How to Deal with Our Current ‘Death Spiral,’ Session 5

Special Topics in One World or None

*The Zoom Link for today’s live session is far below.

Today, we continue with the theme of spiritual consciousness, which I have dubbed: “the consciousness that is necessary for change.” To quote Albert Einstein once again: “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” We are currently in a dire state, where the existential challenges that we face have come to necessitate the most radical change of thinking if we are to survive.

Yet, in the process of making a positive change, we may discover that many other areas of our life improve as well. The nature of spiritual consciousness denotes a state of peace, joy, and love for all humankind, emerging naturally from us, because we have finally found the integrated, healthy, and whole state to which we belong. This is conceptually almost impossible to explain. Experientially, however, it is recognized as a state from which we came and to which we yearn to return. I have often called this a state of heightened mental health, in which emotional suffering disappears and wellsprings of energy and capacity arise in unexpected ways.

This is the opposite of the atomization we spoke of, whereby each individual thinks of oneself as separate from all others, and our desires, goals, and interests compete with those of others. If Oneness is our natural, original state, how did we get to where we are?

This separation is described in some origin myths, such as the creation of Adam and Eve. While Adam and Eve were living in paradise, there was a tree from which they were forbidden to eat the fruit. It was called the Tree of Knowledge. Now, I myself only came to understand why it is called the Tree of Knowledge much later, several years into my being a professor, when a divinity student enlightened me. “Why is it the Tree of Knowledge? What knowledge did we gain?” I asked, during an informal dinner. The student answered: “It is not the Tree of Knowledge, but believing that we have knowledge.” With this one sentence, he dissolved for me years of quandary that not even divinity school could resolve.

In other words, believing that we know, and splitting and splicing the world as we do, beginning with the duality of good and evil, is the hubris that has continued to this day. By believing that we know, or that this knowledge was “better”, we have let go of a higher form of knowledge—or the knowledge that unifies. Without this knowledge, we have no way of returning to Oneness with our source. This separation alone creates misery, hardship, and such unfathomable suffering as to become, in our day, our collective suicidality.

A similar split happened in the great moment of the modern era, when French philosopher René Descartes declared, “Je pense, donc je suis,” or “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”), and a new, Scientific Age was thought to have begun. He began the method of making all inquiry without assumptions, starting with only the premise that one is because one thinks, and then using the senses to prove each hypothesis that one accepts as fact.

However, I would argue that the opposite happened with Cogito ergo sum. In fact, the correct interpretation is: “I think, therefore I forgot who I am.” Thinking in particulars, based purely on the surface-level senses, was the end of knowledge, not the beginning—for we forgot the most crucial knowledge of who we are. Without the knowledge of who we are, we may simply become learned ignoramuses who know more and more about less and less.

What is knowledge of the self? It is the realization that, at the deepest level of consciousness, one’s true self is not just the body, mind, or ego—but part of an eternal, unchanging, and infinite reality that permeates all things. This profound shift in identity frees the self from anxieties, fragilities, and insecurities, to experience a stable, boundless, peaceful, and interconnected existence.

In this state, there is no good and evil—only Source awareness and non-awareness. We will return to this concept later, for one may ask, should we not be fighting evil? Indeed, I have, perhaps more than anyone, emphasized the need to understand criminal personalities and to set severe limits on dangerous behavior, even if it entails hospitalization or incarceration.

For now, we will focus on having the correct understanding, so that we can be the most effective. For example, we are much more powerful when we understand that good and evil are not equals of a duality. One is eternal, and the other illusory; one is real, and the other is not. Ultimately, we will realize that evil does not exist, but is merely the absence of good, and we defeat it by dissolving it.

In fact, “all things are possible” when we are one with the Source. We experience vitality and bliss, unlike when we are separated, when no amount of material goods, worldly achievement, or accolades from others will be able to assuage the lack. No substitute will ever be enough, which is why anger, grievances, and rage accumulate—morphing into desires for vengeance—against whichever target there may be. As much as one is powerful to be one with the Source, one is powerless to be separated from It, and may resort to violence against others, violence against the self, and violence against the species—and this is what we are seeing now in our current “Death Spiral.”

Announcement:

Dr. Bandy X. Lee is inviting you to a live session in a series: