Your Post-Graduate Education

In an age of specialization and technology, it seems to me that a university education should provide connecting links, which lead toward an integrative or holistic mindset.

I would like to chair an interdisciplinary seminar for both undergraduate, graduate or post-graduate students and faculty in various fields who want to consciously explore the connecting underpinnings of their discipline with other disciplines, and with themselves.

Each specialization develops its own rules, language, and theory of knowledge, which in turn leads to division, competition and misunderstanding.

There are many signs in our culture of the search for a "theory of everything." There are movies like "The Matrix," "I Huckabees," and "What the X!Z#!X??#* Do We Know?" in which it is very evident that there is a hunger for this search for the meaning of our academic and life experiences.

Even the best jobs get boring and repetitious unless we are involved in some kind of meaningful research and understanding.

Many medical students want to be employed, for instance, at a teaching hospital, where research is going on. Mediocre television, news, jobs and politics is just not enough and so we get into drugs and wars.

The hunger for meaning is a chronic theme that will not go away with just more distraction and entertainment.

This search means that we are not reaching the dimension of depth very often in our education, in our work, and in ourselves.

This lack of depth shows up in chronic anxiety and other symptoms from illness to war. We learn every tool and technique imaginable, even regarding outer space, but what about the tools and techniques to explore inner space?

Many students are not prepared to wrestle with these questions until their mid-life crisis when they hit bottom and then, guess what, they go back to school.

People's night dreams are full of "going back to school" themes. Life is an educational process, but the university should provide more than just the technical tools for this process.

Of course, people can take philosophy and religion classes, but what about the depth dimension of their own field, and of themselves? I understand that "What the Bleep do we Know?" will soon be publishing 65 hours of dialog on CD's on this topic of the spiritual/quantum dimension of science.

I published a Website about three years ago in which I summarized the work of about 15 major and minor educators, mystics, therapists and scientists who have made contributions to "infinity theory".

I would like to devise an online seminar, which would address the question of whether an infinity theory exists and whether one is needed.

Leading educators from various disciplines in the university and even in the public domain are invited to discuss any evidence in their research and experience for an "implicate" order, for a symbolic core, which energizes their passions and interest in and beyond the "science" of their field.

Music, art, biology, philosophy, economics, computer science, medicine, psychology and even the political sciences have their explicate and implicate dimensions.

The symbology of sound, light, and other energy forms support and infuse every discipline. Students are caught in the cross-fire of competing languages and concepts.

In the recent presidential debates "fact" versus "faith" became a national political issue. When our various disciplines do not undertake self-analysis and self-awareness of our motivational belief systems, the comedians and politicians do it for us.

This online seminar might be entitled: "In Search of a Theory of Everything," or "Does Infinity Theory Exist?," or "What is Holistic Education?" or "Is There an Interdisciplinary Science" or "Is there a Quantum Reality?" Or, "What is Consciousness?"

Friendly debate is the theme, with shared research (technical and personal) and experience included. The assumption is that everyone is both a scientist and a mystic, but that we are not necessarily balanced in our right and left-brain functions.

In the not too far future, the major issue in the world will center around "What is Reality?"

"Know thyself" was the center of the Greek culture, and is quickly returning to the 21st century as a major issue. Self-esteem is agreed upon by almost everyone as a psychological key, which controls the individual, the family and society. But what is beyond self-esteem? Is there a Self beyond the obvious ego? Is there an Infinite Self? Is there an infinite body of knowledge, which we call Wisdom, which underlies all of our concepts? Is there an Inspirational Science underlying our factual sciences?

The purpose of this seminar is to raise questions and make our inner conflicts conscious rather than acted out unconsciously in the body and in the body politic. At that late stage, we have to call in doctors, morticians and the troops. Do we know the basis for a holistic education leading to a whole person and a whole society? We haven't found that combination yet, in either theory or practice, in my opinion. We are instigating a forum to ask what it might look like and how to move toward it.

As we begin such a seminar, I welcome your dialogue about the need for it and the means for meeting such a need. I carry on such a dialogue with colleagues, clients and my own brand of research full-time. I engage in this dialogue now, both online and offline.

Post-graduate education means different things to different people. It could mean after high school, after college, after graduate school, after career training. Most of our education is aimed at learning to survive well in society.

The goal of education, formal or informal, usually focuses on career advancement, personal achievement and social enhancement. Most of our education is based upon the assumption of body and personality security and pleasure.

Social institutions such as family, school, the entertainment industry, the state, the nation and all other political entities are just an extension of the goal of bodily or ego enhancement.

Post-graduate education of the sort that I call Radical Re-education does not usually begin until the mid-life crisis, when all that we have learned so far begins to fall apart and crash.

Mid-life crises do not occur because we are merely getting older, but because we are not getting wiser as we get older.

The Internet is a frantic effort to accumulate knowledge on the information highway, but wisdom does not exist on the social plane of society per se.

Radical education is about wisdom. Ordinary education is about learning the ropes of society, a survival and enhancement social process, but wisdom is far more.

Knowledge is an external process; wisdom is internal. Normal education is a brainwashing matter in which children are initiated into the belief system of society.

And even though there appear to be many belief systems on the face of the earth, which govern various societies, it is not true. It is true that these belief systems take many forms and appear to be in conflict with each other, but upon closer inspection we find that there is an underlying commonality, which we call the ego-thought system.

Some societies we call autocratic, some democratic, and some theocratic, but actually they are all the same. This becomes clearer when you consider that almost all countries have a 70% military budget. All societies have a military of some sort, along with police, courts, judges, prisons, laws, penalties and punishments. These control systems are set up to deal with violators, criminals and evildoers.

Radical re-education has to begin with the individual. We cannot expect society to offer an education, which would challenge its own foundations. We cannot expect such a Radical Re-education about wisdom to be in the mainstream, even in the churches.

Religion, science and politics have become acculturated and oftentimes you can't tell the difference in the sacred, the scientific, the secular, and the political. So we should not expect to obtain Radical Re-education from society, science or religion.

Radical Re-education is a threat to the ego-thought system which rules society, science and religion. Psychotherapy is also susceptible to the temptation to get abnormal people back to normal. Theoretically, Radical Re-education can begin at any point in time, with any minor upset, but it usually does not because we are able to overlook the meaning of minor upsets and the still small voice. The eyes and the ears of the body do not grasp the meaning of these signals because we are engrossed by and enamored with the body and the world.

Being wed to the ego-thought system, we are not free to consider the Truth. For if we were, the Truth would set us free from the insanity we are all involved with.

And so after many trials and errors, we may begin to connect the dots together, which opens the door to another level that we have usually overlooked and resisted.

We are usually unable to detect the wisdom level within us because we are so busy rationalizing and denying the futility of the unconscious ego thought system. The ego is committed to the belief that it is right, and will choose being right over being happy almost every time. The ego loudly professes its desire for happiness, wisdom and peace, but it will sacrifice these for being right, doing battle and winning.

Radical Re-education is not welcomed because we would have to be wrong to engage in it. As much as the ego professes the desire for change, the resistance to change is enormous. Change represents the unknown and the ego prefers the devil we know to the god we don't know. So don't expect a hoard of people to sign up for Radical Re-education. Expect only those in a mid-life crisis who have experienced enough pain from the ego-thought system to begin to question things.

The majority of people who seek psychotherapy want to return to normal from their abnormal painful anxiety-ridden state. We want to return to the comfort zone of normality that they knew in the past, not realizing that their normality produced the crisis. So we have only known normality until this crisis of abnormality.

What do we know about the unknown world of Radical Re-education? Consciously we may know very little, but unconsciously we know it all. The battle, which is going on in the mind and body, is between conflicting illusions within the ego-thought system. The level of the unconscious eternal Self is hardly even recognized because the ego claims to be the self.

The Self does not fight with the ego, but the ego constantly resists the Self. Even though the ordinary education that we have consists of a mediocre type of knowledge, it has to be undone. This undoing of the ego-thought system seems difficult because it is so tenacious and all encompassing.

If we know that we are caught up in a matrix, the desire to change would be more accessible. Radical Re-education begins with this realization, however, there is no order of difficulty with our problems or in the miracle of change. It is no more difficult to stop an argument than to stop a war. Both spring from the same thought system. How easy or how difficult is it for a person to see the flaws in his opinions and judgments and cease to energize them? Normal education involves adding information to your data bank. Radical-Re-education means the undoing of normal knowledge so that you realize your natural wisdom.

Radical Re-education, especially in the first phase, means to recognize the false premises and content of that normal education to which we are so totally committed. Normal education has to be entirely undone when we begin to access our inherent god-given internal wisdom. This un-doing, however, is like the layers of an onion. It is hard to realize how mythological and stereotyped our belief system is. The ego delights in our assumptions and re-enforces them constantly.

When you listen to the political pundits you see how partisan the entire mindset of each side is. It is almost impossible for non-partisan cooperative activities to occur, although it appears on the surface to be so. We are wed to the idea that the body and the world are physical entities and the ego clings to those ideas tenaciously for its survival.

But is our true identity dependent upon the body and the physical world? Or are these dependencies a result of educational brainwashing. The story is told that when Columbus landed on the shores of the Americas, the natives who did not believe in such massive ships, actually could not see them on the horizon.

The ego-thought system is based upon illusions, which resulted from the fearful belief that we are separate from God, from the truth and from our source. Radical Re-education is not something we beg for. Rather it is something, which promises to enhance the ego, not destroy it. Even if the ego is false, we still want to enhance it.

Spiritual Psychotherapy also begins with the patient's hope to return to normal, but somewhere along the way we begin to realize that normality is a trap, a disease, a danger to the person. Normality is what created the crisis and the suffering in the first place. We have to change horses in the middle of the stream. Since we believe we are the ego, we are on the defense against ego exposure and ego humiliation. Little do we realize that ego humiliation is a necessary step in the process of change. We end up defending our illusions as precious to our very identity because we believe we are an ego.

Can we expect the ego to welcome Radical Re-education? Expect your ego to run like hell from radical re-education. The ego is a bundle of unconscious fears and guilt. The last thing the ego wants is truth and reality. What you see and seem is nothing but a dream within a dream, said Edgar Allen Poe. And you are going to spend your time, energy and money for some Radical-Re-education which the ego doesn't even want?

Radical Re-education is not going to make us more popular. In fact, Radical Re-education is going to make you healthy, wealthy and wise, but that is not what the ego wants. The ego only appears to want that. The ego wants contention, friction, problems, and to win. The ego wants to be on top of the heap. The ego wants to be in control because it is in a very precarious position and cannot be otherwise. The ego wants you to believe that you are it. The ego wants you to believe that you are separate from God. The ego wants you to believe that you are this body and that this physical world is essential to your peace, happiness and freedom.

So if you have had enough anxiety, suffering and disillusionment, you may be ready for Radical Re-education, which is a process you begin with a crisis and learn the tools thereof and continue throughout your life on an hour-by-hour conscious basis.

The ego-thought system is largely an unconscious process and wants to remain so. Awareness is a conscious process, not a habit. Awareness is a constant living process of choices. Every event, value and response is re-evaluated in the light of this living spiritual process of awareness. Nothing is taken for granted. Every common sense value is called into question.

Before this game is over, every experience you ever had or will have is re-examined in the light of this newly emerging realization of truth. Ego laziness will not cut it.

If your anxiety is severe enough, you are invited to begin, realizing that your conventional education produced your anxiety. Anxiety is you invitation to Radical Re-education.

Once you get your foot in the door of wisdom-awareness, keep it there, lest you slip back into the matrix of conventional thought. In conventional education we get caught up in comparison and competition with other people, but there are no such other people. All so-called people are projections of your mind. We do not know other people, we only know our opinions and beliefs about them. Such brainwashed conventional thinking is mediocre and does not recognize the oneness of life.

In a series of 100 lessons we map out the assumptions of our conventional ego-thought system and the markers of the Real Self which we are beginning to realize in Radical Re-education.

The differences in these two systems are absolute and distinguishable. We are committed to one or the other, not to both.

• The ego believes in opposites as pleasure and pain, but the Self recognizes no opposites.
• The ego believes in complexity and the Self in simplicity.
• The ego only recognizes differences from others and the Self recognizes our similarities.
• The ego focuses upon the losses and threat of loss in life; the Self know that there are no losses and that you cannot lose.
• The ego says that people are guilty, and the Self recognizes that we are all innocent just like God made us.
• The ego says you are condemned, the Self says there is no condemnation.
• The ego says that your story is a personal story of victimization; the Self says that such never happened.
• The ego says there is a world out there that existed before you were born and will continue to exist after you die; the Self says there is no such world.
• The ego says that you are angry at certain people, but the Self says that such objects of anger are just symbols of our unconscious thoughts.
• The ego says the offender needs punishment; the self sees that all offenses are only requests for love.
• The ego justifies its stress and anger, but the Self says there is nothing to be stressed about in reality.
• The ego says it can be abused and hurt; the self says there is no such thing.
• The ego calls for sacrifice, and the self says that sacrifice is a misnomer.
• The ego says that death is real, the Holy Spirit says no one dies.
• The ego constantly judges things as good or bad, the Self says that neither good nor bad exists.
love.
• The ego says that fear exists, the Self says that only love is real.
• The ego dwells on the past of should have, would have, could have; the Self knows that the past never happened.
• The ego tries to improve its net worth and value, but that was given in the beginning.
• The ego is always worried about becoming a victim, but the self sees that such thinking is just false guilt.
• The ego says there are special relationships which are the only way to salvation, but the self recognizes that everyone is special.
• The ego claims that God created the world and left us in its tragic clutches; the Self knows that the world is just a dream we made up to justify our perceived separateness from God.