“the grip of my conditioning”
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries
disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain
“What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without a sense of beauty,”[i] according to Edith Wharton, author of The Age of Innocence (1920). This “novel of manners” re-created the social world of the Gilded Age. It tells of “a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.”[ii] Wharton seemed to realize the toxic effect that living in the context of Paradigm-B was having on American society. The denial of reality led to zombie-like behavior.
Insight # 4 comes to us from Sir Peter Russell (b. 1946), a British scientist who was able to synthesize the scientific and the mystical which helps us shift from a self-destructive worldview (Paradigm-B) to a life-enhancing worldview (Paradigm-A). He is from the Non-dualism (Oneness) school.
“The realities of our day-to-day consciousness and of these moments of liberation are so difficult that it is almost as if a mental fence divides the two. On one side of the fence, I am caught in my mind—in my thoughts, my anxieties, my judgments, and my fears. I may on occasion recognize that this is all unnecessary, and that it removes me from the present moment, but such passing insights are seldom sufficient to release my mind from the grip of my conditioning.”[iii]
The essays in this book discuss the “grip of my conditioning” in Paradigm-B as well as the way to Transcendence.
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Additional Reading:
- Paradigm-B, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 2
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[i] Batuman, Elif, “Essay: The Age of Innocence.” The New York Times Book Review. November 3, 2019, p. 15.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Russell, Peter. Waking Up in Time. Novato, California: Origin Press, 1992, p. 91.
