Falling Unconscious

                                       The Fall

How is it then that we find ourselves east of Eden?
By what self-destructive acts did we suffer the wrath of heaven?
How can we come to believe again?
Believe that we wander still in the Garden?
Value the eternal promise of resurrection?
Hear the still, small voice, and its sweet melody of salvation?
Can we sit in the stillness and feel the heart’s return?
Twas a dream, a nightmarish madness of the mind.
Paradise, beauty and perfection, we are there still.
                   Roy Charles Henry

In the second book of the Three Great Questions Trilogy, we learned the details of human behaviors related to repression and projection. In this essay we focus on those behavioral dynamics in the shattering of Oneness which in the context of the Christian religion is called The Fall.

Adding some of the concepts or basic assumptions found in Ken Wilber’s The Spectrum of Consciousness (1977), we can outline the essence of Simple Reality (also referred to as the Absolute, the Mind, Oneness, P-A, or in the context of religion, God). This worldview is virtually unknown in the West except to scholars and is not understood by most of them. It is not a matter of intelligence as we have previously learned but is attributable to the fact that the dominant human worldview, P-B, will not accommodate or accept a more profound narrative. Therefore, many might find these principles difficult to internalize. Not all of the principles presented here are Wilber’s and we recommend you read his books to understand how his ideas differ from those found in the Simple Reality books.

The essence of Simple Reality is Oneness not duality. It is immutable, changeless and unknowable by the human intellect. As humans we can “know” or experience Simple Reality intuitively as a “feeling.” Simple Reality can be said to be “heartfelt.” All physical forms and ideas are illusions of a divided universe which we think we can measure and manipulate. All human thinking such as analysis, synthesis, evaluation, knowledge accumulation, remembering, etc., are a product of mental operations and do not reveal Reality. Thinking in the context of P-B or dualism also involves repression of unacceptable aspects of our personalities into our individual shadows and projection of those aspects onto other people and events in our lives.

In summary, Simple Reality or Mind is featureless, non-conceptual and non-objective. Illusion or P-B was created by the subject/object split or the shattering of P-A by the mind, or as the Bible says, the knowledge of good and evil.

Key concepts we will need to know as we tell the story of The Fall:

• Dualism – unaware of the “underlying ground” of non-duality (Oneness)
• Repression – repressing non-duality into our personal unconscious
• Projection – projecting the non-duality as differentiated multiplicity or as two antagonistic opposites such as the self and the other

Becoming unconscious is represented in the Jewish myth in the Old Testament in the story of The Fall or the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden because of their knowledge of good and evil (original sin).  In Simple Reality we call it entering into the illusion of P-B, leaving the present moment P-A.

Adam’s intellectual knowledge of good and evil resulted in losing the awareness of Oneness. Ignorance in the Hindu or Buddhist sense is “ignore-ance” of Oneness (Simple Reality) and has nothing to do with the lack of knowledge but rather the intellect succumbing to illusion. Since the major instrument of ignorance is thought, it is thought itself which is ultimately responsible for the seeming existence (illusion) of the conventional universe (P-B).

Simple Reality is in effect shattered by the intellect and the processes involved with thinking which moves us further away from our intuition or natural wisdom. Notice how both identity and illusion are created in this process.

First, Mind (P-A) is shattered by thinking about the knowledge of good and evil (dualism) and hence, non-duality is repressed. This primary dualism is splitting the subject/object, self/other, and organism/environment. Our identity determined by this worldview becomes centered in the body, our organism vs. the environment as other. This split of the Mind creates the illusion of organism vs. environment and also creates the illusion of space.

Secondly, the unity of past and future, being and nothingness, life and death are split, repressing that unity and projecting it as the conflict of life against death. The awareness of death is repressed. We kill ourselves by degrees to avoid an illusory death. Our identity after this split does not accept death, so we abandon our mortal organism and escape into something that seems to the mind much more solid—namely “ideas.” In fleeing death we flee our mutable body and identify with the delusional idea of an immortal ego or me. We begin to live in the past and future and refuse the timeless Now. The split of past vs. future creates the illusion of time. “Thus man attempts to avoid the death of the timeless Moment by living in the past that doesn’t exist and seeking a future that will never arise.”

Thirdly, our accepting the illusion of death is a denial of the body. The organism is rejected and split, its unity is repressed and then projected as mind and body, a psyche vs. soma. The false self or persona is created and body awareness is repressed. The false self survival strategy becomes a life-long project of avoiding the Now. The split of the false self or ego vs. the body creates the illusion of immortality.

In flight from death we demand a future, and thus our moments pass.
Ken Wilber

(Note: the psyche is the soul or spirit and psychologically it is the mind functioning as the center of thought, emotion and behavior and consciously or unconsciously adjusting and relating the body to its social and physical environment.)

“Man in fleeing death, flees his mutable body and identifies with the seemingly undying idea of himself. Corrupt but flattering, this idea he calls his “ego,” his “self.”

Finally, we impose a dualism or split upon our false self or ego and repress the underlying unity of all our egoic tendencies and project them as the persona vs. the shadow. The shadow consists of repressed traits that the ego pushed out of consciousness. Our identity is now the persona or false self. The split of the persona vs. shadow create the illusion that “my persona is me, all of me.”

Awakening into the present moment requires reversing The Fall into unconsciousness with Buddha’s insight that there is no “I” no “me” thus grasping the illusion of the persona. Meditation is the means by which we begin our climb back to Oneness, it is our ladder. The Point of Power Practice provides the rungs on the ladder with each step being a response to our conditioned, shattered false self.

We ascend the ladder of consciousness, letting go of the illusion of the persona and its repressed shadow, our dependence on the intellect, our identification with the body, and the related fear of death. Having surrendered the illusion of the persona with a physical body we also see the illusion of time begin to fade as we learn that the present moment is all we have. We transcend the illusions of past and future.

Reaching the top rung of the ladder, non-dualism, we experience the unity of subject and object, self and other, organism and environment and in so doing the illusion of the primary split is transcended. We now have an experience of The Great Insight, the insight that Oneness is the True context for the human story and we are in turn empowered with an identity which unites us with all of Creation.

Simple Reality eludes most of humanity because of our “fall into unconsciousness;” we are unaware of its existence. We cannot know Simple Reality with our senses or our limited intellect; we know it by being it, by feeling it, by expressing it. The ladder of transcendent consciousness awaits all of us if we choose to begin the process of ascension, the process of awakening.

________________________________________________________________

References and notes are available for this essay.
Find a much more in-depth discussion in books by Roy Charles Henry:
Where Am I?  The First Great Question Concerning the Nature of Reality
Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival