Bois d' Arc Methodist
(Given to my theology tutor Kellett before his appointment as pastor there)

Empiricism

Mythological mysticism of the shadowy past could thereby be brought down to earth as advanced empiricism. The preparatory authority of verbal suppositions could be transcended as human experience became our centralizing guide. Language could then be used more realistically as a practical tool in organizing the whole-mind to look right-at reality for (non-verbal) guidance on using (divinely inspired) common sense naturally in order to figure out our surroundings—and decide what to do in life.

A first task would be to explore our own mental equipment. The formerly forbidden-as-frightening depths of the subconscious mind must finally be faced.

Archtetypes At The Roots Of Consciousness

Thunderbirds

My own practice at suspending the verbal function—in order the dream while awake (especially late at night)--suggested the working hypothesis herein: that the underlying (non-verbal) ingredients of perception comprise a continuous flow of elemental ideas (also called universals and archetypes). They seemingly stream constantly through the subconscious (as an abstractly unnoticed "movie").

These elemental building blocks continually combine—rather randomly—into the fictions of (waking) dreams. (Silly little stories really—imaginative vignettes—always burgeoning from the depths of consciousness.) They seemingly comprise a primordial groundwork for the integrative function depicted in the title to a previous essay: "Abstraction as an Existential Profile of the Human Mind and Experience."

Evidently these elemental ingredients are in turn re-composited (spontaneously) into conscious perceptions of surrounding reality. The whole process is internal to the mind (within one's living nervous system, which still seems to tick even during out-of-body experiences).

Uncertainty

It becomes problematic, therefore, whether anything short of outright death can transcend whatever bias is presumably produced by this seemingly inescapable enclosure of human experience. I recall a suggestion to this effect by Carl Jung (in a "Psychological Commentary" to THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD).

This complication seemingly blocks fully direct perception of whatever reality exists outside the mind; which remains a subject for scientific inquiry. So far evidently we only know—directly—the finished products of an internal process.

It furthermore appears that whatever instrumentality is used for probing outside ourselves—from familiar senses through cameras to computers—is subject to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle: the externally plastic subject matter is presumably disturbed to some inescapable extent by our (active) attempts at observation.

My transcendental experiences with expansion in the usual spectrum of visible light have suggested how this may happen. Conceivably the electromagnetic energy that becomes light—at certain pulse-frequencies—is illuminated by the mind. Some of the energy is then reflected back—as thus processed—toward compositional effects upon its sources in the unified Aesthetic Continuum (upsetting our old assumption that "light" flows in only one direction from these sources). An intriguing example of such effects may be the collapse of wave into "particle" functions as postulated in quantum physics.

Consequently our old assumptions about what external reality is like when left alone
become, again, rather problematic. (It may be dark.)

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Note (December 26 '03): I recall noticing in California 30 years ago an enigmatic effect of viewing on wet winter nights a bright light shining through bare tree limbs. A circular halo was formed by glistening limbs—however they might be intertwined in the wind. Selective glistening still formed a concentric circle within the tangle. As I moved from side to side, significantly, the circle moved with me. Why would this happen if the light were coming as already illuminated in only one direction?

California exercise in Jack London's Valley of the Moon (l972-2004)

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