3.1.2 Metaphors for complexity and unertainties
Moreover, the above theories seem to be fundamentally
flawed, in my view, in that they seek elegant, integrative ways to explain
everything with certainty. According to my redefinition of 'science', I need to
seek instead the various aspects of the complex that a human being is, not
worrying about certainties. It is my experience that even theories, models, and
explanations can drastically change as my experience takes new forms. Over the
past two years of my quest, I have re-interpreted my past entirely at least
four times. Each time, the new explanations triggered the thought: 'Oh, so this
is what really happened!' or 'Oh, so that is what is really going on!' I no
longer invest my models and explanations with a value of absolute truth. Rowan
wrote a typical description of this process, relative to creative visions
(Rowan, 1993, pp.195-198).
I began with psychological explanations of
'pathology', and went on to humanistic ones of growth and self-actualisation.
From there, I expanded into purely spiritual interpretations, and on to more
rigorous 'transpersonal' ones. This directed toward mystical views and
rekindled my old interest the cosmologies of physicists but also threw me back
to old dualist science explanations. Social ecology led me to face the
complexity and find brain new 'complex-'simple', scientific and humanist ways
of understanding things, with elements of all of the preceding. I have learned
to relativise what I think I know, indexing* it mentally with (a) the
theoretical framework I use, (b) the date at which I developed the explanation,
(c) the context of my personal concern at the time. The complex-simple approach
seems to be the most practical for me now. It allows for uncertainty about many
issues, and for expansion of the points of view I will peruse in the
future.
Understanding what I call, without definition for the
time being, the 'Higher mind' or '~ew Paradigm mind', requires a capacity to
appraise the many aspects of the mind-body-person complex, which are embedded
in a 'lifeworld' as Husserl defined it. At the core of it all is the composite
'Body-Mind-Experiencer' or 'BodyMindSelf'. My picture of this is shown in.
Figure 8.
* Korsybski's (1933) General Semantics deals with how
language limits the reality we experience, and how using various devices of
language and thought can expand our reality. 'Indexing' is one of
them.
Perception
BodyMind Medicine
BRAIN & other systems
Bo dy-Min d-Experiencer
Left Right
Physio-Kundalini
MIND
ODY BODY
Life
Energy
Conscious Unconscious
Emotions Empathy
SELF &
Consciousness
Ego/Personality Shadow
Transpersonal Self
Figure 8: Metaphors for human nature, for 'person':
Mine is 'Body-mind-self'
To build a complete picture of the functioning of the
human 'power of Creation', I will need to review literature from a number of
fields related to the many aspects of human living experience.
The 'self' or 'experiencer' part accounts for
psychological, spiritual and philosophical ways of making sense of the process
of living. The sense of self rests on both the body, which gives us our
physical sense of being a specific entity, and the mind that thinks, apparently
to most of us, independently from the body, the mind that learns, knows,
creates, has a purposive drive, and various ways of knowing. It is active
thanks to all forms of life energy. These various dimensions are addressed b y
a number of fields I survey.
| 
