A Brief Statement of my Current Philosophical Position

At some point lately I read a post by a facebook friend, Michael Rectenwald, an author and professor at NYU, which was a short video of a short talk given by Michio Kaku, an American futurist, theoretical physicist, and popularizer of science. The gist of the video was that the human mind controls the physical reality. This 'new discovery' has actually been around during the great esoteric period from the mid-to-late-1850s to approximately the mid-1900s.

There have been many investigators and investigations, most lasting lifetimes, during that period, starting primarily with Helena Blavatsky and her great work 'The Secret Doctrine - the Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy (1888).' This work was based on her reading and understanding of the Stanzas of Dzyan, a very ancient group of stanzas based on what is thought to be deep meditations. She had many detractors but also very many admirers of her work which included physicists like Einstein, mathematicians, philosophers, journalists, etc...

Other investigators into human consciousness and/or physics include:

• the Russians G.I. Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky (it was in Ouspensky, that I was introduced for the first time to the idea that each dimension was perpendicular to each element of all preceding dimensions. So I then 'grokked' time as the fourth dimension and then saw that the 5th dimension, travelling through time, at least mentally, was a possibility - think deja vu as an example. So all the recent theories, by recent I mean starting in the early 20th century (physicists and mathematicians even pre-dating Einstein and Einstein himself) have been working their way to the present state of physics, which, to me, is a more mathematical way of expressing ideas first postulated in a set of ancient stanzas and clarified for western minds by Blavatsky.
• Rodney Collin, student of both the Russians and writer of such books as, for example, 'The Theory Of Celestial Influence - Man, The Universe, and Cosmic Mystery.’
• Alice Bailey, student of Blavatsky and author of a series of books based on her relationship with one of the planetary masters - consciousnesses that have broken the cycle reincarnation that, according to her and others, are still among us, attempting to bring out the best in humanity (to put is simply.)
• Idries Shah, a Sufi and author that came to the west to promulgate his understanding of the truth that starts and ends with the human and our efforts toward right thinking/actions/understandings in order to perfect ourselves. His Sufism, while based on early esoteric islamic teachings, also has close echoes to the teachings Siddhartha Gautama, The Buddha.

My studies in the late 60s and early 70s and as recently as the last few decades had led me to understand that there is no 'matter' but what has been called matter are really focal points of energy tied together in interesting ways (we all live physically in the 3rd dimension and our instruments have been useful in detecting the 3 dimensional world, until recently, when we've been developing much more sensitive tools like The Large Hadron Collider at Cern, and the electron microscope that have expanded our consciousness way beyond the material world. And we are energy as well, with consciousness to boot, being much higher on the evolutionary chain than mere ‘matter.’ Are we at the top? Why would be we presume so? The majority of us still kill one another of any reason - religion, resources, jealousy, fear, a mere liking of killing, any thing really, and any combination thereof (The Seven Deadly Sins being an attempt to simplify the many into a few.) But there are consicousnesses that teach that Love - Right Feeling, along with Right Action and Right thought, is the only way out of this cycle of reincarnation brought on by the bad karma we accumulate.

My investigations into meditation, especially during the late 60s - late 70s, were, I felt, a much more direct and immediate approach to the meaning of all this than all the reading of what others thought - at least it was certainly more humane and useful in living my life. But the studies in both meditations and the works of others, were and are only as good as they make me and only as useful as I am, changed for the better by them. Early on, I came to the conclusion that modern religions are way down the path of 'someone who interpreted what someone earlier had interpreted, what someone earlier interpreted, etc… what the originator really talked about - The Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad as originators for starters with Lao Tzu, Confucius, and others thrown in, Poets being chief among them.

I came to the conclusion that there is only one truth to reality but many paths to that truth - some spiritual, some scientific, and some philosophical. Blavatsky said it succinctly as ‘There is no religion higher than Truth.’  One may substitute science or philosophy for the word religion just as well.