"Human capabilities will be seen for what they are,
and a great new period of development will occur, in which all
concepts of selfhood and reality will be literally seen as
`primitive superstition.'"
- Seth: The Unknown Reality Vol. 2 (p
646)
As far as I'm concerned, no more profound words were ever uttered by this multidimensional being. Often Seth makes statements of rather immense profundity like the one above; if, that is, one can figure out where he was coming from. In this particular instance, I must say, I feel I have a relatively clear idea of what Seth means in this quote. As a matter of fact, Seth is the only author that I have ever come across to directly make this point. Unfortunately, Seth often only hints at the depths and implications of his more profound remarks, and this particular instance is no exception. The quote above was presented in a context in which Seth was discussing possible future potentialities of our species and so his statement is presented in such a manner as to describe the coming of some future state of mankind. Here, I am not particularly interested in possible futures of the human species. Here I am interested in exploring the implications and ramifications of a point of view in which "all concepts of selfhood and reality are seen as primitive superstitions."
Let me say it again: we want to explore a point of view, or more precisely, the implications inherent in such a view in which all concepts of selfhood and reality are seen as primitive superstitions. In other words, there comes a point in intellectual development where all the stories about what I am or what you are, and all the stories about reality, life, truth, or whatever you want to call it--all these stories take on the same meaning as the stories of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Initially, we believe there is a Santa Claus or an Easter Bunny, but eventually we outgrow such notions. We no longer take them seriously but see them for what they are: fun and entertaining stories that provide a framework for the development of important qualities such as imagination or cultural affinity with our neighbors, as well as other important factors. I don't want to say that these stories take on the quality of being a myth, because the whole concept of "myth" is grounded in the assumption that there is some "real" reality with which to contrast to the myth. Such a line of thought would be self-contradictory in that it would only lead us into concocting new stories. That's not Seth's intention, and that's not what I'm talking about either. What we're saying is that all the stories; the stories of all the world's civilizations, religions, all of the philosophies, all of the sciences, all the stories of occultists, all the stories of economics and politics, psychology, sociology and anthropology, medicine and education, law and history, all the stories of identities; of the housewife and policeman, the child and the adult, the preacher and the teacher, ALL of these stories, and every other "concept of selfhood and reality" that you can conceive of, these are all just that: stories. All of these stories are the personae through which we live out our existence, the thought-forms in which we dress our souls.
In a very real sense, to accept the above statements is not just to adopt another viewpoint or tell another story. It is to come to a level of realization where all viewpoints are seen exactly for what they are: viewpoints, stories, combinations of words and thoughts and emotions, ideas and attitudes linked together forming particular configurations within human minds and human lives, configurations that exert unbelievable power over each and every one of us on all the levels of our individual and collective experience.
The crucial factor involved in understanding what I'm getting at here is the element of belief. Belief becomes the crucial point of focus because it reveals our relationship to any given story, and in fact, one's relationship to one's self. It's the difference between believing that a story is a story or believing that a story is something other than a story. What do I mean by this? Let's explore the meaning of these statements in terms that are a clearer reflection of our actual experience with what I am calling "stories".
Our individual and collective perceptions, and thus, experience, are always on some level or another couched within a mental framework or context. Such a context serves the dual function of, on one hand, defining the scope and breath of our experience, and, on the other hand, defining the limits and boundaries of our experience. The mental boundaries of our lives both enclose us within their scope, but also relate us to the nonverbal and nonconceptual levels of our experience. To paraphrase Seth:
"It is only through ideas that we can achieve true
freedom, but it is only through ideas that we can eliminate our
true freedom".
And it is this particular line of consideration that leads us into the essential crux of both of Seth's quotes; that is that we must at some point or another, as individuals and as a species as a whole, come into a more realistic relationship with the ideas and mental-imaginative constructs that define our lives, these being precisely the nature of all the "stories" of our lives. However, I do not think that such a level of insight necessarily entails that we come to see "all concepts of selfhood and reality ... as `primitive superstition.'" This realization in itself provides a useful first approximation or, in another sense, is like training wheels into a vaster and more inclusive realization and appreciation of the roles that mental-imaginative constructs --thoughts, words, ideas, definitions and the like--do and can play in our lives and in the human experience as a whole. These things are not necessarily "primitive superstitions" though further on we will address why Seth has chosen this particular term. These things are products of our mind on both a collective and individual basis, and as such are in many respects akin to the honey produced by bees or the milk produced by cows. In such a sense I believe that this is our fundamental relationship to the products of our mind; they seep from us, we perspire them, they flow from us automatically and quite spontaneously as a natural by-product of our inherent organization as human beings. Our minds, through imagination and contact with other minds, generate products; thoughts, ideas, etc., and these disperse from us much as a plant produces and disperses seeds. In a sense, this is the old occult adage "thoughts are things", and seeing them as such makes it much easier for us to ask fundamental questions such as: What is the relationship between mind by-products (thoughts) and individuals or collective groups of people? At what levels are these relationships fixed and at what levels are these relationships flexible?
With regard to our "fixed" relationships to mind products, it is not my intent here to go into the mechanisms of thought generation and the behavior of thoughts as individual entities for I have discussed this in other chapters. Suffice it to say at this point that the fixed aspects of our relationships to thoughts involves the fact that, aside from the fact that we cannot avoid thinking, thoughts themselves serve as a type of "glue" or bonding principle both in terms of an individual psyche and collective social organizations. Thoughts, and the gestalt-like organization of them, hold together both our individual minds and our collective social groupings. This is an inherent, unavoidable consequence of our relationship to our thoughts, and as such is therefore "fixed". We can no more prevent these types of processes than we can avoid metabolizing food we have eaten.
Within the scope of this essay, however, the truly relevant question is: What are the flexible levels of our relationship as human beings to the products of our minds? It is through this line of inquiry that we can make clear sense out of Seth's quote and in particular his reference to "primitive superstitions". What is flexible in our relationship with thoughts? Well, it is inevitable that we think. However, the content of what we think is obviously quite flexible. That the actual shape and content of thoughts is flexible is a vast understatement. In actuality there is no more plastic and moldable medium in our experience. I do not think it would be an exaggeration to say that thoughts are infinitely plastic. I do not think there is any limit whatsoever to the shape, content and meaning that thoughts can take. We can have little thoughts, big thoughts, good thoughts and bad, intellectual thoughts and stupid ideas, thoughts about thoughts, and thoughts about anything whatsoever, even thoughts about nothing at all! All we know and understand expresses itself as thought, and it is through the process of thought that the entire drama of human experience is played out. The processes of mind through which thoughts are created and sustained are not amenable to an all-inclusive containment by thoughts themselves, but this has not prevented us from creating an unending myriad of thoughts about the nature of thinking, which again only illustrates the infinite plasticity of forms which thought can take.
The plasticity of thoughts is both vast and transcendental and indeed it is almost trivial to point this fact out. Yet this realization is rarely acknowledged though all our mental behavior rests securely in this fact, and we quite subconsciously and instinctively continue to produce an unending array of ever-changing, ever different thoughts. Yet to see this fundamental plasticity of thought is, it seems, disconcerting to the modern mind. For what is implied in this realization is that all the thoughts of humankind, all the thoughts of all the peoples of all the cultures and societies past, present and future are, in some sense or another, all on equal footing. Thus, in our Western Civilization's insecure and tenuous mental grasp of things it is easier to ignore some issues altogether. It is easier to talk about primitive mythologies, medieval superstitions and old wives' tales and concoct infinite distinctions of types and categories of thinking that in the end only serve to blind us from the fundamental unity of the fact that all humans make thoughts and that those thoughts can take an infinite variety of forms.
The previous paragraph leads us to the fundamental point of this essay and also the bottom line to the Seth quote that started this section. And that is to focus our attention on our attitudes towards our thoughts. This is the second great flexible aspect in our relationship to the products of our minds. Not only can thoughts take an infinite variety of forms, but as well, and in some respects more importantly, people can take an infinite variety of attitudes to the thoughts that affect them and fill (or we could say `define') their lives. Seth's statement presents a particular attitude towards our relationships to our thoughts on both collective and individual levels. The true crux of his statement was alluded to earlier when the issue of "belief" came up. This is THE key word: BELIEF. This single word defines or implies a vast set of attitudes and assumptions with regard to individual and collective relationships to ideas. And these attitudes and assumptions are themselves mostly unconscious or instinctive reactions to the fact that we make and have no choice but to be in a relationship with thoughts. And when these attitudes are not unconscious, they are at best nebulously defined, half understood glimmerings of something not quite grasped or comprehended for what it is. What I'm saying here is that our attitudes about our relationship to thoughts and ideas is probably the most crucial factor on all of the levels of human existence and this fact is simply not recognized as such, at least not in any practical or useful fashion. If it was, we would not believe in ideas, there would be no process of belief, except perhaps in the early developmental stages of an individual's psyche.
Thus, this is what Seth means by saying: "Human capabilities will be seen for what they are, and ... all concepts of selfhood and reality will be literally seen as `primitive superstition.'" Seth is saying that we will come to see the mind and the ideas generated and sustained by the mind in a new way. And the essence of this "new way" will be that we won't believe in ideas, for we will see the need to believe in ideas to be a "primitive superstition". It is not that any particular concepts will be thought of as superstitions, whether they be concepts of selfhood and reality, or concepts about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Concepts will be recognized exactly for what they are--concepts. There will be no more mistaking of ideas for the things that ideas are intended to describe. "Reality" will no longer be simply a word or concept but a signpost, a beacon of meaning in the mental world pointing to the ultimately undefinable experiences of living consciousnesses. Mental realities will be seen to be one element among a multitude of elements in the overall experience of humans and other creatures. There will no longer exist a need to attempt to capture experience in mental terms, operating under some nebulous notion that ideation supersedes experience. Ideation will be seen as only one among a myriad of levels of human experience. The proper place of ideas will be fit into the human framework and humankind will no longer be slaves to ideas, but ideas shall become active partners in the endeavors of humankind. And the crux of this transition shall be the elimination of the need to believe in ideas, not any particular ideas, but ideas as a whole.
Yet to not believe in ideas does not necessarily imply that one sees the relationship between ideas and reality clearly. One may be a stubborn nihilist, for example. But to see clearly the relationship between ideas and reality does completely imply that one no longer needs to believe in ideas. It will be realized that ideas do not require belief to be functional, and that ideas actually work better if not suffocated under a blanket of belief. Again, and this simply cannot be over stressed at humanities' present level of evolution: the need to believe in ideas will be seen as the superstition itself.
And this realization will lead humanity into new ways
of life because it will not simply be another story about mind
and ideas but a clear, intuitive realization--a thoughtless
thought or wordless insight--about the nature and place of mind
and ideas in the human experience. But this "thoughtless
thought", this new way, or new, deeper and more inclusive
understanding will not come upon us magically or miraculously. It
will come when we as individuals seek to understand with greater
clarity and depth, and much more importantly, with a deeper and
truly sincere intellectual honesty, our relationships to the
ideas that bind or free us.
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