It is also very important to distinguish between the soul and the conscience. The soul has no morality. A serial killer is an expression of the soul just as much as a saint. The creative process of the universe is an improvisation. There are inherent potentials which manifest themselves, but there is no overreaching intelligence to guide the process. Some paths lead on to bigger and healthier subsystems, and others are dead ends. We can see this in evolution. Some sea creature walked onto land and it was a success. The full potential of life on land was unleashed. But the dinosaurs proved to be a dead end.

The same self-aware energy is the motivating force behind the successes and the failures. Thus those who enacted the Holocaust were full of genuine enthusiasm, but it was misdirected by their armouring into mass slaughter.

When it comes to how we act, we are influenced by a number of factors :

1. All else being equal we will avoid behaviour which causes us pain and pursue behaviour which makes us feel pleasure.

2. We may also allow reason to effect our behaviour. We may choose a course of action which involves pain if we reason that it confers an advantage for us in the long run.

3. In the armoured (i.e. divided) state, we may feel compelled to behave in a way which will allow us to not be rejected or otherwise badly treated by others. This is a form of avoidance of pain, but it becomes complex as we trade off different kinds of pain against each other.

4. Our conscience may influence our behaviour by making us feel guilty if we behave in a particular way. The conscience is a part of the ego – a part of our armouring – in which we store our expectations about ourselves. These are imparted to us socially and laid down as a part of the deeper structure of our personality. It may consist of codes of behaviour taught to us by our parents or our teachers and can incorporate ideas absorbed later in life from others if those ideas mesh in some way with what has already been laid down.

All of these ways of choosing our behaviour carry with them their own flaws and limitations. The first is very short term decision-making. Eating sweets may give me pleasure, but if I don’t moderate that in the light of knowledge of the physical effects I’ll make myself sick. The second is a very good approach but it is limited by our current understanding of the situation and may in some cases be too slow, as we can’t always gather all the facts before making a decision. The long-term effectiveness of the third would depend on whether the majority were going in the most potentially successful direction. This may be the case after a problem has been solved, but if there is a major problem it is usually because the majority are going in the wrong direction. Also, it is fear-driven, and being intimidated into a course of action contaminates the health of the system. The fourth is once again effected by the accuracy of the absorbed ideas, but also, because the system is guilt-driven, it discourages rational examination of those ideas and being correction through intimidation leads to an unhealthy system.

Now we have the advantage of being able to integrate aspects of each approach into something which works more effectively. We are still going to want to seek pleasure and avoid pain. If these new ways of understanding ourselves and the universe are well-founded they will make it much easier for us to use reason as a guiding force in our behaviour. And we will be guided by others (although aware that at base we are all one), but only in the spirit of co-operation, and not through any sense of fear. And we will carry with us ideas about how to chose the kind of behaviour which is in the long-term interests of ourselves and the system of which we are a part but without any form of emotional oppression.

Impasses to Thought

If you think that what I say here makes sense and you wonder why you haven’t come across these kinds of ideas before it is because the evolution of ideas, like the evolution of species, is obstructed by impasses.