Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
27-Feb-10
Winslow Burhoe
617.538.2015
winslow@directacoustics.com
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FOREWORD..................................................................................................................................5
INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................6
DETECTIVE STORY..................................................................................................................11
GOD’S PLAN...............................................................................................................................15
SPIRITUAL INTEGRATION..................................................................................................15
GREAT ART............................................................................................................................16
MEDITATION.........................................................................................................................16
EVOLUTION...........................................................................................................................17
CULTURAL STREAMS..........................................................................................................17
TIME........................................................................................................................................17
WEALTH AND LEISURE TIME............................................................................................17
DEATH.....................................................................................................................................17
HUMAN SUFFERING.............................................................................................................18
GOD’S TOOLS............................................................................................................................19
HUMAN PRODUCTIVITY.....................................................................................................20
NATURAL SELECTION.........................................................................................................20
SPIRIT GUIDES.......................................................................................................................22
TIME........................................................................................................................................22
DEATH AND SUFFERING.....................................................................................................22
IDENTITY....................................................................................................................................23
CULTURAL IDENTITY..........................................................................................................23
MEDITATION.............................................................................................................................27
Description............................................................................................................................27
SPIRITUALITY...........................................................................................................................30
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MY SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE..............................................................................................35
My deceased mother’s voice.................................................................................................36
Early meditation....................................................................................................................36
ART..............................................................................................................................................40
DIMENSIONS..............................................................................................................................44
HUMAN EVOLUTION...........................................................................................................45
CULTURAL EVOLUTION.....................................................................................................46
DUALITY....................................................................................................................................48
CULTURAL STREAMS..............................................................................................................49
. . .AFTER LIFE...........................................................................................................................50
SUMMARY..................................................................................................................................51
EXCESS MATERIAL..................................................................................................................53
POSTMODERNISM................................................................................................................53
FALSE MYTHS, BAD SCIENCE AND HOAXES.................................................................53
Greed....................................................................................................................................53
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Global Warming is a bad thing.............................................................................................53
Acid rain...............................................................................................................................53
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FOREWORD
Once again, my son has asked me to write a preface to one of his misguided “do-goodism”
attempts to enlighten a dark and illiterate mob. I wish he had asked while I was still alive.
In this book, he is making a futile and inaccurate attempt to describe how everything in the
universe is held together and how that is important to us. In a typically superstitious ploy, he invokes the
existence of spirits to explain everything that cannot be explained through good science. Who is so hair-
And Art! Who needs art? Isn’t it enough to work hard and lead a good life and have that
Winslow is a very well-meaning and nice boy, but I am afraid he has let his wishful thinking lead
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INTRODUCTION
It is only common sense to accept the premise of a spiritual realm. I am impatient with those who
pride themselves on knowing so much that they can deny the existence of what they cannot see or
As an amateur scientist and musician, I naturally became a loudspeaker designer. Since there
were no courses or books to teach loudspeaker design, I had to pretty much self teach myself in all the
various fields involved. The mathematics of electrical and magnetic fields led to the insight that there are
more (27 altogether) dimensions in the universe than we can directly observe, which got me to thinking
As an amateur scientist, I have always been skeptical of the dogma of all religions, but I have
been interested in the philosophy and mythology contained in them and thought that since so many people
As an amateur scientist, I have always wanted to understand how everything works and is put
together.
As an amateur scientist, I have put together this account about how spirits could be working with
us without contradicting any of my scientific understandings. If this account is true, it then provides a
template of how to live our lives in a way that is useful and satisfying. Even if it is not true, you can still
act as if it is true and suffer no harm. In fact, you will still lead a useful and satisfying life.
Once I put aside the question of whether there is a spiritual domain, the question becomes, “How
do I deal with it?” I assert that the answer goes beyond meditation and Awakening. Those are interesting
and satisgying personal experiences, but produce no results. I think there is more.
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In this account, there are speculations about how God might be managing the course of history, in
particular, the course of biological and cultural evolution, which I view as His most important tools.
The essence of this account is that the universe is primarily spiritual. The role of humans is to
provide a field for action. Action occurs only in the material world. There are two key points in God’s
long-range plan: one is to encourage humans to create Great Art; the other is the evolutionary
development of humans biologically and culturally to the point where they easily mingle with the spirits
Since action in the material world is important to the spiritual realm, there is a great deal of
interest from the inhabitants of the Spiritual Realm as to what goes on in our arena. From our point of
view this most frequently shows up in various forms of spiritual guidance. It is when we tap into and act
from this guidance that our lives become the most fulfilling and satisfying.
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BEFORE LIFE . . .
You have always lived here, in the Spirit Realm. You have lots of time, but it never seems to pass.
You are surrounded by what looks like a glass bubble. When you look through it you can see people –
humans – on the other side of the bubble. Humans are interesting; some of them create Art. You love Art;
you wish you could create Art the way humans do. You would like to communicate with some of the
humans but whenever you try to say something they never seem to hear. You can also see animals. Only
a few of them create Art, and, although they seem to hear you when you speak to them, they have very
In the material world, you can see that animals and humans live in a different dimension of time.
You can see that they have short lives. You have lots of comrades. Whenever a human or an animal
begins its life, God assigns one of you to be its companion throughout its life. All of you are eager for
this opportunity to actually be involved in the creation of some kind of Art, which you all love so much.
You can remember that you once lived a life as a loon in the material world. Of course it was
wonderful. The loon lived mostly in great beauty. Between the lake in the mountains and the ocean was
the great flight every season, and, in the lake, every year was a new family of loonlings. You could still
see back through the glass varrier to your comrades in the Spirit Realm.
You wished the loon could create Art. All too soon, it was over, and you were back with your
Finally you get selected to merge with a human baby. At the beginning, the experience is similar
to that of the loon. You can see the beauty of the baby’s world and can still see back across the barrier to
your comrades in the Spirit world. You try the baby’s hand at creating some Art, but it is still too clumsy.
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Soon the baby starts learning human culture and the beginning of speech. This is very interesting. Thye
baby’s environment is completely at ease; everything is provided and its least whim is satisfied.
But now the baby is beginning to acquire an identity. It is beginning to associate pleasure and
pain with bodily sensations – its bodily sensations. As the baby develops its identity, you find that you
are beginning to be excluded from its attention. The baby begins to forget that you are there. Its life is so
interesting with learning language, absorbing culture and manipulating its parents and siblings.
Then there are the never-ending difficulties of childhood, adolescence and surviving as an adult.
Then there are the demands of children in a new family. The life with a human is definitely not what you
There is never enough money and yet, when there is, it somehow seems to be wrong.
Of course, there have been some good moments. You have been able to nudge the human toward
the right career and the best available spouses, and there were a few moments of Meditation, when in a
rare moment of calm you were able to achieve oneness with the mind of the human.
Humans have a poor understanding of Art. They have no idea that Art is what you are primarily
interested in. Nevertheless, you have been able to experience Art at various times throughout the
Finally, the human’s body wears out and you are free to return to the Spirit Realm.
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THE PURPOSE OF LIFE
The purpose of life is to integrate with our spiritual core and the spiritual realm and to create Great Art
We have to distinguish between what we would like to be the purpose of our life and what God intends.
The former is in the category of wishful thinking, while the latter is in the category of ultimate reality.
From our point of view, we have to realize two things. God does not always reveal His
intentions, and He deals in a much larger time frame. So we should not be surprised that our fundamental
purpose in life has a spiritual context, rather than it is to satisfy our own desires for meaningfulness and
In evolutionary time our purpose is to transcend pride, desire and human suffering and reach a
state of integration with our spiritual core. In this state, we communicate freely with the spiritual realm
and death becomes irrelevant and suffering disappears. This purpose applies both to each of us in our
Unfortunately for most of us, this state is till many generations in the future. In our own time, we
still have important purposes. I recognize three. One is to work on the cultural streams that lead to
evolutionary nirvana. The other is to create Great Art. A third is to develop our meditative skill so as to
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DETECTIVE STORY
The creation of this book has followed a philosophical investigation into how the universe works
and how I fit into it. The questions of metaphysics, ontology, epistemology and teleology began to disturb
me before I became a teenager. As an avid fan of mystery novels, I learned to apply those techniques of
At first, and for a long time, I was convinced that spirituality was a false myth, that nothing
existed which I could not observe and that everything could be explained by science. I thought that
people who believed in God or other spirits were mistaken or even unenlightened. Still, it did give me
pause that there were so many such people as well as a vast literature devoted to spirituality.
me from my secularism. Of course, my father was also a firm secularist, as well as an intellectual deeply
interested in religion. He became a student of the theory of evolution and eventually created a new career
in attempting to combine and unify the science of evolution with the practice of religion. As far as I
Influenced by my father, I too became interested in evolution and fancied that I could see the
purpose of life in the sweep of evolutionary progress. I became so enthusiastic that when I started a
business, I set it up as an evolutionary experiment in social organization. The results of the experiment
were mixed: the business was very successful, but the evolutionary consequences washed me out of it.
It was in the formative stages of the embryonic business that my faith in secularism was shaken.
In the early months, a streak of good fortune oversaw its development. Over approximately one year, it
seemed that every day a miracle occurred to benefit the business. These miracles included finding new
personnel and vendors, sources of financing, serendipitous inventions, discovery of production techniques
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and improbable support from friends, including a capital infusion from my mother-in-law who I had
imagined was thoroughly disapproving of my wild venture. After a few months of this, I began to feel
that the laws of probability were being violated. I was forced to acknowledge that it must be something
other than mere good fortune. I must have some kind of Guardian Angel helping my business succeed.
cataclysmic. I was both awed and grateful. Up until this time, my life seemed to have been ruled by an
endless series of misfortune and failure. However, my newfound spirituality did nothing to answer the
The next step in the detective story was the discovery of multiple dimensions. As a thorough-
going Modernist, my father had also introduced me to the ides of Freud and Einstein. I was fascinated by
the theory of relativity and the concept of time as a dimension. I grappled with that idea for more than a
decade before I could begin to accept it intuitively. The breakthrough was preceded by the understanding
from one of Edwin Land’s (founder of Polaroid) papers on the human perception of color that our
experience of reality is created by the mind. His paper described an experiment where he showed an
observer two versions of the same scene, one to each eye, and each in a slightly different shade of orange.
In another paper, Land explained that when the mind sees a straight line, as for example, the edge
of a table, the digital information created in the eye and optic nerve is actually quite jagged. The mind
interprets the physical input and creates a nice perfectly straight line. These papers showed me that our
perception of reality is indirect. Our mind creates a series of tableaux that it derives from the actual
sensations from the outside world. I realized that the same thing is true of time.
The human’s total experience of the events in time is too vast for the limited capacity of the brain
to make sense out of. The human mind has invented the technique of looking at events one at a time. As
a corollary, the mind invents the sense of the present, past and future and that time passes. The mind
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experiences reality in a similar fashion to experiencing a movie or reading a book; the whole movie
exists, but the mind can see only one frame at a time or read only one page at a time. This insight into
who the mind deals with time makes it possible to intuitively understand time as a dimension, in the
The next clue came from my eclectic reading as a loudspeaker designer. In an obscure
monograph, a Harvard professor (Ted Hunt) outlined a theory I haven’t seen anywhere else. In electrical
engineering a mathematical vector is used to indicate the direction of electrical impedance of capacitors
and inductors. Its value is the square root of minus one and its symbol is i or j. Hunt recognized a
symmetry with magnetic impedance and postulated a mathematical vector, which he called k.
Eventually, I came to realize that these vectors are perpendicular to each other and to the dimensions in
what we call the real world. This perpendicularity implies dimensionality, just as time is also
perpendicular to all other dimensions. I felt that I had discovered, or at least recognized, dimensions five
and six.
These three extra dimensions (time, electric and magnetic) are all invisible to our senses, and yet,
they are necessary to explain phenomena that we can perceive. A loudspeaker needs all of them in order
to work. Wow, I thought to myself, if there are three dimensions I cannot see, there must be more – at
least three, to a symmetrical total of nine, or maybe even, twenty-seven. I have since discovered String
Theory, which is an attempt to resolve the contradictions between the theory of relativity and quantum
mechanics. The mathematics of string theory requires at least ten dimensions which might be twenty-
The next hypothesis is that all these unseen dimensions could provide a real space where invisible
spirits could exist. Well, this is a very satisfactory conclusion. Finally the ontology of a spiritual realm
can be explained, consistent with our conventional science. However, the teleological question, “What is
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Somewhat later, I started going to a therapist. His technique used guided meditation, and, in the
meditative state, I began to have direct experience of my Guardian Angels and of the boundary between
our space-time continuum and the spiritual realm. This was in the year, 2000, when I was 65. This was
when the ideas for this book began to coalesce. This was when the detective story ended and I began to
It’s hard to say how I hit on the purpose of life as described in this book. I f there was any
detection, it consisted of observing animals, and in particular birds a in considering that they all had a
spiritual core and why were they so observant and beautiful. It was hard to believe that in view of the
nature of evolution that it was for their own benefit and the alternative was that their beuty and sensations
Now this is a possible path of inference, but at the same time, I am living in guidance and it
seemed that it was as muched channeled as inferred. So it is not necessary to include as part of the
Detective story.
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GOD’S PLAN
Above all we must infer His beneficence. Otherwise there would be no point to either our or
When we have confidence that all is right, we can more easily consist of bits of culture that are
seek out satisfactory explanations and find useful behavior. transmitted from one brain to the
In the long run, God’s plan is that human advantage than genetic superiority.
consciousness will become integrated with its spiritual core and with the spiritual realm. This result will
be achieved through the processes of evolution both for with respect to our biological animal forms
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Its final achievement will be after a revolution in human culture, especially in its orientation
Although each of us has a spiritual core, many of us do not recognize or have access to it.
Moreover, many of our dominant cultural streams do not recognize or even acknowledge either our
Each of us now has the capacity to achieve this kind of spiritual integration. It can occur in an
instant or it can continue for some time, until the material environment provides an interruption or
distraction.
Spiritual integration is a goal in many of the world’s religions. It is known by many different
terms: enlightenment, bliss, Satori, born again, et al. Its achievement is unusual in our times because we
are seriously challenged merely to survive and prosper in peace. This is difficult for our biological
existence. Our culture also makes spiritual integration difficult because it is dominated by entertainment,
GREAT ART
It has always mystified me from the point of view of evolution as to why we should have the
propensity for creating and appreciating Great Art. I cannot conceive of any survival value either for the
My experience tells me that Great Art is an important contribution to the spiritual realm.
Through our perceptions, enjoyment of Great Art is available to the spiritual realm.
MEDITATION
Meditation has many forms. In general, it is the enhancement of spiritual awareness and its
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Another important value is the integration of the human and the spiritual consciousness, as
EVOLUTION
While this evolution is going on, we are still able to create and appreciate Great Art.
CULTURAL STREAMS
In God’s plan there are provisions for creating new cultural streams, based on our spiritual
context, that will help us develop access to our spiritual core and the spiritual realm and allow us to
TIME
In the background, we have to remember that God does not experience time as we do.
For Him, all time is laid out in a panoply from beginning to end.
Meditation requires leisure time which requires wealth. In the new cultural stream greed is no
DEATH
Why are we so afraid of death? Since time does not pass, it is not so much the end or our life as
one of its boundaries. For our spiritual core, it is a moment of release, the freedom to return to the spirit
realm.
It is the culture that denies its spiritual core that fosters a fear of death. Continuing to live as a
mortal has become the highest moral value. Especially children must not be allowed to die.
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Death is an essential process in biological evolution. It is what permits the survival of improved
adaptations.
HUMAN SUFFERING
Many people ask why there is so much suffering and injustice in the world, if God is all-powerful
First, in the overall plan, suffering is only temporary. God’s plan is long and complex. What
may seem like undue suffering and injustice in our time may be essential to the working out of the future
Utopia.
Second, suffering and injustice is a mater of choice for each person. He or she is making an
Third, it is only someone’s opinion that there is excessive suffering and injustice in the world.
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GOD’S TOOLS
It is a mystery to me how God interacts with the material world. Many philosophers and skeptics
have claimed that He doesn’t, that, in fact, He doesn’t even exist. My preference is to act as if He does
exist and is beneficent toward me and all humans. From what I know of history, it seems as though God
is interested in how things turn out for humans both as a group and individually. From that point of view
it would seem that God is able to influence how things turn out in the material world in at least three
areas:
1. Spiritual guidance;
2. Biological evolution;
3. Cultural evolution;
In dealing with these three areas, God has basically three tools:
1. Spirit Guides
2. Genetic variation
3. Human Creativity
Spirit Guides interact with us in the present in a variety of ways. There is prayer, meditation,
Biological evolution, as conceptualized by Darwin and others, has occurred over a long sweep of
history and is still going on. There are several different threads, but since the earth is a closed system, all
of them interact to some extent. The thread of most interest to this discussion is that of the human brain,
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Cultural evolution has been going on for a much shorter time span but has completely taken over
the evolution of the brain. This is because the children are no longer permitted by human culture to
HUMAN PRODUCTIVITY
Human productivity is what produces the wherewithal by which all humans live. This includes
but is not limited to food, housing and machinery. Human productivity is greatly increased by human
culture, which includes but is not limited to education, tools and craftsmanship. Trade is an essential
element of human productivity. Human productivity is essential to God’s plan in order to minimize the
effort for human survival so that the cause of suffering is eliminated and there will be predominantly
leisure time for the practice of Meditation and the creation of Art.
NATURAL SELECTION
1. The process of having children whose characteristics are determined by a code from its parents
(genes.)
Thus natural selection is inherently cruel. Death of some of the children is essential to the
process of evolution. Some of the children must perish in order for the advancement of the species. It is
this perfectly natural process which is at the root of all human suffering. We are all in a constant struggle
not to be among those not to perish. This general procedure applies to all biological species and to
elements of human culture as well. Those elements of human culture which encourage the survival of the
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In the case of a biological species it is a hostile environment or an environment of scarcity which
causes some children to perish. In the case of cultural ideas it is the limited capacity of the human mind
God is able to alter the genetic and cultural material which passes between generations in order to
In wealthy societies, human culture often interferes with biological natural selection because
many such societies tend to preserve the lives of their children even when they are clearly not better able
to survive on their own. In other words, wealth tends to stop the process of biological natural selection.
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SPIRIT GUIDES
TIME
Time is like a fourth tool, because God, in his omniscience, works in all of time.
Some people think that death and suffering are cruel and unusual. A just and compassionate God
would never permit. Usually such people have forgotten that we have a spiritual core and that death is the
release of that spiritual core from the prison of a mortal being. Moreover, death and suffering are
is a dimension (one of
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IDENTITY
CULTURAL IDENTITY
parts. For what he calls the ego I am developing a new Self organization
concept, cultural identity. What he calls the superego I is a fairly modern analysis
assert is the spiritual core, or soul. What he calls the id I of non-linear systems. It describes
It does not begin to appear until the baby starts to both animate and inanimate
between the brain and its cultural environment. is the inherited code created at
a suitable host into which the cultural identity can self organize.
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On the other hand, the cultural identity is like a vine on a tree – it suffocates the person’s self-
awareness. It becomes a barrier to one’s spirituality. It is like a weed that grows uncontrollably.
Cultural identity is a form of a cultural stream. It circulates between the brain and its immediate
environment. It passes through the brains of family and associates before returning to the same brain
whence it arose.
The human child is not born with a cultural identity. The embryo starts off in state of Buddhist
Enlightenment. As the body develops self-awareness, it is integrated with its spiritual core. It continues
in that state until the infant begins to learn language and encounters punishment and disapproval. Thus
Animals do not have identities, to a large extent. The survival of animals is largely not protected
by culture or cultural identities. To the extent that animals have self awareness, it is integrated with the
The existence of the cultural identity confuses humans about the existence of its spiritual core.
Meditation silences the identity and at least temporarily reduces the confusion.
It would be much better if our culture and schools fostered a dominant cultural stream that
engendered a cultural identity in babies that was naturally integrated with the body’s self-awareness and
spiritual core. (Perhaps this was at one time the case in Buddhist Tibet).
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But now that we recognize how desirable it is to have one’s total identity of self-awareness,
spiritual core and cultural identity unified into one personality, we can address the question of how to
It would be fruitless to attempt to alter your own cultural identity. That would be like a novel
Your cultural identity is a reaction to the cultural input of others. Humans are protected by
culture.
When a human thinks of itself as “I”, it is sometimes referring to its spiritual core, but more often
Modern psychology does not help the confusion because it does not take into account the
Our vocabulary adds to the confusion: I, self, myself, ego, identity, inner self, inner voice,
conscience, etc.
When people experience their spiritual core or spiritual guidance, the cultural identity is being
bypassed and the organism is having a direct experience, which is the normal way animals do it.
Bodily sensation and psychic awareness correspond respectively to the body and to the soul.
Our human identity contains several parts. It begins with a spiritual core which is installed in the
early months of the infant’s existence. As the child develops, the body’s experiences lead to a sense of
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physical identity which is not the same as the spiritual core’s self awareness. Eventually the child begins
to absorb culture and language which leads to the self organization of a cultural identity.
These different parts of the identity should be viewed as a potential team. Instead of going off in
different directions, often unaware of each other, the identity can be a unified consciousness, going
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MEDITATION
Description
When I was young and secular, I understood meditation to mean a kind of thinking or musing. I
had little idea that meditation was actually the primary access to the spiritual realm. It took me quite a
while to realize that meditation was a spiritual practice that required some skill and effort. I now have the
Imagine that our consciousness comes from a spirit that enters our body when we are an infant or
an embryo. As a baby our consciousness remains open to the spirit domain from which it came. In other
words babies are in a constant meditative state. Somewhere around the age of two, when we learn to talk
and to experience guilt, we start to become attached to our bodies and to become anxious about the future.
Our access to the spiritual domain becomes limited and our time periods of being out of the meditative
state become longer and longer. Most of us eventually forget that we ever were in a meditative state.
Meditation is like a medicine which allays the symptoms of a maladapted cultural identity
without affecting the underlying problem. Meditation and enlightenment are not end goals for humans.
Meditation, then, is a loosening of our attachment to the body and our anxiety about the future
and our guilt about the past. In a meditative state, we gain access to the spiritual domain.
Once in the meditative state there is a feeling of bliss and oneness with the universe. Cares
One can still be active in the physical world when in a meditative state; the key is to be unaware
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Ways to meditate:
There are many ways to meditate. Meditation is merely getting the mind detached from
the ego and physical world so that it is free to pay attention to the spiritual world. Being in the
state of meditation can be as brief as a second or it can last for many hours. Some can even
remain in a state of meditation indefinitely while carrying on their normal physical lives.
Preparation
There are a number of things that can be done to facilitate getting into a meditative state:
Find or create a peaceful and quiet environment wherein you are unlikely to be
interrupted;
Take a few deep, slow breaths; focus on tour breathing while you allow it to slow down;
continue to pay attention to your breathing; breathing air is somehow connected to breathing
spirituality;
Mentally count down something backwards, for example, your breaths; start at least at
ten;
Avoid distracting thoughts, annoying or even pleasant experiences that have happened in
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Focus on an object, place, thought, idea, color, sound etc.
This is to slow down your normal mental activity, which is devoted to survival by looking for
things, especially things that are going wrong or about to go wrong. A common technique is to repeat the
syllable Om.
Merely observe whatever thoughts go through your mind, paying attention to when they end.
This is a technique I have read about. I am not sure that it actually works from my own experience.
This is a technique that I discovered more or less by accident while still a teenager. I think that I
had heard or read somewhere that it is a possibility to eliminate our thoughts. At the time I didn’t know
about meditation as such. While trying to relax between classes in high school, I went through most of
the steps listed above to prepare for meditation and then just as an exercise, I started trying to stop my
thoughts. Of course, it doesn’t work as long as you’re trying because trying is a thought in itself. But I
kept on trying anyway. After my mind had slowed down enough so that I could recognize when a new
thought was starting, I would admonish myself, “No, not that one.” Usually a new thought would
immediately begin, but by continuing to say, “No, not that one.” They began to slow down. I was
encouraged to continue this practice because even though I never succeeded in stopping my thoughts, I
ded get tremendous experience of rest. A minute or two of this exercise seemed to give me the equivalent
rest of an hour of sleep that I had missed the previous night. One day, my thoughts stopped, and my mind
became completely disconnected from the physical world. It was only for a fraction of a second, but it
There are books by Tim Robbins, I believe, that go into great detail about how to ski or play
tennis at a level far beyond your usual facility. When your mind stops being engaged with your activity,
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your body can perform perfectly. There is ease, mastery and bliss until your mind catches on that
In public speaking and some other activities, such as writing, your mind can also lose its
distraction by the real world and perform with ease, mastery and perfection.
Prayer
I was never into prayer, as I spent the first part of my life denying the existence of God.
Guided Meditation
This can be done either in a group or singly. The guide leads his audience through a series of
procedures and cues (usually aural, but also possibly visual) with the result of loosening the mind’s
attachments. Once the meditative state is achieved, the guide can continue keeping the audience focused
SPIRITUALITY
The spirit realm has its own dimension of time. Like all other dimensions it is perpendicular to
the dimensions in the material world. That is why spirits are able to go back and forth in our dimension of
time.
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DEVELOPING SPIRITUALITY
We all have a spiritual core. This core is normally overwhelmed by the difficulties that the
Our objective in life is to overcome the hostile environment – to transform it into a friendly
Happily, our spiritual core and its comrades in the Spiritual Realm are eager to help us in so
The basic method for tapping into this reservoir of help and advice is through meditation.
The first principle is to know that there are spirits trying to communicate with you, so that it is
merely a matter of listening on the correct frequency or channel. The spirits do not use our five senses.
Therefore, we have tolisten with our mind rather than our ears.
Attachment is the enemy of listening to the spirits. It could be attachment to your pride,
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Other methods of access to the spiritual realm
It is always necessary to disengage your mind from its attractions and concerns in the real world.
Once that is achieved, the next step is merely to open one’s mind into spiritual awareness and telepathic
listening.
The spirits do not always use language to communicate their guidance. If you get into the
meditative state, or “the zone,” and don’t “hear” or otherwise sense any message, you can use your own
words either to ask a leading question or to suggest a course of action and then “listen” for a yes/no
answer. I find that the spirits are loath to respond to trivial questions or to questions related to achiving
One way of using your own language to make a leading suggestion to your spirit guides is to use
the I Ching. For those unfamiliar with this great book, it is an ancient (started six millennia ago)
contributed to by many authors and finally extensively edited by Confucius. It consists essentially of
sixty-four symbolic hexagrams, eaxh containing a subject, a few sentences of wistom about the subject
and six poetic verses which somehow illustrate or expand the subject. The subjects cover the gamut of
universal human experience: war, piece, family, community, hardship, prosperity, relationships and
proper conduct.
In the common usage, one is directed to one of the hexagrams, and perhaps, one or more of its
verses, by a system of chance. Once, selected, you read the hexagram and interpret how its wisdom
might apply to your life. I view this process as a form both of guided meditation, where spirits guide your
random selection of a hexagram, and as a form of asking leading questions, where the text of the
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Have a near death experience
When death is close, the mind has basically two choices: it can emphasize its attachment to the
material world, saying, “No, I don’t want to die. How terrible. Woe is me.” And the like. Or it can look
ahead into what death offers: a release from the material world and a return to the spiritual realm. If for
some reason, death does not occur, then the mind which has looked forward into the face of death can
remember the nature of the spiritual realm that it offered. This memory can continue to be a gateway to
Great Art has the ability to distract the mind from the material world. In addition, the act of
appreciating Great Art attracts spirits to your mind. When your mind is absorbed in appreciating Great
Art, you can sneak a look sideways (without your mind noticing) into the spiritual realm and, perhaps,
make contact with the spirits who are appreciating the Great Art along with you.
Be “Born Again”
I cannot speak of this from my own experience. I had a friend, John, who seemed to spend his
life helping other people. He never explained it to me, and I didn’t know his story until I heard his
brother’s eulogy. When quite young, John had had a near death experience from some kind of terminal
illness and made a promise to God on his deathbed. His promise was to help other people.. He lived his
life without fear or rancor. He worked hard and with the skill of Michelangelo. He did not seek wealth
for himself and instead gave freely of his labor to all about him. Perhaps the reason, he never mentioned
his having been “born again” to me because during the time of our friendship, I had not yet made the
Follow a hunch
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This is pretty easy. Some of your hunches might be a form of spiritual guidance.
This is the easiest way of all. It merely requires being alert. I have had at least tow strong
commands. One was to give up coffee, and the other was to move in with my now new wife.
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MY SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE
My father was a strict materialist. I am not so sure about my mother. For him there was no spirit,
no ghosts, no guardian angels, no angels at all and God was merely the scientific laws of the universe.
For the most part, I went along with his views until a year in my early thirties when I was starting a new
business. During this year, it seemed that every day a miracle occurred which made it possible for my
business venture to continue. These miracles had to do with funding, personnel, advice from strangers,
discovery of new vendors, help from vendors, help from relatives, customers for my product and
inspiration for products and manufacturing techniques. For a while, I was not surprised. I had had other
periods in my life which had been dominated by good fortune. Eventually, however, I became struck by
the improbability of it all and concluded that I must be the beneficiary of spiritual assistance. This was an
intellectual conclusion rather than a spiritual experience, but it left me open to the possibility of the
existence of spirits.
I still had an intellectual problem because my education in physics and astronomy left no place
where they could exist. This problem persisted until I was nearly fifty. I had been expanding my
theoretic understanding of loudspeakers, in particular, the so-called imaginary reactance of inductors and
capacitors, when I realized that the mathematics of the s-plane (characterized by the vector of the square
root of minus one) implied a physical dimension. I quickly realized that the mathematics of the magnetic
vector implied an additional similar dimension. Having already accepted time as the fourth dimension, I
suddenly had a universe with at least six dimensions. How many more could there be? Eventually, I
came to believe that there are twenty-seven dimensions. Of course, this would be where the spiritual
realm exists. The problem of not being able to see these dimensions ceased to exist, because, after all, I
could not see the dimension of the square root of minus one, either.
As for experiences that could be considered spiritual, I had had quite a few even before I believed
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My deceased mother’s voice
The most striking was hearing my mother’s voice after she had died. This happened several
times, and I got the impression that she was still somehow looking out for me. I now think that when
someone dies, they turn into another time line that allows them to pass freely along the time line of their
previous existence and look in on their loved ones and perhaps give a little help.
Early meditation
Another, somewhat frightening, experience happened while I was a sophomore in high school. I
had been practicing the mental exercise of stopping my mind in the spare minute before the next class
would begin. I had accidentally discovered that this would give me the equivalent of hours of sleep that I
had missed the night before. As I practiced over a period of weeks, I become more and more proficient,
until finally, it seemed that my mind actually stopped, for a brief moment, only a fraction of a second.
Exhilarated, I tried to do it again. I was successful only one or tow attempts, when I found my
consciousness rushing through vast desolate plain under a cloudy sky toward a dark hole in a vast wall
blocking the entire horizon. I became terrified of losing my way and not being able to get back to my
precious body. I aborted the experience and stopped that exercise for decades to come.
In a somewhat meditative state, I was musing on the nature of dimensions when I received a very
definite mental image of three interpenetrating spheres and the verbal message, “twenty-seven.”
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LIVING WITH SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE
We live in a sea of spiritual guidance. There is a whole organization of spirits and guardian
angels (living in their own dimension of time, which is different from ours) waiting for every chance
when one of us might be receptive to the slightest whiff of guidance. In the case of important choices
(marriage, conception, career) they act even when we don’t listen, which is why so many seemingly
We can do better. Knowing that spiritual guidance is all around us, we can listen. At first blush
this seems like a difficult task. How does one listen when he can’t hear? Surprisingly, there are a lot of
ways. As infants, before we learn human language and before we become absorbed in our identity, we
are constantly in the spiritual experience. It is only as we begin to grow up and experience pride, desire
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INTERVIEW WITH GOD
Does the concept of self organization make the concept of God unnecessary?
I view self organization as an ally not a competitor.
Why does the spiritual realm need the material world?
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It is a symbiotic relationship.
“Symbiotic” is not a word that God is expected to use. What do you mean by it?
Neither can exist without the other.
Winslow: Why did you want to include a chapter on Cultural Streams in this book?
There are two reasons. First, cultural streams are My most important tool in
guiding the co-evolution of mind and culture. Second, introducing the idea of Cultural
Streams to Winslow, the author, is a perfect example of how I insert changes into human
culture.
Winslow: What is the importance of Economics in Your scheme of management?
The proper understanding of Economics creates the leisure time that men need to
meditate and restore their spiritual connection.
Winslow:What is the purpose of human life?
The answer is in this book. Sloth, greed and indolence are fostered in cultural
streams.
Winslow:How can men become wealthy and create leisure time without succumbing to sloth,
greed and indolence?
Human life provides a context for spiritual being.
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ART
In a similar way it has always mystified me why birds and animals exhibit and are custodians of
great beauty. If it is all for the benefit of the spiritual realm and our posterity, it all makes sense.
There are many media for Great Art. My favorite is the organ music of Bach. Art in literature
may also be possible, although perhaps not in English, except for Shakespeare and for Nabokov’s “Pale
Fire.”
Birds seem to enjoy the music of Vivaldi and often join in. I would think that the spirits enjoy
ANIMAL ART
BIRD SONGS
SPIDER WEBS
BEAVER DAMS
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PROSPERITY
Prosperity is an essential part of God’s Plan. You could almost think of prosperity as one of
God’s Tools. Prosperity is the source of leisure time and hence the luxury of free time to devote to
Prosperity is achieved through mutual exchange of the fruits of one’s labor. The magnitude of
Productivity is the multiplying effect of culture and cultural streams on one’s labor. For example,
a dishwasher in New York is paid more than a dishwasher in Bombay. In either culture, a computer
programmer is paid more than the dishwasher. Culture includes all information that is passed from one
brain to another. Cultural streams are related information that is passed on in a group, like a language,
Governments provide many impediments to prosperity, primarily through taxation and regulation.
Governments also make prosperity possible by providing security, contract enforcement and financial
media. Free commerce is essential to the development of prosperity as are the rights to own and sell
property.
In our culture, the generation of wealth, i.e., excess wealth, is rightly viewed with suspicion. Our
culture is still strongly influenced by the almost universal suffering experienced during the Great
Depression. The cultural streams developed during the Great Depression were suitable for dealing with
poverty and hardship. Those cultural streams are no longer appropriate and yet are deeply imbedded in
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the culture and difficult to change. People who are controlled by those cultural streams and who becom e
• They tend to support government that limits affluence and effects greater equality of
Hence, before prosperity can become common and the nature of our society, the cultural attitudes
developed during the Great Depression, (and other similar historical times), toward affluence
must evolve both with respect to proper conduct and to acceptance of prosperity.
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HOW TO USE THE I CHING
The best translation is by Richard Wilhelm (into German) and Cary Baynes (into English,)
Start with the point of view that this is an exercise to enable spiritual access. A more common
Second, follow the steps in preparing to meditate as in the Chapter on Meditation, page 21.
Fourth, read the text while keeping your awareness open for spiritual input.
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DIMENSIONS
All dimensions are perpendicular to each other. We can easily see that for the three dimensions
of space. Time is a different kind of dimensions, where action takes place, for example, motion. Time
has another characteristic. It is one way. That is why there is cause and effect, and that is why time travel
is not possible.
There are many more dimensions than we can perceive with our customary five senses.
Many of us also have a sixth sense, so-called, which gives us some awareness of spirits and the
spiritual realm.
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THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION
HUMAN EVOLUTION
cultural evolution and it is a subject which is dear to our hearts, which causes some of us to resent its
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CULTURAL EVOLUTION
from one generation to the next, which is capable of being altered, into an hostile environment where only
the fittest survive. In this case, the information is literally cultural information bits, such as, letters or
words; the transmission is by writing, speaking or such; the generations are from one mind to the next;
The bits of information are usually gathered up into related groups and are often transmitted as a
cultural stream. Examples of cultural streams include languages, religions and philosophies. Schools and
universities are devoted to transmitting cultural streams. Cultural streams include politics, economics and
science. From birth, we are inundated in numerous cultural streams, first from our parents and relatives,
then from school and our peers, also from the media and our work environment and also from our
religious and hobby groups. Our minds are obviously incapable of absorbing all this information and so
Cultural streams complicate biological evolution because the culture affects the survivability of
the human. The culture of First World countries provide more protection tto humans than that of Third
World countries. Higher levels of education and training also provide better immunity from the physical
environment.. In fact, in more advanced cultures, there is so much protection against early death that
biological selection no longer occurs. The result is that there is no longer any biological evolution.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of culture to humans, and jet its evolution as very
little studied by scientists. It has been suggested that this may be so because the results of such studies
would not be welcome amongst those political groups which dominate scientific investigation. An
example of this can be seen in the furor which emerged after E.O. Wilson published his seminal work,
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Sociobiology, which dared to suggest that the social evolution he observed in insect and animal societies
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DUALITY
In the universe there is a Spiritual Realm and a material world. To our limited senses, to the
extent that we are even aware of the Spiritual Realm, these seem to be two different areas of experience.
When our minds are occupied with the difficulties of surviving, we can easily forget about the Spiritual
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CULTURAL STREAMS
The great irony of human beings is that they are designed both to create wealth and to suffer
poverty. Whenever they manage to accumulate wealth, they don’t know what to do with it and so they
A cultural stream that would be useful in implementing God’s plan would emphasize the
following elements:
• Meditation
• Productivity
HUMAN SUFFERING
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. . .AFTER LIFE
You have seen human culture grow into maturity. Human labor productivity has grown so that
all humans are prosperous and have leisure time, which is used for Art and Meditation. You and your
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SUMMARY
As far as we are concerned, there are two parts of the Universe, the Spirit Realm and the material
world, which is where our five senses work. Some of us have a sixth sense and some awareness of the
Spirit Realm, especially where it overlaps the material world. Actually, there are not separate parts. The
material world is where spirits merge with animals (including humans) to produce Great Art.
In the Spirit Realm, there are many different kinds of spirits with many different jobs. Some of
them leave the Spirit Realm and merge with animals (including humans) and become their soul or
conscience. Some of them stay in the Spirit Realm but watch and guide the animals (including humans)
when they need help. The spirits love Great Art. They love nature, music, visual art and poetry. The
spirits cannot create art, and they cannot observe it directly. That is why they merge with animals
(including humans). Animals can observe and create art. The spirits’ favorite animals are birds and cats,
because they have good vision and hearing and because their lives are often peaceful. Spirits don’t like to
merge with humans, because humans tend to develop an identity which interferes with the integration of
the human and its spiritual core. However, humans make the best art, and so, the spirits have to put up
Humans are different from animals in that they worry about the future and become attached to
their comfort and discomforts. For an infant, everything is fine between the soul and the child. But once
the baby develops language and begins to struggle against its environment, there develops, spontaneously,
a cultural identity, and the baby begins to lose track of its spiritual core.
Meditation is the special mental state where the internal voice of one’s cultural identity is turned
off, and communication is opened between the human and its spiritual core. In this state, the human is
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not worrying about the future or about threats to its identity. Animals are almost always in a state of
meditation because they never develop a cultural identity or suffer (worry about the future.)
God’s plan involves the evolution of animals, humans and human culture to the point where
humans (including their cultural identities) are able to recognize and integrate with their spiritual core and
to intermingle freely with spirits and the spiritual realm. This plan will entail a shift in human culture so
that it no longer promulgates suffering and instead supports economic prosperity, leisure time and the
We can help God speed these changes along. We can do this, partly, by being in a meditative
state as much as possible and by seeking guidance from the spirits who are available and eager to do so.
We can also work on changing the culture that is hostile to prosperity and fosters suffering.
The proper goal in human life is to transform one’s cultural identity from being a barrier against
spirituality to being a facilitator in unifying one’s spiritual core with one’s cultural identity. .
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EXCESS MATERIAL
In the process of growing up, humans in developing their cultural identity almost always forget
about the state of meditation and become absorbed in the material, are attached to the future and learn
how to suffer.
It just seems that way to most of us because we don’t sense the spirit realm as if it is real. In fact,
“I don’t know what to tell him,” meaning me. “You have been trained to think of yourself in the third
person.”
I believe that the total identity is based from the spiritual core.
POSTMODERNISM
Greed
Acid rain
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