General Theory of Religion (GTR):

Volume I: Fundamentals.

Arlen Wolpert

System Dynamicist and Independent Scholar

(Book manuscript draft of November 15,2009)

(The work presented here supersedes all my previous scientific publications in the fields of religion, philosophy, phenomenology, psychiatry, and system dynamics.)

Table of Contents

Introduction to the General Theory of Religion: The six chapters of the General Theory of Religion: Bibliography. (pp 50-57)
Appendix:

Some notes on the present state of this book manuscript:


The painting shown above is by the American painter, Winslow Homer, and is entitled 'Fog Warning.' It is displayed at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts: It represents, for me, the mystic struggling to return home - against long odds - after having gained the Great Catch: The knowledge of God during mystical union.

Introduction

Part A: An Engineer's Story: a narrative of my religious crisis and its culmination in mystical union in 1962. (1):

(This is a narrative of the last 21 months of my 53 month religious crisis. It covers the period from July 1960, when I was hired by the MIT spinoff company, to April 8-9, 1962, when the crisis culminated in my religious experience. From another aspect it covers the period between the latter part of stage 2 to the beginning moments of stage 14 of Table I. Table I is shown on page 33 or 34. It is Key #2 of Chapter 2. The narrative includes my experience of purgation and its culmination in mystical union.)

Worldly Life Spiraling into a Crisis.

In July 1960 I was hired as an engineer by a dynamic MIT spinoff company engaged in intense research and development activity. This company was packed into a small building whose lights burned night and day on an otherwise dismal, treeless, industrial back street in Cambridge. It had only about ten engineers at the time but would grow over the next twenty years to be listed on the NY Stock Exchange. This band of men, poorly financed, was competing with the, then famous, General Electric Research Laboratory in a race to develop a promising new technology. There was a fire of creativity running through that small company at the time. It emanated mainly from our demonic chief engineer who was spearheading the development and, to a lesser extent, from the haughty, brilliant, young MIT professor who had originated the new technology and was the company founder and president. There were other firebrands there also.

I had been traveling in Western Europe and India during the previous two years and thought of myself as a big-time adventurer, but in reality I had been floundering since 1957 when a tragic event had occurred to someone very dear to me. Though I was a 28-year-old engineer with a specialization in great demand and had been a student of one of the founders of that specialization, emotionally I had become, in those three short years, like a teenage runaway. In this structurally weakened state I had become entangled with, and addicted to a wanton, dominant, experienced, mediterranean woman of 35. Back in college in the midwest I had been an hermetic, crew cut, student-athlete and had never come across a woman like her. Though she was street-smart there was a sensitivity and vulnerablity to her that I was only dimly aware of at the time. In addition to being addicted to her I had also become psychologically addicted to cigarette smoking.

My desk was crowded into a small room with those of four other engineers. I was chain-smoking three packs per day of strong, unfiltered cigarettes, filling the room with smoke and, at times, a prolonged, fitful cough. I was trying to make an intense effort to concentrate in order to raise the level of my status but was hindered by dissipating habits that I could see were destroying me. My colleagues were young, bright, and versatile engineers. They wondered why management let this strange, ill-mannered, and arrogant person in the door. I felt out of place, put upon, and rejected. A promising career and vital health had sunk to this level. Perhaps I could have settled for mediocrity - slavery in one form or another - but to my mind I was in a battle for my life. (2)

The Crisis and a Supreme Effort to Save My Life.

Sometimes, if one will only persist, certain defeat can be turned into victory. Locked in this battle for my life, as it seemed to me, I began to mount a supreme effort to straighten out my life. I was desperate. The state of mind I was in can be illustrated by Churchill's words and actions during the Spring of 1940. In his radio broadcast of May 19 during the invasion of France by Germany, he said:
"This is the most awe striking period in the long history of France and Britain. It is also beyond doubt the most sublime. Side by side, unaided except by their kith and kin in the great dominions and by the wide Empires which rest beneath their shield - side by side, the British and French peoples have advanced to rescue not only Europe but mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history. Behind them - behind us - behind the Armies and Fleets of Britain and France - gather a group of shattered States and bludgeoned races; the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians - upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend, unbroken even by a star of hope, unless we conquer, as conquer we must, as conquer we shall.

"Today is Trinity Sunday. Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be."

Such was my state of mind. Come what may, it was better to go down fighting than to accept the ultimate consequences of the present course of my life (3). I attempted and failed many times to stop smoking from March through August 1961. I was irritable and rather wild during withdrawal periods - often insulting people. At the same time my concentration was getting better and I was beginning to do some rather good work. The latter offset my wild behavior and kept me from being fired. I began to devote more of my free time to my work. In addition I found nutritional supplements helpful during withdrawal: wheat germ, brewer's yeast, and a nutritional product called Tiger's Milk. Exercises in hatha yoga, particularly sirsasana and sarvangasana were also helpful. I carried an inspirational book in my back pocket that I had taken out for a month from the MIT Library. At critical moments I prayed for help.

I tried with all my will to break off with the woman through the Spring and Summer of 1961 but my blessed heart would not be dominated by my will. I kept returning to her like a drug addict week after week. In the end my heart found the way to leave her:

One steamy Friday night in August my thoughts of her became particularly intense. The conflict between my desire for her and my integrity had become critical. I was in my apartment in the negro Blackstone Square area of the South End. Instead of driving over to her apartment, I decided to walk. She lived about two miles away near Egleston Square which at that time was on the border between the white and negro neighborhoods.

In walking along old Columbus Avenue, I found my heart and soul open to the sights and smells and sounds of the night: small-time gamblers milling around outside a barber shop; the man and the woman strolling down the broad sidewalk, he with his flashy suit and greased down hair, she with her dynamite smile and curvaceous body. The gospel song coming from somewhere:

"Deep in my heart I do believe that
We will overcome some day." Carolina Hymn
Further up the avenue, I noticed a drug addict lying on the ground amid the litter of tin cans and broken glass; then there was the strong smell of stale liquor and cigarette smoke wafting from an open door of a bar. Further still, I noticed a round woman coming out of the laundromat with her bundle of clothes and her soulful eyes - those soulful eyes, so deep - so different from the cold, hard eyes of technology.

Through all these scenes I past until I finally arrived at the door of the mediterranean woman's apartment near Egleston Square and knocked at her door. She was dressed in a short pink nightgown that fell only to the top of her thigh. A wave of lust ran through my whole body. I laid down on the living room carpet on my back overwhelmed by the walk, the sights of the steamy hot night, and the passion that flowed through my body. My heart and my soul and my pores and my veins were open. My blood was pulsing in every part of my body. She mounted me with her pink nightgown as I lay there and writhed on me. This did not effect the subtler level of my mind and heart where my concentration had been focused during the walk. My openness and depth of feeling gave me a detachment where mind and soul lay passively, watchfully beneath the passions that she was stirring up. As she writhed on me, a power developed in this passivity and transformed my lust. Presently I got up, tried to excuse myself, and left. I never saw her again: my addiction to her had somehow vanished.

"He unto whom all desires enter
As waters into the sea,
Which, though ever being filled, is ever motionless,
Attains to peace,
But not he who hugs his desire."
Bhagavad Gita II:70
A month later in September I succeeded in stopping smoking permanently. Around October I came up with a novel design for my project. My spirit was on fire(4).

Arete: Competitive Pressure Forces Excellence Out into the Open.

The level of competence of my competitors or peers was very high - in a few it had reached the level of Fire as has been mentioned. Though I was doing good work, my status was still low relative to my peers. Now with my novel design in the conceptual stage, I accepted the call to challenge these competitors in order to raise my status and prove my worth (5). The resulting intense effort carried on over a period of time eventually focused my concentration and brought a depth of analysis. This produced the innovations required to make the conceptual design workable. I believe, and this cannot be emphasized enough, that the strain of the effort would have led to a breakdown if I had not had at this stage, latent within me, a transcendent purpose (6) and a trust in God that it would be fulfilled. This transcendent purpose together with prayerful concentration brought about a centering (7).

The intellectual strain was not the only strain involved. I was experiencing another strain that I sensed would be difficult to manage later when I would have to do the detailed designing and building of the device. This second kind of strain involved interaction with my co-workers. I would be required to interface with and coordinate the activities of a number of people - draftsmen, machinists, technicians, foremen - within a tight schedule. At the same time I would have to work out more of the theoretical underpinnings of the design. Underlying these activities was the baffling politics and power structure of my peers. Usually work like this should be done only by those who are well integrated into the organizational structure and have good informal communication and support systems. For a lone wolf with obviously few social and communication skills, in particular the lack of a subtle understanding of political games, it is utter folly. I was setting myself up to be crucified. By any rational standards I should have remained at my desk with my theoretical work. In my ignorance I was completely unaware of the difficult situation I was getting into, but I did sense a supreme struggle ahead.

To my mind this was the critical moment of my life. I felt in my bones that I had to do or die; that the issues in my life had finally been joined; that this struggle was the meaning of my life. The reason for this rare conviction was that I had, temporarily at least, achieved an alignment of a number of elements of my mind, as when a rackety complex machine is carefully adjusted by a skilled mechanic and begins to hum. At long last I was running true. At that point I trusted in God that He would not abandon me if only I be true (8).

Around that time I sensed a barrenness caused by the renunciation I had recently undergone. I needed a rootedness not only in the mind and spirit but in the heart and soul. I sensed that I had to dig deeper in my quest (9). At that time, early November 1961, I felt I should take a ten day vacation before embarking on my task.

"Just as I am, though tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt
Fightings without, and fears within
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!"

Transcendence and Grace.

During this vacation I went to San Diego to see old acquaintances, arriving on Friday night. I took the inspirational book with me.

Around Wednesday I left San Diego by bus and hitchiking seeking a place associated with the book. I found it very much by chance. It was a monastery far up in the foothills of the Santa Ana mountains (10). I approached the simple Spanish style retreat in a state of adventure, openness, and hope. As I entered the gate and before meeting anyone, I felt a sort of peace come over me as if I had entered an enchanted land. I found that the monastery was maintained by a monk and about five brothers. They allowed me to stay with them for a visit.

My system went into a different mode during the course of that first day. The peace that my heart and mind had felt earlier continued on and deepened during the three or four days of my visit. I sensed a subtler level of thought and feeling. A subtler vibration within my heart was being energized. I was in a holy atmosphere (11).

I was tempted to remain - as the sun was setting on Sunday night - but realized I must finish my project first.

I returned to Boston on the night flight out of San Diego and came to work late Monday morning with renewed energy and resolve: I would prove that I was a good engineer and then return.

I did not know it at the time, but I was now beginning the process that would prepare me to eventually walk the razor's edge or walk the plank!

Concentrating again upon my work, there began - and developed over the next few months - a slow awakening of a subtler level of my heart from its lifelong slumber. This brought me slowly into an entirely new state: one which transcended the previous more primitive state. I found myself dealing with stress through prayer and tears. The tears, finally unlocked, soothed the deep sadness of my soul. They alleviated my withdrawal symptoms (12).

Also my ability to cope increased. This can be illustrated by Churchill again as taken from the notes of Major General E. L. Spears on May 31,1940 (13):

"At the meeting of the Supreme War Council in Paris during the evacuation of Dunkirk, Churchill reported to the French that 165,000 men had been evacuated including 10,000 wounded and 15,000 French. Reynaud, the French President of the Council, at once drew attention to the small number of French withdrawn. Weygand, the Chief of the French General Staff, chimed in 'But how many French? The French are being left behind!' His voice was high, querulous and aggressive.

"Churchill looked at him for a moment. The light had died out of his face, his fingers were playing a tune on the edge of the table; out came his lower lip as if he were going to retort, and I expected one of those sentences that hit like a blow, but his expression changed again. It was evident that he felt every indulgence must be shown to people so highly tried, undergoing so fearful an ordeal. He looked very sad, and as he spoke a wave of deep emotion swept from his heart to his eyes, where tears appeared not for the only time that afternoon. 'We are companions in misfortune', he said, 'there is nothing to be gained from recrimination over our common miseries.'

"The note he had struck was so true, went so deep, that a stillness fell over the room, something different from silence, it was like the hush that falls on men at the opening of a great national pageant. I imagine all thoughts were turned inwards, questioning whether each one was observing that precept. It was important in its results, for the note it struck was maintained throughout the meeting; goodwill, courtesy, and mutual generosity prevailed."

Only at this transcendent level, where coping skills of the heart were activated, could the quality of response of the lone wolf, without allies, be adequate to overcome the competitive pressure of his brilliant peers to hold him back and to overcome his own social awkwardness.

At this stage and during the ensuing months my heart and my brain were working in tandem. Coming out of work one evening, briefcase in hand, I began to weep as I caught sight of the late November sunset. The old heartless life was in abeyance. Thinking went on constantly day and night until the project was completed. When the design seemed to be unworkable, all I had to do was walk the streets at night and the solution would come (14). At times I walked the Boston streets that winter without a coat, warmed only by the inner fire coursing my brain and body (4). Such was my state (15). Competition with my peers became a minor factor; dissipating habits were tossed off with ease one by one. I was now dealing with an awakening heart, tears, a transcendent purpose, prayer and openness, and concentration at a fiery level (12).

I felt this was my life at stake, the end of the line of my genes. I had to pull out all the stops. Centering myself in the openness of prayer at the eye of the storm, I seemed to gain control of the very pulse of life. The powerful winds of my spirit had been caught now by my sails; the rod of iron of my will was in my right hand ruddering me; and the waves of my emotions were dangerously whipping across my bow. As the great adventure proceeded I sensed an immense ocean within me, its deep, slow, surging waves powering my heart and soul (4) (16).

"Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!"
In these unfamiliar elements, with only God as my companion, the strings binding my heart began to come unloosened (17).

The Seeker of God then went to his salvation by way of the Refiner's Fire, the second stage of his purification.

The Heart Begins to Open.

The purification resulting from renunciation came about by a supreme effort of the will and by Grace, but the second stage of the purification that followed proceeded passively. A force began to manifest itself in me and I could do nothing but pray. My will was powerless to effect this Force. It began in the following way:

I returned to Southern California at the end of March 1962 for another ten day vacation after successfully completing the project. I was still running true. I was charged and in a state of openness. On this visit I went to another monastery run by the same Order of monks. Again I found myself in a holy atmosphere (11). I had a deeply restful, enchanting, profoundly moving week, many times bubbling over with mirth and on one occasion, hearing a beautiful piece of religious music, I was unable to contain a weeping which became a prolonged sobbing from the bottom of my heart.

Around noon on Sunday I left the monastery to return to Boston for work the next day. I was to take a cab to the Los Angeles airport and then a non-stop flight to Boston. I had plenty of time. The cab stand was about a half-mile away. I was walking down a hill with a small suitcase in my hand. As I walked reflectively and in peace down that hill in the warm and brilliant Southern California sun, my heart slowly began to feel full. My mind was drawn inward. In this mood I arrived at the cab stand. I told the driver my destination. He was a rather cool and playful young man in his early twenties. I noticed that I was very friendly and mirthful - quite unusual for me since I usually never spoke to cab drivers. During the ride I was joking and at times giggling and had a great time for the half hour drive to the airport. At one point the driver asked me if I had had a 'joint' before getting into the cab. Of course I did not.

At the airport, however,the warmth or power in my heart began to deepen. I was sitting in the waiting area for the flight but found I could not stay seated. I got up and began to pace the floor of the waiting room. I was well dressed and groomed in a fine conservative suit. Perhaps it was a rather strange sight. The thought occurred to me I was on the verge of a heart attack, but I was only thirty and in good health so dismissed the idea.

The plane was quite full. I took my assigned seat by the window. After the plane circled LA and turned East, the Force in my heart began to get intense. My heart was opening!! There was a struggle going on in my heart. The Force was opening my heart and, because of my fear, my will was waging a losing battle to close it. The opening of my heart brought about a fear - indeed - a terror. At the same time I felt a degree of love for all, forgiveness, brotherhood and sisterhood for all.

I called for the stewardess. I told her something was wrong with my heart. She got me out to the first aid area and gave me oxygen, but it had no effect. She took me to the first class area where there were fewer passengers and I could be alone. The Force continued to try to open my heart and I was in a state of terror for fear I would die shortly. I kept getting up and walking to the drinking fountain to quench the fire in my breast. I must have drank at least two gallons of water during the five and one-half hour flight.

A few times the stewardess came by to see how I was. Once she sat down next to me. She seemed quite curious about me. She was about 24 or 26. Under the ceiling spotlight I could see her features were delicate but her beauty had now passed its peak. There were the first signs of tension wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Close up I could sense something about her that had gone cold and there was a sadness underneath her makeup. She was neglecting what I could see was a precious soul. In the course of our quiet conversation I told her, in a somewhat oracular way, 'Please leave this terrible job.' She asked me why I thought it was so terrible. I said, in effect, she was being paid to be pleasant and gay to the passengers even though her heart and soul didn't feel it any more. She needed an honest job. With my heart so open, I knew my intuition was sure and I could see these things clearly, quite in the same way that the lay of the land can be seen and understood better when standing at an elevated place. Under ordinary circumstances such a conversation would have set the stewardess' teeth on edge, but with my heart so open she seemed to sense my good will and took what I said to heart.

Nevertheless, when I arrived in Boston about 10:30pm, I was met by a powerfully built and rather serious airport state police officer. He was about 35 or 40 years old. He escorted me from the plane ahead of the others and led me to the airport shelter. Normally I was rather aloof from police officers, indeed I didn't like authority of any kind, but when the officer met me my heart was so open I felt all men were my brothers. As I walked aside of him to the shelter, I found myself putting my arm around his broad shoulders. I became aware of the gun at his holster but it made no difference to me. In the state of mind I was in, I felt toward him like toward an elder, beloved brother meeting me at the plane. I chatted with him and thanked him for his trouble and great courtesy and assistance. I told him I had just left a monastery and was overwhelmed by being in a crowd of people and that I would be alright once I got home. Besides being an optimistic prognosis to calm myself it also seemed to be an appropriate way of explaining my openness and feelings of brotherhood and also of avoiding being detained. Ordinarily this tough, no-nonsense police officer would have given me a difficult time but instead, like the stewardess, he seemed to sense the integrity of my feelings.

The Dark Night of the Soul: The Heart is Purified and Prepared for the Culminating Experience.

I took a cab and arrived about 11pm at my South End lodgings. They consisted of two rooms on the second floor of an almost- deserted rooming house overlooking the extensive federal housing project near the Cathedral. The dull red brick buildings and barren clothes-lines at the edge of the project could be seen from my front window by the light of the street lamps. The window faced a large tree-lined, but neglected, park called Blackstone Square. Next door was a Syrian Church with a domed roof overhung by a huge tree now bare of leaves. A light quietly emanating from the ornate glass window in the dome soothed my soul as I paced the rooms.

Finally I was alone. I lay down on my bed. I knew very little about the writings of the mystics at the time. I did not know that I was now entering the Refiner's Fire or the Dark Night of the Soul (18) that would purify my heart and make me fit for Union with God.

"But who may abide the day of His coming,
And who shall stand when He appeareth?
For He is like a Refiner's Fire." Malachi 3.2
The events in the cab and on the plane were the beginning but the Dark Night of the Soul began in earnest when I laid down on my bed. As I have said, the fire in the heart led to the opening of the heart. The heart continued to open slowly and inexorably, step by step, like a flower. As it did, it produced forgiveness - forgiveness of those I felt had wronged me, who had teased and mocked me. These vexations departed from my heart one by one as they came to my mind - like water drops from a lotus leaf. At the same time there came to my mind, one by one, things I had done which lay buried in my consciousness undermining my life. I prayed for the Lord to forgive me and He did so, one by one (19).

Simultaneous with this forgiveness was terror and joy. I was in terror of losing my life. The Fire or Force was opening my heart and I was naturally terrified since my heart had never been open that wide. Fear keeps the heart closed so if the heart is opened beyond its normal position it produces terror. To alleviate this terror I had to forgive. It allowed the heart to tolerate being opened at that degree of opening. As this proceeded, hatred slowly left my heart and it slowly became more purified.

Then the heart opened more. More terror. More sin and error came to my mind one by one and I asked the Lord to forgive me and He did so one by one. The terror lessened. The heart opened wider. More joy. More terror. More prayers. And as the heart opened ever wider my joy increased to ecstasy or rapture (20).

At the same time I was dealing with another aspect of the terror of losing my life: the dread or remorse that I would lose my worldly ties. I would die in this lonely place never to see my dear ones again. My worldly hopes and dreams would end here never to be fulfilled. Clinging to life, I begged the Lord, Oh save me. Let me live.

This Prayer of Salvation during such an emotional crisis deepened my attachment to God with Form. To confirm and permanently establish this attachment I made a Covenant with God with Form. Once this firm attachment was made I could remove myself from worldly attachments and all its associated complexities and my fears could more easily be borne (21). Only the most simple and fundamental structures of the mind-heart system were now being employed. This stabilized my mind and enabled my heart to continue the process of opening. It opened amidst joy, ecstasy, terror and anxiety while at the same time there was a fierce attention of my mind and being on that which was within.

The Great Silence.

Gradually, then, over a period of about an hour this Refiner's Fire succeeded in bringing about an opening and purifying of my heart and bringing along with it peace to my conscience. As a result, my thinking process was able to rest. As this occurred, all of my mind - all of my being - was freed to focus on the present moment within where there existed the blessed open heart. In this undistracted, dramatic state my mind became one pointed. That was its natural, purified state. Then, suddenly, all action within me ceased (22). The pumping of my blood, the beating of my heart, the quivering or hum of my nerves (or perhaps the latter was my body shaking) ceased quite abruptly and I was left in a state of profound silence (23). I had crossed over to the Great Silence (24).

In that state I no longer felt the previous terror, joy, or anxiety. Instead I felt I had come into my True Home, where I was Free(21, 25). I had left the World and was in a state of Pure Being. In that state my mind could not think; it could only observe inwardly and record (26). I had no power to recall or analyze. All of my mind and being continued to focus on the present moment within during the transition into the Silence and at the Silence. In that state of mind and being, my system was satisfied that it had penetrated to the core. Its energy then ran out. It let go and I fell into a swoon: a deep and abiding sleep (27).

It was the silent night, the holy night.

Presently I awoke. It was daybreak. All was peace, bliss. Within me lapped the Living Waters: a serene, wave-like energy of such a subtle frequency that it was capable of flowing evenly throughout my head and body as if they were both made of one substance(4, 28). I was in such a state of peace and bliss, pervaded by a feeling of inner goodness, that the experience has led me to believe this is what is known as Heaven (29). My sincere and earnest search for the Truth during the previous 53 months had finally been satisfied (30). I no longer felt that I must seek the ground of my life, the base upon which to build a sound life. I felt I had found the Ground of My Being: the philosopher's stone, the Formless, the Timeless, the Unconditioned, Knowledge, Bliss (31).

This I now feel is God: no more, no less. Reflection on those blessed hours since April 1962 has led me to that conclusion (32).

References and Notes.

  1. An Engineer's Story is similar in form to Parmenides' allegorical proem (Burnet 1948) given just below. It introduces his Fragments.
    "The car that bears me carried me as far as ever my heart desired, when it had brought me and set me on the renowned way of the goddess, which leads the man who knows through all the towns. On that way was I borne along; for on it did the wise steeds carry me, drawing my car, and maidens showed the way. And the axle, glowing in the socket - for it was urged round by the whirling wheels at each end - gave forth a sound as of a pipe, when the daughters of the Sun, hasting to convey me into the light, threw back their veils from off their faces and left the abode of Night.

    "There are the gates of the ways of Night and Day, fitted above with lintel and below with a threshold of stone. They themselves, high in the air, are closed by mighty doors, and Avenging Justice keeps the keys that fit them. Her did the maidens entreat with gentle words and cunningly persuade to unfasten without demur the bolted bars from the gates. Then, when the doors were thrown back, they disclosed a wide opening, when their brazen posts fitted with rivets and nails swung back one after the other. Straight through them, on the broad way, did the maidens guide the horse and the car, and the goddess greeted me kindly, and took my right hand in hers, and spake to me these words:

    "Welcome, O youth, that comest to my abode on the car that bears thee, tended by immortal charioteers! It is no ill chance, but right and justice that has sent thee forth to travel on this way. Far, indeed, does it lie from the beaten track of men! Meet it is that thou shouldest learn all things, as well the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth, as opinion of mortals in which is no true belief at all. Yet none the less shalt thou learn these things also, - how passing right through all things one should judge the things that seem to be."

    (The text of the translation is from: John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy , 4th edition(Adam & Charles Black, London,1948) 172.)
  2. The disintegration of moral character - loss of integrity and the descent into dissipation and obsession - often leads to desperation and sets the stage for a religious conversion. Many of the teachings of religion focus on this crisis. (See for example, 'The Sermon' from Moby Dick by Herman Melville.)
  3. The successful attitude of the seeker of God, the warrior, and creative men and women appear to be identical. It is the attitude of detachment. The essence of detachment is to let go of the clinging to life. Some aspects of this idea are illustrated below:

  4. What is occurring here is similar to what occurs in social and biological systems which have been driven to stable states far from thermodynamic equilibrium. As they are driven further from equilibrium, such systems experience a series of bifurcations leading to structural changes and increases in energy exchange with the environment.
  5. On arete:
  6. Elie Wiesel, Nobel peace laureate, Boston Globe, October 21, 1986:
    "If you want to break out of your despair simply for your own sake, I don't think it will work. You will continue to suffer in your solitude and loneliness. But if you do it for someone else, a child even, one other person, then somehow you can find your way out."
  7. On mystical union and psychosis:
  8. On the concept of Truth:
  9. Quotation of Kant in K. Jaspers, Kant(Harcourt, San Diego,1962), p90:
    "Any fragmentary attempt to become a better man is futile. The foundation of a character lies in the absolute unity of the inner principle of a man's whole life conduct. No doubt . . . there are few men who have attempted this revolution before the thirtieth year, and still fewer who have firmly established it before their fortieth."
  10. I.K.Tamini, Glimpses into the Psychology of Yoga (Theosophical Pub. House, Wheaton, IL, 1976), pVII:
    "As our minds get purified and harmonized and the intuitive faculty begins to function, knowledge which we need wells up from within us, and the help and guidance which we deserve comes to us from somewhere, somehow, unasked. This is the law of spiritual life which those who tread the path of yoga should always keep in mind."

  11. Prigogine and Stengers, Order Out of Chaos, 163-165. (for example, the formation of Benard cells is very much sensitive to, and dependent on, the existence of a gravitational field.):
    " . . . . matter acquires [fundamental new properties] in far-from-equilibrium conditions: external fields, such as the gravitational field, can be 'perceived' by the system . . . The important point is that . . . . this mechanism expresses an extraordinary sensitivity. The sensitivity of far-from-equilibrium states to external fluctuations is . . . . [an] example of a system's spontaneous adaptive organization to its environment."

  12. From J. W. Forrester, 'Nonlinearity in High-Order Models of Social Systems', paper number D-3691-1, March 1985, System Dynamics Group, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139:
    "By shifting loop dominance we mean the process by which control of a system moves from one set of feedback loops to another set, often with dramatic changes in behavior. The several control loops will all have been present in the system from the beginning but some lie inactive until conditions trigger them into operation.

    "The processes behind the typical S-shaped growth curve serve as a simple example of shifting loop dominance. Consider a population expanding toward an upper limit to the carrying capacity of its environment. When the population is well below the limit, population expands exponentially, driven by a linear positive feedback loop in which additions to population increase in proportion to population itself. The positive feedback loop produces the initial upward-sweeping section of S-shaped growth. But as the limit to population is approached, a previously dormant linear negative feedback loop becomes active, interacts nonlinearly with the positive loop, reduces the growth rate of the positive feedback loop toward zero, and eventually takes full control to adjust population toward the limit whenever population deviates in either direction from the limit. The two loops come into operation at different times. First, the positive feedback loop of growth is in control during the early exponential growth phase. Later, the negative feedback loop exerts increasing control to neutralize the positive loop and convert the system to a goal-seeking search for an equilibrium at the population limit. Biological and social systems contain numerous structures that move in and out of dominance as forces shift."

  13. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Finest Hour, 1939- 1941, Volume VI (Houghton Mifflin Co, Boston, 1983), 438-439.

  14. On the relationship of the mind to the object:

  15. The holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement has been called the flow state. Csikszentmihalyi describes it as follows:
    "In the flow state, action follows upon action according to an internal logic that seems to need no conscious intervention by the actor. He experiences it as a unified flowing from one moment to the next, in which he is in control of his actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment, between stimulus and response, or between past, present, and future. . . . . one may experience flow on the battlefront, on a factory assembly line, or in a concentration camp. The experience is one of complete involvement of the actor with his activity. The activity presents constant challenges. There is no time to get bored or to worry about what may or may not happen. A person in such a situation can make full use of whatever skills are required and receives clear feedback to his actions; hence he belongs to rational cause and effect system in which what he does has realistic and predictable consequences."
    M. Csikszentmihalyi, Beyond Boredom and Anxiety (Jossey-Bass Pub., San Francisco, 1975), 36.

  16. Vivekananda, Complete Works, Vol. 5 (1979 edition): pp447-453:
    ".... thousands of us are, for our whole life, meditating on Om, are getting ecstatic in devotion in the name of the Lord, and are crying, 'Thy will be done, I am fully resigned to Thee!' - and what are they getting in return? Absolutely nothing! How do you account for this? The reason lies here, and it must be fully understood. Whose meditation is real and effective? Who can really resign himself to the Will of God? Who can utter with power irresistible, like that of a thunderbolt, the name of the Lord? It is he who has earned Chitta-shuddhi, that is, whose mind has been purified by work, or in other words, he who is the Dharmika.

    "Each individual is a centre for the manifestation of a certain force. This force has been stored up as the resultant of our previous works, and each one of us is born with this force at his back. So long as this force has not worked itself out, who can possibly remain quiet and give up work?"

  17. As I designed and built the device, the mantra I was using was, 'I will not be a nothing'. No guru or priest or rabbi had given me this mantra. It was something I would say to myself from time to time with feeling.

    Let's examine this. The behavior of a stable system may be described as goal-seeking. Conversely, an unstable system is one dominated by a positive feedback loop and has no goal. As I said to myself with all my heart and soul, 'I will not be a nothing', I had no goal on the plane of action but I was striving for transcendence to a higher plane. I cared not whether I was moving up or down the ladder of worldly success. To me higher or lower on that plane of action was nothing. Consciously or unconsciously, deep down, I knew that I had somehow become a slave, a nothing, to a social system, in particular this company's social system.

    What was left to me it seems was to BURN - the soul afire. The engineering device that I was designing and building at that time was in keeping with such a state of mind. Unconsciously I was worshipping God in the form of Fire, or perhaps something more. The device was a cylindrical metal- ceramic electron tube the size of a 5 inch long crucifix, structured with a copper rod running down its spine. A high electric current (about 200 amps) flowing in the rod generated a magnetic field. The electron tube was mounted or jury-rigged on a frame. At the heart of the assembly was a half inch diameter by one inch long cylindrical tantalum cathode heated to 3100 deg F. The cathode's intense white light emanated from the openings between the plates of the electron tube and I was aware of its rays as I waited for it to heat up or as I worked around it, studying for countless hours how the electron tube operated. This could be done since in its vacuum phase it was enclosed by a highly evacuated glass bell jar and in its cesium phase by a metal bell jar with a quartz window. I was not aware at the time that the electron tube was in the form of a crucifix, but what joy I felt to see it work.

    "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
    And with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." Jesus (Matthew 22:37)

    "If.....thou shalt seek the Lord thy God,
    Thou shalt find him, if thou seek him
    With all thy heart and with all thy soul." Moses (Deut 4:29)

    "Whoever has God in mind - simply and solely God - in all things, such a man carries God with him into all his works and into all places and God alone does all his works." Meister Eckhart

    The mechanical drawings for this particular design are not available to me. However, a later design of an entirely different electron tube also shows crucifix-like qualities. The mechanical drawing for the latter is shown below.

  18. Saint John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers, mainly from the 16th century manuscript #3446 (Image Books, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1959), 93:
    "These proficients [those who are on the road to Divine Union] have two kinds of imperfections: the one kind is habitual; the other actual. The habitual imperfections are the imperfect habits and affections which have remained all the time in the spirit, and are like roots, to which the purgation of sense has been unable to penetrate. The difference between the purgation of these and that of the other kind is the difference between the root and the branch, or between the removing of a stain which is fresh and one which is old and of long standing. For, as we said, the purgation of sense is only the entrance and beginning of contemplation leading to the purgation of the spirit, which, as we have likewise said, serves rather to accommodate sense to spirit than to unite spirit with God. But there still remain in the spirit the stains of the old man, although the spirit thinks not that this is so, neither can it perceive them; if these stains be not removed with the soap and strong lye of the purgation of this night, the spirit will be unable to come to the purity of Divine Union."

  19. M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, I (Halle a.d.S.: Max Niemeyer, 1927), 385. Quoted in Marjorie Grene, Heidegger (Hillary House, Inc., New York, 1957), 38:
    " . . in the Being of a being death, guilt, conscience, freedom and finitude dwell together at its very source."

  20. Matthew 6:14:
    "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you."

  21. Saint John of the Cross:
    "The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for, until the cord be broken, the bird cannot fly. So the soul, held by the bonds of human affections, however slight they may be, cannot, while they last, make its way to God."
  22. On the mental imagery of the release of knots in the heart:
  23. On the timelessness, motionlessness, and oneness of the state of mystical union:
  24. On what is required of the seeker in order to attain mystical union:
  25. Ruysbroeck:
    "[Union with God] is an unwalled world."
  26. During the Great Silence or samadhi or mystical union the following state of mind and body existed: The following philosophers - one from the West; the other from the East - have spoken about this state. Here is what they have to say:
  27. From: The Dark Night of the Soul by Saint John of the Cross:
    "Forgetful of myself,
    My head reclined on my Beloved,
    The world was gone
    And all my cares at rest,
    Forgotten all my grief among the lilies."
  28. On the state of mystical union or samadhi:
  29. On the state of mystical union:
  30. On the attainment of mystical union:
  31. The central tenet of the Jewish religious teachings of my boyhood had been realized:
  32. On mystical union:

Part B of the Introduction: The very beginning of my religious life and its slow development after mystical union.

I went to Southern California on a ten day vacation when I was 30 years old. I had been working very hard at an MIT spinoff company in Boston and needed a break. On that vacation I had a profound sixteen hour religious experience from noon on Sunday April 8th 1962 to about 1 am on April 9th,1962 (To read a narrative leading up to and including my religious experience, please read Part A of the Introduction). That sixteen hour religious experience has remained the most sacred hours of my life. I still remember and value and cherish the depth and greatness of that religious experience. The experience occurred naturally or spontaneously, without the use of drugs or herbs or meditation techniques (see Part A of the Introduction). The experience is usually called in Western culture, purgation culminating in mystical union. The 10 hour purgation experience is sometimes called The Dark Night of the Soul. Then purgation culminated in the profound 4 to 7 second religious experience of mystical union. I returned to Boston during the middle of that religious experience. After a day or or two I noticed that my mind began to lose some of its stability and deep concentration. It was clear to me that I needed advice or direction and a quiet, meditative religious environment in order to stabilize my system. So, with these two ideas in my mind, I decided to return to the monastery in Southern California, perhaps sometime around May 1962, and try to revisit or stay at the monastery up in the foothills of the Santa Ana mountains in Southern California. I had first visited that monastery during a one week vacation in early November 1961 (see Part A of the Introduction). I was very impresssed with the monastery's holy atmosphere. It seemed to me that it would be a good place for stablizing my system.

It turned out that I was allowed to stay at the Santa Ana Monastery beginning in May 1962. I then left my engineering job in Boston and settled down at the Santa Ana monastery. I was then given the role of a preprobationary monk at that monastery. The exact nature of that role was not specified, but I do recall I needed to be in a holy atmosphere, to settle down, and to learn how to proceed in my religious life. During the first two months at the monastery, May and June 1962, my mind and heart were experiencing both a very peaceful spiritual state and a state that Csikszentmihalyi (1975) calls a flow state. Around June I requested that Swami Prabhavananda, the profound and charismatic head of the monastery system, to kindly give me some instructions. His brief, but very profound, instructions will be presented and discussed in Section 2 of Part C of the Introduction. Then, in July the depth of my spiritual state and my flow state slowly began to lose its sacred quality. I tried, but I couldn't stop my spiritual state and my flow state from slowly returning to a normal state. Then, slowly, I began to find the monastery life incompatible and only stayed until November 1962. Thus, I stayed at the Santa Ana monastery for a total of seven months. Nevertheless, I am very grateful to Swami Prabhavananda of the Ramakrishna/Vivekananda Order for enabling me to stay at the monastery during those critical seven months. I then returned to Boston.

Then, for the next 15 years I tried to lead a religious life in the Boston area, using the simple instructions that had been given to me by Swami Prabhavananda at the Santa Ana monastery (see Part C of the Introduction). During those 15 years I was guided mainly by the promptings coming from my blessed heart (see section 2 of Part C of the Introduction). My aim during those 15 years was to rise to the greatness of a religious life. I was very much absorbed in this activity.

It was a very interesting, but very difficult, 15 years for me (see Part C of the Introduction). Some of my adventures and experiences during that period led me to some maturation: maturation of my mind, my heart, and my developing religious life. My experiences during those 15 years and beyond also revealed to me some of my character flaws.

Then, toward the end of those 15 years, from 1973 to 1977, I took on a memorable, indeed fascinating, - but very stressful - four year experience as a night-shift cab driver in Boston. I needed to experience and understand some of the deep adventures that an independent life sometimes gives us. However, in 1977 it became clear to me that in taking on night-shift cab driving I had taken on more than I could handle. In 1977 I was 45 years old: I decided it was time to begin my climb, back up to engineering. That slow, but adventurous, climb back up to high tech engineering took about 7 years (see Part C of the Introduction).

As my return to engineering advanced, my mechanical engineering skills, my heat transfer skills, my physics skills, and my mathematical skills all began to sharpen up again. Later in 1984, when my analytical climb back up to high tech engineering began to level off, I began to reflect on the 22 years since my religious experience: I recalled that ten years back, in 1974 - during the first or second year that I was driving the cab - I ran across Prof. Jay W. Forrester's powerful system dynamics (SD) methodology while browsing at the MIT bookstore. To my surprise, Forrester's advanced and very subtle SD methodology looked relatively easy to me. However, after I had become more familiar with Forrester's analytical ways, I understood why his SD methodology seemed relatively easy. He seemed to be constantly using the first principle of engineering: Keep It Simple. Also, I noticed that Forrester and his associates - and even some of the MIT undergraduate students working with them - were able to apply SD to deeply comprehend the dynamics of a great variety of very complex social systems. In short, it looked to me like I might be able to use Forrester's SD methodology to analyze the dynamics of my consciousness system underlying my religious experience of purgation.

So, after I had gone through the stressful cab driving adventure as far as I could go, I started to sharpen up my engineering and physics skills again. I was awakening and beginning to find myself. I was slowly beginning to emerge from my social training during the years from 4 or 5 years old to my graduation from the engineering school at the University of Minnesota. I got the MSME degree when I was 24 years old in 1956.

So, in 1984 I was slowly waking up, but in 1984 I was 52 years old! I began to realize that I didn't have much time. If I were to scientifically comprehend my religious experience, I had to make my move: So, in 1984 the General Theory of Religion Project began. It was not the beginning, though. I had sensed for a number of years that my heart, my soul, and my mind were slowly putting together the structure of a new and important comprehension of my religious life: Using System Dynamics (SD) to penetrate to the very core of religion.

Dive deep, Oh my mind, Dive deep.

Part C of the Introduction: My religious and scientific development during the years that followed mystical union:

In this chapter I will attempt to explain how my life has benefited from my experience of purgation culminating in mystical union (PMU). At the same time I will try to explain how I am attempting to work out my salvation with diligence.

1. The Early Period Leading Up to PMU.

After graduating high school in June 1949 I eventually found a job in July at a bank in downtown Minneapolis. My job was to add up checks and sort them. However, my real aim was to bring my tennis game up to a championship level. So, everyday I brought my athletic bag to work and stored it under my machine. Then, after work I would play tennis until dark.

However, after working for 6 months the Korean war broke out. I was going to be 18 in March. So, I ducked into the university. Meanwhile, Bougetz and other dynamite guys from my class volunteered. Some came home killed or maimed. (It is good for me to keep in mind those precious classmates.)

I studied engineering at the University of Minnesota [MS (Mechanical Engineering) 1956] and have worked on and off as a high tech research and development engineer, mostly in Boston. My engineering career extended from 1957 to 1989, but I only spent a total of 15 of those 32 years working as an engineer.

The direction of my life, my thought, and my high tech analytical research changed in a very profound way in April 1962 when I was 30 years old. I had a 16 hour religious experience, centered at the very deepest level of my heart. The experience occurred after visiting a monastic retreat in Southern California during a 10 day vacation. The vacation was taken after completing an intense and stressful engineering project (see Part A of the Introduction). In the West this religious experience is often called purgation culminating in mystical union (PMU). My heart had opened up and the sacred spirituality at the very core of my being was revealed to me, indeed, was revealed to every cell in my mind and body. This religious experience occurred naturally, without the use of drugs or herbs or meditation techniques. A religious conversion like this transcends everything else in one's life. For example, for 15 years after the religious experience in 1962, my use of high tech engineering analysis had essentially shut down. Such analyses no longer seemed so very important or meaningful to me.

2. Sacred Psychotherapy.

A month after I experienced PMU I went back to the monastic retreat in Southern California in the role of a preprobationary monk. I went to the retreat, mainly, because I needed to get some direction for my budding religious life. However, once I was in the monastery I settled into a flow state (Csikszentmihalyi 1975) that lasted two months, a kind of divine flow state. In this state of balance, harmony, and groundedness at the monastery, I pondered on some questions: How does one go about building a sound life? What do I do now in this state of mind? I searched for an understanding of my religious experience. I tried to comprehend the incredible greatness I had experienced. However, even though I was in a high spiritual state, my mind was just baffled by the question of how I should proceed from here and what direction to take in my religious life.

At this critical stage of my budding religious life, the key direction for my religious life was given to me by Swami Prabhavananda of the Ramakrishna Order of India. He was the charismatic head of the Southern California wing of the Order, which included this monastery. After I had stayed about 4 or 5 weeks at the monastery I requested the swami to tell me how I should proceed in my religious life. He told me to think of the Lord as residing at the deepest part of my heart and to meditate on that. I did not know what he meant by meditation and I shied away from asking him, because I didn't want the swami or anyone else to become my master. I wanted to remain free. Nevertheless, after PMU I realized that my heart was my treasure: The swami was on the right track. So, I have stayed with the essence of the advice he gave me, although I have adjusted certain aspects over the years. The swami, wisely, didn't tell me what to use as the image of the Lord. He didn't suggest Ramakrishna or Jesus or Buddha, etc. The blessed swami left that critical decision to me.

My immediate ancestors were all culturally Jewish, but not particularly religious. However, because all four of my grandparents were Jewish, the essence of Judaism was somewhat ingrained in me. This essence is contained in the Shema. I had always interpreted the Shema - with the loving help of my father and mother, together with the teachings of Rabbi Minda - as follows: The Lord is One; The Lord is formless.

Thus, after the many years since the brief advice given to me by the swami in 1962, I have now settled down with the following kind of religious psychotherapy, as I 'work out my salvation with diligence.' I call this psychotherapy, sacred psychotherapy (SP). My psychiatrist is the Lord:

  1. The Lord, residing at the deepest part of my heart, is formless. Stated another way, the very core of my heart is sacred.
  2. My sacred heart knows, step by step, what it will need during the process of healing, growth, rebuilding, and reintegration after PMU.
  3. My understanding of meditation is that it is an informal process. It is a process by which I learn to master the art of listening to the moment by moment promptings of my blessed and sacred heart.
  4. My task is to learn to follow my sacred heart, moment by moment, using the above kind of informal meditation. My sacred heart will lead me during the process of overcoming my heart's arrested development. That development had been arrested between the ages of 9 or 10, when I had a trauma and a dozen or so muscles in my heart had become cramped or paralyzed, to the age of 30, when all the cramped or paralyzed muscles were released.
  5. My two prayers are:
    1. Lord, teach me how to pray.
    2. Lord, guide me.
  6. Overcoming my arrested development occurs by a natural healing process. It is a process that will lead me to manhood (to be a mensch) and to the realization of my full potential. (I know about my full potential: It was experienced during mystical union.)
  7. The deepest part of my heart is the Lord of my life. My direction comes from there. The sacred, at the deepest part of my heart, is the center of my life. My brain, however powerful it is, is not the Lord of my life. The will or ego associated with my brain and senses need to be firmly brought into harmony with the promptings of my sacred heart. That is the road!
  8. Ideally, SP is a moment by moment adventure with the promptings of one's sacred heart.
After many years this is the way SP has developed or evolved. Certainly, I am not at the end of the road. I am not a mensch. I have not attained my full potential, but this is the way I am now traveling on the road. I believe this approach is a good operational meditation and religious philosophy for a person like me. I am dealing with the blessed release of the effects of a childhood trauma. Specifically, I believe this means the release or abreaction of heart muscles that had become cramped/paralyzed at the age of 9 or 10 and then eventually released at the age of 30. After mystical union in 1962 I needed to attend to my blessed heart in a sacred way. The development of my blessed heart had been arrested for 20 or 21 years! So, at 30 years of age my blessed heart began the process of healing itself and growing toward manhood. Despite my powerful will and ego, I have had to learn - from the age of 30 to the present - that my first priority is to serve the promptings of my sacred heart. I have had to become the servant of my sacred heart. I have failed so many times in this process, but I get right back up and try again. The blessed Lord forgives.

3. Right Livelihood.

In 1962, a few months after Swami Prabhavananda had given me the advice on how to proceed, I slowly began to find the monastery was not a compatible environment for my particular religious life. After seven months in the monastery I left, eventually returning to Boston. However, I kept in touch with the Ramakrishna Order. I found the insights of certain monks and devotees of the Ramakrishna Order to be helpful as the years went by. I admired the way one of the monks conducted himself. The Order kindly allowed me to roam somewhat freely throughout their system without requiring me to join or commit myself to the Order. This roaming within the Order included various Ramakrishna Order locations in the US - particularly Boston - a retreat near Paris, and a few locations in India.

The structure underlying the roaming, searching, and floundering in the Boston area between 1964 and 1984 circled around the practical question: What is my 'right livelihood?' I needed to make a living. But, what job should I look for? My heart sensed that engineering was not the right job for me during this stage of my religious life. Instead, I felt, deep in my heart, that I had to allow my heart to heal, to rebuild itself, to grow, and to reintegrate itself with my entire neurophysiological system and with the whole of society. This work has continued from 1962 all the way to the present moment. In chronological order, starting in 1964, this exploration in Boston into my 'right livelihood' included working with my father in his garden (six months); working as a carpenter's helper partitioning apartment houses in Dorchester (nine months); an inner city teacher at a vocational-technical institute in Roxbury (four years); an observer at an experimental 'open school' in Framingham (three years); and then a volunteer hospital orderly in Cambridge (one year). At the time, I considered these activities as earnest searches for my right livelihood.

As I stated previously, after PMU in 1962 my blessed heart was now growing and developing again after the release of the trauma. My child-like heart had always dreamed of adventure, but in the years from 9 or 10 years old to my college years I was always afraid to go too far from 'home', afraid to go too far from my family's hopes and dreams for me. Also, my limited choices during college (during the Korean War) had tended to slowly narrow my natural abilities and to make me into a specialist. After PMU it was clear to me I needed to broaden my experience if I were to rise to the greatness of a religious life, to an adventure with my growing and developing heart, as it healed, rebuilt, and reintegrated itself.

{Let me interrupt my narrative of my earnest search for my right livelihood, here, and use this paragraph to reflect on the vocational-technical institute (VTI): In 1965 the VTI began and it was drawing in street smart young men (about 18 or 19 years old) for a two year education. I may be wrong but I believe one of the schools aims was to allow the students - Italian, Irish, Polish, Blacks, Jews, you name it - to avoid the draft for a couple of years so they could gain a little wider maturity, and could get some technical job training. Those young men came from all corners of the inner city of Boston. The expanding Vietnamese War was a factor here, driving these young men to the school. There was something about the vocational-technical institute that had a deep affect on me: Those street smart young men from all the corners of the inner city of Boston were teaching me, although they didn't know it. All I could teach them were academic things. Later, I heard about some of their experiences after they graduated from the vocational-technical institute and went to war: As the years went by I would think back - from time to time - about some of those young men and their character. Eventually, as I began to awaken a little to the essence of character, it dawned on me: Some of those guys had a power within their heart and soul that couldn't be stopped: Where did they learn that? It seemed to me that some of them were able to deal with the war and when they got back home they seemed to be able to deal with that also.}

4. Cab Driving Adventure.

Now, back to the narrative of my search for my right livelihood: Eventually, my savings ran out in March 1973. Again, seen from the present perspective, that was what my blessed heart was waiting for. It forced my heart to go to a deeper level of rebuilding and reintegrating. Thus, I left my volunteer hospital orderly job and found what I considered a good job for a philosopher or mystic: night-shift cab driver (Cambridge, four years). I stress the night-shift, because on that shift (for yellow cabs in Cambridge during the 1970s) the cab driver was usually free to 'play the streets,' rather than be the slave of the radio dispatcher. The drawback is playing the streets is more dangerous, but my blessed heart preferred danger to slavery. Back when I was a boy, maybe 13 or 14, I could hear some of the older boys making noise and hanging out on the streets of our neighborhood in Minneapolis until about 10pm or so during the warmer months of spring, summer and fall. What kind of adventures were they having in the night? I wanted to roam with them, but I was only 13 or 14. Instead, I stayed home and listened to the play by play radio broadcast of the Minneapolis Millers baseball team. The heart of that team was Bobby Estalella in center field. He would usually break open the game with a home run or something like that. How did he get like that?

Now at last, as a cab driver, I could roam the streets of the city - Boston and Cambridge this time - and observe, as a detached outsider, what was going on out there at night. Oh, what an adventure it was for the first 6 months. Then, as the economy disintegrated after the oil embargo of 1973, cab driving reverted to its difficult and more fundamental mode: a waiting game. This mode required skills and elements of character that, unfortunately, I found I did not possess. However, I struggled on.

Toward the end of those four years of cab driving I gradually had to face the reality of my situation: the stress was starting to become too much for me. Indeed, it was slowly killing me. But I delayed changing jobs. This brought me to a crisis from which I barely emerged. Eventually, I was willing to admit that the attempt at working as a cab driver was - at least for the time being - beyond my ability. To help me give it up, I rationalized that more time, experience, and character were needed. I rationalized that once I learned these very subtle skills, I would return to cab driving. I only knew that now I had to move on. So, I was able to pack up in my memory insights I had gained about myself, about the people I had met, and about the US social system. However, as seen from my present perspective, I believe learning cab driving skills must start way back on the streets and alleyways of the city, perhaps at 13 or 14 or 15, for one to have a chance at eventually doing the job like a mensch. All my cab driving was not wasted, however. After all the years of reflection since then on my four years of cab driving I have concluded that the fundamental ground of social life for cab drivers is Respect. As for integrating with the other cab drivers, that I couldn't do. I have always been a loner and a watcher and will always be one.

5. Return to Engineering.

Then, in July 1977 when I was 45 I managed to find my way back into engineering. Even in engineering my blessed heart needed time to broaden its experience. I went through a two and one half year engineering adventure before I was able to get back into my specialty as a heat transfer engineer. This adventure occurred naturally, because I had been out of engineering for 15 years. Having no money, I had to take what I could get. I started out with a contract or temporary job examining tooling - jigs and fixtures - in the tool crib of a company that was machining out parts and assembling them into precision instruments (six months). Then, slowly building up my resume, I worked as either a temporary engineer or consultant in energy auditing of complex buildings (on and off for 11 years), MHD engine testing on a contract (3 months), etc. Moving around like this, I got a broader perspective on the field of engineering and the all around variety of the working environment in Boston. Eventually, in December 1979 I arrived back into high tech with a temporary job as a heat transfer engineer, rearing to go! As I picked up my golden sword again, I began to relax. Instead of working in a frenzy, as I had done at the MIT spinoff company, I was working more calmly and with my heart. Also, my engineering report writing was more skilled now, more balanced, sharper. I worked as either a temporary heat transfer engineer or consultant or senior research engineer until 1987.

As I look back now on those very interesting 25 years from 1962 to 1987, it is becoming clear that this period was an adventure with my heart. My blessed childlike-heart - with its arrested development caused by the childhood trauma at the age of 9 or 10 - slowly and naturally and prayerfully began rebuilding and reintegrating itself as I grew toward manhood. Nevertheless, in 1984 when I was 52, my maturity was no longer 9 or 10 years old. I would estimate my maturity in 1984 was probably that of a 15 or 20 or 30 year old. The maturity of my blessed heart was still growing, but I was more balanced and more at peace with myself.

6. Reflections on some of my struggles in the inner city.

Here are a number of insights that emerged from this 25 year search:

7. The Early Analytical Period.

In 1984 when I was 52 years old and had reestablished myself in high tech engineering again, and had been working in that capacity, on and off, for a period of five years; I began to realize that I was getting old and time was running out for me in my quest. At that point I realized that I had to deepen my religious quest. This nudged me toward a different approach to religion. I did not abandon my religious quest, but I approached it in a different, perhaps more intelligent, way: I began to realize that the only thing I really knew about religion was my experience of PMU. I firmly believed that - with my experience of PMU - I held the key to religion, but here again I didn't know how to proceed.

In this new, more focused, and more rational approach to my religious life, I realized that in order to proceed I needed to find and then apply the appropriate formalized analytical method. I believe this is the way most theoretical mechanical engineers would like to proceed in this situation. I recalled that in my religious wanderings I had come across an analytical technique in 1974 that looked promising. It was Jay W. Forrester's System Dynamics (SD). (The book I had skimmed at that time was Forrester's great book, World Dynamics.) So, in 1984 - between jobs - I began to read, to study, and to use the SD method. I sat in on an SD seminar at MIT for the Fall semester of 1984. Jim Hines, with his causal loop diagram technique, and Ulrich Goluke, with his SD model of the alcoholism addiction, were very helpful in getting me started. Then, in December I began to use SD's causal loop diagram technique to first recall and then organize the details of my entire 14 stage religious crisis and my religious experience of PMU. Eventually, I began to focus in on PMU and make rough causal loop models of my religious experience. As I did this recall and organization of the details of PMU, I noticed powerful emotions were being released within me: I had caught fire again, like in the days at the MIT spinoff company (see Part A of the Introduction).

It wasn't long before my preliminary work indicated that SD and the causal loop diagram technique had the potential to get me going toward analyzing core consciousness during the purgation phase of PMU. It was clear that SD was the analytical tool I needed in my spiritual life: It could bring about an integration of my analytical mind and my sacred heart. It could integrate my talent for making an engineering analysis with my love of God and religion. Here was a way for me to meditate on God and the religious life. Here was my 'right livelihood'! Thus, I began to settle down into the meditative religious life in the role of a system dynamicist, developing such a magnificent religious and scientific breakthrough. SD and its various techniques would become my new 'golden sword'! This development, this scientific project, this deep spiritual meditation has been going on since 1984. If it is the Lord's will, I will continue this blessed, ever-deepening meditation for the rest of my life.

8. Reflections on Later Stages of the Analytical Period.

Underlying my activities since 1984 is prayer. I always prayed alone. My prayers were always directed toward the Lord. In my prayers the Lord resides within my blessed heart (see section 2 of Part C of the Introduction). My first allegiance is to the Lord. The society in which I live must be secondary. As I have said above, in my work I have usually operated as a maverick or temporary worker ever since 1962. That independent habit or orientation toward work tends to free my mind and soul. It is probably the main reason why - in my scientifically-based, religious work - I have emerged from nowhere as an independent scholar (1984 to present).

I am now one of the many independent scholars who think and live in Cambridge, close to the libraries at MIT and Harvard. I feel comfortable in the role of an independent scholar, because if I am to get to the Truth I need to avoid the subtle cultural conditioning and political correctness that sometimes captures and enslaves the mind of the professional scholar, particularly those professional scholars who have chosen to work in the highly politicized areas of the social sciences, the humanities, and religion. Because of my independent orientation, I find there is no conditioning or political correctness that bars my way as I penetrate toward the truths existing at the deepest level of the inner life. As a result, I am opening up those truths and am continuing to open them up after a long scientific analysis of PMU that began in 1984. This book manuscript is centered on those truths.

However, despite the fact that considerable progress toward the truth has been uncovered and understood by my scientific analyses of PMU, I am finding that this progress is not yet acceptable to cultural and scientific authorities, academic leaders, and protectors of religion. Those leaders have the skills - and the power given to them by their culture - to either compel or influence the minds of other academic scholars and thinkers. The problem of publishing or communicating my work is only partially overcome by publishing on the web. At present all of the professional scholars and leaders, reading both my scientific publications and this web site, are silent.

This project or book manuscript goes very deep. Ultimately, I believe it has the capability of producing a great awakening of mankind's understanding of the subtlety and depth of religion. It is fitting and proper that academic scholars and their leaders take their time to try to comprehend and integrate their minds with such subtlety and depth and to evaluate the possible impact these ideas could have on a society and culture.

I tend to believe that, in the long run, truth is always the best course to take. My position is similar to that of Revel (1991): If scientists and other scholars do not pursue and then establish truth, 'insincerity, the ideological manipulation of facts and the tendentiousness of clan rivalries' will move into the vacuum and mislead the precious scholars throughout the world who are fervently seeking the truth.

As I wait and try to bear my isolation, I just try to write better and to sharpen my analysis. I am comforted by the fact that I am growing in my religious life, my mind is deepening, and I am working on something that is great: Clarifying the subtlety and depth of religion, and its effect on the subtlety and depth of the inner life and its effect on deeply integrating the mind and heart. In short, I am trying to integrate science and religion (please see Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6).

The search for truth is not new to me. I got into the habit when I was an engineer. I have found that truth is respected in engineering more than in any other kind of work. The reason is quite simple. If engineers do not abide by truth, the machines being designed and built will not perform properly. Closely related to truth is the character of the engineers and the managers. For example, sometimes management needs to cut costs. Under certain conditions, this could undermine the performance and reliability of the machine. In that situation truth becomes a battleground between management and engineering. What occurs on that battleground determines not only the performance and reliability of the machine but the spirit and enthusiasm of the engineers, technicians, and managers and, ultimately, the success or failure of the company.

High tech mechanical engineering is scientifically based, mainly in differential equations and physics. Experience, imagination, and creativity are also important. I was mainly an analytical mechanical engineer. I have some insight into the remarkable ability of a high tech engineering analysis in comprehending the very subtlest aspects of the operation of a machine. The problem is this subtle kind of thought and analysis, found in high tech engineering, is usually focused on the operation of machines of one sort or another. However, intellectuals and scientists should be aware that the techniques of high tech engineering are capable of much greater kinds of applications. Concern for the operation of a machine is a very limited sphere of interest compared to the vast interests of the human mind, as it strives toward Truth or Veritas.

In this book I have broken out of that narrow engineering sphere of interest. My high tech engineering analysis is focused on, perhaps, one of the most important or most central questions facing mankind: Understanding of the operation of the mind and the body and their relationship to the heart and to core consciousness during both the release of a childhood trauma and its association with a religious experience. In short, I am using system dynamics (SD) to penetrate to the very core of religion. My high tech analysis of my religious experience uses the formalized system dynamics (SD) methodology as a base and then goes on to use it as the powerful SD-based Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology. These methodologies are applied to analyze my core consciousness during my deep religious experience. This formalized phenomenological analysis is the key methodology underlying the general theory of religion (GTR). More importantly, it is the key to breaking the deadlock that is now holding back the development of both science and religion (see Chapter 5).

Now, I need to take a little time to clarify the above paragraph and the various paragraphs above it, because those paragraphs are among the most crucial paragraphs of the book.

It is necessary to list key changes that began to occur in me after PMU from 1962 to the present. These key changes came to me, at least in part, from my high tech analyses of purgation made between 1984 and the present and now are beginning to be presented in Chapters 1 and 2 of this book. This key information will be important for our understanding as we proceed:

  1. After getting the very beginning phase of Chapter 1 solidly underway, between 1984 and 2007, I began to suspect that certain cramped or paralyzed muscles deep in my heart had been spontaneously released during the 10 hour purgation phase of PMU.
    (At the time of my religious experience I did not understand that the release of cramped muscles in my heart had occurred. Nor did I understand that the origin of the cramping or paralyzation of these heart muscles could have been due to a childhood trauma that I had experienced way back when I was 9 or 10 years old. The connection between the cramping or paralyzation of my heart muscles, the trauma, and PMU only emerged later, after I had started to make both the system dynamics(SD) based and TFP based formalized, phenomenological analysis of my core consciousness during PMU in 2008. Now, as my analysis goes deep Step III of the TFP methodology is becoming very important. It is the eidetic reduction phase or transcendental grounding phase of the TFP methodology. Those Step III insights are starting to unlock my understanding of the origin of PMU.)
  2. After experiencing PMU I had the feeling I had found the rock on which to build a sound life.
    (I believe this feeling came about because underlying PMU was the fact that certain muscles had been released from my heart after having been cramped or paralyzed there for a period of 20 or 21 years - from the age of 9 or 10 to the age of 30. [During these 20 or 21 years my development had been arrested.] Thus, at the age of 30 - just after PMU - my heart, though still undeveloped at 30 years of age, was relatively sound and free and running true again. With this change in state of my heart, I sensed a firm, grounded quality in my mind and heart. In this state I felt I could finally begin to build a sound life. [Please note that just after PMU - at 30 years of age - I was not really aware of the fact that my development had been arrested.])

9. Preliminary Summary.

Please keep in mind that this Part C of the Introduction is really only a draft: Nevertheless, here is a summary of some of the key elements I am now wrestling with, as I try to deal with the core of my understanding of PMU:
  1. The 21 months leading up to PMU, which is narrated in Part A of the Introduction, is important. It is important that I focus in on my life at that critical time. It consisted of my versatile work at the MIT spinoff company, my independent and original heat transfer work in plant physiology, my all out effort to straighten out my personal life (see Part A of the Introduction), and my interaction with the Ramakrishna Order. Also, hidden deep within me was my simple Jewish religious preparedness, taught to me between the time of my early childhood through to the time of my early teens, etc. These are some of the key factors that had awakened me to the deepest technical and spiritual level I was capable of at that time. I am asking myself: What was the relationship of those key factors with my life at that time and with PMU and with the release of my trauma?
  2. Just before PMU, during my 10 day visit at the LA Monastery (see Part A of the Introduction), I suspect that Swami Prabhavananda, alertly, saw that my trauma was ripe for release. Though I am not sure: There is a 50/50 chance that he may have given the trauma its final push, but not with his will. I suspect he had the spiritual power within him to spontaneously accomplish this final push. Also, just before I left the LA Monastery at noon on April 8,1962 to take my return flight to Boston and experience PMU, I recall he gave an inspiring Sunday morning lecture on the key religious experience - mystical union - known in the Hindu religion as samadhi.
  3. I had no Hindu religious preparedness before my experience of PMU. However, I had experienced Reform Jewish religious preparedness when I was a boy or youth in Sunday School. I believe one needs to develop religious preparedness at a young age, perhaps between 5 and 13 years of age. How could I ever have developed Hindu, Moslem or other religious preparedness after the age of 30 years old? Thanks to my parents and Rabbi Minda of Temple Israel in Minneapolis, when my trauma began its release, my precious Jewish religious preparedness - developed when I was a child and a youth and existing quietly in my subconscious - awoke and kept me stable throughout the trauma's release. As you will soon read from Key #1 of Chapter 2, this was when I had to 'walk the plank.' I suspect that Swami Prabhavananda understood, far more deeply than I, the importance to me of my Jewish religious preparedness during the time he knew me. As a result, he never really encouraged me to become a Hindu or become a member of the Ramakrishna Order. Please note, though, that despite these insights he did not decide to reject me. He just let things flow in a natural way: Such are the ways of a great religious man.
  4. The GTR is emerging - in part - from my long attempt to wrestle with, integrate, and comprehend the above factors.

Part D of the Introduction: A Heat Transfer Specialist Awakens, Begins to Broaden His Mind, Becomes a System Dynamicist, and Takes on the Role of an Independent Scholar.

Most religions were generated by a single individual who had a peak experience. However, most of those religions were gradually conditioned and tamed by social forces, were compromised, and then degenerated into their present form. My solution to this degeneration problem has been to develop a general theory of religion (GTR). The focus of the GTR has been to scientifically examine the permanent data of my phenomenological or core consciousness system residing in my long term memory (LTM). That data had been permanently stored in my LTM during my peak experience. As we shall see, it was in this way that the GTR has established a permanent, scientific base for the core of all religions.

However, many religious people will make the following point: "We should examine the peak experience of people like Moses, the sages of the Upanishads, Parmenides, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Ramakrishna, or other revered avatars and saints!" My response has been that there is not enough data in the sacred texts associated with the Avatars. My position is that many people have had a peak experience. However, only a few of those people have been known and have had followers: After the peak experience some have become arhats or avatars; others - those who have attained steady wisdom - have become bodhisattvas [Buddhist], sthitaprajnas (The Bhagavadgita II:54-72), saints [Christian], etc. Others have anonymously devoted themselves to family and community and, if they are recognized, are sometimes called a mensch, a standup guy [US slang], etc. Still, other mystics are problematic and difficult to categorize. In my opinion it would be best to have an avatar or a saint or a mensch make a scientific analysis of his or her peak experience so we could base the general theory of religion on that analysis. However, no avatar or saint or mensch has stepped forward. As a result - for the time being - the scientific analysis must be based on an analysis of my own experience. I give the following credentials for such an undertaking:

  1. I experienced purgation, culminating in mystical union, in 1962.
  2. I have been immersed in religious thinking since then.
  3. I have never joined any religion.
In 1984, I began a lone, relentless study of SD, particularly focused on how SD should be applied to analyze my religious experience. In doing so, I gradually found that the politics associated with religion was such that, if I wanted to get at the Truth, it was absolutely necessary that I take on the role of an independent scholar:


The painting shown above is by the American painter, Winslow Homer, and is entitled 'Fog Warning.' It is displayed at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts: It represents, for me, the mystic struggling to return home - against long odds - after having gained the Great Catch: The knowledge of God during mystical union.

Chapter 1. Scientific Analysis of my Religious Experience, Leading Toward the General Theory of Religion:

In early 2008 - after a relentless 24 year effort, focused on the GTR Project - I attained my religious and scientific goals: I established a three step, presuppositionless, system dynamics(SD)-based, phenomenological methodology for analyzing the data in my long term memory (LTM). My LTM permanently contained what is called either my dynamic core consciousness or my dynamic inner phenomena. This data was permanently recorded in my LTM during my 1962, ten-hour, subjective, religious experience of purgation. I call the three step methodology, Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP). My strategy had been to establish TFP, while at the same time apply it to analyze the data in my LTM during my ten-hour religious experience of purgation. As a result, Steps I and II of the TFP methodology are able to describe my 1962, ten-hour experience of purgation by modeling and simulating the contents or data in my LTM. The flow diagram or feedback system for purgation, shown at Figure 2 on the next page - and its mathematical model that follows it - is the base for my consciousness simulations associated with the dynamics of my religious experience of purgation. The simulations of my consciousness associated with my religious experience are shown at Figures 1 and 3.

Then, in the final step - Step III - of the TFP methodology I made a scientifically-based eidetic reduction of my experience of purgation. That is, the analysis associated with Step III reveals the dynamics of the physical objects - or the dynamic noumena - being released in my neurophysiological system during my religious experience. Those dynamic physical objects or dynamic noumena being released were driving the 38 core consciousness variables in Figure 2 associated with my experience of purgation. That is, the 38 variables associated with my inner phenomena or my core consciousness are presented in the feedback system or flow diagram at Figure 2 on the next page. Those 38 dynamic inner phenomena variables or dynamic core consciousness variables were permanently located in my LTM, ever since the time (1962) when I experienced purgation. I found that the dynamic noumena - functioning during my dynamic purgation experience - probably had the following material form: About a dozen sets of cramped or paralyzed antagonistic heart muscles were being released, one by one, in my neurophysiological system. These particular dynamic sets of cramped or paralyzed antagonistic heart muscles were known by philosophers, phenomenologists, and physiologists as the noumena in this case. The dynamics of these noumena were driving the dynamics of my inner phenomena or the dynamics of my core consciousness. My eidetic reduction of my religious experience revealed the dynamic physical objects or the noumena and allowed me to comprehend the physical reality of my religious experience of purgation.

Once I was able to use Step III to determine or identify the probable dynamic physical objects in my neurophysiological system that were probably associated with the noumena, I then slowly began to recall the details of my early life when I was 9 or 10 years old. That was when I was traumatized. Then, I began to conjecture that the dozen sets of cramped antagonistic heart muscles had probably become cramped or paralyzed during my childhood trauma (see Section B of Key #1 of Chapter 2 shown about seven or eight pages below). Eventually, I began to conjecture that over a period of 20 or 21 years those cramped heart muscles slowly became ripe - like apples on a tree - and then were spontaneously being released in 1962 during my experiencing of purgation when I was 30 years old. In this way I began to understand the dynamics of my religious experience. But, in order to gain those insights I had to use the three steps of the TFP methodology and I had to be willing to make the above 24 year effort. Most importantly, though, I was relentlessly driven by my need to know about the origin of my profound religious experience.

Keep in mind that my ten-hour experience of purgation just preceded the estimated four-to-seven second experience of mystical union. During mystical union the analyst experiences what I believe is the very ground or core of his or her being. From my experience, I think mystical union lies at the very ground or heart of both philosophy and religion. However, also keep in mind that the profound experience of mystical union is not dynamic. It is a timeless and changeless experience. As a result, it is an experience that cannot be analyzed using SD. However, I think mystical union eventually can be analyzed - but probably not completely - beginning with the first law of thermodynamics. The analysis of my experience of mystical union will be attempted in Volume II of the General Theory of Religion or GTR Project. However, my ten hour, dynamic experience of purgation is my focus now in this Volume I of the GTR Project.

Let us now take the above four paragraphs and clarify them a bit in the following seven or eight pages of the rest of this Section. These seven or eight pages will reveal the substance of the General Theory of Religion Project:

My scientific analysis of the dynamic core consciousness data or phenomena data associated with purgation indicates that the data of core consciousness during purgation was immediately or spontaneously being permanently stored in my long term memory (LTM), while I was having my religious experience. Then, 22 years later (in 1984) my exploration of that permanent - but dynamic moment by moment - LTM data for purgation began. It began with Step I of the TFP methodology. Step I allows the analyst to explore and the roughly structure the permanent LTM data for purgation. It uses the SD-based, causal loop diagram technique, but the reader should note that the causal loop diagram technique is not mathematically based. Because of this the Step I exploration is helpful, but is not scientific. Nevertheless, that Step I technique enabled me to begin the TFP-based model, shown in Figure 2, of my inner phenomena system or my inner core consciousness system going on during purgation. Step I was just the beginning of my exploration of purgation. In Step II I began using Forrester's powerful SD methodology to scientifically describe the dynamics of my consciousness during my experience of purgation. That is, in Step II I mathematically modeled and simulated core consciousness, also called the inner phenomena, associated with purgation. The SD-based, phenomenological structure or noema for purgation is shown in Figure 2. Its associated mathematical model is shown just below Figure 2.

I spent ten years - from 1984 to 1994 - using Steps I and II. I spent about two years using Step I. Then, I spent about eight years using Step II. In doing so, I scientifically structured a 38 variable, SD-based, phenomenological model of purgation and its associated mathematical model. During the first years of using Step II I had obtained a fairly good mathematically-based, preliminary model of purgation's core consciousness. Then, during the last years of that 10 year period I began using an iterative technique to refine the structure of Step II's preliminary mathematical model, so that the model slowly became a much more refined and accurate model. The iterative technique of Step II consisted of constantly repeating the following iterative cycle:

  1. Compare the model's various core consciousness simulations with the corresponding LTM data for purgation.
  2. Revise either purgation's preliminary mathematical model or restructure the Figure 2 purgation feedback structure or both, using the insights gained from item #1 of this 3 item iterative cycle.
  3. Having made the revisions at item #2, simulate all the important variables of the model again.
After deepening the structure of the model in Step II by using the iterative technique, I found that I became able to more accurately model and simulate - moment by moment - the 38 variables associated with my particular core consciousness system for purgation. This refinement was carried on over the last years of that ten year period of Step II. The resulting model is shown at Figure 2, just below. In this way both the description of core consciousness during purgation and the structure of the model of purgation became more refined and more accurate. In addition my simulations of purgation allowed me to reexperience purgation and to think long and hard about it. This reexperiencing of purgation was occurring 32 years after I had first experienced it in 1962! It was a labor of love.

By using Steps I and II of the TFP methodology, the system dynamics model of my experience of purgation - shown at Figure 2 below - together with its associated mathematical model, enabled me to simulate my experience of purgation. The simulation of my entire religious experience is shown in Figure 1, which is located just after the mathematical model. Also very important is Figure 3, which is located just below Figure 1. It shows the simulation of the release of three knots in the heart during purgation.

Figure 2: The system dynamics model or flow diagram or noema or feedback system for core consciousness during purgation:


Mathematical model for purgation, emerging from my work on Steps I and II of the TFP methodology and on my work using the iterative technique associated with Step II:

Use a dt of .005 minutes.

Figure 1: Simulation of my entire 16 hour religious experience.

Figure 1 just below simulates only four variables of my 38 variable model of my 16-hour (or 960 minute) religious experience, but those four variables give a keen description of the dynamics of my religious experience. The 16-hour simulations describe stages 11, 12, 13, and 14 of my 16 hour religious experience. The 14 stages of my religious crisis are listed at Table I at Key #2. Key #2 follows Key #1 at Chapter 2. Chapter 2 presents The Keys to the GTR Project.


The eight items in the list below give a more detailed description of the stages of my 1962 religious experience, simulated in Figure 1 above.
(The timetable for my entire 16 hour religious experience is given in the eight stages given just below. Further detail is given in the narration at The Heart Begins to Open section of Part A of the Introduction. Please note that the simulations of the #3 and #4 PsychicStress variables in Figure 1, above, are not accurate between the 555 minute mark and the 617 minute mark. That is because the release of the knots in my heart were happening too fast to be simulated accurately when the simulation covers a 960 minute period. This can be easily corrected by using a much larger graph. For example, at times knots were being released every 30 or 60 seconds during that period. Figure 3 below also corrects that problem: It presents more detailed and more accurate two minute simulations of the key variables functioning during that relatively fast moving period when knots or cramped muscles were being released from my heart. Figure 3 also gives the reader a deeper understanding of how a knot in the heart was released.)

  1. 0 minute mark to the 60 minute mark: The simulation begins at noon Pacific Standard Time (PST). It starts with the 15 minute walk from the monastery to the cab stand, during which my heart began to open. This opening of my heart continued on until about the 180 minute mark and then was stable for about 6 hours. However, at the time of the arrival of the cab at the Los Angeles airport, my PsychicStress had not begun to rise yet.
  2. 60 minute mark to the 120 minute mark: The one-hour wait at the airport. The intensity of PsychicStress began to rise during this period.
  3. 120 minute mark to the 450 minute mark: The flight from LA to Boston, leaving LA at about 2:00pm PST and arriving at Logan airport in Boston around 10:30pm EST. (Notice the preliminary peak in PsychicStress around the 180 minute mark. That peak served as a kind of warning to me to get ready for what was coming: The walking of the plank!)
  4. 450 minute mark to about 10 minutes before the 555 minute mark. This period began when I arrived at Logan airport and includes the discussion with the state police officer at the airport plus the cab ride from the airport to my apartment plus about one-hour of preliminaries - thinking, pacing the floor of my apartment, etc. - before lying down on my bed at about 10 minutes before the 555 minute mark. The 555 minute mark is when the crucial first knot in my heart was going to be completely released.
  5. About 10 minutes before the 555 minute mark to the 617 minute mark: This is the one-hour unstable or oscillating period of purgation during which the 12 KnotsInHeart are purged (Figure 3, just below, shows - by way of simulation - how the experiencer of purgation walks the plank during the release of 3 of the 12 KnotsInHeart.). The 10 minutes before the 555 minute mark were the most critical minutes of my life. That was when the first knot in my heart was going through the deep religious and neurophysiological process of being released. Those were the desperate 10 minutes when I really had to walk the plank. I have never been the same since those desperate ten minutes, particularly the final 3 or 4 minutes of those 10 minutes.
  6. The great experience of mystical union, lasting anywhere between 4 to 7 seconds, occurred around the 617 minute mark. (After the releasing of the dozen or so knots in my heart during purgation, the religious experience culminated in mystical union.)
  7. 617 minute mark to the 960 minute mark: Deep sleep.
  8. Awaken at sunrise to the Divine State at the 960 minute mark.
Thus, my religious experience included purgation (from 0 to around the 617 minute mark), mystical union (with a duration of around 4 to 7 seconds during the 617th minute), and deep sleep (with a duration of around 6 hours). The total experience was thus around 16 hours or 960 minutes. In summary: purgation lasted roughly 10 hours; deep sleep lasted roughly 6 hours (see Table I, below, at Key #2).

Figure 3: Two minute simulations during the walking of the plank.

Here are some two minute simulations during the release of three of the twelve knots in my heart during purgation. The gathering of these four critical simulations attempts to simply describe - via simulation - how the potential mystic 'walks the plank' for three of the twelve knots released during purgation. The release of the crucial first knot is not shown simulated in Figure 3: The release of knots is shown only for the following knots: The 5th from last, the 4th from last, and the 3rd from last knots. Two of the simulations track the oscillation of the intensity of two critical variables, FearDeathDueToKnot and PrayerQuality. During the same two minute time period the other two simulations track (1) the decrease of the variable, KnotsInHeart, and (2) the rise of the variable, TruenessOfMind. As TruenessOfMind rises, it is eventually going to lead to mystical union when all 12 KnotsInHeart have been released. Notice in Figure 3 that a knot is released only when the variable, PrayerQuality, reaches 100%. Here is the mathematical model for the variable, PrayerQuality:

PrayerQuality = (0.5)*(PrayerIntensity + PrayerTrueness).......eq.1

Once I had obtained a certain degree of accuracy and mastery of both my model of core consciousness during purgation and the dynamic description of purgation culminating in mystical union, using Step II of the TFP methodology, I was ready to begin the final step: Step III of the TFP methodology. Step III is concerned with transcendentally grounding Figure 2, the Step II model of my core consciousness or my inner phenomena going on during my experience of purgation. Essentially, transcendentally grounding Figure 2 means identifying the dynamic noumena or the dynamic material objects in my neurophysiological system that were driving the 38 core consciousness variables or phenomena variables associated with my Figure 2 phenomenological model of my experience of purgation. The leading phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl, called this Step III the eidetic reduction. However, I don't think Husserl's method for Step III is scientific. An indication of this is that Husserl called his method for performing the eidetic reduction, eidetic variation or imaginative variation or free phantasy (Drummond 2008). On the other hand, I believe Step III of my TFP methodology - used in this book manuscript for performing the eidetic reduction - is scientific. Here's why:

Though Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Franz Brentano (1838-1917), Paul Natorp (1854-1924), the Marburg School of Neokantianism (1870-1920), Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), Aron Gurwitsch (1901-1973), and others (see Holzhey 2005) studied such phenomena deeply, they were unable to perform the eidetic reduction in a scientific way, because science was not advanced enough in the 18th, 19th, and the first half of the 20th century. Transcendentally grounding or performing the eidetic reduction of purgation or performing Step III could only have been attained after the first half of the 20th century, because it was only after World War II that the two critical breakthroughs in science, needed to perform the eidetic reduction, occurred. Those two breakthroughs were:

  1. The publication of the powerful System Dynamics (SD) methodology (Forrester 1961, 1968b).
  2. The invention of computers for implementing the SD methodology, particularly implementing the solution to sets of simultaneous nonlinear differential equations.

My preparation for developing a scientific method for performing Step III extended from 1994 to the early part of 2008. Much of the time that I used up during that 14 year process found me trying to understand the subtle and cunning fight going on between scientific scholars and religious scholars over the eidetic reduction. It seemed to me that the protagonists located in the middle of that fight were Husserl (science) and Heidegger (religion). The confusion over Truth in the very subtle field of Phenomenology was driven - in part- by a variety of religious scholars, like Heidegger, who - very naturally - didn't want to see religion undermined. These religious scholars were also religious professors who were hired to see that their religion was not undermined. That was their job. During that period, I spent a lot of time wrestling with the ideas thrown around by the religious scholars in phenomenology. Those ideas lacked a scientific or mathematical or engineering base for dealing with the eidetic reduction. In my case - due to the fact that I had carefully studied mechanical engineering and physics at the university - I had been trained to never compromise when trying to get at the Truth about machines. Now, with my mind and heart and soul focused on my analysis of my sacred religious experience, I could never back away from the Truth.

Also, I had a very difficult time understanding the published books of leading phenomenological thinkers and philosophers in the field of phenomenology. Here is an example: The first summary of the field of Phenomenology in the English language was written in German by Husserl. The plan was to translate Husserl's German summary into English and then publish it in the Encyclopaedia Britanica of 1929. For the first time the field of Phenomenology was going to be introduced to the English speaking world. Eventually, it was published on time, but it is now well known that the translation from German into English had been strangely and misleadingly translated.

In addition, an important problem for me during my 14 years of introduction to Phenomenology was I had no deep training in philosophy. I was a rather naive engineer, a lone independent scholar, who had followed his nose and wandered into Phenomenology. I was not aware that the essence of the work I had cut out for myself was located right in the middle of an intellectual war between science and religion. Nevertheless, my long, floundering, 14 year study of the very difficult field of Phenomenology eventually resulted in my scientifically-based eidetic reduction of my experience of purgation.

Here is how I used Step III to finally break through to the eidetic reduction. Step III: You have enabled me to understand the origin of my experience of purgation.

However, in order to really identify the kind of dynamic noumena or the release of material objects, capable of driving the phenomena we must go deep: We must carefully study the biology of the dynamic noumena: Here are two examples of dynamic noumena that are structured as a SONFS. When these noumena are finally released, they are capable of driving the dynamic phenomena - shown in Figure 2 - as a SONFS:

  1. Here is some fundamental biology associated with the release of dynamic noumena that are structured as a SONFS:
    "The amount of blood pumped by the heart per unit time (cardiac output) depends on the heart rate and the contractile force of the heart. Sympathetic activity increases the cardiac output; parasympathetic activity reduces it. The two parts of the autonomic nervous system thus have antagonistic effects on the spontaneous active heart. Of course, regulation of the cardiac output by the autonomous nervous system never occurs in the organism in just that way, because the sympathetic and the parasympathetic system influence the heart simultaneously. The heart is subjected continuously to inhibitory parasympathetic and excitatory sympathetic influences. Each change in activity in one or the other of the two autonomic systems results in changes in the heart rate and/or the contractile force. Thus, the cardiac output (amount of blood pumped by the heart per unit time) increases when there is a rise in sympathetic activity and/or a drop in parasympathetic activity. Conversely, the cardiac output declines when there is a drop in sympathetic activity and/or a rise in parasympathetic activity. Since the CNS [central nervous system] has these means at its disposal to regulate the cardiac output through the autonomic nervous system, the body can adapt the operation of the cardiovascular system to the requirements of the moment."
    (From Schmidt, RF. 1978. Fundamentals of neurophysiology. Springer-Verlag: New York. p 237)
  2. Here is an earlier explanation of the biology of the release of the dynamic noumena that are structured as a SONFS:
    "...the contractions of particular sets of muscles in the heart must entail the suppression of activity of other muscles for coordinated movements of the heart to emerge."
    (From Sherrington, CS. 1906 or 1948. Integrative Action of the Nervous System. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK.)
The contents of this paragraph, together with items 1 and 2 just above, will eventually initiate the beginning of a long scientific study that will eventually establish the biology of the noumena driving the phenomena, for the case of the release of a trauma. The phenomena are shown in Figure 2. As you will recall, the entire phenomena system or core consciousness system in Figure 2 is structured as a SONFS.

Now, if one reads the narrative of my religious experience, shown at Key #4 in Chapter 2, one can see that almost all the dynamic action occurring within me during purgation was occurring in my heart. Therefore, within my neurophysiological system it is probable that a dynamic noumena system, structured as a SONFS in the form of the dynamic release of sets of antagonistic heart muscles, was driving the Figure 2 phenomena system or core consciousness system, which is also structured as a SONFS. Slowly, I began to realize that the transcendental grounding analysis given just above is the scientific Step III, or scientific-based eidetic reduction. I had been looking for it for 14 years, as I strived to establish Step III of the scientific Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology. A relatively brief, but very clear, summary of the entire TFP analysis of the phenomena - for my 10-hour experience of purgation - is given at Key #5 of Chapter 2.

After I had gone through the three steps of the scientifically-based TFP methodology, presented in the above five or six pages, a number of other insights began occurring to me about my religious experience of purgation: The dynamic material objects or noumena in my neurophysiological system that were probably driving the core consciousness or the dynamic phenomena associated with purgation were, roughly, a dozen spontaneously releasing pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic, heart muscles. Once I had identified the noumena, I began to realize those muscles had probably become cramped or paralyzed during the time when my childhood trauma occurred, way back when I was 9 or 10 years old (see Section B of Key #1). Therefore, having linked the dynamic noumena with the abreaction or release of my trauma, I began to realize that back in 1962 at the age of 30 - when I was experiencing purgation - I was really experiencing the release or abreaction of my cramped heart muscles, heart muscles that were functioning deep in the ground of my being.

The release or abreaction was a two step process: First, the cramped heart muscles had to become ripe during the 20 or 21 year period, from the time when my trauma had occurred when I was 9 or 10 years old to the time when the cramped heart muscles were released when I was 30 years old in April 1962. Putting it simply, in 1962 my childhood trauma was finally ripe and was spontaneously being released or abreacted.

Further, it is well known that childhood traumas are constantly occurring throughout the world. Then, by studying religious experiences associated with the major religions I began to realize that my peak religious experience - purgation culminating in mystical union - had the same type of origin and the same type of noumena as the peak experiences found in all other religions (see Key #2 in Chapter 2): The release or abreaction of a trauma underlies my peak experience and indicates that my religious experience is a universal experience. It is similar to religious experiences occurring throughout the world. As a result, I began to see that I was not only dealing with the core of religion, I was dealing with a general theory of religion: e pluribus unum. I also began to see I was dealing with the long-sought-for integration of science and religion. I also began to see that, as a byproduct, the analysis had solved the central problem in the emerging field of consciousness studies: Chalmers' hard problem (CHP). A brief summary of the solution to CHP is also shown at Key #5 in Chapter 2.

The fullest presentation of all of the above ideas and related insights - with roughly 600 accompaning links - is the subject of this book. Its URL is at http://world.std.com/~awolpert

Key Breakthroughs: The key breakthroughs made during my 24 year effort between 1984 and the early part of 2008 are listed below. Those breakthroughs are establishing the foundations for the General Theory of Religion and the Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology. These foundations will ultimately bring about a series of scientific revolutions. Some of the scientific fields that will experience these revolutions are as follows: consciousness studies, psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, phenomenology, system dynamics, scientific aspects of religion, and science itself.

  1. A general theory of religion (GTR): This is a scientific theory that indicates that at the very core of all major religions in the world is a peak experience which originates during the 'sacred release' of the experiencer's cramped or paralyzed heart muscles. These heart muscles had become cramped during a traumatic childhood experience. The nature of a 'sacred release' is presented at Section D of Key #1.
  2. The primary purpose of all major religions. It is very important for religious people and their leaders to focus on the central or primary purpose of religion. My particular insights associated with the primary purpose of religion are dealt with at Keys #1, #2, #3, and #6 of The Keys to the GTR Project section of this Introduction. I believe that at the present time only a small percentage of religious leaders are aware of the central or primary purpose of religion. The fact that many cultures have forgotten the primary purpose of religion is the reason why formerly great religions are presently in danger of degenerating: My position is that the primary purpose of religion is to enable religious devotees to deal with the release of a trauma: To be able to walk the plank. If a religion and its culture has lost its ability to teach its devotees how to deal with the release of a trauma, that religion and the culture that depends on that religion are headed for obsolescence or superficiality or degeneration.
  3. The presuppositionless, scientific analysis of the religious experience of purgation, explained in the GTR Project presentation above, has never been done before. In addition, the phenomena associated with my ten-hour religious experience of purgation (see the SD-based, flow diagram at Figure 2) has a first person perspective. As a result, that first person perspective for my scientific analysis of purgation will be the start of the second stage of the scientific revolution. Up until now the first stage of the scientific revolution - from the 17th Century to the present - has been limited to a third person perspective.
  4. My system dynamics(SD)-based, presuppositionless, Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology is establishing the long-sought-for scientific approach to a phenomenological analysis (or core consciousness analysis) of a deep subjective experience, such as purgation. I believe that during the early part of the 20th Century Edmund Husserl could already envision the coming of the TFP methodology, this great scientific breakthrough in phenomenology. At that time Husserl gave a name to this relentlessly approaching methodology: Philosophy as a Rigorous Science (Husserl 1911).
  5. The scientific solution to Chalmers hard problem for the case of my deep subjective religious experience of purgation is being presented for the first time in this book at Key #5 of the Introduction. Key #5 will illustrate how the powerful Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology is going to be used to make a presuppositionless analysis of my subjective experience of purgation. (For a brief summary please see Key #5 of the Introduction, just below). This solution is leading to key breakthroughs in the science of consciousness. For example, the eidetic reduction of the purgation experience is performed in a scientific way. It will be scientifically identifying the noumena or eidos in the experiencer's neurophysiological system that is driving the phenomena (or core consciousness) during purgation.
  6. The potential scientific and religious revolution that is going to blossom in the field of psychiatry and the field of religion: At the present time psychiatry does not seem to me to be a real science. Politics and money, rather than Truth, appear to be dominating psychiatry at the present time. The psychiatrist, J.M. Masson (2003b), has been trying to clean out and revolutionize the field of psychiatry since 1970. However, he was harassed so intensely by the psychiatric community that he decided to leave the US and is now in exile in New Zealand. I believe my contribution to Masson's continuing revolution will reopen his case against the present state of psychiatry. I believe it will begin with my SD-based, scientific analysis, associated with the release of my trauma.
Underlying these six breakthroughs is Forrester's system dynamics (SD), the scientific foundation of all my work. My conjecture is SD may be the logos.

Chapter 2: The Keys to the GTR Project

The Six Keys that Open Up the Heart of this Book:

Key #1: The Primary Purpose of Religion.

Here is the essence of Key #1: When a trauma is being released, the experiencer usually panics during the release of the first knot or the first set of cramped heart muscles. After that the experiencer has a nervous breakdown and then develops some form of psychosis. The primary purpose of religion is to enable the experiencer to avoid the panic, nervous breakdown, and psychosis that usually occur during the beginning minutes of the release of the first knot associated with the trauma. I call those beginning critical minutes: walking the plank.

The Primary Purpose of Religion is to enable one to walk the plank: This phrase applies to the release of the first knot during the crucial ten minutes of my deep 16 hour religious experience. In the West my 16 hour religious experience is usually called purgation culminating in mystical union. During the crucial ten minutes I used my religious preparedness (see Key #1, section C), taught to me when I was a child and a youth. That religious preparedness saved me when I had to walk the plank. This means that my religious preparedness saved me from panic, from a nervous breakdown, and from the eventual development of some form of mental illness: Religious preparedness is the The Primary Purpose of Religion:

Yea,
Though I walk through the valley
Of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil:
For thou art with me;

from Psalm 23 of the Bible or the Old Testament

I would now like to tell you more about walking the plank: The desperate minutes during purgation, when I was in danger of panic, a nervous breakdown, etc. Those were the most crucial ten minutes of my life. With the profound help of the Divine I made it through those crucial ten minutes when the first knot in my heart was being released. The knots in my heart were caused by my childhood trauma. Walking the plank takes place when the first knot of the trauma is being released. All traumas eventually begin to release themselves, but usually the release is not completed because the experiencer panics during the release of those cramped or paralyzed heart muscles. In my case, once my religious preparedness enabled me to deal with the first knot, my heart and my imagination were then more able to deal with the entire one hour release of the dozen or so knots in my heart associated with the release of my trauma. Below, in section D, you will see that it was because of the profound help of the Lord that I was able to make it through the release in one piece.

Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee: How great thou art, how great thou art.
(from a favorite Gospel song of the Christians)

A. In order to go deeper into the Primary Purpose of Religion, first let me introduce you to the following phrases: "Walking the razor's edge" or "walking the plank" or walking the way that is said to be "straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life...."

  1. From the Hindus: To walk the razor's edge...
    "Like the sharp edge of a razor is that path,
    difficult to tread and hard to cross."
    Katha Upanishad: 3:14.
  2. From the Christians: Straight is the gate and narrow is the way..
    "Enter ye in at the straight gate: for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
    Because straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."
    Matthew 7:13-14.
  3. From that Saturday matinee movie, when I was somewhere between 6 and 13 years old. As I recall, the movie was about the life of a young seaman on a 19th century sailing ship, whose ship encounters the dreaded pirates. The movie was being shown over at that 52nd and Lyndale theatre in Minneapolis, sometime between 1938-1945: To walk the plank.

B. Now, I need to tell you about my childhood trauma. It occurred when I was 9 or 10 years old. Traumas eventually begin to release themselves, spontaneously. My particular trauma was released when I was 30 years old, 20 or 21 years after the trauma occurred. The spontaneous releasing process of my trauma was the driving force of my consciousness during my religious experience of purgation culminating in mystical union.

At some time in 2005 - after 21 years of working on the formalized, scientific, system dynamics-based, phenomenological analysis of my religious experience - the following insight occurred to me: At the same time as my 1962 religious experience of purgation was occurring, the abreaction or complete release of the cramped heart muscles associated with my childhood trauma was occurring. That is, the insight that occurred to me in 2005 was as follows: The physical effects on my body, resulting from my childhood trauma, were the quick development of about a dozen or so sets or pairs of cramped or paralyzed antagonistic muscles in my heart. Those dozen or so cramped or paralyzed pairs of muscles were then released from my heart 20 or 21 years later during the abreaction of my trauma. This 2005 conclusion is based on the following three sets of interlocking data:
  1. Certain key memories from my childhood that I can still remember fairly well. Those memories occurred when I was 9 or 10 years old, when I was 11 years old, and when I was 30 years old..
  2. The studies and insights of Charcot, Breuer, Janet, Freud, and the bold J.M. Masson on hysteria. {See publications by Charcot, (Freud 1966), Masson, etc.}
  3. The results that have been emerging from the many years I have spent scientifically analyzing my consciousness during my experience of purgation culminating in mystical union.
As I have stated, my childhood trauma occurred around 1941 or 1942 when I was about 9 or 10 years old. The assailant was about 14 or 15 years old and was unknown to me. I saw him running toward me in the distance as I was taking a short cut across the snow-filled school grounds in late afternoon. The snow was about a foot deep - maybe more - and I could not outrun him. When he caught up with me, I immediately blacked out and am unable to remember the nature of the assault. I don't remember having any post-assault pain in the private areas of my body or anywhere else. Also, I don't remember any semen on my clothes or body. I know I would have remembered if those two actions had actually occurred.

After many years of thought I have come to the conclusion that I reacted against the 14 or 15 year old attacker by taking the position of a completely silent and unconscious 9 or 10 year old boy, lying in the snow. I did not take that position because I was clever: I took that position because it was in my genes to do that. I believe that by doing that I had caused the 14 or 15 year old attacker to get scared. He then ran away. He got scared because he thought I was dead.

However, as a result of my scary experience, I was traumatized: I believe this traumatization resulted in the cramping or paralyzation of about 12 pairs of my heart muscles. I believe this, because it seemed to me that there were about a dozen knots released during the abreaction of my trauma. This cramping or paralyzation of my heart muscles had lasted for a period of 20 or 21 years, from when I was 9 or 10 years old to the time when I was 30 years old and the cramped or paralyzed heart muscles associated with my trauma were completely released.

Here are two other memories from my youth and my college years: I believe these two memories are related to the childhood trauma:

  1. An experience of hysteria: When I was 11 years old and making the stressful transition in the Fall of 1943 from grade school to the 7th grade in junior high school, my legs became paralyzed for a few hours. Earlier, on my way to school that day, I stopped by at a friend's house and then we walked to school together. He told me his older brother had rheumatic fever. I thought about this during the morning until I began to think I was 'catching' rheumatic fever. Eventually, in early afternoon my legs became paralyzed and I couldn't walk. My father came from work to pick me up at the school nurse's office about 3 or 4pm. When we got home my father carried me in and laid me down on my bed. He talked to me for about a half hour and eventually convinced me my legs could not have become paralyzed by rheumatic fever. Then, he told me in a loving way, but with manliness and conviction, that I could get up and walk. I did so and ran out to play with much joy.
  2. I was a fairly good tennis player in high school and college. Some top players in Minneapolis had remarked from time to time that I had one of the best backhands around. My second serve was arching, spinning, curving, wildly bouncing, and hard to handle (I am exaggerating a bit here). However, when I would get toward the end of any close tournament singles match, I always lost - much to my frustration and disappointment. This was particularly true in my college years. The most contemptuous words in all of athletics are reserved for such a person: 'He choked!' Freud has clarified this experience, somewhat: He has called it 'strangulated emotions.'
    (This second paragraph has to be examined carefully for bias. I may be making a last ditch effort in my old age to free myself from the label given to me in my youth.)

C. Now, let me describe my particular religious preparedness. (This religious preparedness was very important in saving me during the experience of purgation, when my childhood trauma was being released. My religious preparedness enabled me to successfully walk the plank without panicking and having a nervous breakdown.) So, here are four important factors that I believe made up my religious preparedness:

  1. My precious mother: My Jewish mother's sincere and simple mentioning of God during my early childhood, which led to my simple childhood prayers to God.
  2. Sunday school: My simple Reform Jewish religious training in Sunday school from the age of 5 to about 15 years old.
  3. Community and history: The time I went with my parents and close relatives to the Synagogue during the High Holy Days of 1945 when I was 13 years old. It was about a month after the end of World War II and the news was just coming in about the Holocaust. Many of the leaders of the Jewish community of Minneapolis were there. Everyone seemed serious. My uncle pointed out the owner of the great Minneapolis Lakers basketball team. The dynamic, manly-looking owner seemed serious, too.
  4. The critical religious link to my Jewish ancestors: When I was somewhere between 7 and 15 years old, my father took me up a flight of stairs to an area above the auditorium at the Synagogue and showed me the sacred Everlasting Light. Just below the Light was a plaque with the name of my revered grandfather, who died when I was about three or four years old. My grandfather had escaped from being forced into the Cossack army by fleeing Lithuania at 16 years of age. He then got on a ship and came to the US seeking freedom. Trained as a tailor, he began his life in the US by picking up rags off the streets of New York and then washing, sewing, ironing, and selling them.
The primary purpose of religion is to enable one to successfully negotiate the release of a trauma without panicking and having a nervous breakdown. Here is how it works: When I was 30 years old and the first knot or lead heart muscle of my trauma began the crucial 10 minute process of releasing itself and my stress, fear, and anxiety began to build up, I got scared. I thought: Am I gonna die? What's happening to me? I did not know what to do! but I was deeply prepared: With no options left to me during those crucial 10 minutes leading up to the release of the first knot, I instinctively began to use my simple prayers, my simple Jewish Sunday School teachings, and my imagination, in a very spontaneous and natural way. Although it wasn't easy for me to deal with purgation, I believe this religious preparedness was the decisive factor enabling me to 'walk the plank.'

D. At the present time my model, shown at Figure 2 of Chapter 1, is not quite able to vividly simulate what it's like to walk the plank. Instead, let me try to give you a detailed narration: In this narration of what it's like to walk the plank, I am trying to narrate as accurately as I can how my religious preparedness dealt with that crucial first knot:

After the first 9 hours of purgation, particularly after experiencing the preliminary peak in PsychicStress at the 180 minute mark, shown in Figure 1 of Chapter 1, I knew I was dealing with an opening heart that was stymied by a knot. However, as the first knot began its 10 minute releasing process, particularly during the last 3 or 4 minutes before the 555 minute mark in Figure 1 of Chapter 1, my stress, my fear, and my anxiety started to mount. It was clear that the situation was getting dangerous.
(This is where I believe panic and a nervous breakdown would have occurred. However, I had already begun to use my religious preparedness and my prayers. So, I hadn't panicked yet.)

My first step, using my religious preparedness, was to pray: "Oh Lord, save me." Then, slowly and prayerfully, I began to use my imagination and my religious belief to associate the knot with a particular sin in my life and I asked the blessed Lord - now taking on the role of a Judge in the scenario - for forgiveness of that sin. My religious teachings or belief told me that, if the Judge were to accept my plea, the sin would be forgiven and the knot would then be released. But, there was no release! I didn't panic, though. At that point, using my imagination, I felt the wise and manly Judge was not releasing the knot yet, because He wanted to make sure I was really serious about asking for forgiveness of that sin. But during this delay I noticed my stress, fear, and anxiety were increasing rapidly. My situation was getting desperate. Time was running out, but God was with me:

Then, out of nowhere, my imagination stepped forward and - with great emphasis - countered my rising fears and anxiety: My imagination said to the rising fears and anxiety: "The Judge is not playing around. He is deadly serious. He will not put up with any second-rate prayers."

I liked the kind of a guy this Judge was! No nonsense. Finally, I had found a guy who was serious. He had a much greater standard for integrity and trueness than I had ever had. Now, as my state of mind rose to extreme desperation, I began to pray in earnest. I prayed with an intensity and integrity that was far more profound and intense than the way I had prayed before. Now, I prayed with all my heart and soul. Then, the Judge, calmly standing back and carefully assessing the situation, decided that forgiveness of my sin was justified and, in a very detached way, He allowed the knot to be released at the 555 minute mark.

Because of the integrity and thoroughness by which the Judge conducted this examination during the release of the first knot, I knew He had things under control: I was in good hands. More importantly, I now knew that despite His aloofness and detachment He wanted me on his side. I began to recognize He was a very rare kind of guy: A serious, no nonsense, straight shooting, type of Judge. He was able to penetrate straight into my very heart and soul. (That was where my manhood was bravely waiting for its liberation.)

Then my heart began to open further and I encountered the next knot. "During the tenth hour the above scenario - with many variations - went on relentlessly for about a dozen knots. Yes, the tenth hour was about fear, anxiety, release, and the liberation of my manhood that occurred during this abreaction or release of my childhood trauma. However, the tenth hour was also about a series of intense, serious, earnest, and sacred pledges or promises, made knot by knot in the presence of God. (God always watches over or supervises the activities of the Judge and the person who is being judged.)

In this way - by using my imagination, my prayers, and my religious belief - I was able to walk the plank. This very dangerous process had the potential to either result in panic, a nervous breakdown, and some form of psychosis or result in the release of the cramped or paralyzed heart muscles and convert that release into the intense, profound, and sacred religious experience of purgation culminating in mystical union.

If I had not called upon the Divine and had not used my imagination, my prayers, and my religious belief, I would have panicked and had a nervous breakdown. Instead, with the Lord at my side I had walked the plank!

Yea,
Though I walk through the valley
Of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil:
For thou art with me;

from Psalm 23 of the Bible or the Old Testament

E. Now, let me tell you how the process, leading eventually to 'walking the plank,' began for me:

Key #2: A Brief Introduction to the General Theory of Religion.

"... if there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one which will have no location in place or time; which will be infinite like the God it will preach, and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and of Christ, on saints and sinners alike; which will not be Brahminic or Buddhistic, Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these, and still have infinite space for development..." (Vivekananda 1893)

Table I, below, gives the 14 stages of my 53 month religious crisis. The details of Table I give the reader a brief and concise base for understanding the similarities of religions and for understanding the deep concept of a general theory of religion.

Please notice that Purgation is listed at Stage 11 and Mystical Union is listed at Stage 12 of the Judeo-Christian terminology. The Hindu terminology uses the term Overcoming Samskaras for the experience of Purgation and uses the term Samadhi for the experience of Mystical Union, etc.

Key #3: Why a Culture Cannot Survive without Religion.

(Why has religious belief survived throughout the whole history of mankind?)

Here are some of the most important religious insights of the book: They are based on my very detailed System Dynamics(SD)-based, Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) analysis of my religious experience, particularly the finer and finer simulations of my core consciousness during purgation. This TFP analysis is being carried out in detail in Chapters 1 and 2. The finer and finer simulations have slowly uncovered the practical reason why prayer, imagination, and religious belief have survived from the time of migrating primitive tribes to the present:

Key #4: A Narrative of my Experience of Purgation Culminating in Mystical Union.

The following excerpt introduces the reader to the religious aspects of this book. It is a two page narrative of my 1962 religious experience of purgation culminating in mystical union. Purgation and mystical union are stages 11 and 12 of Table I, shown at Key #2. The excerpt is taken from An Engineer's Story, presented at Part A of the Introduction.

The Heart Begins to Open

The purification resulting from renunciation came about by a supreme effort of the will and by Grace, but the second stage of the purification that followed proceeded passively. A force began to manifest itself in me and I could do nothing but pray. My will was powerless to effect this Force. It began in the following way:

I returned to Southern California at the end of March 1962 for another ten day vacation after successfully completing the project. I was still running true. I was charged and in a state of openness. On this visit I went to another monastery run by the same Order of monks. Again I found myself in a holy atmosphere (11). I had a deeply restful, enchanting, profoundly moving week, many times bubbling over with mirth and on one occasion, hearing a beautiful piece of religious music, I was unable to contain a weeping which became a prolonged sobbing from the bottom of my heart.

Around noon on Sunday I left the monastery to return to Boston for work the next day. I was to take a cab to the Los Angeles airport and then a non-stop flight to Boston. I had plenty of time. The cab stand was about a half-mile away. I was walking down a hill with a small suitcase in my hand. As I walked reflectively and in peace down that hill in the warm and brilliant Southern California sun, my heart slowly began to feel full. My mind was drawn inward. In this mood I arrived at the cab stand. I told the driver my destination. He was a rather cool and playful young man in his early twenties. I noticed that I was very friendly and mirthful - quite unusual for me since I usually never spoke to cab drivers. During the ride I was joking and at times giggling and had a great time for the half hour drive to the airport. At one point the driver asked me if I had had a 'joint' before getting into the cab. Of course, I had not.

At the airport, however, the warmth or power in my heart began to deepen. I was sitting in the waiting area for the flight but found I could not stay seated. I got up and began to pace the floor of the waiting room. I was well dressed and groomed in a fine conservative suit. Perhaps it was a rather strange sight. The thought occurred to me I was on the verge of a heart attack, but I was only thirty and in good health so dismissed the idea.

The plane was quite full. I took my assigned seat by the window. After the plane circled LA and turned East, the Force in my heart began to get intense. My heart was opening!! There was a struggle going on in my heart. The Force was opening my heart and, because of my fear, my will was waging a losing battle to close it. The opening of my heart brought about a fear - indeed - a terror. At the same time I felt a degree of love for all, forgiveness, brotherhood and sisterhood for all.

I called for the stewardess. I told her something was wrong with my heart. She got me out to the first aid area and gave me oxygen, but it had no effect. She took me to the first class area where there were fewer passengers and I could be alone. The Force continued to try to open my heart and I was in a state of terror, for fear I would die shortly. I kept getting up and walking to the drinking fountain to quench the fire in my breast. I must have drank at least two gallons of water during the five and one-half hour flight.

A few times the stewardess came by to see how I was. Once she sat down next to me. She seemed quite curious about me. She was about 24 or 26. Under the ceiling spotlight I could see her features were delicate but her beauty had now passed its peak. There were the first signs of tension wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Close up I could sense something about her that had gone cold and there was a sadness underneath her makeup. She was neglecting what I could see was a precious soul. In the course of our quiet conversation I told her, in a somewhat oracular way, 'Please leave this terrible job.' She asked me why I thought it was so terrible. I said, in effect, she was being paid to be pleasant and gay to the passengers even though her heart and soul didn't feel it any more. She needed an honest job. With my heart so open, I knew my intuition was sure and I could see these things clearly, quite in the same way that the lay of the land can be seen and understood better when standing at an elevated place. Under ordinary circumstances such a conversation would have set the stewardess' teeth on edge, but with my heart so open she seemed to sense my good will and took what I said to heart.

Nevertheless, when I arrived in Boston about 10:30pm, I was met by a powerfully built and rather serious airport state police officer. He was about 35 or 40 years old. He escorted me from the plane ahead of the others and led me to the airport shelter. Normally I was rather aloof from police officers, indeed I didn't like authority of any kind, but when the officer met me my heart was so open I felt all men were my brothers. As I walked aside of him to the shelter, I found myself putting my right arm around his broad shoulders. I became aware of the gun at his holster but it made no difference to me. In the state of mind I was in, I felt toward him like toward an elder, beloved brother meeting me at the plane. I chatted with him and thanked him for his trouble and great courtesy and assistance. I told him I had just left a monastery and was overwhelmed by being in a crowd of people and that I would be alright once I got home. Besides being an optimistic prognosis to calm myself, it also seemed to be an appropriate way of explaining my openness and feelings of brotherhood and also of avoiding being detained. Ordinarily this tough, no-nonsense police officer would have given me a difficult time but instead, like the stewardess, he seemed to sense the integrity of my feelings.

The Dark Night of the Soul: The Heart is Purified and Prepared for the Culminating Experience

I took a cab and arrived about 11pm at my South End lodgings. They consisted of two rooms on the second floor of an almost-deserted rooming house overlooking - to the right - the extensive federal housing project near the Cathedral. The dull red brick buildings and barren clothes-lines at the edge of the project could be seen from my front window by the light of the street lamps. The window faced a large tree-lined, but neglected, park called Blackstone Square. Next door - to the left - was a Syrian Church with a domed roof overhung by a huge tree, now bare of leaves in early April. A light, quietly emanating from the ornate glass window in the dome, soothed my soul as I paced the rooms.

Finally I was alone. I laid down on my bed. I knew very little about the writings of the mystics at the time. I did not know that I was now entering purgation or the Refiner's Fire or the Dark Night of the Soul (18) that would purify my heart and make me fit for Union with God:

"But who may abide the day of His coming,
And who shall stand when He appeareth?
For He is like a Refiner's Fire." Malachi 3.2
The events in the cab and on the plane were the beginning but the Dark Night of the Soul began in earnest when I laid down on my bed. As I have said, the fire in the heart led to the opening of the heart. The heart continued to open slowly and inexorably, step by step, like a flower. As it did, it produced forgiveness - forgiveness of those I felt had wronged me, who had teased and mocked me. These vexations departed from my heart one by one as they came to my mind - like water drops from a lotus leaf. At the same time there came to my mind, one by one, things I had done which lay buried in my conscience undermining my life. I prayed for the Lord to forgive me and He did so, one by one (19).

Simultaneous with this forgiveness was terror and joy. I was in terror of losing my life. The Fire or Force was opening my heart and I was naturally terrified since my heart had never been open that wide. Fear keeps the heart closed so if the heart is opened beyond its normal position it produces terror. To alleviate this terror I had to forgive. It allowed the heart to tolerate being opened at that degree of opening. As this proceeded, hatred slowly left my heart and it slowly became more purified.

Then the heart opened more. More terror. More sin and error came to my mind one by one and I asked the Lord to forgive me and He did so one by one. The terror lessened. The heart opened wider. More joy. More terror. More prayers. And as the heart opened ever wider my joy increased to ecstasy or rapture (20).

At the same time I was dealing with another aspect of the terror of losing my life: the dread or remorse that I would lose my worldly ties. I would die in this lonely place never to see my dear ones again. My worldly hopes and dreams would end here never to be fulfilled. Clinging to life, I begged the Lord, Oh save me. Let me live.

This Prayer of Salvation during such an emotional crisis deepened my attachment to God with Form. To confirm and permanently establish this attachment I made a Covenant with God with Form. Once this firm attachment was made I could remove myself from worldly attachments and all its associated complexities and my fears could more easily be borne (21). Only the most simple and fundamental structures of the mind-heart system were now being employed. This stabilized my mind and enabled my heart to continue the process of opening. It opened amidst joy, ecstasy, terror and anxiety while at the same time there was a fierce attention of my mind and being on that which was within.

The Great Silence

Gradually, then, over a period of about an hour this Refiner's Fire succeeded in bringing about an opening and purifying of my heart and bringing along with it peace to my conscience. As a result, my thinking process was able to rest. As this occurred, all of my mind - all of my being - was freed to focus on the present moment within where there existed the blessed open heart. In this undistracted, dramatic state my mind became one pointed. That was its natural, purified state. Then, suddenly, all action within me ceased (22). The pumping of my blood, the beating of my heart, the quivering or hum of my nerves (or perhaps the latter was my body shaking) ceased quite abruptly and I was left in a state of profound silence (23). I had crossed over to the Great Silence (24).

In that state I no longer felt the previous terror, joy, or anxiety. Instead I felt I had come into my True Home, where I was Free(21, 25). I had left the World and was in a state of Pure Being. In that state my mind could not think; it could only observe inwardly and record (26). I had no power to recall or analyze. All of my mind and being continued to focus on the present moment within during the transition into the Silence and at the Silence. In that state of mind and being, my system was satisfied that it had penetrated to the core. Its energy then ran out. It let go and I fell into a swoon: a deep and abiding sleep (27).

It was the silent night, the holy night.

Presently I awoke. It was daybreak. All was peace, bliss. Within me lapped the Living Waters: a serene, wave-like energy of such a subtle frequency that it was capable of flowing evenly throughout my head and body as if they were both made of one substance(4, 28). I was in such a state of peace and bliss, pervaded by a feeling of inner goodness, that the experience has led me to believe this is what is known as Heaven (29). My sincere and earnest search for the Truth during the previous 53 months had finally been satisfied (30). I no longer felt that I must seek the ground of my life, the base upon which to build a sound life. I felt I had found the Ground of My Being: the philosopher's stone, the Formless, the Timeless, the Unconditioned, Knowledge, Bliss (31).

This I now feel is God: no more, no less. Reflection on those blessed hours since early April 1962 has led me to that conclusion (32).

Key #5: Here is the summary of my scientific analysis of the religious experience of purgation, which includes the solution to Chalmers Hard Problem (CHP) for the case of purgation.

SUMMARY

A subjective or deep inner experience began to present itself to me at about noon on April 8,1962, nineteen days after my 30th birthday: I was walking down a hill with a small suitcase in my hand. As I walked reflectively and in peace down that hill in the warm and brilliant Southern California sun, my heart slowly began to feel full. My mind was drawn inward. This was the very beginning of my ten hour religious experience of purgation, which culminated in the great, 4 to 7 second, experience of mystical union. During those beginning moments I was baffled: I thought, "Where is this experience within me coming from?" Right there was the key problem: Where does this experience originate? In science this problem - associated with the onset and the continuation to the end of subjective or deep inner experiences - is an example of what is now being called Chalmers Hard Problem (CHP). The four paragraphs below answer the first of the following three questions:

Here are the three questions:

Solving Chalmers Hard Problem (CHP) for the case of purgation aims at identifying the origins or material forces within me, driving purgation's core consciousness phenomena during that experience. My system dynamics analysis of my core consciousness phenomena during purgation found that the dynamic material forces driving my dynamic core consciousness during purgation were the spontaneous releasing - one by one - of about 12 pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic, muscles in my heart. Those pairs of heart muscles had become cramped or paralyzed during my childhood trauma, way back when I was 9 or 10 years old. Then, 20 or 21 years later - at the age of 30 - my trauma and its associated cramped or paralyzed heart muscles had become ripe for release. Finally, the abreaction or spontaneous release of those heart muscles began.

However, it is very important to be aware that during the releasing process of a trauma the trauma's associated psychic stress, fear, and anxiety are usually too much to bear for the experiencer. He or she usually panics, has a nervous breakdown, and then develops some sort of mental illness. Therefore, in order for the experiencer to be able to deal with that psychic stress, fear, and anxiety associated with the release of a trauma, the experiencer must use prayer, religious preparedness, etc. Such activity is the Primary Purpose of Religion. That is, my blessed prayers and religious preparedness enabled me to bear the anxiety, fear, and psychic stress without panicking, having a nervous breakdown, etc. This allowed me to go through the emotional crisis and arrive at a complete abreaction or release of my trauma. Because I used prayers, etc, throughout the ten-hour release of my trauma and because the experience was rooted deeply in my heart, my spontaneous religious response has dominated my memory of the abreaction or release of my trauma.

In my particular case, my cramped or paralyzed heart muscles spontaneously went through the process of releasing themselves. The dynamics of my releasing heart muscles drove the dynamic data of my core consciousness phenomena. That dynamic data of core consciousness was then immediately and permanently stored in my long term memory (LTM) at the time of that abreaction or release. The data of core consciousness being stored in my LTM was about the dynamics of my core consciousness during the entire ten hour purgation experience, including the core consciousness data about the state of openness of my heart. (Please note: Because my cramped or paralyzed heart muscles were spontaneously releasing themselves one by one, it naturally caused the state of my cramped up heart to begin to return to its full or open or natural position: Therefore, my heart was opening.)

Twenty two years later, in 1984 when I was 52 years old, I began the system dynamics-based analysis. The first thing I delved into was the dynamic core consciousness data for my ten hour experience of purgation. Immanuel Kant would have called that dynamic core consciousness data, associated with purgation and stored in my LTM, the dynamic phenomena of purgation. Also, he would have called the estimated 12 pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic muscles in my heart, that were - one by one - being spontaneously abreacted or released, the dynamic noumena.

I will now present how I was able to get the answer to question #1:

Getting the answer to Question #1: Identifying the noumena or the origin of the purgation experience.
(This is the scientific solution to Chalmers' hard problem [CHP] for the case of my deep ten-hour religious experience of purgation.)

My analysis leading up to identifying the noumena has been focused on analyzing the core consciousness data of the phenomena stored in my LTM, because I am proceeding according to Newton's Rules of Philosophizing rather than Descartes' Discourse on Method. Proceeding according to Newton's method, which is now called the scientific method, eventually resulted in the transcendental grounding (Natorp/Kim 2003) of core consciousness during the deep inner experience of purgation. The aim of the task of transcendentally grounding purgation is to identify the dynamic physical objects or noumena in my neurophysiological system that were driving the phenomena: These phenomena were associated with my core consciousness during my entire experience of purgation.

Though Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Franz Brentano (1838-1917), Paul Natorp (1854-1924), the Marburg School of Neokantianism (1870-1920), Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), Aron Gurwitsch (1901-1973), and others (see Holzhey 2005) studied such phenomena deeply, they were unable to transcendentally ground phenomena in a scientific way, because science was not advanced enough in the 18th, 19th, and the first half of the 20th century. The solving of CHP could only have been attained after the first half of the 20th century, because it was only after World War II that the two critical breakthroughs in science, required for solving CHP, occurred:

  1. The publication of the powerful System Dynamics (SD) methodology (Forrester 1961, 1968b).
  2. The invention of computers for implementing the SD methodology, particularly implementing the solution to sets of simultaneous nonlinear differential equations.

SD is the underlying analytical tool of the three step Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology (For a short introduction to these three steps see the next paragraph. Later, you can also study Chapter 5 or Section I in Chapter 6.) Using the three steps of the SD-based TFP methodology, I am able to mathematically analyze my first person core consciousness data residing in my LTM. In that analysis, shown in Section II in Chapter 6, the SD-based TFP methodology scientifically structures the data for purgation in a very compatible way: As a multiloop nonlinear feedback system (MNFS). The reason the TFP methodology is compatible with biological phenomena is because the MNFS structure is the same structure as the entire neurophysiological system. The neurophysiological system underlies and drives core consciousness.

Here is a short introduction to the three steps of the SD-based TFP methodology. The methodology is illustrated by showing how it is used for analyzing core consciousness during purgation:

My analysis of core consciousness during purgation began in 1984 and has continued steadily right up to the present time. The key breakthrough was Step III, above. It occurred sometime between late 2007 and early 2008. The list of nine items below gives the sequence of scientific tasks I have been performing since 1984, together with the collection of observations and insights that I became aware of during that analytical period. Basically, I used Steps I, II, and III of the SD-based, TFP methodology to analyze the core consciousness data in my LTM. Please note that all the core consciousness data for purgation, residing in my LTM, is associated with or driven by the dynamic noumena. That core consciousness data was dynamic. It varied - moment by moment - during my ten hour experience of purgation.

In summary, here is how this SD-based TFP methodology was used to solve CHP for the case of core consciousness during purgation: I first focused on my core consciousness data, associated with my deep ten hour religious experience of purgation. It resided in my LTM. I then use Steps I and II of the TFP methodology to analyze that data. (For details of this formalized analysis and construction of the purgation feedback system, see Section I and Section II of Chapter 6. The results of this scientific task are summarized in item 1 of the nine item list below. Then, by focusing on Step III, I obtained the results summarized in items 2 thru 9 of the list below. In those items my SD-based, TFP analysis of core consciousness during my experience of purgation identifies the probable dynamic physical objects or transcendental objects or noumena that are the origins or driving forces of my core consciousness during purgation. This comprehensive analysis of purgation illustrates how the SD-based, TFP methodology was able to solve CHP for my deep inner experience of purgation.

  1. In Steps I and II the SD-based, TFP methodology was used to construct the 38 variable SD flow diagram and its associated mathematical model. This construction used the core consciousness data collected in my LTM during my experience of purgation (see Figure 2 and its derivation in Sections I and II of Chapter 6). The flow diagram in Figure 2 was completed in 1994.
  2. Then, in 2007 I began to use perhaps the most critical and most important step, Step III. First the Step III technique found that the flow diagram for core consciousness during purgation, developed in item 1 above and shown in Figure 2, is a second-order negative feedback system (SONFS). Once the order of the flow diagram or feedback system is identified, the dynamic characteristic of the noumena is also identified.
  3. Then, to determine the noumena driving the phenomena, I needed to search through all the dynamic physical objects within my neurophysiological system and find those dynamic objects that operate as a SONFS. At this particular early period in my search I have found only one promising candidate: Any set of dynamic antagonistic muscles operates as a SONFS.
  4. During my 10 hour experience of purgation I sensed or observed that the dynamics of purgation was being experienced mainly in my heart. Therefore, if the promising candidate is antagonistic muscles, they must be heart muscles.
  5. The great stress, fear, and anxiety - accompanying the releasing process of each set of antagonistic heart muscles - indicated that those muscles had been cramped or paralyzed prior to the estimated 72 minute period when the spontaneous releasing of the cramped or paralyzed heart muscles occurred. That estimated 72 minute period occurred between the estimated 545 minute mark and the estimated 617 minute mark (see Figure 1 in Section II.B of Chapter 1).
  6. During the Step II analysis (which is located just after the Introduction in Section II of Chapter 1), I sensed or estimated that there were about a dozen or so pairs of cramped antagonistic heart muscles released during purgation.
  7. Therefore, the dynamic noumena - that drove my dynamic core consciousness phenomena during purgation as a SONFS - was probably releasing a dozen or so pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic, heart muscles over an estimated 72 minute period.
  8. I then asked myself what had caused the cramping or paralyzation in my heart muscles. I then remembered I had a childhood trauma when I was 9 or 10 years old: The trauma had probably caused the cramping or paralyzation.
  9. Therefore, the origin or driving force of the purgation experience was probably the abreaction or release of the effects of my childhood trauma.
I believe this is the probable solution to Chalmers' Hard Problem (CHP) for the case of my deep religious experience of purgation. It tells of the origin of my ten hour experience of purgation. It answers the first of the three questions.
(See the summary at the beginning of Chapter 1. It gives the answers to the second and third questions.)

Additional information associated with the above summary of my solution to CHP for the case of purgation:

The above brief summary illustrates how Chalmers' Hard Problem (CHP) is solved for deep inner experiences, like purgation. It also illustrates how the mind/body problem is solved. Even though these solutions are very insightful - particularly for scientifically oriented philosophers, psychiatrists, and religious people - high level scientists will probably not be satisfied with this kind of solution. For example, for such scientists the solution to CHP is only the first breakthrough. Granted, this first breakthrough - the solution to CHP - is the key to any thorough extended analysis. Nevertheless, neuroscientists and cardiovascular experts - working together - will wish to perform three additional analytical steps to finalize the analysis for the case of purgation. I cannot perform those three analytical steps, because I am not skilled enough in neuroscience and cardiovascular science. (I am a theoretical mechanical engineer and system dynamicist.) The three additional analyses required are:
  1. Determining the precise location in my heart of the cramped, antagonistic heart muscles. This is a very difficult "easy problem" (see Chalmers' statement about the easy problems of consciousness at the end of the summary in Chapter 1).
  2. Determining the neurobiological correlates of consciousness (NCC) during purgation. This is also a very difficult "easy problem." (see the statements on CHP by Crick, Koch, and Searle at the end of this summary). These difficult "easy problems" are available for analysis only after the CHP breakthrough for purgation has been precisely solved (see item 1 just above). Once item 1 has been solved, the neuroscientists and cardiovascular experts need to neurophysiologically link the dynamic sets of cramped, antagonistic heart muscles with the dynamic core consciousness going on during the experience of purgation. (My early conjecture is that the key to this linkage is understanding the operation of the experiencer's somatosensory system. It looks to me like that system extends all the way from (1)the cramped heart muscles that are being released to (2)the postcentral gyrus in the experiencer's cerebral cortex. The location of the latter part of the somatosensory system is probably where the dynamic core consciousness associated with purgation had been generated during the release of my trauma.)
  3. The method for testing the scientific validity of my SD-based, TFP analysis of purgation is shown in Chapter 6, Section II.B, item 11.

Key #6: Introduction to my Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP) model and its simulations of the phenomenological variables associated with my religious experience of purgation (first draft).

Please be patient. Key #6 is going to take a lot of time to develop and present. I will start by introducing the reader to my Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP) model of my 16-hour experience of purgation, shown in Figure 2 (see Section A and B). I will then present the mathematical model associated with my TFP model of purgation (see Section C). Then (in Section D), I will explain or clarify how two, very important, feedback loops from the TFP model of purgation in Figure 2, below, worked together to enable me to successfully walk the plank (see Key #1).

A. Figure 2: Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP) model for my deep, subjective, ten-hour religious experience of purgation.

Figure 2, below, shows that my TFP model of purgation is a phenomenological system. A phenomenological system is what Damasio (1999) is calling a core consciousness system. However, I will use the term, phenomenological system throughout this discussion.

The TFP model, shown in Figure 2, is composed of a set of 38 dynamic variables, most of which are "dynamic phenomenological variables. These dynamic phenomenological variables are based on the experiencer's inner perception. Inner perception is the immediate awareness of the experiencer's own psychological phenomena: of his joys or desires, his sadness or rage, etc. To this awareness, restricted to the immediate present, Brentano ascribed infallible self-evidence." (Spiegelberg 1994)

Please note: For the deep experience of purgation, all awareness or phenomenological or core consciousness data is always available from the experiencer's long term memory (LTM). Also, please note the "most basic" or most important psychological phenomenon is an intentional phenomenon. There are two examples of such "most basic" or most important psychological phenomenon in the lower sector of the purgation model: KnotsInHeart and HeartOpenness. The experiencer is constantly aware of those two "most basic" or most important phenomenon throughout the experience of purgation. Nevertheless, KnotsInHeart and HeartOpenness do not exist, because they are not material objects. Heart muscles do not have knots in them and they don't open. That is why in the field of phenomenology KnotsInHeart and HeartOpenness are described as having intentional inexistence.


B. Additional introductory explanations of the TFP-based model of purgation in Figure 2. (first draft):

Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP) is a marriage between Forrester's System Dynamics (SD) and the emerging field of phenomenology, developed by Brentano, Husserl, and their associates.
  1. The architecture of the TFP model of purgation in Figure 2 (first draft):
    First, I would like to discuss the architecture of the model of the 38 phenomena, shown in Figure 2 above. That architecture is associated with my deep, subjective experience of purgation. That architecture of the model, shown above, has a quickly operating (milleseconds to seconds) cognitive mechanism in the upper sector that interacts with a relatively slow system (seconds to hours) in the lower sector. Jackendoff (1987) has called the former the computational mind and the latter the phenomenological mind. Communication between these two sectors of the model are implemented by about six transducers or transition variables. Regarding these two sectors, the former originates in the thalamocortical system and is nonconscious; the latter originates in the limbic-brain stem and neurocirculatory system and is mostly conscious (an insight given to me by Dr. Prabha Guha 1991).

    There are 27 dynamic phenomenological variables (or dynamic core consciousness variables) associated with the phenomenological mind. These variables are located in the lower sector of the model. They are named, using what Husserl called the 'natural attitude.' For example, KnotsInHeart is not a thing. It is a phenomenon. It has no reality as such, because there are no knots in the heart. However, in actuality it is now known that during purgation there are cramped or paralyzed muscles in the heart. Thus, naming the phenomena variables in the 'natural attitude' means the name it feels like to the experiencer (myself) as he recalls the details of the dynamic psychological phenomena going on during his 10 hour experience of purgation. Whereas, the naming of dynamic material objects that underlie the dynamic phenomena operating in the experiencer's mind is the naming of the dynamic noumena operating during purgation. Thus, simulating the 27 phenomena variables of purgation and naming them in the 'natural attitude' is a way for the analyst (myself) to present a moment by moment narrative to the reader who, informally, wants to know what was going on during my experience of purgation.

    The model's representation for my dynamic phenomena going on in my phenomenological mind during purgation is shown as a feedback system in the lower sector of the model. There are 27 phenomenological variables in that lower sector. The intentionality of the phenomena during purgation is about a somatosensory mental image. The mental image does not exist. It is only a psychological phenomena in the experiencer's mind. However, that mental image phenomena is about the heart opening against a resistance in the form of knots in the heart. Using the insights of Meinong (1904), Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology has labeled such intentionality, 'intentional inexistence,' because KnotsInHeart is not a material object. Further, hearts are not opened and they don't have knots.

    However, eventually, in Step III of the TFP analysis, the TFP analysis finds that the material objects that actually exist in the experiencer's neurophysiological system are about 12 sets or pairs of antagonistic heart muscles. When those 12 sets or pairs of antagonistic heart muscles are released during the time when a trauma is released, those heart muscles become dynamic and drive the dynamics of all the phenomena in the phenomenological mind. Therefore, even though the mental image does not exist, it can be modeled and simulated because there is a one to one relationship between the dynamics of the heart muscles and the dynamics of the mental image and other dynamic phenomena associated with the phenomenological mind. In short, the dynamic heart muscles are the dynamic noumena that drive the dynamic psychological phenomena that are experienced in the form of the dynamic mental image. The noumena are the 12 sets or pairs of antagonistic heart muscles. They are driving the phenomena. The mind uses its imagination to convert the dynamics of the heart muscles to the dynamics of the mental image. That is why it is called a somatosensory mental image.

    There is a saying that a picture is worth 1000 words. For a person experiencing the fast moving, incredibly stressful, and fearful dark night of the soul or purgation, a mental image is worth 1000 neurophysiological facts. Hence, during the crisis of purgation the mind uses a somatosensory mental image. An image makes it easier and quicker for the mind to comprehend and to act or respond quickly to the essentials of what is sensed within. Phenomenological variables of the model associated directly with the somatosensory mental images include HeartOpenness, KnotsInHeart, FearDeathDueToKnot, and the set of feedback loops associated with them. ForgivenessResponse, PsychicStress, and OpeningPressure are also associated with this mental image. A simulation of these conscious variables allows us to get a good description - in the 'natural attitude' - of the phenomena (or core consciousness) and how it is driven, moment by moment, during the stressful and fearful experience of purgation.

    As for the computational mind (or the cognitive mechanism) in the upper sector, the 11 variables representing the nonconscious cognitive mechanism are located in the upper part of the model, above a semicircle that goes just above KnotOriginInsight, AttentionalFocus, and PsychicEnergyFactor. I conceived or invented this cognitive mechanism sector and use it, because it is able to include PrayerTrueness into the lower sector of the model. Eventually, this cognitive mechanism sector will be replaced by a model developed by a combination of scientists in the field of cognitive science and system dynamicists. At present we must use my invented model. It incorporates the concept of redundancy from engineering; Miller's (1956) concepts from information theory concerning channel capacity and recoding; Miller's 'magical number seven' used in cognitive science; and the retrieval accuracy of short term memory concept developed by Schouten and Bekker (1967), Wickelgren (1979), and Luce (1986). The concept of redundancy comes into play during mystical union when the primary information processor shuts down and the background information processor takes over in its place. How the model of consciousness operates when time stops during mystical union will be discussed more fully in items 4 and 5 in Section II.B of Chapter 6.

    Preliminary mathematical definitions of each of these variables are given in the 38 variable (11 in the upper sector, 27 in the lower sector) mathematical model, shown in Sector C, below. The constants in the equations and the table functions have been tuned to give an accurate simulation of the 10-hour Dark Night or purgative stage right up to the moment just preceding mystical union. Of the 38 variables, 23 are aspects of the phenomenological system (or core consciousness system). All 23 are located in the lower sector. The simulations of these 23 aspects of the dynamic phenomena are all operating simultaneous. For example, simultaneously, the experiencer (myself) was conscious of the dynamics or change of the following aspects of the dynamic phenomena during purgation: The rise in OpeningPressure and HeartOpenness, the removal of a knot (KnotsInHeart), the rise and fall of the intensity of FearDeathDueToKnots and PsychicStress, the rising and falling intensity of PrayerIntensity of my prayer, the rise and fall of the intensity of AttentionalFocus of my mind, etc.

  2. Dynamics of the phenomena during purgation (first draft):
    In my normal life HeartOpenness was stable at 5% of maximum possible openness and there were a stable set of twelve KnotsInHeart. This is shown at Time=0 in the simulations at Figure 1. (Keep in mind that these numbers are only my best estimates: the initial value of HeartOpenness could have been anywhere from 2% to 10% or 15%; the initial value of KnotsInHeart could have been anywhere between 8 and 15 knots.) However, just after the beginning of the Dark Night or purgation (Time>0), the phenomenological mind undergoes a change in such a way that OpeningPressure jumps from its NormalOpening Pressure of 5% all the way up to 80%. This is reflected by the fact that I have programmed AdditionalOpeningPressure to go from 0 to 75% at Time = 0. To understand the initial dynamics of the model at this point, keep in mind that the flow diagram for the 10-hour experience of purgation shown in Figure 2 has, at present, only two sectors. Eventually, the flow diagram or noema of core consciousness for the entire religious crisis may have 3 or more sectors. Therefore, the step input from AdditionalOpeningPressure is assumed to come from or originate in either a shift in loop dominance (Forrester 1985) or a bifurcation (Strogatz 1994) associated with a projected, but not yet modeled, adjacent sector or sectors. This step input causes limbic-brain stem variables in Figure 2, such as HeartOpenness, PsychicStress, FearDeathDueToKnot, KnotsInHeart and the like, to change or become dynamic, all coordinated by way of the feedback loops in the structure.

    KnotsInHeart, HeartOpenness, and the three memories in the cognitive mechanism are called state variables by mathematicians. In system dynamics terminology they are called stocks or levels or accumulations. Each stock or state variable has the characteristic of accumulation, analogous to a bathtub accumulating water. Using this bathtub analogy, 'How open is the heart at this moment?' is analogous to 'How full of water is the bathtub, now?' ForgivenessResponse, HeartUnfoldmentRate, PrimaryInformationProcessingRate, BackgroundInformationProcessingRate, and InnerSensingRate are examples of rates. They act like either the bathtub's inlet faucets or outlet drains. Whether the faucet is an inlet faucet or outlet drain is indicated by the large arrowhead. (Eliminate the darkened arrowhead and use the open arrowhead to indicate the direction of flow of the thing or entity that is passing through the 'faucet'.) The much smaller arrowheads indicate the direction of causation. For example, the arrows coming from PrayerTrueness and PrayerIntensity and pointing at PrayerQuality indicate that the first two variables determine the value of PrayerQuality at any time. Specifically, the mathematical model gives the following definition of PrayerQuality:

    PrayerQuality = 0.5*(PrayerTrueness + PrayerIntensity) ............equation 1

    When PrayerQuality reaches 100%, which is the 'forgiveness threshold', the ForgivenessResponse is triggered and one KnotInHeart is removed in a ratchet-like fashion. (The knot is removed, rather than added, because the undarkened arrowhead points away from the KnotsInHeart stock.) Action then shifts to a negative feedback loop associated with HeartOpenness and PsychicStress: The removal of this one knot begins to unseal the restricted and rigid or tight heart, causing PsychicStress to decrease rapidly, which then causes the HeartUnfoldmentRate 'faucet' to open. This causes HeartOpenness to open further, causing PsychicStress to rise again as the heart begins to encounter the next knot. As a result FearDeathDueToKnot, and then PrayerIntensity, and WillfulAttention, begin to rise again. The rise in fear and attention leads to a shift in loop dominance: Action shifts to the cognitive mechanism, which is essentially a negative feedback loop concerned with solving the problem of the origin of the knot. The fear and attention driven PrimaryInformationProcessingRate in the cognitive mechanism speeds up, leading to an increase in KnotOriginInsight. This increasing insight is concerned with the solution to the following problem: What is the particular sin, guilt, or hatred that is at the origin of this next knot? The gradual solution to this problem and my gradual acceptance of this solution leads to greater PrayerTrueness and then greater PrayerQuality until the latter reaches the 'forgiveness threshold,' triggering the ForgivenessResponse again. Then, the next knot cycle begins.

C. Now, I will focus on the two most important feedback loops of the model in Figure 2. A study of those two feedback loops will begin to clarify how the experiencer of purgation was able to walk the plank. This study is going to take a lot of time. (first draft):

  1. Phenomenological Mind Detail (first draft):
    My TFP model in Figure 2 is about the 27 phenomenological variables present in my phenomenological mind (Jackendoff 1987) during my religious experience of purgation. These 27 phenomenological variables are shown in the lower sector of Figure 2. The names of these phenomenological variables are given in what the phenomenologist, Husserl, called the 'natural attitude' or the 'Lebenswelt' or the 'life world'. They were modeled using the phenomenological data associated with my entire experience of purgation. That data was stored in my long term memory (LTM), as the data was being experienced. When the data of the LTM is accessed, it is naturally found to be given in what Husserl called the 'language of the life-world' or the 'Lebenswelt' or the 'natural attitude.' I tend to call that language the language of the common man. I imagine the following situation: The common man is honestly trying to narrate to close friends what happened to him during the time when he had a crucial, deep, subjective, religious experience. He does not know what was actually occurring in his neurophysiological system. He only knows the 27 phenomenological variables and their dynamics. So, he begins the narrative with "For some reason my heart began to open ......etc."

    Now, here is a simple definition of the various kinds of phenomena shown in the phenomenological mind modeled in the lower sector of Figure 2: "Phenomena are objects or aspects known by the experiencer only through his or her senses:" I found this simple definition in Webster's dictionary. However, in the case of a subjective experience like purgation, the somatosensory system is, perhaps, the only sensing system involved, although feeling was involved, also. Certainly, the sense of smell, seeing, and hearing were not involved. Examples of noemata or variables that are 'objects' in Figure 2 are KnotsInHeart and HeartOpenness. However, these 'objects' or noemata were not real objects. They were perceived by the experiencer in what Husserl called the 'natural attitude' or the 'life-world'. Examples of noemata or variables that are aspects are SealmentOfSoul, MaximumBearableUnboundedness, Ratio, PsychicStress, FearDeathDueToKnots, PrayerIntensity, ForgivenessResponse, etc. The model shown in Figure 2 must be studied by the reader to allow him or her to grasp Husserl's concept of the 'natural attitude' or the Lebenswelt or what I am calling the language of the common man. In order to do this he uses the following terminology: his names for his phenomenological variables.

    (In Key #5, above, I presented how I was able to identify the noumena. The noumena can only be known through the thought or reasoning methodology given in Step III of the Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP) methodology. The application of Step III to the purgation experience illustrates how the analyst identifies the noumena that are driving the phenomena during purgation. This very important part of the TFP analysis is clarified in Key #5.)

  2. Identifying and explaining how the two feedback loops work together to enable the experiencer to walk the plank (first draft):
    Perhaps, the two most important feedback loops in the lower sector (the phenomenological mind sector) are the two feedback loops driving PsychicStress. Then, the rise in PsychicStress causes FearDeathDueToKnot to rise. This causes PrayerIntensity to rise (If, and only if, the experiencer begins to pray). If he begins to pray, he will probably succeed, if PrayerQuality and the ForgivenessResponse are able to cause a KnotInHeart to be released. If he does not begin to pray, FearDeathDueToKnot will rise too high, causing the experiencer of the first knot to panic and have a nervous breakdown.

    Here are those two most important feedback loops:

    In Section D we will be focusing on the lower sector. Recall that Jackendoff (1987) calls that sector the phenomenological mind. It contains the two feedback loops associated with walking the plank: The KnotsInHeart feedback loop and the HeartOpenness feedback loop.

    Notice that those two feedback loops use soft variables. Soft variables are used throughout the lower sector. Some of these soft variables in the model have dimensional requirements: All three prayer variables, PrayerTrueness and PrayerIntensity and PrayerQuality, must have the same dimension (prayer magnitude units) and both UnboundednessOfSoul variables must have the same dimension (unboundedness of soul units). The latter requirement causes Ratio to be dimensionless.

    Some of the rest of the variables associated with the phenomenological mind sector are what I am calling transitive variables. The equations established for the transitive variables were determined by iteratively comparing the sets of simulated values of the various transitive variables with the data in my long term memory (LTM) (see the iterative technique presented in The GTR Project of the Introduction).

When the experiencer's PsychicStress starts to build up, his FearDeathDueToKnot starts to rise. Now, if the experiencer has begun to pray, PrayerIntensity will begin to rise. If all goes well, PrayerQuality reaches 100%, the ForgivenessResponse is triggered, and one KnotInHeart is removed in a ratchet-like fashion. However, if the experiencer is nor religious, he or she may rebel in some way against the use of prayer. If the rebelious attitude dominates the mind of the experiencer too long (we are dealing with seconds here), the experiencer will - in short order - panic and have a nervous breakdown.

Chapter 3: The Dark Night of the Soul or Purgation. A more detailed account:

A. Let us start with the total picture of my religious experience:

Figure 1, just below, shows simulations of four aspects of my consciousness during my 16 hour or 960 minute religious experience. I was experiencing these four aspects simultaneously. These four simulations are based on the system dynamics flow diagram of Figure 2 and its associated mathematical model.

Figure 1: Sixteen hour simulation of purgation, mystical union, and deep sleep, ( stages 11, 12, and 13 respectively).


Here is the estimated timetable for the 960 minute religious experience simulated in Figure 1, above.

Thus, my religious experience included purgation (from 0 to around the 617 minute mark), mystical union (with a duration of around 4 to 7 seconds of the 617th minute), and deep sleep (with a duration of around 6 hours). The total experience was thus around 16 hours or 960 minutes; purgation lasted roughly 10 hours; deep sleep lasted roughly 6 hours.

B. Here are simulations of the release of three of the twelve knots in my heart during purgation.

Figure 3: Two minute simulations during the walking of the plank.

The gathering of these four critical simulations attempts to simply describe - via simulation - how the potential mystic 'walks the plank' for three of the twelve knots released during purgation. The release of the crucial first knot is not shown simulated in Figure 3. The release of knots is shown only for the following knots: The 5th from last, the 4th from last, and the 3rd from last knots. Two of the simulations track the oscillation of the intensity of two critical variables, FearDeathDueToKnot and PrayerQuality. During the same two minute time period the other two simulations track (1) the decrease of the variable, KnotsInHeart, and (2) the rise of the variable, TruenessOfMind. As TruenessOfMind rises, it is eventually going to lead to mystical union when all 12 KnotsInHeart have been released. Notice in Figure 3 that a knot is released only when the variable, PrayerQuality, reaches 100%. Here is the mathematical model for the variable, PrayerQuality:

PrayerQuality = (0.5)*(PrayerIntensity + PrayerTrueness).......eq.1

C. The 8-step iterative sequence, below, attempts to give the reader an idea of what was going on within me each time a knot was released from my heart during purgation (Stage 11):

Stage 11 of Table I is known variously as the Dark Night of the Soul (John of the Cross) or Purgation (Malachi 3:3) or Refiner's Fire (Malachi 3:2), or overcoming either seals or knots or original sin or nafs or samskaras or samsara (Suzuki 1959) etc. The opening or unfoldment of my heart during Stage 11 prepared me for mystical union. The various aspects of my consciousness associated with the opening and purification of my heart during stage 11 had a cyclical characteristic. This is described by means of the following 8-step iterative sequence. Each iterative sequence removes one knot. It took roughly 12 of these 8-step iterative sequences to remove the 12 knots in my heart:

  1. An unfoldment force within the deepest part of my heart led to an opening of my heart.
  2. This initial opening produced a certain degree of rapture, but gradually it also brought a psychic stress and fear of death as the opening heart began to encounter a resistance, perceived as a knot in the heart.
  3. The terror or psychic stress caused my mind to either conjure up or discover the following interpretation or explanation for the presence of the knot: Each knot in my heart had a one-to-one representation in my mind of a particular guilt, sin, error, or hatred.
  4. As the fear of death and stress mounted due to the opening heart working against that particular knot, my mind's analytical faculties quickly found and became aware of a particular attachment or impurity in the mind associated with that particular knot in the heart, be it a remembered sin, guilt, error, or a hatred.
  5. Because of the extreme stress I began to pray to a God whom I called the Lord.
  6. As the stress began to mount even further almost to the point of death in this Dark Night of the Soul, either of the following occurred:
  7. This success of prayer, in which a hate turned to love and in which I felt the presence of a forgiving God, encouraged dialogue to develop with this concept of God with Form: The Lord. This assisted my mind in letting go of the whole neurotic complex in my brain that connected to or centered around that particular knot in my heart. I attached myself instead to this concept of God, my Blessed Friend, the source of comfort. (Deuteronomy 4:29 and Matthew 22:37)
  8. Thus, my heart felt less stress and terror with that knot now untied and my mind became less complex. The mind was therefore a further step more stable and ran more true. I could rest in grateful companionship with The Lord. Moreover, with the knot now removed rapture deepened a further step toward ecstasy or bliss and the focus of my mind on the present moment within became more pervading.

D. Summary:

It took about nine hours (0 to 555 minute mark) to go through steps 1 through 6 of the iterative sequence for Purgation in Section C, above. During step 6 the first knot was removed. Thereafter, the eight step iteration or recursion looped relentlessly during a period of about an hour. Thus, at the 617 minute mark all twelve knots in the heart had been purged. The sin, guilt, hatred, and error in my mind and heart associated with each knot had become uprooted; a Covenant had been made. Now, only the most simple and fundamental structures within my mind-heart system were being employed, and there was a fierce and deepened attention of my mind and being on the God-infused present moment within. The iterative structure or algorithm in Section C describes a phenomenon that is like labor before birth. That is, the Refiner's Fire or Purgation is the labor before the birth of God realization during mystical union. The purpose of this labor is to produce a purification and opening of the heart. The opening force comes from deep within.

E. Some Notes:

  1. The 12 knots were removed from my heart during the one-hour unstable region of the simulation of purgation in Figure 1 when time was between the 555 minute mark and the 617 minute mark.)
  2. For more detail please see Figure 3. It shows a two minute simulation of that unstable region, from the 607 to the 609 minute mark, during which three knots were purged
  3. I am using an initial value of twelve knots in the heart, because it coincides with the 12 petals of the Hindu concept of the heart chakras. However, from my rememberance of the experience of purgation I am estimating that the initial value could have been anywhere between seven to fifteen knots in the heart.

F. The various kinds of consciousness that existed during purgation, mystical union, and the two month Divine State that followed PMU:

In this section I will be using the concepts of extended and core consciousness. They were named and defined by Damasio (1999).
  1. When my heart began to open in the 'warm and brilliant Southern California sun,' as described in The Engineer's Story of Chapter 1, core consciousness began to emerge (see Figure 1 at time = 0). During the next nine hours core consciousness slowly began to become more and more dominant and to overshadow extended consciousness. When (as described in Chapter 1) I returned to my apartment in Boston's South End and 'lay down on my bed,' core consciousness began to dominate the final hour of purgation (the period of time from the 550 minute mark to the 617 minute mark). Figure 1 only simulates core consciousness. Extended consciousness was also present, particularly during the first nine of the ten hours, but (using Husserlian terminology) it was 'bracketed-out' in the TFP phenomenological analysis (see Chapter 6).
  2. When I went into the state of mystical union, core consciousness also ceased or at least OpeningPressure, Fear, and Stress ceased. It seems to me that a different kind of consciousness existed during the 4 to 7 seconds of mystical union. There is no scientific name yet for that state of consciousness. For the time being let us call it Allah consciousness or Brahman consciousness or God consciousness, etc: a divine kind of consciousness. In this state one experiences an unsurpassable and unforgetable greatness. This greatness is experienced while one is in a timeless state. There is no change in the state of this consciousness. This is unique. Usually, consciousness is constantly changing and time seems to change from past to future. My present conjecture of what is going on here is given at this link.
  3. For the remaining 6 hours of the simulation in Figure 1 above, I was in deep sleep and not conscious. Thus, the phenomenological analysis terminates at the moment of transition from purgation to mystical union.
  4. When I awoke at the 960 minute mark I was in a very balanced and serene state of consciousness, a state quite different from the states mentioned above. This serene state lasted for two months. Csikszentmihalyi's (1975) description of the flow state is akin to that two month state, but he does not emphasize the balance and serenity inherent in that heavenly state. Further information on these forms of consciousness are given at this link.

Chapter 4. Mystical Union: A more detailed account of stage 12:

Toward the end of the Dark Night (see Stage 11), during the two minute period (615 to 617) extending from the removal of the last knot from my heart to the experience of mystical union, my mind rapidly became completely absorbed with the God-infused present moment within and my heart continued to open. Psychic stress, fear of death, and prayer due to fear were rapidly disappearing and the intense energies associated with them were becoming transformed into a force powering a supreme inner attention and absorption. Then, quite abruptly, a cessation of all inner sense or movement occurred for a period estimated to be between four to seven seconds, during which I was in the state of mystical union.

In mystical union the following occurred:

To understand how I arrived at the above state of mystical union, please study Chapter 1, the dramatic narrative of the 22 month period leading up to that state. During that time I was working as a project engineer. I call the narrative, An Engineer's Story.

Chapter 5: A practical application for the General Theory of Religion: Curing Mental Illness throughout the World by means of a Collaboration between Science and Religion.

Here is the outline of an open collaboration between brilliant System Dynamicists, who have been studying my system dynamics-based General Theory of Religion (GTR), and the talented and versatile scientists now working in the field of Genomics at The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard:

The highly regarded Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard is taking a position toward mental illness that I find complements the position taken by my General Theory of Religion (GTR). There may be a way to integrate these two approaches through an open collaboration:
  1. The Broad Institute believes the application of the most advanced genomic tools will solve the problem of what is causing mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression. Once the genomic cause is known for each illness, the Broad Institute believes conceiving and developing novel, more effective treatments for such illnesses can finally be accomplished. The Broad Institute is now involved in a 10 year, $500 million project along these lines.
  2. The GTR's scientific position is that most mental illnesses begin their development at the moment when the abreaction or release of a trauma has led to panic and a nervous breakdown. When the panic and nervous breakdown occur the abreaction process or the release of the trauma ceases, usually during the unsuccessful releasing process of the first set of cramped, antagonistic heart muscles. However - and this is very important - if there is no panic and nervous breakdown during the abreaction of the trauma, the entire release of the trauma will be successfully completed and mental illness will not develop. The GTR's position is that the primary purpose of a religion is to religiously prepare children of that particular religion, in case those children are traumatized in the future. Specifically, the GTR's position is that the aim of a religion is to prepare those children so they will be able to deal with the beginning signs of panic that will be present when the trauma is eventually beginning to be released. In short, the primary purpose of a religion is to avoid the panic and the nervous breakdown, associated with the eventual release or abreaction of a trauma. If the children's religious preparedness has been done effectively, no panic and nervous breakdown will occur. As a result, there will be no mental illness among the devotees of that religion. Therefore, if a study of a person's genomics shows a tendency toward - for example - schizophrenia, this form of mental illness will only begin to develop in that person after panic and a nervous breakdown occurs. Note carefully: the GTR's position is that a religiously prepared child will eventually be prepared to deal with the release of a trauma later in his or her life: He or she will be able to keep the panic and nervous breakdown from occurring. This has been carefully described in Key #1 of the Introduction to the GTR, where I reveal how I was able to avoid panic and a nervous breakdown at the age of 30 during the abreaction or release of my childhood trauma. That childhood trauma occurred when I was a child of 9 or 10 years old. I was religiously prepared, mainly by my mother and father and by Rabbi Minda overseeing his Sunday school. The critical years were between the ages of about 5 through 15 years old. Therefore, I believe a careful study of religious preparedness is the most important and the most central phenomenon for psychiatrists, scientists, and religious leaders to study. Collaborating scientists conducting such a study would include the talented and versatile scientists at the Broad Institute, system dynamicists who are now studying and becoming interested in my internet presentation of my General Theory of Religion analysis, religious scholars, etc. The main idea here is that if the panic and nervous breakdown do occur during the abreaction, then - and only then - will the results of the Broad Institute's genomics approach - described above - come into play. Here is another important point: the GTR is finding that the primary purpose of a religion is very similar for most of the religions existing throughout the world (see Key #2 and Key #3 just below). Therefore, the results of the collaboration between system dynamicists, who are studying, analyzing, and publishing about a great variety of complex systems, and the versatile scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, who are focused on the use of Genomics to cure mental illness, could begin a very interesting and productive long term project: A project that may eventually wipe out mental illness throughout the world, but only in conjunction with the local religions existing throughout the world.
We are asking the Broad Institute to consider making the integration of these two approaches to the origin and cure of most mental illnesses the centerpiece of their very important 10 year, $500 million project. Success on such an open collaboration between those scientists working with the genomics approach, those working with the religious approach, and those working with the psychiatric approach could not only bring about the elimination of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression, but could also bring about deep cultural integration and deep cultural teamwork between genomics, religion, psychiatry, and the pharmaceutical industry. Such integration and teamwork will always be desperately needed in a modern culture.

In the modern era, it is so critical that leaders of the government, the industrial community, the business community, the scientific community, the pharmaceutical industry, the universities, the psychiatric community, and the religious communities learn to work together. I believe such cultural teamwork would bring about healthy, vibrant societies throughout the world: Societies as free as possible from those mental illnesses that result from the panic and nervous breakdown associated with the release or abreaction of a trauma.

Key #2: A Brief Introduction to the General Theory of Religion.

"... if there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one which will have no location in place or time; which will be infinite like the God it will preach, and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and of Christ, on saints and sinners alike; which will not be Brahminic or Buddhistic, Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these, and still have infinite space for development..." (Vivekananda 1893)

Table I, below, gives the 14 stages of my 53 month religious crisis. The details of Table I give the reader a brief and concise base for understanding the similarities of religions and for understanding the deep concept of a general theory of religion.

Please notice that Purgation is listed at Stage 11 and Mystical Union is listed at Stage 12 of the Judeo-Christian terminology. The Hindu terminology uses the term Overcoming Samskaras for the experience of Purgation and uses the term Samadhi for the experience of Mystical Union, etc.

Key #3: Why a Culture Cannot Survive without Religion.

(Why has religious belief survived throughout the whole history of mankind?)

Here are some of the most important religious insights of the book: They are based on my very detailed scientific, presuppositionless, System Dynamics(SD)-based Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) analysis of my religious experience, particularly the finer and finer simulations of my core consciousness during purgation. This analysis is being carried out in detail in Chapters 5 and 6. The finer and finer simulations have slowly uncovered the practical reason why prayer, imagination, and religious belief have survived from the time of migrating primitive tribes to the present:

Chapter 6. Clarification of key religious concepts:

Toward the Meaning of the Experience of Purgation and Mystical Union: My mind has been directed toward gaining these insights ever since I began this study in 1984.

1. The essence of faith.

Sometimes, desperate people - when their backs are to the wall facing defeat, death, and/or disintegration - make a miraculous recovery. Examples are found among warriors, businessmen, athletes, people on their death bed, prisoners, former addicts of one kind or another, etc. Do you remember the people of London during the Battle of Britain? Do you remember the people of Grand Forks, North Dakota during the Red River flood of 1997? Do you remember the night that Archie Moore came back from a terrific beating in the first round to steadily make his way back and ultimately defeat a powerful Canadian boxer? An Engineer's Story is a narrative that details one person's experience of this mode or capability, including the desperate circumstances that brought it about.

All such people are knowers of a greatness within that has enabled them to function in these situations in a mode far more profound, powerful, and skilled than their ordinary abilities. This human capability probably evolved during the desperate battle conditions of our earliest hominid ancestors. This capability is always available to human beings. To know this is the essence of faith.

2. The meaning of life: Cracking the Code!

There is something driving us to our full potential: to our ultimate end or object; to our telos. This telos is ultimate trueness, freedom, integrity, grounding, and love, but we never seem to attain it. Whatever trueness, freedom, integrity, grounding, or love we attain, we sense it is not enough. We need more.

In my case my full potential, my telos, was only satisfied when I had experienced mystical union. It was in mystical union that I experienced ultimate trueness, freedom, integrity, grounding, and love. When that occurred I felt my search was over. I was finally satisfied. Therefore, it was this that I had been driven to, unconsciously. The drive toward this goal is mostly hidden from us; it is unconscious: An unconscious life force or entelechy is silently and wordlessly informing us: 'Come to the state of ultimate freedom, trueness, integrity, grounding, and love.

From the point of view of intentionality our lives are about reaching this goal, the state of ultimate freedom, trueness, integrity, grounding, and love. That is, in our daily lives this is the unconscious intentionality of our conscious lives. This unconscious intentionality is driven, in turn, by some sort of unconscious life force.

With these insights the mystic had cracked the code: He had found the structure underlying the dance or game of life and he had a conjecture on what drives the dance.

3. The nature of God: The essence of religion

Focusing on the transition from purgation to mystical union gives powerful insights: During purgation my imagination produced mental imagery and the emergence of an archetype when I really needed it. These products of my imagination played a central role in stabilizing my mind during the experience of purgation. However, they suddenly ceased functioning at the moment of cessation in mystical union. The fact that God was experienced then, after those two aspects of the imagination had shut down, conflicts with the present position of both the scientific community and the Western psychological community. The Western psychological community's extensive study of the mind has convinced them that God is a product of the imagination. My position is that we must go deeper: The experience of God originates at a much deeper level:

During mystical union inner sense ceases; including the inner sense of time, the ability to think, to imagine, to will, and to make immediate recall. Simultaneously, one has an ecstatic experience of merger with the essence of one's inner self or inner Being. This timeless essence or Immensity or Ground cannot be conditioned, either by society or authorities or by anything else. The ecstatic experience of this Ground, occurring after purgation when my heart had been purified and fully opened, is an experience of an unsurpassable Greatness that fully satisfied my desperate search for groundedness.

Immediately after, when I came down from mystical union and ordinary consciousness partially returned, I was in a heavenly state. This state is called bhava by the Hindus and 'the Peace that passeth all understanding' or 'Beulah land' or heaven by Protestant mystics. It is a state of supreme bliss.

A few months later, I gradually returned to ordinary consciousness. Then, in 1985 or thereabouts, I began to search my language for a name for the formless and unsurpassable Greatness experienced in mystical union, because I needed to communicate the insights emerging from this work. Because I was born and raised in the United States and English is my native language, the only name I could find that satisfied my heart and mind was the word, God, the name my precious mother spoke to me about when I was a boy.

If I had been born and raised in a Hindu culture, the name I would have chosen would have been Brahman; If I had been born and raised in a Muslim culture, the name would have been Allah; If I had been born and raised in a Japanese Buddhist culture, the name would have been No Thing or Emptiness; etc.

Bibliography [under construction].

(Link here to a separate list of my own publications.)
  1. Allison HE. 1983. Kant's Transcendental Idealism. Yale University Press: New Haven. (see page 3)
  2. Allison HE. 1996. Idealism and Freedom. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK.
  3. Arieti S. 1974. Interpretation of Schizophrenia, second ed. Basic Books: NY. Pp.696-697.
  4. Aristotle. 1941. The Basic Works of Aristotle, translated by R. McKeon. Random House: New York.
    (Physics 219B; Posterior Analytics 100B5).
  5. Atran S. 2001. Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of Science. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
  6. Atran S. 2002. In God's We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. Oxford University Press: New York.
  7. Augustine. 2000. City of God. Modern Library: New York, NY. X:22; XI:VI.
  8. Augustine. 1999. Confessions. Modern Library: NewYork, NY. XI:XI.
  9. Ayer AJ. 1959. Logical Positivism. Free Press: NY.
  10. Baer R. 2003. Sleeping with The Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude. Random House: New York.
  11. Barsky RF. 1997. Noam Chomsky, a Life of Dissent. ECW Press: Toronto.
  12. Barsky RF. 2007. The Chomsky Effect, Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
  13. Barzun J. 2000. From Dawn to Decadence. HarperCollins Publishers Inc., NYC.
  14. Baumgartner E, et al eds. 1996. Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Verlag Roll: Dettelbach, Germany.
  15. Beck AT. 2005. Anxiety Disorders and Phobias, A Cognitive Perspective. Basic Books: Cambridge, MA.
  16. Beiser FC. 1992. Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.
  17. Berger G. 1972. The Cogito in Husserl's Philosophy; translated by K. McLaughlin. Northwestern Univ. Press: Evanston.
  18. Berger PL, Luckmann T. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Anchor/Doubleday: London.
  19. Bergson H. 1913. Time and Free Will, translated by RL Pogson. Macmillan: New York.
  20. Berne RM, Levy MN. 1997. Cardiovascular Physiology. Mosby-Year Book, Inc: St. Louis, MO.
  21. Bernet R, Kern I, Marbach E. 1993. An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology. Northwestern University Press: Evanston, IL.
  22. Bernet R. 2000. 'The Traumatized Subject', Research in Phenomenology, Vol XXX, pp160-179.
  23. Bhargava R. 1998. Secularism and its Critics. Oxford University Presss. Delhi, India.
  24. Black D. 1984. Toward a General Theory of Social Control. Vol.1: Fundamentals; Vol.2: Selected problems. Academic Press, Inc: Orlando, FL.
  25. Blackburn S. 1994. Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford University Press: New York.
  26. Blackburn S. 2003. Metaphysics. In Bunnin N., Tsui-James EP, eds. 2003. The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, 2nd ed. Blackwell Publishers Ltd: Oxford, UK.
  27. Boyer P. 2001. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. Basic Books: New York.
  28. Brentano F. 1874. The distinction between mental and physical phenomena. Reprinted in Chisholm RM. 1960. Realism and the background of phenomenology. The Free Press: New York.
  29. Brentano F. 1981. Sensory and Noetic Consciousness. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Volume III, translated by M. Schattle and L. McAlister. Routledge: London.
  30. Brentano F. 1995a. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, translated by A.C. Rancurello, D.B. Terrell, and L. McAlister. Routledge: London. (2nd ed., intr by Peter Simons, 1995).
  31. Brentano F. 1995b. Descriptive Psychology, translated by Benito Muller.M. Routledge: London.
  32. Buchdahl Gerd. 1992. Kant and the Dynamics of Reason: essays on the structure of Kant's philosophy. Blackwell Publishers: Oxford (also at 238 Main Street, Suite 501, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.)
  33. Bunnin N., Tsui-James EP, eds. 2003. The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, 2nd ed. Blackwell Publishers Ltd: Oxford, UK.
  34. Burnet J. 1948. Parmenides proem, in Early Greek Philosophy, 4th ed. A & C Black: London.172.
  35. Burrell G. Morgan G. 1979. Sociological Paradigms and Organisational Analysis. Ashgate Publishing Co: Brookfield, VT 05036.
  36. Campbell J. 1972. Myths to Live By. Penguin Books: New York, NY. 202.
  37. Caputo JD. 1986. The Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought. Fordham University Press: New York.
  38. Carnap R. 1959. The Old and the New Logic. In AJ Ayer, ed. Logical Positivism. Free Press: NY.
  39. Carnap R. 1959. The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language. In AJ Ayer, ed. Logical Positivism. Free Press: NY.
  40. Cassirer E. 1950. The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science, and History since Hegel. Yale University Press: New Haven, CT.
  41. Cassirer E. 1951. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ.
  42. Cassirer E. 1981. Kant's life and Thought, trans James Haden, introduction by Stephan Korner. Yale University Press: New Haven, CT.
  43. Cassirer E. 2000. The Logic of the Cultural Sciences. Yale University Press: New Haven, CT.
  44. Caygill H. 1995. A Kant Dictionary. Blackwell Publishing, Inc: Cambridge, MA.
  45. Cerbone DR. 2006. Understanding Phenomenology. Acumen Publishing Ltd: Chesham, Bucks HP5 1HQ. (www.acumenpublishing.co.uk)
  46. Chalmers DJ. 1995a. Facing up to the problem of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 2(3): 200-219.
  47. Chalmers DJ. 1995b. The puzzle of conscious experience. Scientific American 273(6):80-86.
  48. Chattopadhyaya DP, Embree L, Mohanty JN, eds. 1992. Phenomenology and Indian Philosophy. SUNY Press: Albany.
  49. Chirban JT ed. 1996. Personhood: Orthodox Christianity and the connection between body, mind, and soul. Bergin and Hardy: Westport, CT 06881.
  50. Chisholm RM. 1960. Realism and the background of phenomenology. The Free Press: New York.
  51. Chomsky N. 2006. Language and Mind, 3rd edition. Cambridge University Press: NY.
  52. Chomsky N. 2000. New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind. Cambridge University Press: NY.
  53. Chomsky N. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
  54. Colson CW. 1976. Born Again. Chosen Books: Lincoln, VA.
  55. Colson CW. 1979. Life Sentence. Chosen Books: Lincoln, VA.
  56. Craig E. ed. 1995. The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group: London and New York.
  57. Crick F. 1994. Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. Scribner: New York.
  58. Crick F, Koch C. 1995. Why neuroscience may be able to explain consciousness. Scientific American 273(6):84-85.
  59. Csikszentmihalyi M. 1975. Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, CA. 36.
  60. Csikszentmihalyi M. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper Perennial, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers.
  61. Damasio AR. 1994. Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. Putnam: New York
  62. Damasio AR. 1997. Thinking and feeling. Scientific American. 276 (6).
  63. Damasio AR. 1999. The Feeling of What Happens. Harcourt Brace: New York, NY.
  64. Damasio AR. 2003. Looking for Spinoza, Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. Harcourt Brace: New York, NY.
  65. Dawkins R. 2006. The God Delusion. Houghton Mifflin Company: New York.
  66. Deikman AJ. 1971. Bimodal consciousness. Archives of General Psychiatry 25(12): 481-489.
  67. Descartes R. 1954. Descartes: Philosophical Writings, translated and edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and P.T. Geach.Edinburgh.
  68. Descartes R. 1968. Discourse on method, and other writings [by] Descartes; translated with an introduction by F.E. Sutcliffe. Penguin.
  69. Descartes R. 1996a. Meditations on first philosophy; translated by John Cottington. Cambridge University Press: New York.
  70. Descartes R. 1996b. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, edited by David Weissman. Yale University Press: New Haven.
  71. DiStefano JJ, AR Stubberud, IJ Williams. 1990. Schaum's outline of theory and problems of feedback and control systems, 2nd edition. McGraw-Hill.
  72. Douglas JD. 1970. Understanding Everyday Life: Toward the Reconstruction of Sociological Knowledge. Aldine Publishing Company: Chicago.
  73. Dreyfus H. and H. Hall (eds). 1987. Husserl, Intentionality, and Cognitive Science. MIT Press: Cambridge.
  74. Dreyfus HL and MA Wrathall, eds. 2006. A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism. Blackwell Publishing: Malden, MA USA.
  75. Drummond JJ. 2008. Historical Dictionary of Husserl's Philosophy. Scarecrow Press: Lanham, Maryland.
  76. Dufrenne M. 1966. The Notion of the A Priori. Northwestern University Press: Evanston, Illinois.
  77. Eckhart M. 1941. Meister Eckhart, translated by RB Blakney, Harper and Row: New York.
  78. Edie JM. 1987. Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, IN.
  79. Eliade M. 1982. Ordeal By Labyrinth. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL. 125.
  80. Elkin M. 1984. Families under the Influence: Changing Alcoholic Patterns. W.W.Norton & Company: New York.
  81. Ellis RD. 1995. Questioning Consciousness: The Interplay of Imagery, Cognition, and Emotion in the Human Brain. John Benjamin Press: Philadelphia, PA. 2-4.
  82. Elveton RO. 1970. The Phenomenology of Husserl: Selected Critical Readings. Quadrangle Books: Chicago.
  83. Embree LE. 1972. Life-World and Consciousness, Essays for Aron Gurwitsch. Northwestern University Press: Evanston, Il.
  84. Embree L. et. al. 1997. Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. Kluwer: Dordrecht.
  85. Epictetus. 1955. Enchiridion. The Library of Liberal Arts, Tr. T.H. Higginson (LLA 8), Second Edition, November, 1955. The Liberal Arts Press, Inc: New York.
  86. Ewing AC. 1938. A Short Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, Il.
  87. Farber M. 1943. The Foundation of Phenomenology, Edmund Husserl and the Quest for a Rigorous Science of Philosophy. Harvard University Press: Cambridge.
  88. Farber M. 2006. The Foundation of Phenomenology, Edmund Husserl and the Quest for a Rigorous Science of Philosophy. Aldine Transactions, A Division of Transaction Publishers, Rutgers-The State University, 35 Berrue Circle, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854-8042. www.transactionpub.com
  89. Farber M. 1959. Naturalism and Subjectivism. Charles C. Thomas Pub.: Springfield, Illinois.
  90. Fingarette H. 1972. Confucius - The Secular As Sacred. Harper Torchbooks, Harper & Row, Publishers: New York.
  91. FitzHugh R. 1961. Impulses and physiological states in theoretical models of nerve membrane. Biophysical Journal 1(6): 445-466.
  92. Follesdal D. 1998. Edmund Husserl. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.4:574-588. Routledge: London.
  93. Follesdal D. 1978. Brentano and Husserl on Intentional Objects and Perception. Grazer philosophische Studien 5, 83-94. (reprint in: Dreyfus H. and H. Hall (eds). 1987. Husserl, Intentionality, and Cognitive Science. MIT Press: Cambridge. 31-41.)
  94. Forrester JW. 1961. Industrial Dynamics. Pegasus Communications, Inc: Waltham, MA 02453-5339.
  95. Forrester JW. 1968a. Urban Dynamics. Pegasus Communications, Inc: Waltham, MA 02453-5339.
  96. Forrester JW. 1968b. Principles of Systems. Pegasus Communications, Inc: Waltham, MA 02453-5339.
  97. Forrester JW. 1973. World Dynamics, 2nd edition. Pegasus Communications, Inc: Waltham, MA 02453-5339.
  98. Forrester JW. 1975. Churches at the transition between growth and world equilibrium. in Collected Papers of Jay W. Forrester. Pegasus Communications, Inc: Waltham, MA 02453-5339.
  99. Forrester JW. 1985. Nonlinearity in higher-order models of social systems. D-3691-1. MIT System Dynamics Group: Cambridge, MA.
  100. Forrester JW. 1993. System dynamics and the lessons of 35 years. System-Based Approach to Policymaking, edited by K.B. DeGreene. Kluwer Academic Publishers: Norwell, MA.
  101. Forrester JW, et al. 1997. Road Maps. D-4501-4. MIT System Dynamics Group: Cambridge, MA.
  102. Forrester JW. 1999. System Dynamics: The Foundation Under System Thinking.
  103. Fowler JW. 1981. Stages of Faith. Harper: San Francisco, CA.
  104. Freeman A. 2003. Consciousness:A Guide To The Debates. ABC-CLIO Press.
  105. Freud S. 1966. Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Translated from German under the General Editorship of James Strachey in Collaboration with Anna Freud, assisted by Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson. The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis: London.
  106. Friedman M. 1996. Overcoming Metaphysics. In RN. Giere and AW Richardson (eds). Origins of Logical Positivism. University of Minnesota: Minneapolis.
  107. Friedman M. 2000. A parting of the ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Open Court Publishing Company: Peru, Illinois.
  108. Gallagher S. 2005. How the body shapes the mind. Oxford Univ. Press: New York.
  109. Gardner H. 2006. Five Minds for the Future. Harvard Business School Publishing: Boston.
  110. Gardner H. 2004. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Basic Books: New York.
  111. Gasset JO. 1960. What Is Philosophy? Norton: New York, NY. 64
  112. Gellhorn E. 1942. Autonomic Regulations. Interscience Publishers, Inc: New York.
  113. Gellhorn E. 1953. Physiological Foundations of Neurology and Psychiatry. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis.
  114. Gellhorn E and GN Loofbourrow. 1963. Emotions and Emotional Disorder. Harper and Row: New York.
  115. Gellhorn E. 1967. Principles of Autonomic- Somatic Integration. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis.
  116. Gellhorn E. 1968. Biological Foundations of Emotion. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis.
  117. Gellhorn E and WF Kiely. 1972. 'Mystical states of consciousness: Neurophysiological and clinical aspects.' J. of Nervous and Mental Diseases 154:399-405.
  118. Giere RN and AW Richardson, eds. 1996. Origins of Logical Empiricism. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis.
  119. Giddens A. 1976. New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretive Sociologies (2nd edn, 1993). Polity: Cambridge, UK.
  120. Gilson E. 1937. The Unity of Philosophical Experience. Scribners: New York, NY. 313.
  121. Goluke U. 1980. A Comprehensive Theory of the Pathogenesis of Alcoholism. DSM #251 & #252. Resource Policy Center, Dartmouth University: Hanover, NH.
  122. Goluke U, Landeen R, Meadows Dennis. 1981. The dynamics of alcoholism. System Dynamics and the Analysis of Change, B Paulre, ed. North-Holland: Amsterdam.
  123. Green MF. 2001. Schizophrenia Revealed. WW Norton: New York.
  124. Gray Jeffrey. 2004. Consciousness: Creeping up on the Hard Problem. Oxford University Press.
  125. Grene M. 1957. Heidegger. Hillary House: New York. 38.
  126. Guha P. 1991. Personal communication.
  127. Gupta B. Mohanty JD. 2000. Philosophical Questions East and West. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc: Lanham MD.
  128. Gupta M. 1942. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (translated by Nikhilananda). Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center: New York.
  129. Gurwitsch A. 1966. Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology. Northwestern Univ. Press: Evanston.
  130. Gurwitsch A. 1966. 'The Last Work of Edmund Husserl,' in Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology. Northwestern Univ. Press: Evanston. pp 397-447.
  131. Gurwitsch A. 1974. Phenomenology and the Theory of Science, edited by Lester Embree. Northwestern Univ. Press: Evanston.
  132. Gurwitsch A. 1985. Marginal Consciousness, edited by Lester Embree. Ohio University Press: Athens, Ohio.
  133. Guthrie WKC. 1978. A History of Greek Philosophy. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK. Vol II:1-80; Vol V:406.
  134. Guyer, P. 1992. The Cambridge Companion to Kant. Cambridge Univ. Press: Cambridge, UK.
  135. Guyton AC. 2000. Textbook of Medical Physiology, 10th edition. W.B. Saunders Company: Philadelphia, PA.
  136. Guyton AC. 1991. Textbook of Medical Physiology, 8th edition. W.B. Saunders Company: Philadelphia, PA. p656.
  137. Guyton AC, Montani JP, Hall JE. 1988. Computer Models for Designing Hypertension Experiments and Studying Concepts. The American Journal of the Medical Sciences 295(4)320-326.
  138. Guyton AC. 1980. Circulatory Physiology III: Arterial Pressure and Hypertension. WB Saunders Company: Philadelphia.
  139. Guyton AC, Jones CE, Coleman TG. 1973. Circulatory Physiology: Cardiac output and its regulation. WB Saunders Company: Philadelphia.
  140. Guyton AC, Coleman TG, Granger HJ. 1972. Circulation: Overall regulation. Annual Review of Physiology 34:13-46.
  141. Hall SF. 1999. Fear itself. New York Times Magazine. February 28. page 91.
  142. Hamlin C and JM Krois. 2004. Symbolic Forms and Cultural Studies, Ernst Cassirer's Theory of Culture. Yale University Press: New Haven.
  143. Heatherton TF, JL Wineberger Eds. 1993. Can Personality Change? American Psychological Association: 750 First Street, NE, Washington DC 20002.
  144. Hebb DO. 1949. The Organization of Behavior. Wiley: New York.
  145. Hebb DO. 1958. Textbook of Psychology. Saunders: Philadelphia. Chapts 2 and 3.
  146. Helmholtz H. 1971. Selective Writings of Hermann von Helmholtz, R. Kahl ed. Wesleyan University Press: Middletown, CT. 185-186.
  147. Heschel AJ. 1955. God in Search of Man. Farrar, Strauss, & Cudahy: New York page 140.
  148. Hilgard ER, Bower GH. 1966. Theories of Learning, 3rd ed. Meredith Pub: New York.
  149. Hiriyanna M. 1932. Outlines of Indian Philosophy. Allen & Unwin Ltd: London.(342-3; 359-60).
  150. Hodgkin AL, Huxley AF. 1952. A quantitative description of membrane current and its application to conduction and excitation in nerve. J. Physiol. (London) 117: 500-544.
  151. Holton, GJ. 1996. Einstein, History, and Other Passions: The Rebellion against Science at the End of the Twentieth Century. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company: New York.
  152. Holzhey H. and V. Mudroch. 2005. Historical Dictionary of Kant and Kantianism. Scarecrow Press, Inc.: Lanham, MD.
  153. Hughes HS. 1958. Consciousness and Society. Knopf: New York.
  154. Huntington, SP. 2004. Who are we? The Challenges to America's National Identity. Simon and Schuster: New York.
  155. Husserl E. 1911. "Philosophie als strenge Wissenshaft." Logos (1910-1911):289-341. English translation by Q.Lauer: "Philosophy as Rigorous Science." In Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, pp71-147; and in Husserl: Shorter Works, pp166-197.
  156. Husserl E. 1931a. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, Translated by WRB Gibson. MacMillan Co.: New York.
  157. Husserl E. 1931b. Phenomenology and Anthropology, in Realism and the Background of Phenomenology. RM Chisholm ed. 1960. Free Press: Glencoe. pp.132-133.
  158. Husserl E. 1964. The Idea of Phenomenology, trans. William P. Alston and George Nakhnikian. Martinus Nijhoff Press: The Hague.
  159. Husserl E. 1964. The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness, translated by James S. Churchill. Indiana University Press: Bloomington.
  160. Husserl E. 1965. Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, translated with notes and an introduction by Q. Lauer. Harper and Row: New York. (This book consists of two key essays by Husserl: 'Philosophy as a rigorous science' and the 'Vienna Lecture: Philosophy and the crisis of European Man.' The introduction by Lauer is very interesting, also.)
  161. Husserl E. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. by David Carr. Northwestern Univ. Press: Evanston.
  162. Husserl E. 1971. "Phenomenology," Edmund Husserl's Article for the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1927), Revised translation by Richard E. Palmer." in Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 2 (1971): 77-90. Also in McCormick and Elliston eds. 1981. Husserl's Shorter Works. University of Notre Dame: Notre Dame, Indiana.
  163. Husserl E. 1977. Cartesian Meditations, translated by D. Cairns. Martinus Nijhoff: The Hague. pp 34-35.
  164. Husserl E. 1982. Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy, translation by F. Kersten. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers: Boston, MA.
  165. Huxley Aldous. 1944. The Perennial Philosophy. Harper & Row: New York, NY.
  166. Idel M. 1988. Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah. SUNY Press: Albany, NY. page 1.
  167. Ihde D. 1977. Experimental Phenomenology: An Introduction. Putnam's Sons:
  168. Jackendoff RS. 1987. Consciousness and the Computational Mind. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
  169. Jaeger W. 1986. Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, 2 Vols. Oxford Univ Press: New York.
  170. James W. 1902. Varieties of Religious Experience. Reprint 1982. Penquin: New York. 337.
  171. James W. 1950. Principles of Psychology. Dover Publications: New York.
  172. Janet P. 1965. The major symptoms of hysteria; fifteen lectures given in the medical school at Harvard University, 2d ed., with new matters. Hafner Pub. Co.: New York.
  173. Jaspers K. 1954. Way to Wisdom. Yale University Press: New Haven, CT. (16; 33-34; 52-53).
  174. Jaspers K. 1956. Reason and Existenz. Routledge & Kegan Paul: London. (35; 67-69).
  175. Jaspers K. 1962. Kant. Harcourt: San Diego, CA. 90.
  176. Jay M. 1973. The Dialectical Imagination. University of California Press: Berkeley, California.
  177. Jefferson T. et al. 1776. Declaration of Independence of the USA.
  178. John of the Cross. 1574. Dark Night of the Soul (translated and edited by EA Peers (1959) mainly from the 1574 manuscript #3446). Image Books: Garden City, NY. (33-34; 36-39; 61; 93; 100-111; 121).
  179. Jung CG. 1967. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung. Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd.
  180. Kabir. 1916. Songs of Kabir (R. Tagore translation). The Macmillan Company: New York.
  181. Kakar S. 1991. The Analyst and the Mystic. University of Chicago Press: Chicago.
  182. Kandel ER, Schwartz JH, Jessell TM. 1995. Essentials of Neural Science and Behavior. Appleton and Lange: Norwalk, Connecticut.
  183. Kandel ER, Schwartz JH, Jessell TM. 2000. Principles of Neural Science, 4rd edition. McGraw-Hill: New York.
  184. Kandel ER. 2006. In Search of Memory. W.W.Norton and Company: NY.
  185. Kant I. 1929. Critique of Pure Reason, translated by N.K. Smith. St Martin's Press: New York. (A19-A36; B46-52; A106-108; B207-217; A568-571; B596-599).
  186. Kant I. 1967. Kant: Philosophical Correspondance 1759-99. Arnulf Zweig, editor and translator. University of Chicago Press: Chicago 60637.
  187. Kant I. 1977. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, translation by James W. Ellington. Hackett Publication Co: Indianapolis, IN.
  188. Kant I. 1973. Critique of Judgement, translated by J.C. Meredith. Oxford Univ Press: New York.
  189. Kasher A. 1991. The Chomskyan Turn. Blackwell: Oxford, UK.
  190. Kaufman DA. 2006. "Knowledge, Wisdom, and the Philosopher" Philosophy, Vol 81, Number 315, January. Cambridge University Press: UK.
  191. Kaufmann WA. 1980. Discovering the Mind, Volume 1: Goethe, Kant, and Hegel. McGraw-Hill Book Company: New York.
  192. Kaufmann WA. 1980. Discovering the Mind, Volume 2: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Buber. McGraw-Hill Book Company: New York.
  193. Kaufmann WA. 1980. Discovering the Mind, Volume 3: Freud, Adler, and Jung. McGraw-Hill Book Company: New York.
  194. Kaufmann WA. 1964. Existentialism: From Dostoevsky to Sartre. World/Meridian: New York.
  195. Kearney R. 1994. Modern Movements in European Philosophy. Manchester University Press: Manchester, England.
  196. Keener JP, Sneyd J. 1998. Mathematical Physiology. Springer-Verlag: New York. 116-159.
  197. Kelty M. 1985. Aspects of the Monastic Calling. St. Joseph Abbey Press: Spencer, MA. 15-16.
  198. Kim, Alan, "Paul Natorp", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta(ed.),URL=http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2003/entries/natorp/.
  199. King ML. 1958. Stride Toward Freedom. Harpers Brothers: New York, NY.
  200. Kolakowski L. 1975. Husserl and the Search for Certitude. Yale University Press: New Haven and London.
  201. Kolakowski L. 2007. Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group: New York.
  202. Korner, S. 1955. Kant. Penguin Books: Baltimore.
  203. Krois JM. 1987. Cassirer: Symbolic Forms and History. Yale University Press: New Haven.
  204. Kubler-Ross E. 1969. On Death and Dying. Simon and Schuster: New York.
  205. Kurzweil R. 1999. The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. Viking, Penquin: New York.
  206. LaBerge D. 1995. Attentional Processing. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA. 140.
  207. Lane DC. and R Oliva. 1998. The greater whole: Towards a synthesis of system dynamics and soft systems methodology. European Journal of Operational Research 107(1):214-235.
  208. Lane DC. 1999. Social theory and system dynamics practice. European Journal of Operational Research 113(3):501-527.
  209. Lane DC. 2001a. Rerum cognoscere causas: Part I - How do the ideas of system dynamics relate to traditional social theories and the voluntarism/determinism debate? System Dynamics Review 17(2):97-118.
  210. Lane DC. 2001b. Rerum cognoscere causas: Part II - Opportunities generated by the agency/structure debate and suggestions for clarifying the social theoretic position of system dynamics. System Dynamics Review 17(4):293-309.
  211. Laplanche J, Pontalis J.-B. 1973. The Language of Psycho-Analysis, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith with an Introduction by Daniel LaGache. W.W.Norton and Company: New York.
  212. Lauer Q. 1965. Introduction to Husserl's phenomenology and the crisis of philosophy (see Husserl E. 1965). Harper and Row: New York.
  213. Lauer Q. 1978. The Triumph of Subjectivity. Fordham Univ. Press: New York.
  214. Layder D. 1994. Understanding Social Theory. Sage Publications Inc., 2445 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, California 91320.
  215. Lazarus RS, Lazarus BN. 1994. Passion and Reason, Making Sense of Our Emotions. Oxford Univ. Press: New York.
  216. LeDoux J. 1996. The Emotional Brain. Simon and Schuster: New York.
  217. Levinas E. 1979. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, translated by Alphonso Lingis. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers: Boston, MA.
  218. Levinas E. 1981. Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, translated by Alphonso Lingis. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers: Boston, MA.
  219. Lincoln A. 1863. Gettysburg Address.
  220. Lindberg DC, Numbers RL. eds. 1986. God and Nature, Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science. University of California Press: Berkeley, CA.
  221. Luce RD, R. Bush, E. Galanter (eds). 1963. Handbook of Mathematical Psychology, Vol II. Wiley: New York.
  222. Luce RD. 1986. Response Times. Oxford University Press: New York.
  223. MacNab FA. 1966. Estrangement and relationship. Experience with schizophrenics. Indiana University Press: Bloomington.
  224. McCain J. 1999. Faith of My Fathers. Random House: New York, NY. 253-254.
  225. McCormick P and Elliston FA. Eds. 1981. Husserl's Shorter Works. University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame, Indiana.
  226. Marcus G. 2004. The Birth of the Mind. Basic Books: New York.
  227. Masson JM. 2003a. Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst. Ballantine Books: New York.
  228. Masson JM. 2003b. The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. Ballantine Books: New York.
  229. Masson JM. 2003c. My Father's Guru. Ballantine Books: New York.
  230. Masson JM. 1988. Against Therapy. Atheneum: New York.
  231. Masson JM (Ed). 1985. The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess. Harvard University Press: Cambridge.
  232. Mathews R. Wacker W. 2002. The Deviant's Advantage. Crown Business: New York.
  233. Maxwell Nicholas. 2004. Is Science Neurotic? Imperial College Press: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE.
  234. McGeoch JA. Irion AL. 1952. The Psychology of Human Learning. Longmans: New York.
  235. McNally RJ. 2003. Remembering Trauma. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.
  236. Meinong A. 1904. 'The theory of objects.' in ed. R.M. Chisholm. 1982. Realism and the Background of Phenomenology. Ridgeview: Atascadero, CA pp76-117.
  237. Meissner WW. 1984. Psychoanalysis and Religious Experience. Yale University Press: New Haven.
  238. Merleau-Ponty M. 2005. Phenomenology of Perception, translated by Colin Smith. Routledge: New York.
  239. Miller GA. 1956. The magic number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review 63: 81-97.
  240. Miller GA, Galanter E, Pribram KH. 1960. Plans and the Structure of Behavior. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston: New York.
  241. Mills GK and K Campbell. 1974. 'A critique of Gellhorn and Kiely's Mystical states of consciousness. J of Nervous and Mental Disease 159(3): 191-195.
  242. Minkowski E. 1966. Traite de psychopathologie. Presses Universitaires de France: Paris.
  243. Mohanty JN, McKenna WR. 1989. Husserl's Phenomenology: A Textbook. CARP, Inc. and University Press of America, Inc: Lanham, MD
  244. Mohanty JN. 1993. Essays on Indian Philosophy, Traditional and Modern. Oxford University Press: New Delhi.
  245. Mohanty JN. 2000. The Self and Other. Oxford University Press: New Delhi.
  246. Mohanty JN. 2002. Between Two Worlds, East and West: An Autobiography. Oxford University Press: New York.
  247. Montell C. 2002. On Evolution of God-Seeking Mind. Evolution and Cognition Vol.8, No.1:89-107.
  248. Moore GE. 1953. Some Main Problems of Philosophy. George Allen and Unwin LTD: New York.
  249. Moran D. 2000. Introduction to Phenomenology. Routledge: London and New York.
  250. Mowrer, OH. 1950. Learning Theory and Personality Dynamics. Ronald Press: New York.
  251. Mowrer, OH. 1960. Learning Theory and Symbolic Processes. Wiley & Sons: New York.
  252. Natanson, M. 1962. Introduction, in Schutz A. 1962. Collected Papers I, The Problem of Social Reality. Martinus Nijhoff: The Hague. pp XXV-XLVII.
  253. Natanson, M. 1973. Edmund Husserl, Philosopher of Infinite Tasks. Northwestern Univ. Press: Evanston, IL.
  254. Natorp P. 2004. Plato's Theory of Ideas. An Introduction to Idealism. (First English translation of Paul Natorp's 'Platos Ideenlehre' from 1903/1921. Edited with an introduction by Vasilis Politis. Translation by Vasilis Politis and John Connolly. Postscript by Andre Laks.) Academia Verlag: Sankt Augustin, Germany.
  255. Natorp P. (in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), (see also Kim 2003)
  256. Null GT. 1989. 'Husserl's Doctrine of Essence' in Mohanty JD and McKenna WR. 1989.
  257. Nunberg H. 1955. Principles of Psycho-Analysis. International Univ Press: New York, NY. 146.
  258. Osaka Naoyuki (ed). 2002. Neural Basis of Consciousness. John Benjamins Publishing Co.
  259. Osgood CE. 1953. Method and Theory in Experimental Psychology. Oxford Univ. Press: Oxford. UK.
  260. Pinker S. 1994. The Language Instinct. Morrow & Co.: New York.
  261. Plato. 1980. The Collected Dialogues. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ. (Symposium 210D-211D; 214E-222B; Republic 443D-444A; 508D; Phado 115-118; Letters 7:344A; Timaeus 37E-38A.)
  262. Plotinus. 1991. Enneads (MacKenna's translation is best). Penquin: London. (III.7:11; V.8:1).
  263. Preus A. 2007. Historical Dictionary of Ancient Greek Philosophy. The Scarecrow Press, Inc: Lanham, Maryland.
  264. Primozic DT. 2001. On Merleau-Ponty. Wadsworth: Belmont, CA 94002-3098.
  265. Raymond ES. 2001. The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on LINUX and open source by an accidental revolutionary. O'Reilly and Associates, Inc: Beijing, Cambridge, Farnham, Koln, Paris, Sebastopol, Taipei, Tokyo.
  266. Ree J and Urman JO, eds. 2005. The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Culture, 3rd edition. Routledge: New York.
  267. Reed D. 2007. Origins of Analytic Philosophy. Continuum International Publishing Group: London and New York.
  268. Reinhold HA, ed. 1960. The Soul Afire: Revelations of the Mystics. Meridian Books, Inc.: New York.
  269. Reppert SM, Weaver DR. 2001. Molecular analysis of mammalian circadian rhythms. Annu. Rev. Physiol. 2001. 63:647-76.
  270. Revel J-F. 1991. The Flight from Truth. Random House: New York, NY. 8-9.
  271. Richardson A and T. Uebel, eds. 2007. The Cambridge Companion to Logical Empiricism. Cambridge University Press: New York.
  272. Richardson AW. 1996. Introduction: Origins of Logical Positivism. In RN. Giere and AW Richardson (eds). Origins of Logical Positivism. University of Minnesota: Minneapolis.
  273. Richardson GP. Pugh AL III. 1981. Introduction to System Dynamics Modeling with Dynamo. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
  274. Richardson GP. 1991. Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory. University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia.
  275. Richmond B. Peterson S. 1992. STELLA II. High Performance Systems: Hanover,NH.
  276. Ricoeur P. 1967. Husserl, an Analysis of His Phenomenology. Northwestern Univ. Press: Evanston, IL.
  277. Ritzer G. 1996. Sociological Theory (4th edn). McGraw-Hill: London.
  278. Runes DD. 1983. The Dictionary of Philosophy. Philosophical Library: New York.
  279. Russell B. 1905. 'On Meinong's On assumptions (1902).' Mind.
  280. Russell B. 1945. The History of Western Philosophy. Simon & Shuster: New York.
  281. Saradananda S. 1952. Ramakrishna: The Great Master. Sri Ramakrishna Math: Mylapore, Madras, India. (It is important to get the unrevised 1952 edition.)
  282. Sarvagatananda S. 2008. Meditation as Spiritual Culmination, using Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali: (These two Volumes of Lectures and Comments on Raja Yoga by Swami Sarvagatananda are called, Meditation as Spiritual Culmination: Vol. I and II. Advaita Ashrama Publication Department. 5 Dehi Entally Road, Kolkata 700 014, India). In order to contact Advaita Ashrama Publication Department, please use: www.advaitaashrama.org and mail@advaitaashrama.org.
  283. Sass LA. 1994. The Paradoxes of Delusion: Wittgenstein, Schreber, and the Schizophrenic Mind. Cornell University Press: Ithica, NY.
  284. Schacter D. 1995. Memory Distortion. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA. 26-27.
  285. Schilpp, PA. eds. 1949. The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer. Tudor Publishing Company: New York.
  286. Schmidt, RF. 1978/1985. Fundamentals of Neurophysiology. Springer-Verlag: New York.
  287. Scholem G. 1961. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Schocken Books: New York, NY. 131.
  288. Schouten JF, Bekker JAM. 1967. Reaction time and accuracy. Acta Psychologica 27:143-153.
  289. Schutz A. 1962a. Collected Papers I, The Problem of Social Reality. Martinus Nijhoff: The Hague.
  290. Schutz A. 1962b. Common Sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human Action, in Collected Papers I, The Problem of Social Reality. Martinus Nijhoff: The Hague. pp 3-47.
  291. Schutz A. 1967. The Phenomenology of the Social World, translated by George Walsh and Frederick Lehnert. Northwestern Univ. Press: Evanston.
  292. Searle JR. 1983. Intentionality. Cambridge University Press: New York, NY.
  293. Searle JR. 1993. Rationality and realism, what is at stake? Daedalus 122(4): 55-83.
  294. Searle JR. 2000. Consciousness. Annual Review of Neuroscience. 23:557-578.
  295. Shepherd GM. 1988. Neurobiology. Oxford University Press: New York, NY.
  296. Sherrington CS. 1906. Integrated Action of the Nervous System. Yale university Press: New Haven.
  297. Sherrington CS. 1948. The Integrated Action of the Nervous System, with a new forward by the author. Yale university Press: New Haven.
  298. Siddheswarananda. 1942. Meditation According to Yoga-Vedanta. Reprint 1966. Ramakrishna Ashrama Press: Trichur DT, India. (32-33; 38).
  299. Silber J. 1999. 'Procedure or dogma: the core of Liberalism.' The New Criterion, May 1999, pp 4-12.
  300. Simon HA. 1982. Models of Bounded Rationality. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
  301. Simon HA, Kaplan CA. 1993. Foundations of cognitive science. Annual Review of Psychology 44: 1-47.
  302. Smart JJC. 1963. Philosophy and Scientific Realism. Routledge & Kegan Paul: London. page 2.
  303. Smith B, Smith DW. 1995. The Cambridge Companion to Husserl. Cambridge University Press: New York.
  304. Smith NK. 1992. Commentary to Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" Humanities Paperback Library, Inc: Atlantic Highlands, NJ.
  305. Smith NV. 2004. Chomsky: ideas and ideals, second edition. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK.
  306. Smith R. 1997. The Human Sciences. W.W. Norton & Company: New York.
  307. Southern Baptist Convention. 1991. The Baptist Hymnal. Convention Press: Nashville, TN.
  308. Spiegelberg H. 1981. "On the Misfortunes of Edmund Husserl's Encyclopaedia Britannica Article 'Phenomenology'" in Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 2 (1971): 74-76. Also in McCormick and Elliston eds. 1981. Husserl's Shorter Works. University of Notre Dame: Notre Dame, Indiana.
  309. Spiegelberg H. 1994. The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, Third revised and Enlarged Edition. Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht, The Netherland.
  310. Spinoza. 1982. Ethics. Hackett Publishing Company: Indianapolis, IN. (V: Pr 21; V: Pr 23).
  311. Stace WT. 1932. The Theory of Knowledge and Existence. Clarendon Press: Oxford. Chapter V.
  312. Stace WT. 1952. Religion and the Modern Mind. Lippincott: Philadelphia, PA.
  313. Stace WT. 1960. Mysticism and Philosophy. Lippincott: Philadelphia, PA. Chapter III.
  314. Stadler F, eds. 2003. The Vienna Circle and Logical Empiricism, Re-evaluation and Future Perspectives. Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht/Boston/London.
  315. Stapleford S. 2008. Kant's Transcendental Arguments, Disciplining Pure Reason. Continuum International Publishing Group: London and New York.
  316. Stein,JF. 1982. An Introduction to Neurophysiology. Blackwell Scientific Publications: Boston, MA.
  317. Sterman JD. 2000. Business Dynamics. Irwin McGraw-Hill: Boston,MA.
  318. Sterman JD. 1981. The Energy Transition and the Economy, Volumes 1 and 2, PhD Thesis, MIT. MIT Archives. Cambridge, MA
  319. Strawson PF. 1966. The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Methuen & Co LTD: London.
  320. Strawson PF. 1992. Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosophy. Oxford University Press: Oxford and New York.
  321. Strawson PF. 1997. 'Kant's Philosophy of Mind,' in The Oxford Companion to the Mind, ed. R.L.Gregory. Oxford University Press: Oxford and New York. pp406-8.
  322. Stroker E. 1993. Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology. Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA.
  323. Strogatz SH. 1994. Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos. Addison-Wesley: Reading, MA.
  324. Sullivan HS. 1953. Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry. WW Norton & Company: New York.
  325. Suppe F. 1977. The Structure of Scientific Theories. University of Illinois Press: Urbana, IL.
  326. Suzuki DT. 1970. Zen and Japanese Culture. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ. 139.
  327. Tagore R. 1914. Sadana: The Realization of Life. Macmillen: New York, NY.
  328. Tamini IK. 1976. Glimpses into the Psychology of Yoga. Theosophy Publishing House: Wheaton, IL. page vii.
  329. Taylor E. 1999. Shadow Culture, Psychology and Spirituality in America. Counterpoint: Washington D.C.
  330. Taylor E. 1996. William James On Consciousness Beyond The Margin. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ.
  331. Tedeschi RG, CL Park, and LG Calhoun, Eds. 1998. Post Traumatic Growth: Positive Change in the Aftermath of Crisis. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers: Mahwah, NJ.
  332. Tedeschi RG, LG Calhoun. 1995. Trauma and Transformation: Growth in the Aftermath of Suffering. SAGE Publications, Inc: Thousand Oaks, CA
  333. The Bhagavad Gita (Edited and translated by S. Radhakrishnan). 1989. Unwin Paperbacks: London and Boston.
    (II:31-32; II:54-72; VI:19; XI:55).
  334. The Holy Bible, King James version [Old(Judaic) and New Testament (Christian)]. [Deuteronomy 4:29; 6:4. (Moses); Jeremiah 29:13; Jonah 2:1-10; Malachi 3:2-3; Psalm 23; John 10:30; 3:3 (Jesus); Luke 17.21 (Jesus); Matthew 5:8; 6:14; 7:13-14; 10:39; 22:37. (Jesus)]
  335. The Principle Upanishads (Edited and translated by S. Radhakrishnan). 1992. Unwin: London.
    Katha Upanishad (I:3.9; I:3.14); Kena Upanishad I:5; Mundaka Upanishad II:2.8-9.
  336. Thevenaz P. 1962. What Is Phenomenology? And Other Essays. Quadrangle Books, Inc: Chicago.
  337. Thorndike EL. 1913. The Psychology of Learning. New York.
  338. Tillich P. 1980. The courage to be. Yale University Press: New Haven.
  339. Tlumak J. 2007. Classical Modern Philosophy. Routledge: London and New York.
  340. Tocqueville A de. 2002. Democracy in America, edited and translated by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, 722p. University of Chicago Press: Chicago.
  341. Tocqueville A de. 2004. Democracy in America, trans Arthur Goldhammer. The Library of America: New York.
  342. Tomberlin JE editor. 1999. Philosophical Perspectives 13 Epistemology, 1999, a Supplement to Nous. Blackwell Publishers: Cambridge and Oxford, UK.
  343. Torvalds L. Diamond D. 2001. Just for Fun: The story of an accidental revolutionary. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc: New York.
  344. Trivers RL. 2002. Natural Selection and Social Theory: Selected Papers of Robert L. Trivers. Rutgers University Press:Piscataway, NJ.
  345. Trivers RL. 1985. Social Evolution. Benjamin/Cummings Pub: Menlo Park, Calif.
  346. Tuomi I. 2002. Networks of Innovation: Change and meaning in the age of the internet. Oxford University Press., New York.
  347. UUA. 1963. Free Church in a Changing World. UUA, 25 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108. (page 30)
  348. UUA. 2005. Engaging Our Theological Diversity, A Report by the Commission on Appraisal of the Unitarian Universalist Association. UUA, 25 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108. (page 27)
  349. Vaillant GE. 1997. Wisdom of the Ego. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA. 118.
  350. Vander A. et al. 1998. Human Physiology, 7th edition. McGraw-Hill: Boston, MA.
  351. Van der Kolk BA, et al. 1996. Traumatic Stress. Guilford Press: New York.
  352. Van der Kolk BA, et al. 1987. Psychological Trauma. American Psychiatric Press: Washington, DC.
  353. Velarde-Mayol V. 2000. On Husserl. Wadsworth: Belmont, CA 94002-3098.
  354. Vivekananda S. 1893. Addresses at the Parliament of Religion. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, (Reprint 1994). Advaita Ashrama: Calcutta. (Vol. 1: page 19.)
  355. Vivekananda S. 1970. Karma-Yoga and Bhakti-Yoga, revised edition. Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center. New York. (This is the book I carried in my back pocket during An Engineer's Story.)
  356. Weber M. 1949. Max Weber on the Methodology of the Social Sciences, translated and edited by Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch. The Free Press: Glencoe, IL.
  357. Weber M. 1957. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, translated by A.M Henderson and Talcott Parsons. The Free Press: Glencoe, IL.
  358. Welton D. 1999. The Essential Husserl, ed. Donn Welton. Indiana University Press: Bloomington.
  359. Welton D. 2002. The Other Husserl:The Horizons of Transcendental Phenomenology. Indiana University Press: Bloomington.
  360. Welton D. 2003. The New Husserl: A Critical Reader, ed. Donn Welton. Indiana University Press: Bloomington.
  361. Wertheim M. 2004. 'Scientists at Work: Francis Crick and Cristof Koch: After the Double Helix: Unraveling the Mysteries of the State of Being.' New York Times, April 13,2004, page D3.
  362. Wickelgren WA. 1979. Cognitive Psychology. Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 270-271.
  363. Wilson EO. 1998a. Back from chaos. The Atlantic Monthly 281(3):41-62.
  364. Wilson EO. 1998b. Consilience. Knopf: New York, NY.
  365. Wolpert A. 1992. 'Application of system dynamics to the study of a religious experience.' Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of the System Dynamics Society. Utrecht, the Netherlands. The System Dynamics Society: Albany, New York.
  366. Wolpert A. 1996. System Dynamics for Beginners. (Self published)
  367. Wolpert A. 1996. A Meditation on Mystical Union Using System Dynamics, version 1.3. (Self published)
  368. Wolpert A. 2001. General Theory of Religion. Proceedings of the 19th International Conference of the System Dynamics Society. Atlanta, GA. The System Dynamics Society: Albany, New York. USA.
  369. Wolpert A. 2002. Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP). Proceedings of the 20th International Conference of the System Dynamics Society. Palermo, Italy. The System Dynamics Society: Albany, New York. USA. (This is an older version of the TFP methodology. It is now obsolete. At the present time please use the TFP methodology presented at Key #5 in Chapter 2).
  370. Wolpert A. 2009. Web Site: General Theory of Religion Homepage. http://theworld.com/~awolpert
  371. Woodworth RS, Ladd GT. 1911. Elements of Physiological Psychology. Scribners: New York.
  372. Woodworth RS, Schlosberg H. 1954. Experimental Psychology, 2nd ed. Henry Holt & Co. Publishers: New York.
Arlen Wolpert
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
http://theworld.com/~awolpert/
(Draft of November 15,2009)