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, Bogetz 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 10 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 Chapter 1). 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.
At this critical stage of my budding religious life, the key direction 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 3 or 4 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:
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 the whole of society. 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.
However, seen from the present perspective, I was mainly trying to follow my blessed heart, my dear and lovely heart that was now free and growing and developing again after the release of the trauma during PMU. 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 choices during college 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. Oh, my blessed heart: I will be true to thee.
As I proceeded in this way, my savings ran out in March 1973. Again, seen from the present perspective, that was what my blessed heart was waiting for. It forced me 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 the cab driver is 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, some of the older boys used to hang 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 instead I stayed home and listened to the play by play radio broadcast of the Minneapolis Millers baseball team. 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 is Respect.
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 variety of the working environment in the US. 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 sexual trauma at the age of 9 or 10 - slowly and naturally and prayerfully rebuilt and reintegrated itself as I grew toward manhood. Nevertheless, in 1984 when I was 52, my maturity was probably only that of a 15 or 20 or 30 year old. My blessed heart was still growing, but I was more balanced and more at peace with myself.
Here are a number of insights that emerged from this 25 year search:
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 read 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 Chapter 1).
It wasn't long before my preliminary work indicated that SD had the potential to successfully analyze my 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 and 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 would be 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.
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 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, critical 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 my inner life. As a result, I have finally opened up those truths and am continuing to open them up after a long scientific analysis of PMU that began in 1984. This book is centered on those truths.
However, despite the fact that considerable progress toward the truth has been uncovered and understood by the scientific analyses of PMU in this book, I am finding that this progress is not yet acceptable to cultural and scientific authorities, academic leaders, and leaders of religion. These leaders have the skills - and the power given to them by their culture - to either compel or influence the minds of other 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 nature of religion, at the very deepest level. It is fitting and proper that the professional scholars and their leaders take their time to try to comprehend and integrate their minds with such depth and to evaluate the possible impact these ideas could have on a society.
I tend to believe that, in the long run, truth is always the best course to take. My position is like 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 nature of religion and the inner life and integrating my mind and heart with the greatness residing there.
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 field. The reason is quite simple. If engineers do not abide by truth, the machine 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. For certain conditions, this could undermine the performance and reliability of the machine. Under 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 to comprehend 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 and its quest for truth.
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 question facing mankind: The understanding of the operation of the mind and its relationship to the heart and to core consciousness during a religious experience. My high tech analysis of my religious experience uses the formalized system dynamics (SD) methodology and the SD-based feedback phenomenological (FP) 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. Now, I need to take a little time to clarify this paragraph and the various paragraphs above it, because these paragraphs are among the most crucial paragraphs of this 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 the high tech analyses of purgation made between 1984 and the present and shown now in Chapters 6, 7, and 8 of this book. This key information will be important for our understanding as we proceed: