The first thing that emerging consciousness discerns is that it is subject to suffering and is continuously confronted with choices in the form of opposing alternatives. It is tempted from the beginning to cling to that which seems to mitigate its pain and to shun that which seems to feed its pain. And no matter how intensely it clings to the former, the latter does not disappear. In fact, the latter intensifies in proportion as the clinging to the former intensifies. And this is because reality is made of both and not just one. The more intensely you cling to God, the more intensely and closely the Devil pursues you. The more intensely you try to go up, the more real down becomes. Consciousness makes choices in the attempt to avoid suffering and in the process intensifies the reality of the things that make it suffer. And the very act of clinging to one over the other as a way of dealing with reality is to move away from reality and therefore lessen the chances of solving the problem. When consciousness begins clinging to aspects of reality and trying to deny others then fear of reality becomes radicalized and ingrained. It does not then occur to consciousness that reality might be deeper than this dilemma that has already enslaved it. Historically humanity has come up with three major cultural ways of dealing with this dilemma problem: 1) God will bring salvation by permanently separating the saved people from the 'evil' aspect of reality -- this is the position of the major monotheistic religions. 2) Acquiring the quality of spiritual transcendence will remove one from the context of the dualistic dilemma -- this is the position of the major spiritual philosophies. 3) Do your best to attain enough control and power in the world to mitigate the forces that can make you suffer and then know that when you die you will be annihilated and the problem will no longer exist -- this is the position of the rational materialists.
I reject all three of these proposals and offer a different way. This way is to be found within the reality of consciousness itself. Consciousness itself is a fusion of opposites that transforms the opposites into a new and deeper reality. It is not a separation from or a transcendence of the opposites. It is the opposites themselves fused and transformed. The solution to the problem of the fear of death and the blind clinging to meaningless life that makes humanity so vulnerable to the nihilism of the oligarchs lies in the fusion of life and death themselves into a new reality. Consciousness can do this. I know this from my personal experience. It is not a belief. It is something that I know and that I am. I am not life threatened by death. I am life/death threatened by nothing but the absence of growth, which it is in my power to prevent. But this is not a static posture. It is does not end with the elimination of both the fear of death and clinging to life. This elimination through transformation/fusion results in a new reality and that is what I want to talk about. And I am going to refer to my own experiences in dealing with extreme physical and emotional pain in life-threatening illness as a way into this subject.
About twenty years ago, I contracted meningitis. This is an infection and inflammation of the meninges, which are membrane coatings of areas of the brain and spinal cord. This infection can be bacterial or viral. If it is bacterial meningitis then there is very good chance that the infection will lead to death. If it does not lead to death then it will still certainly result in considerable neural and/or brain damage. Newborns that contract bacterial meningitis either die or are retarded in some way. It is a very destructive infection. Most adults who contract bacterial meningitis die.
Viral meningitis is not as dangerous as the bacterial form, but it is still capable of causing death or crippling if one survives it. One of the things that the two forms of meningitis have in common is a depth of physical pain that is capable of causing emotional trauma. This is a pain that terrorizes and warps ego identity and causes it to seek a way out the physical reality it is held by. If it doesn't kill you, it may well make you literally wish that it would. It is a pain that dissolves most of your assumptions about reality. It is a pain that does not come in waves; rather it is continuous and in the entire body. And there is nothing to take the pain away. I can tell you from experience that morphine has no effect on it at all. The pain bent my body into a fetal position that I could not undo. I could not uncurl my tormented body for a month. But I survived viral meningitis.
The doctor who watched over me was very frank and told me after the illness had passed that he would not have been surprised if I had died. The illness permanently took away much of my independent finger movement, which meant that playing the piano beyond anything more than basic chord banging was now only a memory. For two weeks after the illness had passed, I remained cross-eyed. Fortunately my body found a way to gradually correct this malformation. But the most important fact about my experience of meningitis was what happened in my consciousness.
When the pain was at its peak, I found a place of consciousness that I had not been aware of before. This was by no means a place of bliss or even pleasure. Finding it did not make the pain go away. What finding it did do was show me that I would survive and that I was more than the pain. It gave me room to breathe. Room to move on. It gave me the ability to walk through the fire and not be defeated. It gave me the ability to see that reality was more than what I was experiencing.
Ten years after this I went through another life-threatening illness. This time it was my pancreas that became inflamed. Chronic pancreatitis is not as painful as meningitis, but close. Morphine does have at least some effect on its pain. But it is also a very dangerous illness. People that die from pancreatitis literally die from shock. I almost died in this way (my doctor confirmed this). But again I survived. And this time what happened in my consciousness was even more amazing.
A difference between meningitis and chronic pancreatitis is that the pancreatitis, once you contract it, generally does not go way. Once you have it, you have it. And then you have to live with its periodic 'flare-ups', which are unpleasant in the extreme (days of fever, vomiting, and the danger of death by shock). But in my case the pancreatitis went away and it went away because I learned in a new depth of consciousness how to heal myself of this disease. The doctor admitted to me that he had no explanation for my recovery from the disease. And of course he had no belief whatsoever in my explanation of my recovery from the disease. But that was alright; I didn't need his confirmation to know what I knew. So what I am going to describe to you now concerning the relationship between the physical body, the psyche, and consciousness (which goes to the heart of my view of the fear of reality that makes oligarchic power possible) is something I began to really learn about in the process of my being 'miraculously' healed of chronic pancreatitis.
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