Here I would like to share my developing thoughts on my philosophy of mind.
Present understanding: "The Mind is One, the Tension of Two, the Relation of Three, and all Three"
For me, the mind is a developing and unfolding project of increasing consciousness. A Pierre Teilhard de Chardin quote I read recently comes to mind:
"Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge."
I view human, like Nietzsche, as a *bridge*. The entire history of mankind for me forms a transitional phase between animal and "God." That is to say "theosis" - "God became man so that man may become God" - St. Irenaus.
For me, the process of theosis is continually unfolding and responsibility for every human. Morality is consciousness, and the becoming more conscious of ourselves as individual and collective humans, our patterns of engagement individually and collectively, is an imperative. The end nature of consciousness is to know ourselves.
Mystic understandings of God relate the equivalence of knowing oneself and knowing God; that is, to oneself is to know God and vice versa. St. Angelus has written how God cannot exist if "I do not exist." How does one come to know oneself, that is, increase one's knowledge of oneself?
For me, the process is "creativity." What is creativity? I will add a page for this, but, a short understanding for me is this: creativity is a reconciliation of rational opposites. I do not believe that there are any oppositions and that God is Creativity, that is, the greatest union of opposites. In the brain, creativity is the dynamic oscillation of two networks which have opposing forms of cognition. All mental illness are some form of dysregulation between networks, and my concept of the healthy mind is one that is creative, that is, one that is *continously* creative, continually coming to greater knowledge of oneself. To know oneself is to know God, and also, to know others, who are also God. Every human is incarnated.
The phrase at the start: "The mind is One, the tension of two, the relation of three, and all three." In truth, this is true of the "Self" and also "God". The greater self-realization of one's mind is the greater realization of God. The structure of reality *is* this structure for me, and also, the structure of God. That is, God is reality, and Christ confesses reality in the confessional of His incarnation.
For me, the human mind begins as "One". It experiences all things as connected to itself: there is no "other." This is life in the womb, and after the trauma of birth, the relationship with the mother who is an extension of the child's self. The child's concept of self transforms from "One" to a tension of opposites as it *encounters resistance from the world*, this symbolically in the form of the father/Father. The child's first experience of resistance is also its first experience of self - the first time the child's will is denied is the first time he learns he has a will. From this tension between self and Other, child and Father, the child develops a sense of self that contains restriction, limitation, rule, regulation, and inhibition. This imposition from without becomes internalized within and the child develops an inner tension regarding his will and how he ought to act. According to the father's resistance, the child acts in accordance with this imposition without, this counter will, this "super-ego". However, as the child enters late adolescence and adult life, the tension of opposites becomes a developmental paradigm for the development of the third mind. That is, as the young adult now faces the possibility of their responsibility for their life, they can give up the burden and therefore the tension and just follow an external standard, or, they can live within their own soul a progressive tension of opposites and anxiety leading to greater development of the third mind and an integration which enables the individual to, as it were, *create themselves* and become more like God.
This development in the individual child I also see implied within the history of mankind as such, with the present stage that of the continuance of the cycle of opposites that leads to progressive greater integration of the third mind both individually and collectively. For me, the Second Coming is an internal phenomenon.
Peter Sloterdijk has written a book titled "You must change your life" where he presses forward this basic idea of humans as creatures with the ability to transform both their environment *and* themselves. This basic idea - our recursive relationship with the environment - is the essence of the psychology of the future and, as Sloterdijk writes, something we must encounter. But, as a reader, does this not seem self-evident? That we create ourselves? Erich Fromm in Escape from Freedom wrote about the development of Nazi Germany as a response to freedom, a pole shift from excessive freedom to excessive authoritarianism, and his key takeway from his studies was that most people, when given freedom, will willingly relinquish it. Kierkegaard writes about the "dizziness of freedom" and that the person who wishes to become authentic, that is responsible, must, as it were, bear anxiety. The more authentic one wishes to become, the more anxiety one must be willing to bear. One might imagine that the greatest authenticity is perhaps the greatest crucifixion.
From where does this "fear" of freedom come from? The answer is very basic, and all answers come from within ourselves and our own life experiences. To step away and out of the group, to stand on one's own two feet, is almost a denial of the basic biological reality of organisms. Isolation, the willingness to step away from collective immortality, to define oneself as an individual who needs no definition - what could be more terrifying? And what have we learned about the horrors that mankind is capable of when in groups? The mystic tradition always begins with the individual stepping out of the group, going up to the mountains, to the desert. The imperative of solitude in order to gain spiritual insight should reveal something integrative about spiritual wisdom to us.
Neuroscientists are increasingly converging on the view that the highest form of intelligence is meta-cognition - the ability to think about thinking. Well, how else could one think about oneself if one did not separate themselves from themselves? We can find a positive valuation of modern alienation here. Some philosophers think that consciousness was a mistake, that heightened consciousness is a burden and a suffering, and although that is true, I believe this suffering is akin to the birth pangs of a new type of human, a type of human not born in generations, but, one born across thousands of years of history.
What is isolation? For me, it is an expression of the human organism growing into greater consciousness.
I enjoy writing short aphoristic sentences that encapsulate my ideas: here are a few. God is the God who becomes man so that he may once more become God.
God is the man could not live without becoming a child.
God is the self that is constantly becoming itself.
God is the self that returns to itself.
God is the self that exiles itself.
God is a perpetual return and exile.