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Martin Lass: S.O.L.A.R.®
Beyond Materiality. Beyond Spirituality.
Toward the Complete Human Being…
The Age of Reason and the Intellect
—The Human Psyche in Crisis
by Martin Lass
ThWe live in the age of reason, of the intellect, of rationality, of logic, of science, and of seemingly miraculous technologies that spring from all of this. It seems a simple and obvious fact that the Age of Reason has brought with it many benefits in terms of our quality of life and in terms of our overall understanding of the world in which we live. The human intellect and all that it offers is a formidable tool. It gives us great power to cut through the darkness of ignorance, illusion, superstition, and emotional vagaries and to find tangible and practical solutions to the challenges and problems of our daily lives.
As true as this may be, there’s another side to this picture—a side that it’s almost blasphemous to suggest in the company of a race that has put the human intellect on such a towering pedestal. The other side of this picture shows the human psyche in crisis.
The picture includes not only the personal crises that we each experience in our personal lives in our search for greater understanding, meaning, purpose, integration, healing, wholeness, connection, truth, light, love, and oneness. It also includes the global crises we see around us, not the least of which are wars, terrorism, racism, fundamentalism, ecological crises, financial crises, and political manipulations.
The cause of the miracles of the modern age and of the personal and global crises of the human psyche is the same. Let’s explore what this cause consists of, what its nature is, and how we can begin to address the crises but while retaining the personal and global benefits that the human intellect can bring us, materially and spiritually.
Let’s begin by comparing the general state of the human psyche, individually and collectively, to an idiot savant. An idiot savant is a person who has a genius-level talent in some narrow area of their lives, such as being able to instantly tell us what day of the week July 7, 2038 will be without looking at a calendar; or being able to memorize a phone book just by flipping through the pages once; or being able to hear a Beethoven sonata once and then immediately play it back, note perfect.
In all other areas of their life, though, they are as good as crippled. They may be unable to hold a coherent conversation with others, unable to dress themselves, unable to feel any compassion for others’ suffering, or unable to remember what day of the week today is. Often, idiot savantism is associated with, or related to, autism, where the sufferer is emotionally cut off from the world.
One might think that I’ve presented an exaggerated analogy to make a point or just to shock, but I assure you that the human psyche as it stands today is far closer to idiot savantism or autism than it is to being truly balanced and whole.
To begin to understand what I mean, let’s review the S.O.L.A.R.® understanding of the human psyche, which we presented several months ago. (See the archives: “Human Natures”.)
The human being, at its current stage of evolution, consists primarily of three basic Natures: Physical Nature (which includes the sensory apparatus, motor mechanism, musculature, instinctual functions, autonomic and voluntary nervous systems, and procreative functions), Emotional Nature (which includes, again, the nervous system, plus the hormonal and lymphatic systems, the circulatory systems, and the lungs), and Mental Nature (which includes the brain, the spine, the nervous system again, the electromagnetic system of the body, the neuronal network, and much more). Notice how the nervous system exists in all Natures; it connects all the Natures, and, as such, gives us the future possibility of bringing greater balance, harmony, unity, and true wakefulness to our whole being.
Each Nature has its own consciousness and its own way of seeing and dealing with the world. Each represents a different “organ of perception” in the same way that eyes and ears perceive the world differently according to their unique modalities.
In fact, each Nature has its own life. Three separate “layers” of consciousness exist in the one human being, living concurrently with each other, but not necessarily in harmony with each other. Moreover, each Nature is generally unaware of much that goes on in the other Natures.
Let’s consider a few examples to illustrate the point. Do you think about brushing your teeth? Or does your body know how to do this without the participation of your intellect? What about riding a bicycle? Tying your shoes? Driving a car? Can’t we be thinking about something completely unrelated, like what will happen at work later in the day, and not even be aware that our body is continuing to carry out these tasks?
And what about when we get emotionally upset by something or when we “fall” in love? Doesn’t this often interfere with clear thought? And doesn’t this sometimes disrupt the body, perhaps making us lose our appetite, giving us a headache, or creating other physical tensions?
And what about when we become absorbed in a mental task, like a crossword puzzle, reading a good book, or simply daydreaming? Where does our awareness of the body go? And where does our awareness of our emotional state go? Granted, our mental activity may affect our body and emotions, such as when, in the midst of a heated argument, our blood pressure goes up! But we are generally unaware of these effects unless they make themselves known in a painful way. We become so identified with our thoughts that everything else almost ceases to exist for us.
In truth, all these three “lives” are going on constantly. They never stop. They never actually “go” anywhere. But we tend to be more aware of one of these at any given time than the others. Moreover, we tend to favor one over the other, and we’re each different in this respect. Some people lean more toward their Mental Nature, others more toward their Emotional Nature, and others more toward their Physical Nature. And this can change from moment to moment, although the primary leaning in any given person generally remains the same throughout their life.
When one Nature predominates over the other, each of our three Natures tends to “live” a separate life, either disconnected from the others or unconsciously influencing the others in disruptive and disharmonizing ways.
In order to understand what we’re talking about here and what we’re facing, it’s necessary to understand what we mean by consciousness. What we call our waking consciousness is very far from the true waking consciousness of a complete human being. It’s much closer to hypnosis or to actually being asleep.
Our so-called waking consciousness consists of all the automatic, mechanical, and mostly unconscious impulses and reactions of our unaligned and unawakened three basic Natures. As a whole, this unaligned conglomeration of impulses and reactions of our three basic Natures I call Material Nature.
We might initially think that what I’m talking about here is only our so-called unconscious part, but, in truth, it’s everything that we currently are, even while living under that illusion that we operate and act consciously and with free will. (Modern neurology will confirm that our impressions of having waking consciousness, of perceiving reality, and of having free will are actually elaborate illusions created by our brain—at least until we begin to strive for a more truly conscious and intentional life.)
To put our so-called waking consciousness into perspective, ancient knowledge recognized four levels of human consciousness: physical sleep, waking “sleep,” which is our so-called waking consciousness, self-consciousness, and objective consciousness. Humans today live most of their lives in the first two states.
The third state—self-consciousness—would consist of bringing our three basic Natures into greater wakefulness, alignment, and unity. But before this is possible, we must first understand the nature of the way we currently are, beyond our usual Mental Nature illusions and infatuations. And we must see it and understand it in ourselves before we will be truly able to see it and understand it in people around us.
The essence of the matter is simple, although not so easy to see: the current crisis of the human psyche is directly related to the current infatuation with, and predominance of, Mental Nature, while minimizing, neglecting, and otherwise denigrating Physical and Emotional Natures.
Moreover, in the current human psyche, Mental Nature mirrors the genius side of the idiot savant, whereas Physical and Emotional Natures mirror the crippled side. But even though we say “genius side” in reference to modern Mental Nature, this genius is one-sided, warped, and only truly useful along a narrow corridor of our lives.
Given the above, let’s talk specifically about Mental Nature…
As we’ve asserted, in the society in which we have all grown up, the intellect (Mental Nature) has been increasingly infatuated while our other organs of perception—Physical and Emotional Natures—have been increasingly minimized, neglected, and even denigrated. Part of the reason for this is the incredible successes we’ve had in applying our Mental Nature skills to the practical problems and challenges of the world, which one cannot argue with.
But this, combined with an ever-increasing focus on material comfort and pleasure, which the Mental-Nature-inspired technological revolution has given us, has led us all into the illusion that the intellect can “solve” any problem and that intellectual reason is the one and only way to understanding. In the process, our physical and emotional lives have been left behind, as though they are second-class citizens, or as though they are just side-dishes to the main fare, so to speak. And even where issues and challenges of physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being are concerned, the thinking around this is that science and the intellect can solve these, too, by simply applying reason, logic, a set of parameters, or a series of pre-defined steps. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
The truth of the matter is that Mental Nature on its own can truly understand nothing in a complete way—nothing other than basic mathematics and Boolean logic (either/or, yes/no, “if this, then that” kind of logic, for example). It’s simply the way the front-brain, which is Mental Nature’s primary home, is constructed. It doesn’t matter how many ideas we cram into it, its basic operating system is limited in what it can do. To use an analogy, tweezers are useless if we wish to move a mountain, and a chain saw is unsuitable for performing brain surgery. Similarly, Mental Nature, as a tool, is suited for certain things and completely unsuited to other things. And Mental Nature is only a tool. It’s not who we are. But we have, in our conditioning, grown to regard our thinking mind as who we are, which further complicates the whole issue. This is another discussion, though, but one that’s related to the solution to the current crisis of the human psyche.
Furthermore, Mental Nature doesn’t understand that it cannot understand anything beyond a certain very limited point. It doesn’t understand that its function is limited. It doesn’t understand that it requires the help and cooperation of our other organs of perception in order to participate in a truly higher understanding. Such a more inclusive and active participation of more than one Nature is called pondering, where all organs of perception are participating according to their respective functions and respective quantums of energy/consciousness, in harmony and alignment. This is when we can begin to talk about a more complete human being and about resolving the crisis facing the human psyche.
Given Mental Nature’s illusions about itself, though, and given that it’s conditioned by current society to be puffed up with its own importance, when it can’t understand something straight away and make it fit within its own limited parameters, it automatically seeks variety, i.e. new ideas, in quantity; it’s forever “curious” in an unhealthy way, i.e. it’s forever dissecting things, poking around in things that it has little true understanding about, constantly adding complication to complication in a vain search for simplicity; and it’s constantly seeking excitement to prop up its inner feeling of depression about the fact that it knows somewhere inside that it can’t actually truly know and understand anything about anything if it continues to try to go it alone. But it’s arrogant in this respect; it thinks it can think its way out of anything.
Mental Nature, driven by Material Nature needs for survival, safety, security, comfort, pleasure, and satiety, seeks not only variety, but quantity. If one idea is “good” and appears to help us along our way, then surely two ideas are better, and where one idea only covers one aspect of what we wish to understand, surely another idea will cover what the first idea missed, and so on and so forth. So goes Mental Nature’s thinking.
The fact that our Mental Nature thrives on variety, curiosity, and excitement is in itself not a bad thing; it serves to keep us motivated and interested in things in the ordinary way. It has driven the Age of Reason along with all the miraculous technologies that have made our lives “better.” And we certainly need our intellect as much as any other of our organs of perception, no argument here.
However, because of our conditioned infatuation with Mental Nature and because of the “promise” that it can solve any and all problems, we’ve grown up with the tendency to indulge Mental Nature’s appetites and whims willy-nilly, without pause or discernment, believing that the intellect should be given free reign to sort out ourselves, our lives, and the world around us.
Paradoxically, this has led our minds to becoming primarily driven by random influences, internal and external, and by the laws of associative thinking where one thought “calls” another thought “calls” another thought “calls” another thought, and so forth. Then, emotions follow thought. (This is another discussion altogether.) Then this all gets mixed up with physical energies (the motor mechanism, as a subset of Physical Nature) and sexual energies (Sexual Nature, as another subset of Physical Nature), and the result is an aberration of human functioning.
If we had no concern about Mental Nature infatuation and predominance… if we had no concern about the fragmentation of consciousness that living in separated and disharmonized Natures brings… if we had no concern for the growing crisis of the human psyche that manifests in all the aforementioned external and global crises… and if we had no interest in the potential evolution of human consciousness, in the truly spiritual welfare and future of humanity, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Nothing would be amiss, and we could happily continue to allow Mental Nature to indulge willy-nilly, and the world would get along just fine… up to a point!... We only have to look out into the world to see the aberrant results of Mental Nature predominance and infatuation and how this distorts all our other functions and manifests in the myriad of atrocities that humans are capable of. I can’t prove this to you, but you can prove it to yourselves by beginning to look within yourselves more deeply, guided by the few important ideas we have presented here.
If we do have a concern about these things, we must consider the drawbacks of Mental Nature’s conditioned and innate predispositions, not the least of which are its appetites for variety, curiosity, and excitement.
The drawbacks of constantly seeking mental variety include 1) an overloaded mind, overloaded with “stuff” about which the mind has not bothered to delve into any deeper than its automatic functioning usually takes it—analogy: the difference between the stuff of the daily tabloids and, say, a deeply esoteric book, 2) nothing gets pondered; rather, it all just gets played with and then filed, 3) connections between one idea and another are random and associative rather than being consciously considered, weighed, and expanded, and 4) the activity itself of constantly seeking variety keeps the mind occupied and identified to such a degree that it shuts out the other organs of perception—shuts out Emotional and Physical Natures. Take daydreaming as a prime example of this, where all sense of our body and of our feeling disappears into the void (unless the emotions are carried along mechanically by the daydreams).
The drawbacks of curiosity, when it’s disconnected from sensation and feeling, which are the awarenesses Physical and Emotional Natures, respectively, are 1) it causes the mind to constantly be jumping from one thing to another, failing to dwell long enough on one thing to really get to the gist of any one matter—this drawback is inconstancy of mind, 2) curiosity doesn’t necessarily lead us to the heart of any matter, because it’s not concerned with the heart of the matter, but rather only with finding “interesting” things, i.e. it’s driven by things that it’s conditioned/programmed to find interesting… again, it’s an associative activity, not a conscious, intentional, focused, and directed activity… it’s passive, actually, like watching television, and 3) the things that our curiosity is attracted to may or may not be essential to understanding what we wish to understand; curiosity doesn’t know the difference between what is actually relevant or not, because, like the mind as a whole, it’s constrained by its own limitations and conditioning, not to mention by its associative/automatic functioning as a whole, which, in turn, is also a result of social conditioning to live a passive rather than active life, even while we imagine that we’re being active and that we’re in the driver’s seat.
The drawbacks of seeking excitement are related to those of curiosity. Excitement is not a good measuring stick of what’s relevant to our attaining deeper understanding. Excitement most often arises from Material Nature needs and from conditioning, not from our deeper Wish for true understanding. Moreover, excitement is a fleeting commodity. Excitement soon turns to boredom when Mental Nature finally realizes that the true answers to whatever we’re seeking are not to be found in any single intellectual formulation or idea. So then off it goes again, seeking more excitement, because as it stands at the moment, excitement is one of the cheap “foods” that Mental Nature feeds on in the absence of the deeper, more fulfilling food of true Knowledge and Understanding, which, in turn, require the active participation of more than one Nature.
Mental Nature, as it stands at the moment, individually and collectively, is like a child that’s running off like a train out of control, getting overloaded with head stuff, succumbing to delusions of grandeur and omnipotence, jumping from one thing to another, never finishing one thing before starting another thing, and wasting time with useless and “shallow” things that take its temporary fancy—a child that’s unable to focus properly or in any sustained way, has little idea of its direction, present or future, is passively pulled this way and that by random associations, and is generally scattered inside and out. If we don’t believe this, look at the real children of today, who perfectly mirror the consciousness of the society in which they’ve grown up. We’ve actually needed to drug them in order to get them to be able to focus their minds.
When our Mental Nature becomes divorced from our Physical and Emotional Natures and it tries by it itself to understand ourselves, our lives, and the world around us, the result is what we see in us, in our lives, and in the world around us: conflict, disharmony, fundamentalism, head-banging, wars, racism, ignorance and neglect of the environment, fragmentation, meaninglessness, aloneness, and, dare I say, atheism.
When Mental Nature cannot see the bigger Picture of our lives, because it’s incapable of seeing this by itself, instead of questioning its own strengths and weaknesses and turning to complementary organs of perception for an expanded view, it assumes that there is no bigger Picture—at least no bigger Picture other than to ensure the survival, safety, security, comfort, pleasure, and satiety needs of our Material Nature, which the scientific and technological revolutions have been so good at providing, at least to some of us who are more well off and happen to have been born in affluent countries.
But if science and technology have been so good at this—if Mental Nature is the answer to all our questions, problems, and challenges—why are there still wars, poverty, hunger, ecological crises, religious divisiveness, terrorism, increasing mental and emotional illness, increasing suicides, increasing sense of disconnection from society, a breakdown of social and family values, and so much more that one could point the finger at as being the symptoms of the human psyche in crisis?
One might say that the problem lies in materialism and that spirituality is the answer, but this would be yet another Mental Nature either/or formulation and, as such, an incomplete and polarized one. The real problem lies in the fragmentation of human consciousness—the separation and disharmonization of our three basic human Natures—which precludes any real and complete understanding of anything at all.
Conversely, the answer lies in the harmonious development, alignment, and unification of these same basic Natures into a higher and more unified expression of consciousness. This would be true spirituality, because it includes rather than separates everything that we are, materially and spiritually. It acknowledges the complete human being as an intangible spirit, i.e. Spiritual Nature, inhabiting a tangible body, i.e. Material Nature. Material Nature relies upon Spiritual Nature to wake it up, make it real, and bring it alive, and Spiritual Nature relies on Material Nature to provide the raw material for its future and potential transformation into ever-higher “quantums” of consciousness—into ever greater Truth, Light, Love, and Oneness.
This answer goes beyond the either/or, black-or-white, “if this, then that” formulations of Mental Nature. The answer lies in inclusion, not exclusion. It lies not on one side of the coin of life as opposed to the other—in one person’s mental formulations as opposed to another person’s mental formulations. It lies in bringing the pieces of ourselves, our lives, and the world around us into a more unified whole—back into the Oneness from which we all came. And we can only accomplish this by combining our Mental Nature perceptions and functioning with those of our Emotional and Physical Natures. Then a bigger Picture emerges. I call this bigger Picture the Divine Perfection.
Truth, Light, Love, and Oneness,
Martin Lass, S.O.L.A.R.® Founder
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Martin Lass,
The first S.O.L.A.R.® Emissary, Astrologer, Author
& Musician
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The first S.O.L.A.R.® Emissary is Martin Lass. His background includes over twenty years spent studying in two separate mystery schools, each with a direct lineage extending back into antiquity—one school coming through Egyptian traditions and the other from a hidden Central Asian tradition combined with the Sufi Way.
He is also a professional astrologer, astrological/spiritual counselor, accredited practitioner of various healing modalities, musician, composer, and published author.)
S.O.L.A.R.®
Beyond Materiality. Beyond Spirituality.
Toward the Complete Human Being…
www.solarjourney.org
info@solarjourney.org
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