Table of Contents

Management versus Labor

Life versus Death

Human versus Angel

 

 

Copyright © 2010, Lorin Friesen

 

Management versus Labor

The Great Leap Forward was the name given to Communist China’s second Five Year Plan, which began in 1958. It was supposed to vault Communist China from its backward state into the ranks of the industrially advanced nations and was based upon the two pillars of grain and steel.

In order to increase grain production, farmers were organized into collectives. During the first six months of the plan, 25,000 new communes were established, each with an average of 5,000 families. Mao imposed new and untried methods of agriculture upon these communes, such as instructing farmers to plant seeds closer than normal and to plow far deeper than usual.

With steel, Mao’s secret weapon was the backyard steel furnace, and he predicted that within fifteen years, Chinese steel production would surpass that of Great Britain. Mao himself knew nothing about metallurgy, but one of his provincial secretaries had shown him a sample small furnace and had claimed that it produced high quality steel.

And so, Mao ordered that this example be followed in every neighborhood and on every commune. Chinese peasants literally cut down entire forests in order to fuel these furnaces, throwing in their pots and pans as well as other scraps of metal into the furnaces in order to feed them with raw material.

The result was total, unmitigated disaster. Historians estimate that at least 20,000,000 Chinese died of starvation, while the backyard furnaces only succeeded in producing worthless pig iron and girders that couldn’t support any weight.

So what went wrong? Many books have been written about this period, providing detailed economic and political postmortems. What concerns us here is the mindset that motivated this behavior.

In order to understand that mindset, we have to introduce some more theory. So far, this book has focused upon the right hemisphere conflict between Perceiver facts and Mercy experiences. There the struggle is between Feeling and Thinking: On the Feeling side, strong Mercy emotions overwhelm Perceiver strategy and mesmerize Perceiver thought into knowing what is true. On the Thinking side, Perceiver strategy makes up for its lack of confidence by suppressing Mercy emotions.

Here we are looking at a struggle between words and actions.[1] Mao is speaking the words and the Chinese peasants are performing the actions. What happened during the Great Leap Forward when government force was used to impose words upon actions? Millions died, the economy was ruined, and the environment was destroyed.

 Which mental strategy handles words? Teacher thought. Which mode works with actions? Server mode. It there a mismatch between these two? Yes. Unfortunately, it is very common for people to say one thing and do another.

If you look at the diagram, you will see that Teacher and Server are the mirror images of Mercy and Perceiver: Teacher handles analytical emotion; Mercy works with associative feeling. Server strategy places confidence in sequences; Perceiver thought gains confidence in facts.

Like Perceiver confidence, Server confidence cannot be gained instantly but must be built up over time. The easiest way to build Server confidence is through practicing. When I practice, I am repeating a sequence of actions. Each time I successfully carry out a sequence, Server strategy grows in confidence.

Those who play a musical instrument know all about Server confidence. I may be able to play a musical piece perfectly at home, but if I have to perform it in public, then the emotional pressure may be too great for Server thought to handle, and my playing will fall apart.

And, just as Perceiver thought brings stability to Mercy experiences, so Server strategy has a stabilizing effect on Teacher theories. For instance, I remember one Teacher person with whom I spent some time. Being conscious within Teacher thought, he was attracted to universal theories. And so, he had worked out exactly what he would do for the rest of his life. He had a universal theory that explained his entire human existence, and he was emotionally committed to this grand plan. But, three weeks later, he would come up with a totally new plan for his life, one which was equally grand, and to which he was equally committed. One month later, this would be replaced by another universal life theory, and so on. Eventually, I stopped contesting his grand schemes and simply accepted the flavor of the month, knowing that in time it too would fade away. That describes Teacher thought which lacks Server help. It acts grand and feels universal, but it has no stability.

Now look at the relationship between Teacher words and Server actions. Suppose that I say the word ‘run’. Why should there be any connection between the sound ‘r-u-n’ escaping my lips and the physical action of pumping my legs back and forth? If you think about it, it is quite natural for Teacher words and Server actions to follow their own paths, and it is rather amazing that they ever get together at all. In fact, if you spoke German, there would be no mental connection between ‘r-u-n’ and moving your legs. Instead, running would be connected with the word ‘laufen’.

Words, Memorization and Writing: As a result, words and actions both tend to live in their own separate worlds, each oblivious to the existence of the other. On the one hand, there is the realm of Teacher words—which can extend into Server thought through memorization and writing.

Words are capable of saying amazing things and describing grand theories, but by themselves, they have no stability. Instead, words only become solid as they are either memorized or written down. With memorization, the repetition causes Server strategy to remember the words as a solid sequence. With writing, it is the action of putting the words down on paper or typing them into a computer that gives them Server stability.

That is why we take notes when listening to a lecture. If we only listen to the words, then they will tend to go in one ear and out the other. However, if we write them down, then they have a better chance of sticking in our brains.

Similarly, memorizing vocabulary is an essential part of learning a new language. I mentioned before that Contributor strategy assigns Perceiver meanings to Teacher words. But, Contributor thought builds connections between Perceiver and Server, and not between Perceiver and Teacher. Therefore, if we want Contributor strategy to attach meanings to new words, then we write the words down in a notebook and go over them every day until they have been memorized.

Art and Elegance: On the other hand, there is the realm of Server actions—which can extend into Teacher thought through the feelings of art and elegance.

For instance, suppose that I repeat some sequence of actions, such as hammering in a nail, filling out form 42B.1, or aiming a gun at a target and pulling the trigger. Teacher strategy will sense these actions and feel emotionally driven to bring order to this complexity. As a result, these separate steps will gradually flow together to form a single, smooth, coordinated movement. Teacher strategy will then feel goodabout performing this movement. This Teacher feeling is called elegance. It feels good to act elegantly, and it feels good to observe actions that are smooth and elegant.

Let me state this more clearly. When the carpenter drives in a nail with a single blow from his hammer, he feels good. When the seasoned bureaucrat fills out form 42B.1 in a smooth and efficient manner, he feels good. And, when the veteran soldier whips out his rifle and drops a man with a single shot, he also feels good.

There is more to this. If I spend most of my time doing a limited set of Server actions, then not only will Teacher strategy want to make these actions smooth and elegant, but Teacher strategy will feel that the resulting Teacher ‘theory’ is actually universal. Even though these actions do not define the world, they do define my world, and that is the only world that Teacher thought knows.

That explains art. When the artist practices his craft, he acquires a set of skills. Server strategy gains confidence in the performing the actions of painting or sculpting, and Teacher thought feels good about making these actions elegant and graceful. But, suppose that the artist becomes a professional and spends all of his time producing art or thinking about art. Eventually, he will feel that he is not just painting some flowers in the field, but rather portraying nature. He is not simply photographing a man standing in line to buy an electronic gadget, he is capturing the spirit of the age.

The same mental effect occurs with any professional. As I mentioned way back in the first chapter, the carpenter views his world as a large construction project, the politician sees everyone as a potential voter, while the policeman views everyone as a potential criminal. In each case, a limited set of Server actions have been repeated so often that they have defined universal understanding within Teacher thought.

Actions versus Words: Notice that all of this is happening non-verbally. It is the result of Server actions, and has nothing to do with Teacher words. Thus, if you ask the policeman if he sees everyone as a possible criminal, he will probably say no. That is because asking involves words, and the natural course is for words to be unaware of actions.

But which has greater stability, Server actions or Teacher words? Actions are stable; words are ephemeral. As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. This means that when there is a collision between actions and words, then actions will tend to warp words.

For example, I remember one Christian pastor who preached strongly against divorce and remarriage. This was his verbal theory. That was until his own daughter went through divorce and remarriage. Now there was a conflict between Server actions and Teacher words. Which one do you think won? That’s right. His doctrine changed, and he then started to preach that divorce and remarriage was scripturally acceptable.

And that is what the verbal message of Christian rebirth has to fight. When we first introduced the Christian plan of salvation, I mentioned that it has to overcome two mental shortcuts: Mercy feelings and Teacher words. In that chapter we saw that in order to overcome Mercy feelings, everything must be described in terms of people and personal feelings.

Here we are seeing what it means to be limited to Teacher words. Words are great for building universal Teacher theories, but when Teacher words meet Server actions, then Server actions usually win. And what Server actions does a verbal plan of personal salvation have to contend with? All of the actions that were motivated by childish identity; all of the shortcuts that were taken ‘dashing across the china shop in order to grab the brightly colored clown at the other side.’

In practice, this means that a person must ‘reach the end of his rope’ before he is capable of accepting the verbal Christian plan of salvation. In some way, Server strategy has to give up and come to the conclusion that ‘I cannot go further’ and ‘I cannot do any more’. It is only when Server confidence falls apart that Teacher strategy is capable of understanding the words of personal salvation.

And, if that message is accepted, then it will only stick if it is backed up by a new set of Server actions. If actions do not accompany the words, then the new believer will be like a man who looks at himself in a mirror and immediately forgets what he looks like. And that is precisely the illustration used in the Biblical book of James.

Giving Orders: The other option is to force a person to change his actions and obey verbal instructions. Point a gun at his head and tell him what to do. That is what Mao did with the Great Leap Forward. As Mao himself said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

But, what happens if you try to apply the typical grand verbal Teacher scheme? Disaster. Let me suggest four reasons why this is the case: First, Teacher thought loves universality, and so a single plan will be applied in all circumstances, regardless of local conditions or individual capabilities. Instead, the attitude will be that ‘one size fits all’. Therefore, Mao decreed that every commune and every neighborhood should have a backyard furnace, and that every farming community should be organized into identical communes.

Second, Teacher strategy appreciates simplicity. The Teacher person loves to be able to take a complex theory and describe it in a single sentence; he wants an extensive vocabulary so that he can get his idea across by choosing precisely the right term. And so, Mao’s Great Leap Forward could be boiled down to two words: wheat and steel. But, reality is far more complex than this.

Third, Teacher thought prefers to use steps that are untested. A procedure that is tried and true is mentally limiting. It cannot be used to build a grand Teacher theory because everything is already known about it. Uncertain information, in contrast, is wonderfully rubber and can be blown up all out of proportion. Thus, when a Russian scientist came up with a new and untested scheme of planting seeds closer together and plowing furrows deeper, Mao’s imagination was free to build great castles in the air, unrestricted by any unwelcome facts.

Finally, a verbal Teacher theory is unrelated to Server actions. Mao had no practical experience in metallurgy. He had never made steel himself. But, that did not stop him from building a grand Teacher theory out of smelting steel. He knew the words, the words made a grand theory, and that was enough.

Notice that precisely the same mental mechanism allows the Buddhist meditator to say that ‘all is one’. Having become totally free of encumbering Perceiver facts and Server actions, Teacher strategy in his mind becomes capable of saying anything. 

Respecting Humanity: So, is it possible to use grand Teacher theories and central plans to guide Server actions without causing massive starvation and environment disaster? I suggest that the answer lies in respecting the physical body and the human individual.

Talk, as they say, is cheap. When it really comes down to it, I can say anything that I want. I can talk about walking down to the store, but I can also talk about floating on the clouds of Jupiter, drifting through a blood cell on a tiny submarine, or hunting wild gnoozers with fizzlesticks in the land of Zebudy. However, when it comes to doing, then only the first of these alternatives can actually be performed by my physical body.

That was Mao’s problem. He was literally forcing his people to hunt gnoozers with fizzlesticks. After visiting an iron works in Manchuria in 1959, he apparently learned that high quality steel could only be produced in large factories using a reliable source of fuel such as coal. In other words, he realized that smelting steel in a backyard furnace was as plausible as using fizzlesticks on a gnoozer. But, because he did not want to dampen the revolutionary zeal of the Chinese peasant, he allowed them to continue ‘hunting gnoozers’, knowing that they would never catch a thing.

As for respecting the human individual, that is exactly what commune-ism does not do. Instead, it shoves everyone into communes where individuality means nothing.

But what does it mean to be human? We have said that the fundamental attribute of God is universality. What defines a human? I suggest that a human is a finite creature with Mercy feelings who lives in a physical body. Anything, any plan, or anyone that does not respect these qualities is inhuman.

Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? However, I think that we have seen by now that respecting humanity is one of the most difficult things for a human to do.

Does the childish mind respect humanity? No. All it cares about is short-term pleasure and immediate gratification, even when this damages the physical body or fragments personal identity. Why? Because personal identity is being defined by the feelings of the moment. Any time a new and exciting experience comes along, it mesmerizes Perceiver thought and redefines the facts about ‘me’. 

If you want an extreme example, think of the drug addict. All that matters to him is getting his next fix—right now. And so, he literally destroys his body in order to experience a few moments of chemical induced ecstasy.

Does objective science respect the physical body and the human individual? Not really. That is because personal feeling is subjective and science avoids dealing with the subjective.

Do Buddhism and other forms of meditation respect the human individual? No. According to Buddhism, all individuality is illusion. How can you respect something that doesn’t exist?

What about Holy Book based religion? Remember that belief in a Holy Book leads inevitably to self-denial. Obviously, an attitude of denying self is not going to do a very good job of respecting personal identity.

Logically speaking, if you want to respect personal identity, then you have to program your mind with principles of moral cause and effect: Do this and you will experience bad personal consequences; do that and you will experience good personal results. Why? Because these are the principles that guide ‘me’ to long term pleasure and away from lasting pain.

In other words, if you want to respect humanity, then you have to follow the Christian plan of personal salvation to completion. Childish identity must die, ‘me’ must go through the threshold of confusion, and adult identity must come to life. Only then is it possible to think sanely about ‘me’.

Truth Leads to Action: Thus, we conclude that the division between Teacher words and Server actions can only be addressed after the conflict between Perceiver truth and Mercy feelings has been resolved.[2]

That explains why the industrial revolution occurred after the scientific revolution. The scientific revolution that was started by Isaac Newton changed the way that people thought by giving them an integrated Teacher theory. This led to a paradigm shift but did not transform the culture. People starting talking and thinking in new ways, but they still did things the way that they had always been done. 

It took over a century for this new thinking to lead to new actions. But when it finally did, then the world was turned upside down. Traditional handiwork and artisanship become obsolete and was replaced by structured assembly lines and scientific methods of production.

Christianity says exactly the same thing: Faith leads to works. First, you reprogram your mind by holding on to Perceiver truth. Then, you change your world by applying this new thinking in action.

Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ did everything backwards, because it tried to start with the industrial revolution; it tried to change the actions of people before transforming their thinking. That, I suggest, is the basic fallacy of communism. It thinks that ‘acquiring the means of production’ is a shortcut to national wealth. But, if you want the factories to keep running, then they must be run by people that know how to think.

One final matter. If the industrial revolution was so wonderful, then why has it caused so much human misery? Because, this revolution only applied to things and not to people. We discussed this in the previous chapter. While the Christian church has used Perceiver thought and Teacher understanding to digest the periphery of the Christian message, it has not managed to construct an adequate Teacher theory of core Christian doctrines.

Isaac Newton tried. He actually spent more time analyzing the Bible than he did studying science. But, what aspect of the Bible did he primarily study? Prophecy—what would happen to the world in the future, and the Temple of Solomon—the building which represented God to the Jewish people. In other words, he studied the periphery of the Christian message, and largely ignored the core doctrines that dealt with personal salvation.

Because the scientific revolution that Newton triggered was objective, the resulting industrial revolution was also objective. As a result, we now have great respect for the physical body, but no respect for the human individual.

When dealing with physical personal well-being, each country spends a significant portion of its GNP on medical care. Here, everything is done to protect personal integrity and to prevent foreign living material from invading the body.

When dealing with internal identity, we do exactly the opposite. Here, everything is done to violate personal integrity and to invade ‘me’ with foreign living matter. For instance: everyone lies, only idiots tell the truth; in order to get ahead, you must sell your soul; if it feels good, do it; you cannot live without ourproduct; be a movie star and pretend to be someone; be a sports fan and win the championship with us; immerse yourself in the latest action movie on a huge flat screen television.

The solution? Stop treating the Bible as a Holy Book and start treating it as a textbook.

Or have I already said that?

Let us summarize. We began with Mao’s Great Leap Forward, in which Mao imposed a misguided master plan upon the Chinese people. That introduced us to the left hemisphere split between Teacher words and Server actions.

The interaction between Perceiver and Mercy thought tends to be one of active antagonism. Mercy feelings overwhelm Perceiver thought while Perceiver thinking tries to ignore Mercy emotions. In contrast, Teacher words and Server actions tend to live in their own distinct worlds, blissfully ignorant of the other.

Teacher words can be used to build grand Teacher theories, but if these Teacher theories lack Server stability, then they will tend to change every month or two. The easiest way to bring Server stability to a Teacher theory is to memorize it or else write it down.

Server actions can also lead to Teacher feelings of generality. As actions become practiced and coordinated, this creates Teacher feelings of elegance and gracefulness. If a person becomes a specialist and spends most of his time performing or thinking about a limited set of skills, then Teacher strategy will also feel that these actions are universal, and will begin to interpret everything in the light of these actions.

The end result is that Teacher strategy actually becomes filled with two sets of Teacher theories: There are the verbal theories that are based in words, and there are the non-verbal theories which come from repeating Server actions.

When a person talks about Teacher understanding, he will refer to his verbal Teacher theories. But, when verbal Teacher theories meet non-verbal theories, then it is the non-verbal ones that will usually win—because they are backed up by Server confidence. Therefore, actions usually speak louder than words.

However, if the verbal message of personal Christian salvation is to change a person, then words must speak louder than actions. The verbal theory must be stronger than the non-verbal one. As a result, a person is usually only receptive to the Christian message when ‘he is at the end of his rope’ and Server confidence falls apart. And the new believer will only continue to follow this Christian message if he backs up these words with a new set of Server actions.

It is also possible to force actions to follow words. That is the method which the military uses: Do what I say or else I will shoot.

However, Teacher theories that lack Server confidence tend to have four fatal flaws: First, they apply one plan to all circumstances. Second, they are overly simplistic. Third, they prefer using methods that are untested. Fourth, they are impractical.

If a Teacher theory is to help people, then it must respect humanity. However, just as childish Mercy identity naturally opposes Teacher universality, so the general Teacher theories that we develop tend to ignore the human individual.

Childish identity follows shortcuts to pleasure which harm the individual and hurt the body. Objective science studies the natural world while ignoring the person who is doing the studying. Buddhism says that the world of individuality is illusion, while Holy Book religion tells the individual to deny himself.

Instead, it appears that following the Christian plan of personal salvation through to completion is needed to truly protect humanity. If we examine recent Western history, we see that this plan was completed in the objective, leading to the scientific revolution followed by the industrial revolution. Today, people and governments spend a lot of money protecting the physical bodies of individuals. However, when it comes to internal identity, we find that individuality is continually being violated by marketing, entertainment, and pop psychology. 

Concepts introduced in this chapter:

•        Server Confidence: Certainty of action and sequence; can be gained through practicing.

•        Verbal Teacher Theory: Unstable; gains Server stability through writing and memorizing.

•        Elegance: Good Teacher feeling produced by making Server actions smooth.

•        Professionalism: Non-verbal Teacher theory produced by repeating limited set of actions.

•        Central Plan: A verbal, universal theory that is usually simplistic, untested, and undoable.

•        Human: A finite being with Mercy feelings who lives in a physical body.

•        Scientific Revolution: A universal Teacher theory that applies only to the objective.

•        Industrial Revolution: Integrating Teacher theories and Server actions in the objective.

•        Faith Works: Perceiver, then Server; scientific revolution, then industrial revolution.

•        Communism: Attempts an industrial revolution without a scientific revolution.

Questions to think about:

1)    Have you ever taken a supposed shortcut that ended up in disaster? What went wrong?

2)    Are you part of a system or organization that does not respect humanity?

3)    Do you ‘look before you leap’ or ‘leap before you look’?

4)    Is there ever a contradiction between what you do and what you say? Which one wins?

Homework:

Write down at least five different ways in which you try to protect your physical body from being attacked by people, animals, or disease. Now rephrase each of these ways in terms of protecting your personal identity from being internally violated. Are you taking any of these internal protective steps? Why? Why not?

Life versus Death

It started with a little phlegm in your throat, which you had to clear. But your throat still felt scratchy, and so you continued to clear your throat just one more time. At first, each ‘ahem’ was a conscious choice. But, suddenly, silently, a threshold was crossed and the clearing of the throat developed a life of its own. It turned into a habit, a tic. You found yourself clearing your throat even when you hadn’t decided to do so.

Eventually, others started to notice. They began to comment. You tried to stop, but found that you couldn’t. Your new habit wanted to stay alive. If you thought about it, you could stop clearing your throat for several hours. But, if your mind wandered, you would catch yourself doing it—again. And whenever you tried to suppress it, then doing it just once was not enough. Instead, you had to do it several times in a row before you finally felt relief.  

This book has talked a lot about feelings, and we have looked extensively at the relationship between Teacher and Mercy emotions. I would now like to introduce one more type of emotion, one that runs deeper than the feelings which we have discussed so far. Thishyper-emotion, as I call it, is related to integration and fragmentation. Bringing separate parts together creates a hyper-pleasure that goes beyond normal feelings. Similarly, tearing something apart leads to a hyper-pain that is worse than normal pain.

Habits: Cognitive research tells us that human memories are self-organizing. That simply means that memories which are similar tend to group together, just as people in a large gathering will find other individuals with similar interests and start conversing with them. When enough similar memories gather together, then that network will become alive. Like a habit, it will operate by itself and want to express itself.

Think, for example, of our throat-clearing habit. At first, clearing the throat was a conscious choice. That is because a habit had not yet formed. But, once this action had been repeated enough times, it turned into a habit—it became alive.

Once a set of memories becomes alive, it wants to stay alive. It wants to be fed and it wants to express itself. That is why a throat-cleaning habit activates itself when you are thinking about other things. It needs input; it wants to be fed. And, once it is fed, it wants to express itself—by clearing your throat.

Killing a habit is both simple and difficult. All you have to do is stop feeding it and stop it from expressing itself. That is the simple part, which will inevitability turn into the difficult part. That is because any life form that is not fed will get hungry. Eventually it will getfamished. You will feel driven to carry out the habit. You will find yourself continually beginning to clear your throat, and it will take great effort of will to stop the habit from expressing itself.

At this point, allowing a habit to express itself simply prolongs the agony of trying to get rid of it. However, if you continue to suppress the urge, then eventually it will die. You will wake up one morning and discover that you no longer feel the need to clear your throat. In fact, you may not even think about clearing your throat until several hours later, when you suddenly realize that you are no longer doing it.

Tourette Syndrome is a medical condition in which habits go haywire. The person with this syndrome feels driven to express certain tics or repeat inappropriate phrases. He can use conscious effort to temporarily suppress these urges, but eventually the mental pressure becomes so great that they become impossible to suppress.[3] 

Forming and breaking a habit is a basic example of mental integration and mental fragmentation. The level of hyper-emotion that is involved is fairly minimal. And yet, even this low level of hyper-emotion is too great for many people to handle.

Hyper-emotion versus Normal Emotion: Mental life is basically one grand set of interconnected habits. All of these ‘habits’ became alive at some point and they all want to stay alive. The larger the ‘habit’, the greater the associated hyper-emotion.

The relationship between normal emotions and hyper-emotions is quite simple. Normal feeling involves single memories: The chicken tastes good, or the explanation about quadratic equations makes sense. Hyper-emotion, in contrast, works with groups of memories: I love Japanese cuisine, or I cannot understand mathematics.

The strength of feeling attached to a network depends upon how strongly one feels about the individual memories that are contained within that network. For instance, if I don’t really care about sweets, then I won’t feel too bad if the doctor tells me that I have to stay away from all sugar. But, if I have a candy bar or two every day, then breaking my sugar habit will trigger significant levels of hyper-emotion.

Or, suppose that I grew up in a big old house. I will probably end up having many fond memories of the place, and feel strongly if it is torn down: “Do you see this little ceramic tile. That’s all that is left of the bathroom wall. I remember how hard it was to clean the grout between the tiles. And, see this scrap of paper? It comes from the picture that was hanging on the dining room wall, the one that you brought back from your trip to Taiwan.” In contrast, the stranger passing by will simply say, “It’s about time that old heap got torn down. I can hardly wait for them to finish the new shopping center.”

Obviously, I will always feel more strongly about a collection of emotional experiences than I do about any individual memory within that collection. Thus, hyper-emotion takes precedence over normal emotion. If a person has to choose between feeling major pain and going through mental fragmentation, he will choose to feel bad rather than to fall apart.

This explains, for instance, why the abused wife will return to her husband. Even though her abusive husband gives her pain, their relationship also defines her. If she is with her husband, she will hurt. But, if she leaves her husband, she will fall apart. The pain of being abused is preferable to the hyper-emotion of falling apart.

This principle is also illustrated by the history of African colonization. When Europeans first came to Africa, the local natives were largely willing to adapt to the new Western ways. That is because they were dealing with isolatedmemories and making individual changes. But, all of these separate changes slowly added up. Eventually a point was reached where African culture itself was threatened. Now it was the entire network of native lifestyle that was being questioned and not just some individual items within this network. The African tribesman began to wonder who he was, because his cultural identity as a whole was starting to fall apart.

At this point the choice was no longer pain versus pleasure, but rather pain versus fragmentation. When this threshold was reached, Africans started to reject Western influence in favor of local culture, even when native ways led to personal pain. Why? Because, staying in one piece is always more important than feeling bad; hyper-emotion overrides normal feelings.

Let us look now at the relationship between hyper-pain and hyper-pleasure. Hyper-pain occurs when a network falls apart. It is the sorrow of having my entire house torn down; it is the trauma of having my entire culture threatened; it is the philosophical angst of losing all mental certainty.

But, what happens when two living networks are brought together to produce hyper-pleasure? This also involves some tearing down. Remodeling the kitchen of my house, for instance, may lead eventually to the hyper-pleasure of having a brand new kitchen, but in between these initial and final states lies the trauma of unpainted walls, bare floors, sawdust in the air and noisy tools.

In other words, hyper-pleasure always contains a nugget of hyper-pain. The difference is that hyper-pleasure puts everything back together better than it was before, whereas hyper-pain leaves me fragmented and falling apart. In addition, hyper-pleasure knows that everything will come back together, while hyper-pain knows nothing but uncertainty. Hyper-pleasure tears down the house and replaces it with a mansion—knowing all the while the mansion is coming, whereas hyper-pain simply tears down the house.

That brings us to a related conclusion: Hyper-pleasure can only occur within a solid structure. If that structure itself begins to crumble, if the knowing is ever lost, then hyper-pleasure will turn into hyper-pain. For instance, that is what makes sexual child abuse so devastating. For an adult, sex is associated with hyper-pleasure. However, the mind of the young child is not sufficiently integrated to handle the intense emotions of sexual experience. Therefore, if sex is forced upon a child, the mind of that child can literally split into multiple personalities.[4]

The two great physical hyper-emotions are violence and sex. Violence threatens the body of a person with fragmentation, while sex is the joining of one physical body with another. Death or dismemberment triggers the hyper-pain of fragmentation; sex leads to the hyper-pleasure of becoming physically integrated with another human individual.

Violence: Let us look briefly at violence before taking the principles that we have developed and applying them to the topic of sex.

In essence, the hyper-pain of violence pits Exhorter thought against Mercy and Teacher strategies. On the one hand, Mercy and Teacher thought hate pain: Mercy suffering hurts; Teacher disorder is traumatic. Therefore, if suffering and destruction continue, then these two modes of thought will pull back into their shells like threatened turtles and try to avoid feeling anything. On the other hand, hyper-pain is exciting—very exciting. It is thrilling to watch an action movie in which body parts fly and buildings explode.

The end result is a vicious circle. Exhorter excitement is addictive; one experience is not enough. But, Exhorter excitement is also not an independent quantity. Instead, it comes from strong Mercy and Teacher emotions. However, if these two modes of thought become emotionally desensitized, then as with the hardened drug addict, it will continually take more death and greater destruction to produce the same kick of Exhorter excitement. Therefore, each new movie will have to be more explicit than the previous one, with increasingly graphic violence and more blood and guts.

Over the years, I have tried desperately to preserve, protect, and nourish my Teacher and Mercy emotions. I literally cannot watch any of the new action movies or play any of the current action computer games because they are far too vivid for me. To be a soldier in an active war and choose to kill or maim another living human being is for me utterly unthinkable.[5] And yet, for many, this is a ‘normal career’.

Can such a path of personal suffering teach personal character? Can it introduce a person to the process of dying to childish identity? Yes, it can. But, think of the terrible price, both in terms of personal pain and material destruction. 

Sex: Having said this, let us devote the remainder of this chapter to applying the four principles that we described to the physical hyper-emotion of sex.

The first principle is that a network will only have potent feelings if it contains memories with strong feelings. In other words, meaningful sex needs love and romance. What is the point of two people becoming one if these two do not have any strong feelings for each other? If the uniting of two human networks is to generate intense hyper-pleasure, then one must first take the time to put intense emotion into those networks, and that intense emotion comes from living together, struggling together, experiencing together, and even arguing with one another.

The same principle applies to the world of buying and selling. When I buy or sell something, I am also dealing with complete networks and not just isolated fragments. Therefore, if I want to have deep joy from buying or selling, then I must take time to enjoy and experience the items that are being traded.

For instance, my father grew up working in a country general store and has always been buying and selling. I remember visiting his condominium one day to find a high powered speed boat sitting on a trailer in the garage. Our family had never owned any boat—let alone a speedboat, and so I thought that this purchase was rather exciting.

I asked my father about the boat and he said that someone had owed him some money and had repaid the debt with the speedboat. Did we ever get to use that speedboat? No. Did it ever leave its stall in the garage? No. Instead, several months later it vanished as silently and as suddenly as it had appeared.

How much hyper-pleasure did we derive from acquiring this network of experiences? None. As I recall, no one even sat in the boat. That is what sex is like without love or romance, it is an exchange without meaning.

The second principle is that hyper-emotion takes precedence over normal emotion. This simply tells us that sex must be treated much more carefully than normal pleasure, because making a mistake with sex can make the rest of your life miserable. Sex in comparison with normal pleasure is like purchasing a house versus buying a chair to place in that house. Buy a rotten chair and you can always replace it with another. Buy a rotten house and all the furniture in the house, along with home life in general, becomes distasteful.

Put these first two points together and you conclude that sex must never be treated as mere entertainment or fun. First, it will become meaningless, and second, you will probably end up ‘purchasing many rotten homes’.

The situation is actually much worse. That is because sex involves not just any house, but rather the house in which I am condemned to live for my entire life. In other words, the hyper-pleasure of sex comes from my physical body, the ultimate source of my personal identity, the physical container within which I am trapped for the duration of my physical existence.

Moving on to the third point, does sex contain a nugget of pain? It appears so. In French, orgasm is also called ‘le petit mort’, or the little death, and many cultures view sex as a rite of passage, in which one dies to being a child and becomes an adult.

Sex and Salvation: This has deep theoretical implications. What this means is that sex is actually a non-verbal Server-based ‘theory’ that is structurally similar to the verbal Teacher theory of Jesus’ message of salvation: Both involve a close personal relationship between ‘me’ and another individual, and in both of them ‘me’ dies to childish identity and is reborn as an adult. When I have sex, I fall apart and come back together because of my intimate relationship with another person. Similarly, when I ask Jesus into my heart, I fall apart and come back together because of my intimate relationship with another person. And, both go beyond normal feelings and involve temporary hyper-pain followed by lasting hyper-pleasure.[6]

And what happens when verbal and non-verbal theories meet? The non-verbal one usually wins because it backed up by Server confidence and as we all know, ‘actions speak louder than words’. Therefore, it is very important that the act of sex ‘says’ the same thing as the message of salvation—otherwise it will end up twisting the message of personal salvation.

And what does the message of salvation say? It says that salvation begins with Teacher understanding, that the adult ‘me’ must be held together by Perceiver and Server confidence, and that personal rebirth leads to mental wholeness. 

Before we continue, I should point out that this analogy figures prominently in the Bible, for the apostle Paul calls the church the ‘bride of Christ’ and he compares a Christian’s relationship to Jesus to that of a wife and a husband.

So what happens when I treat sex as entertainment? I am non-verbally holding on to the concept that personal salvation is empty and meaningless. What happens if sex for me is a succession of one-night stands? I am using actions—backed up by feeling—to tell my mind that personal salvation leads to personal fragmentation and not to mental wholeness. Similarly, what am I ‘saying’ when I divorce partner A and marry person B? That personal salvation does not work, and that it gives up before reaching the final destination.

In contrast, if I first get to know a person verbally, understand what he or she is like, choose to enter into a long term commitment with that person and then climb into the sack, I am using Server actions to seed my mind with the Teacher theory that personal salvation starts from God in Teacher thought, is based upon Server and Perceiver confidence and then reaches down through choice to save me as a human being. If I follow that path with my sexuallife, then I will find it natural to believe Jesus’ plan of personal salvation.

So, how total should my commitment be to my marriage partner? Well, how total do I want God’s salvation to be to me as an individual? How long should I stay with my partner? Well, how long do I want Teacher understanding to continue helping ‘me’? And, how extensive should my relationship with my partner be? Well, how extensive do I want Jesus’ plan of salvation to be for me?

The point is that sex is structurally too similar to Jesus’ plan of salvation for these two to be treated in different ways. One will end up warping the other, and the strong feelings and Server confidence that are associated with sex will almost guarantee that it is the one that does the warping. 

So if this is such a significant comparison, then why don’t others mention it? Well, the Bible certainly does, but the apostle Paul also says that it is ‘a mystery’. It appears that this is because the conflict between Server actions and Teacher words is something that can only be tackled after one integrates Perceiver facts and Mercy experiences. That is the conclusion which we made in the previous chapter, remember? What exactly does this mean? Well, knowing how hard it is to think rationally about the subject, there is probably a reason why Paul kept it a mystery.

Good Sex: But what if I do not care about Jesus’ plan of personal salvation? What if I just want to enjoy sex? I suggest that we end up with the same conclusion. What happens when sex is used to fragment personal identity? The fourth principle gives us the answer: Hyper-pleasure requires a context that remains solid and unchanging. Without this solid framework, hyper-pleasure turns into fragmentation and hyper-pain. Thus, using sex to fragment the mind takes physical hyper-pleasure and uses it to create mental hyper-pain.

We conclude again that the hyper-pleasure of sex can only be preserved by placing it within the solid structure of a long-term relationship—otherwise known as marriage. Imagine what would happen if you lost an arm or a leg whenever you had sex. The result would obviously be hyper-pain and not hyper-pleasure. But that is exactly what happens internally when physical sex leads to mental fragmentation.

In order to prove this point, one only has to read the headlines on the tabloid newspapers displayed at the checkout counters in grocery stores: actress A is breaking up with Actor B; actor C is in a clinic for substance abuse; actress D is falling apart from stress and has gained eighty pounds. If you want more proof, then ask yourself why the ‘adult industry’ is always searching for fresh faces and new bodies.

If that is the case, then why is sex outside of marriage now the norm? First, I suggest that childish personal identity does not care about the fragmentation that ‘free sex’ produces because it has never experienced the hyper-pleasure of being personally integrated, just as fighting a second Korean War does not frighten the typical North Korean citizen since he is already struggling for survival on the edge of physical starvation. However, for the person who goes through personal rebirth and acquires an integrated personal identity, using sex to fragment the mind becomes mentally abhorrent, just as war is now unthinkable for the South Korean living in his spacious apartment on the banks of the Han river.  

Second, what holds together the mind of the average person? Societal structure and social convention. Therefore, as long as these remain intact, then ‘free love’ remains enjoyable. For instance, I grew up during the hippie era of the 1970s, when the motto was ‘make love not war’. My generation thought that this would last forever. But, it didn’t. Instead, personal lives started falling apart and society today is driven by the hyper-pain of terrorism—the fear that terror will be wreaked upon our modern lifestyle and rip it apart.

Similarly, when sex starts to tear down social taboos, violate societal norms, and add pain, bondage, and other strangeness, then it may still be exciting, but it has ceased being hyper-pleasure and has turned into hyper-pain.

Protecting Hyper-pleasure: I have suggested that lasting hyper-pleasure can only exist within a structure that remains solid. But, what makes mental structure solid? Perceiver and Server confidence. And how does one build confidence? By testing facts and skills and having them survive intact.

In other words, men and women will only be able to gain the confidence that is needed to protect the hyper-pleasure of sex by living alongside one another without hopping into bed. In religious terms, every garden of Eden (Eden means paradise) requires some forbidden fruit. Because, it is living beside the forbidden fruit without eating it that builds the Perceiver and Server confidence that is needed to protect hyper-pleasure and stop it from turning into hyper-pain. If the forbidden fruit is ever eaten, then the hyper-pleasure will end and you will get ‘kicked out of the garden’.

What is hyper-pleasure without solid boundaries? Hyper-pain. What is the ultimate hyper-pain? Death. Therefore, eating the forbidden fruit will not only get you kicked out of the garden, it will also introduce you to death. And what happens when internal walls are broken down? They have to be replaced by external barriers—such as clothes. And yes, I am basically paraphrasing the Biblical account.

This also explains why covering the entire body of a woman with a black cloth and forbidding women from going out alone in public does not work, because it does not teach men and women how to interact with each other as human beings; it does not build the Perceiver and Server confidence that is needed to protect sexual attraction.

Similarly, pretending that humans are sexless beings and condemning even a touch on the shoulder as ‘sexual harassment’ is also mentally debilitating, for it too replaces internal confidence with external walls. Instead, I should view sexual tension as a chance to gain mental confidence, a valuable opportunity for building personal integrity in myself and those around me. Why? Because, personal integrity makes hyper-pleasure possible and stops it from turning into hyper-pain.

“But how can anyone handle the stress of being together and not doing it? Only the socially inept protect their virginity.” This, I suggest, is a natural conclusion of childish identity, which neither values personal integrity nor is capable of protecting it. Instead, it is driven by ‘love at first sight’. Whenever some attractive person comes along, the feelings of the moment mesmerize Perceiver thought into ‘believing’ that ‘me’ and that desirable person belong together. Then, unless social taboos or government rules intervene, the tendency is to pursue this physical attraction to its natural conclusion—until some new sex object shows up and re-mesmerizes Perceiver thought anew.

In contrast, when Perceiver thought is active, then it knows who and what belong to ‘me’ and who and what do not—and if it has sufficient confidence, then it can continue to know this even when in the company of someone attractive. In addition, Perceiver rules of moral cause and effect act as a map to guide ‘me’ through sexually charged situations without either losing or destroying personal integrity. Finally, Teacher feelings of understanding will make me feel good about preserving personal integrity, balancing negative feelings of sexual frustration.

Thus, we are back to the Christian message of salvation. If a person wants to preserve personal integrity when encountering sexual desire, then the God of Teacher understanding has to reach down through Jesus the Contributor and transform childish identity. After all, what is the point of saying that I hold on to the Christian message if I refuse to apply it in the very area where it affects my physical body most personally? And, if I refuse to allow the Christian message of salvation to transform sexual desire, then my sexual actions will make it very difficult for me to understand the Christian message of salvation.

One more point. Notice that the rule regarding sex is the same whether one is single, dating, or married. In all cases, the bottom line is preserving personal integrity. That is why one does not hop into bed when one is single, and that is why one makes a long term marriage commitment to a partner. The difference is that when one is single, then other people do not belong to ‘me’, whereas when one is married, another person does. Obviously, there is more to enjoy in the Garden of Eden when one is married, but no matter what the situation, there will always be some forbidden fruit. And why is forbidden fruit necessary? To preserve personal integrity. And why does one preserve personal integrity? Because, hyper-pleasure can only exist within a ‘walled garden’. Without solid walls, hyper-pleasure turns into hyper-pain. And, the ultimate goal—I hope—is to enjoy hyper-pleasure without destroying it.

Finally, if these conclusions regarding sex seem restrictive or traditional, then please tell me what other options are possible—if the bottom line is preserving hyper-pleasure. As long as we live as mortal humans within physical bodies, I cannot see any alternative.

Sex and a Holy Book: Sex is a very difficult topic for Holy Book religion to address, because it blatantly contradicts the doctrine of religious self-denial. Thus the Christian church—which preaches a message of personal salvation—often finds itself in the predicament ofpraising physical hyper-pain and condemning physical hyper-pleasure. In essence, instead of proclaiming the ‘abundant life’, its message becomes ‘make war not love’.

That is because war, violence, and hyper-pain are consistent with religious self-denial, whereas physical love, peaceful co-existence, and hyper-pleasure are not. If you want an example, I suggest looking at the American neo-conservative. Dying for one’s country and killing or maiming millions in other lands is now called a ‘sacred Christian duty to God’, while showing a little too much skin on television is a matter of national crisis.

That is what happens when the medium becomes the message. I personally would rather pursue love than make war. Why choose hyper-pain? Why not follow the path of Jesus—or salvation, who ‘for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising its shame.’[7]The path to lasting hyper-pleasure may lead through the hyper-pain of personal rebirth, but if personal suffering is ever the primary goal, then I am choosing to embrace hyper-pain—and that is not sane.

This also explains why sex tends to be viewed as lawless and ‘free of rules’. When law comes from a Holy Book, then the biggest rule will always be ‘thou shalt not experience physical pleasure’. Why? Because, personal pleasure threatens blind faith. A Holy Book based map of morality literally ceases to exist in areas of excessive personal pleasure. Even talking about the subject will be seen as threatening to truth, because it corrodes Teacher thought with words that refer to personal enjoyment. Thus sex will become associated with an absence of rules, a jungle of irrational, forbidden passion where morality and understanding do not intrude. That, unfortunately, totally contradicts our conclusion that sex, along with all hyper-pleasure, can only exist within a structure of rules and morality.

Other Forms of Hyper-pleasure: Lest we end with the impression that sex is the only form of hyper-pleasure, let me suggest some other areas where feeling goes beyond isolated experiences to involve entire networks: Family relationships are obviously a prime example, both between parents and children and among siblings. Close friendship can also provide hyper-pleasure, even when the bosom buddy is only the family dog. 

Moving from the physical to the internal, another area of hyper-pleasure is the mental relationship between ‘me’ and my image of God. As Buddhism knows, there is great ecstasy in achieving mystical union with God. Unfortunately, Buddhism lacks the mental structure that is needed to preserve this hyper-pleasure. However, if one follows the indirect path of Christianity and uses mental content to build an image of God, then the hyper-pleasure of worshipping and enjoying God has the internal structure that is needed to protect it and nourish it.

Finally, I suggest that the relationship between mental modes can also lead to great hyper-pleasure. The theory of mental symmetry states that the mind of every person contains seven different modes of thought and that the goal of morality is for all of these modes to become ‘alive’ and to work together in harmony. Thus, it produces hyper-pleasure when the various parts of the mind function harmoniously.  

Saying this the other way, what happens when conscious thought tries to override subconscious modes, or when one mental strategy is pursued at the expense of another? Obviously, a lot of hyper-pain. Instead of functioning normally, mental modes will continually be trying to stay alive—fighting for their very survival.

In plain English, if you want the parts of your mind to work together in harmony, then you must decide that you will stop shutting them down, and choose to give subconscious thought the right to stay alive.

Suffering versus Patience: I would like to make one more point, with which I will end this rather long and heavy chapter. I have suggested that personal maturity can only be reached by dying to childish identity, experiencing personal confusion, and becoming personally re-integrated as an adult. In terms of mental networks, this means going through hyper-pain in order to experience lasting hyper-pleasure.

This process can be driven either by hyper-pain or by hyper-pleasure. The first describes the path of suffering whereas the second is the path of patience.

The path of suffering is triggered by some act of physical or mental violence that shocks me with hyper-pain. If this hyper-pain is sufficiently intense, then it will cause ‘me’ to fall apart inside, as I go through some variation on the five stages of grief. The struggle to regain normalcy then builds the Perceiver and Server confidence that is required to construct an adult personal identity. 

That is the path of suffering. It is exceedingly painful. It can lead to mental rebirth if progress is not halted through bitterness. It is also the primary path that is preached by Holy Book Christianity, because it is the one that is consistent with religious self-denial.

There is also the path of patience. If suffering is like having my home destroyed and being forced to live on the street, then patience is like living alongside my neighbor as he moves into a brand new mansion. Suffering occurs when my computer crashes and all my personal files are lost. Patience means sticking with my existing computer even when far better models are available.

In the same way that bitterness can derail the path of suffering by clinging to an aspect of the old ‘me’ and refusing to allow it to die, so the path of patience can be halted by emotional identification—pretending that I am someone that I am not, that I am with someone with whom I am not, or that I have something which I do not.

Suffering is driven by hyper-pain. Patience, in contrast, is motivated by hyper-pleasure. Sexual desire is one the prime driving forces for the path of patience. Following the path of patience means seeing something good and accepting that it is not yours. This stress of wanting but not having builds the Perceiver and Server confidence that is needed to construct an adult ‘me’. Patience means seeing a beautiful girl walk down the street, having your heart go ‘thud’ within you, and then walking on and accepting that she belongs to someone else. Patience means seeing someone or something beautiful and saying, “I will become like that inside.”

That is why patience and the Holy Spirit are very closely related, because patience internalizes goodness and turns external experience into Platonic form. We even talk about platonic love. Is that the end of the road? No. Instead, platonic love lays the mental foundation that is required to enjoy—among other things—the hyper-pleasure of sex.

Let us summarize: We began by looking at the habit of clearing the throat, and saw that memories which gather together eventually form a ‘living’ network which wants to stay alive, be fed, and express itself.

That led us to the concept of hyper-emotion. When mental networks join together there is hyper-pleasure; when networks fall apart, the result is hyper-pain. Hyper-emotion always takes precedence over normal emotion because a group of memories always contains more emotion than the individual memories within that network. Similarly, the only way to attach strong feelings to a network is by filling it with emotional memories. 

Hyper-pleasure and hyper-pain are closely related, because bringing two networks together or improving a network always involves some destruction. However, with hyper-pleasure there is only temporary, limited fragmentation. If this fragmentation ever becomes too extensive, or lasts too long, then hyper-pleasure turns into hyper-pain.  

We then turned our attention to violence and sex. Violence is the greatest physical hyper-pain, whereas sex is the strongest physical hyper-pleasure.

A focus on violence leads to conflict between Exhorter excitement and Mercy and Teacher Feelings. Exhorter thought finds violence exciting and addictive, while Mercy and Teacher thought find it painful and desensitizing. Because excitement comes from emotion, this means that ever greater violence is needed to produce the same Exhorter ‘buzz’.

Because a mental network only contains strong feelings if the memories that are within that network have strong feelings, we conclude that sex needs romance and love to make it meaningful. And, because working with entire mental networks is much riskier than dealing with isolated memories, we realize that sex can never be treated as mere entertainment but must instead be approached with care and thought.

We next made the strange observation that there are similarities between sex and Jesus’ message of personal salvation. Both involve an intimate relationship between another person and ‘me’; both go through temporary hyper-pain to reach hyper-pleasure; and both lead from childish identity to adult identity. And, this comparison is also found in the Bible.

However, sex is a non-verbal ‘theory’ based in Server actions, whereas salvation is a verbal theory rooted in Teacher understanding. As we have learned, verbal and non-verbal theories tend to follow separate paths. But, if sex begins with communication and understanding, produces a framework of solid personal commitment, and then culminates in the physical act, then it can actually give Server stability to the Christian message of personal salvation. However, if sex leads to personal fragmentation and not personal integration, then it will end up twisting the understanding of personal salvation.

We then realized that all hyper-pleasure must occur within a solid framework or else it turns into hyper-pain. Therefore, sex must occur within commitment, or else it will start corroding social stability until it turns into hyper-pain and is replaced by hyper-pain.

If all hyper-pleasure occurs within a solid structure, and if Perceiver and Server confidence build solid structure, then sex must always be accompanied by limits and rules. And, the only way to build this confidence is by encountering emotional pressure and surviving intact. Thus, sexual tension should be seen as an opportunity for building the personal integrity that is needed to preserve and protect sex.

Finally, I suggested that there are two ways of going through the process of personal rebirth. The first is the path of suffering, which is driven by hyper-pain and can be halted through bitterness. The second is the path of patience, which is driven by hyper-pleasure and can be stopped by identification. Holy Book Christianity, with its religious self-denial, emphasizes the path of suffering, but the Holy Spirit is closely related to the path of patience, because both involve an internal vision of what goodness could be.

This chapter was another one that introduced a lot of new concepts:

•        Normal Emotion: The feeling attached to individual Teacher and Mercy memories.

•        Hyper-emotion: The feeling produced by working with networks of memories.

•        Mental Life: A network of memories becomes ‘alive’ and tries to stay alive.

•        Hyper-pain: The mental anguish of tearing apart a living network of memories.

•        Hyper-pleasure: The mental ecstasy of joining together two living networks.

•        Violence: Threatening the physical body and related mental networks with hyper-pain.

•        Sex: Giving hyper-pleasure to the physical body and associated mental networks.

•        Emotional Precedence: Staying in one piece is more important than feeling pain.

•        Hyper-emotion: Only as intense as the emotions within a network.

•        Hyper-pleasure: Only possible within a greater context of structure and stability.

Questions to think about:

1)    Have you ever felt as if you were totally falling apart inside?

2)    Have you ever had to choose between emotion and hyper-emotion? Describe.

3)    What disturbs you more, inappropriate sex or excessive violence? Why?

4)    What type of walls do you use to preserve your hyper-pleasure?

Homework:

Read the Ten Commandments in the Bible. Which ones are related in some way to hyper-emotion?

We have described briefly the behavior of each of the seven cognitive styles. Write down what each of these seven modes of thought requires in order to ‘stay alive’. How are you providing for each of these mental needs?

Human versus Angel

It was 3 AM in the morning, and he awoke from his sleep with a deep sense of foreboding. He felt a presence in the room, and out of the corner of his eyes he could see little creatures scurrying back and forth. He tried to move but found that he was paralyzed. As he struggled to waken from his state of semi-slumber he saw that his bedroom had no ceiling. Instead, he could see the stars of the night sky along with a shaft of bright blue light. And then he felt his body lifting off the bed and travelling up the beam of light…

He woke up and looked at the clock on the night stand. It was 3:40 AM. About forty minutes had past and he could not remember what had happened—or if anything at all had happened. Maybe it had all been a bad dream.

No. I personally have never seen a UFO. But, I am sure that you recognize the classic story of the UFO abduction.

Symmetry: Dealing rationally with the topic of UFOs is rather difficult. That is because everything about it seems so strange. Therefore, we will try to keep our mental feet on the ground by using a basic tool of math and physics—the tool of symmetry. This discussion may end up a little bit technical, but I do not know how else to deal with this subject.

Symmetry looks at mirror images.  The human body is symmetrical, with the left side a mirror image of the right. The human brain is symmetrical, with a left and a right hemisphere. The diagram of mental symmetry is also symmetrical: Teacher is the ‘mirror image’ of Mercy, while Server is the ‘mirror image’ of Perceiver. And, if we were to look at the Exhorter, Contributor, and Facilitator in more detail, we would find that they too can operate in one of two modes, modes which are mirror images of one another. In fact, symmetry plays such a major role in my model of human thought that I ended up calling it the theory of mental symmetry.

Summing up, the physical body, the brain, and the mind—as described by the diagram of mental symmetry—all appear to be symmetrical. But, what about the interaction between the physical body and the mind. Is it also symmetrical?

No. In computer terms, the two associative styles deal with input, whereas the two analytical modes handle output. On the input side, the physical body fills Mercy strategy with ready-made experiences and feelings, while Perceiver strategy receives information about objects and where they are located. On the output side, Teacher thought can express itself through words, while Server strategy is able to control the physical body.   

Teacher	Words Out
Server	Actions Out
Mercy	Experiences and Feelings In
Perceiver	Objects and Position In

This mind/body asymmetry can be clearly seen in the parietal lobes of the brain. The left parietal lobe, used by Server thought, stores actions for the entire physical body. When it is damaged, the result is apraxia, in which a person cannot do a sequence of actions. If he tries to light a match, for instance, he may try to strike the match against the box before taking the match out of the box.

The right parietal lobe, in contrast, stores all of the mental maps. Damage that area of the brain, and a person becomes spatially confused, no longer able to work out the spatial relationship between physical objects. His sense of body ownership can also become distorted and he may actually think that one of his limbs is no longer part of his body.

Messengers and Names: As we know by now, Teacher strategy hates it when a general theory is incomplete. And, we have just stumbled across a major hole in the theory of mental symmetry. One whole side is missing. That would be like having a picture of someone that only shows one half of his body. So what do you do when that happens? You take the mirror image of the side you do have and use it to fill in the missing half.

So let us play mirror image. I have stated numerous times that Mercy thought is the first strategy of the mind to begin operating in the human infant. Suppose instead that Teacher thought—the mirror image of Mercy strategy—were the first to start functioning. Suppose that instead of living within the finite object of the physical body we instead ‘lived’ within a limited set of Teacher words.

That is bizarre, truly bizarre. Can you imagine inhabiting a verbal message, living within some finite sequence of Teacher words? It may be bizarre, but it is also completely Biblical and totally scientific.

According to the Bible, humans aren’t the only intelligent creatures around. Instead, the Bible clearly teaches that God also created angels. The word ‘angel’ comes from the Greek word ‘angelos’ which means—that’s right—messenger. In addition, Jesus himself is called the ‘living word’. And, if you think that this idea of attaching verbal labels to intelligent creatures applies only to aliens, the Bible also repeatedly promises names to humans who believe.

And everyone knows what a name is. Suppose that I talk about the butcher, the barber, or the car mechanic. Do you care what he looks like? Does his physical body make any difference? Basically, no. Instead, what matters is how well he can carry out his job, how well he fits the name of his profession.

With some names, such as ‘Medical Doctor’, the label determines very strictly what a person can and cannot do. In order to call yourself a doctor, you have to go to school for years and pass numerous difficult examinations.

And names can really define personal identity. For instance, I started playing violin when I was three years old. Therefore, it took decades before I stopped thinking of myself as a violinist.

If you want to imagine what a mirror-image being would be like, take a medical doctor, remove the physical body and leave only the skills, the knowledge, and the name. If you want an example, think of the holographic doctor in the television series Star Trek Voyager, who began his ‘existence’ as a medical program within the ship’s computer.

If an angel is a being that lives within a message, which is what the name ‘angel’ means, then that describes an angel.

Objects and Waves: But how can I compare physical bodies with angel names? A body is an object that lives in space, while a nameis only a wave of sound spoken by the mouth. An object is totally different than a wave, right?

Wrong. According to quantum physics, every object is also a wave and every wave is also an object, and if you don’t understand this then ask any physicist and he will tell you that he also does not understand it. But, he will also say that the equivalence of objects and waves is a basic principle of physics, as fundamental as Newton’s law of gravity.

For the rest of the mirror image, we simply have to take our table and flip everything around:

Teacher	Words, Waves and Feelings In
Server	Actions and Sequence In
Mercy	Experiences and Pictures Out
Perceiver	Objects and Position Out

And, if you try to analyze that combination, it reminds you of your typical UFO encounter. Instead of living in physical matter and being associated with physical matter, UFO creatures seem to live within waves of energy and be surrounded by waves of energy. Thus, while the human world programs Mercy thought, the UFO world seems to be associated with Teacher strategy.

Notice that we have now come up with a totally different view of angels, UFOs and miracles. Most people view these as violations of natural law, items that disturb the universal theories of natural science. And, an image of God that is rooted in a universal Teacher theory has no place for exceptions to the rule, even if they are miracles which claim to be ‘from God’.

The theory of mental symmetry, in contrast, demands the existence of a mirror-image realm. Without it, the picture of humanity is incomplete and asymmetrical. That is rather significant, because the Christian Bible says a lot about angels and the supernatural. If a theory cannot include the supernatural, then it cannot claim to be a theory of Christianity. And, if an image of God is based in a universal Teacher theory, then this explanation of the supernatural must preserve Teacher understanding and not violate it.

This is a rather important point, so I will try to say it once more from a different angle. Suppose that I played it safe and left out this chapter on aliens and the supernatural. That is what Thomas Jefferson, the American president, did. He literally took out his scissors and cut out everything from the New Testament that referred to the supernatural. Is that an answer? As the Apostle Paul himself said: Christianity without the resurrection from the dead is meaningless and simply makes people miserable.  

Therefore, we must deal with the supernatural. But how? If we treat miracles and angels as events and creatures from God that violate natural law, then this also violates the concept that God is a Being of Universal Order and Structure. The only remaining option is to find a way of fitting the supernatural within a universal Teacher theory—and that is what symmetry and its mirror images allows us to do.

If you read through stories of alien encounters, they really do seem to be mirror-image creatures. Instead of using Server actions to move from here to there, UFO creatures are always popping in and out of space and teleporting from here to there. Look in the Bible and you find angels doing the same thing—appearing and disappearing in and out of nowhere. And what mental strategy is responsible for creating objects and deciding where they belong? Perceiver thought. In other words, these creatures use Perceiver strategy to ‘move’ and not Server thought. 

This also explains why there is so little solid physical evidence of either UFOs or angels. Mirror-image beings would have the power to turn Perceiver objects on and off, just as humans can choose which Server action they will perform. We humans insist upon physical evidence because we assume that it is solid. But, for mirror-image beings, objects would not be solid. Instead of living in a world of solid physical objects, their ‘solid world’ would be one of Teacher waves and Server sequences. They would be seen by humans as beings of energy and would temporarily visit the human realm by occupying a physical container. 

And when these beings communicate, they often seem to use the medium of pictures and visions. What do they ‘talk’ about? Usually, sequences. We humans live in a spatial world of Perceiver objects and so we talk about where we went, what is where, and what is happening everywhere. When angels speak in the Bible, they tend to talk about Server sequences: what will happen when, and the order in which things will happen. We call that prophecy. 

Computer Programs and Images: That probably didn’t make any sense, and if I go further, it will probably make even less sense, so let us continue this discussion with the help of a human illustration. Suppose that I decide to study the image on my computer monitor for ‘solid evidence’. Will I find any? Of course not. That is because the picture on the screen is continually changing. It is not solid but is being generated by the computer. And how does a computer generate pictures? By running a computer program, written in thewords of a computer language. In brief, what drives a computer is not Mercy images but rather Teacher words.

This contrast between ‘computer program’ and ‘computer images’ is also found in the Bible. When Jesus was talking about who would betray him to the authorities, he said, “The Son of Man is to go, just as it is written of Him; but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed!”[8] In other words, the angelic ‘computer program’ had been written, but exactly whose human image would appear on the screen still remained to be determined.

Now that we have some idea about what a mirror image being would be like, let us turn to the question of alien morality. What exactly is the difference between an angel, a demon, and a UFO being? I suggest that we are again trying to put a human interpretation upon something that is inherently non-human. That is like asking, “What is the difference between a computer game in which you go around shooting people and a computer game in which you try to build cities?” As far as the computer is concerned, nothing. Both are computer programs written in a computer language.

So what is the difference between a ‘good’ computer program and a ‘bad’ one? How well it runs. Does it contain bugs? Does it try to infect other computer programs? Does it run smoothly? Does it respect other computer programs? That would describe mirror-image morality.

And the Bible appears to apply mirror-image morality to angels: “And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day.”[9] ‘Leaving your own domain’ sounds more like a computer bug than putting unpleasant pictures on the screen. And, being placed in darkness would be a harsh punishment for a being composed of energy and light.

For humans, though, the pictures on the screen would matter very much. If I had to live in one of these programs, then I would far rather live in the city building game than in the shooting game. And that is why the last chapter emphasized the topic of respecting humanity. A shooting game does not respect humanity; a city building game does.  As long as these are simply games on a computer, then none of this matters. Similarly, as long as we can play mental games within our physical bodies, none of this is important. But, if the physical body disappeared, then only the game would remain. The game would become the new reality. And, who would run all these ‘computer programs’? Mirror-image beings, because they live in words and ‘computer programs’ describe their ‘reality’.

Heaven and Hell: This, I suggest, explains the difference between heaven and hell. When a human dies, his physical body decomposes and turns into dust. His mind—or whatever it is that occupies the body—appears to keep on going. If you want evidence for that, then I suggest going to the Internet and checking out Nurse’s Forums. Nurses spend more time with the dying than any other profession, and they tell story after story describing how the inner substance of a person survives the demise of his physical body. 

Where does a person go after he dies? It appears that he enters the mirror-image realm of angels, demons and UFOs. After all, he no longer has a body with which to inhabit the human realm of physical matter, so that is the only ‘place’ that he can go. There are many accounts, both in the Bible and in other literature, connecting dead people with both aliens and angels. 

Thus, heaven is simply the part of the mirror-image Teacher realm that respects humanity, whereas hell is the inhuman part that doesn’t. Putting this in computer language, heaven is a cosmic ‘computer program’ that respects humanity, whereas hell is a cosmic ‘computer program’ that does not.

But why would a dead person be forced to live in a ‘computer program’ that did not respect humanity? Why couldn’t he just ‘change the channel’ to a program with better content? Because, as we saw in the previous chapter, integration always takes precedence overpain. Therefore, if a disembodied person wanted to stay in one piece, then he would have to enter a ‘computer program’ that matched his mental content. If he spent his human life filling his mind with inhuman content, then that is the cosmic computer program that his mind would force him to inhabit. Living in that ‘program’ might be painful, but it would keep him in one piece, whereas changing to another ‘program’ would cause him to fall apart.  

But what is so bad about falling apart inside? Humans do it all the time. Yes—as long as we have our physical bodies to hold us together. But, once a person dies and loses his physical body, then nothing remains except internal content. If that internal content ever fell apart, the result would be mental annihilation, a hyper-pain that is worse than any other possible pain or hurt.

Thus, hell is actually a cosmic computer program that holds childish identity in one piece. Or, as Jesus said, hell is an ‘unquenchable fire’ where ‘the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’[10]

So, what type of ‘computer programs’ are we as humans currently running? Do they respect humanity? Are they setting us up for heaven or for hell? Well, childish identity runs the ‘program’ of hedonism, the military runs a program of personal destruction, most corporations run a program of personal exploitation, science runs a program that ignores the individual, while the program of blind faith denies the individual. If I had to spend my entire existence trapped in one of these computer programs, I would call it hell.

In essence, we are simply repeating what we stated in the previous chapter. We learned there that only the mind that applies the Christian message of personal salvation is capable of coming up with Teacher theories that respect humanity. Now I am suggesting that after a person dies, the internal part of him that survives death requires a Teacher theory that respects humanity.

Putting this in Christian language, if I want to go to heaven after I die, I must accept Jesus as my personal savior. That may sound religious and judgmental, but it really isn’t. Instead, it is simply basic karma—an extrapolation of personal cause and effect.

Saying this one more time, after I die physically, I will have to live with the image of God that I have mentally constructed. While I live in a physical body, I can play all the mental tricks that I want, because I still have a physical body which inhabits a physical world that respects humanity. But, when I die, all that is left is my mental content. That will determine my new ‘reality’.

Am I suggesting that my mind creates reality? Not necessarily. Instead, this new ‘reality’ is probably being created either by God or mirror-image beings. However, I am suggesting that I will be irresistibly drawn to the reality that matches what my mind contains.

Teacher theories that ignore ‘me’, or tell me to deny myself, or say that physical matter is illusion, may be fine to talk about. But, imagine having to deal with intelligent creatures who actually took my theories and turned them into my reality—who ran the ‘computer program’ in which I would then be forced to live.  

Christianity and Aliens: That brings us to our next theological question. How does the message of Christianity relate to angels, demons and UFO creatures? Since this is a rather delicate theological question, I will take the liberty of corroborating my theory with a few Bible verses.

First, does Christianity actually apply to aliens? Christianity must apply also to mirror-image creatures, or else the Christian God cannot claim to be a Universal Being. This is consistent with the Bible, which states that God “raised Him [Jesus] from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.”[11]

Notice that Jesus is in heaven, above every name. That definitely includes mirror-image aliens. And, this Teacher status includes both now and some future age. Notice also the strange list of ‘rule and authority and power and dominion’. None of these terms describe human creatures. Instead, all refer to some form of Teacher ‘order within complexity’, consistent with the idea that we are dealing with mirror-image beings inhabiting Teacher thought.  

Second, is it possible for angels ‘to be saved’? If ‘being saved’ means verbal acknowledging the Christian plan of personal salvation and ‘asking Jesus into your heart’, then one would conclude that angels cannot be saved. That is because the Christian message uses the Mercy language of people and personal feelings.

Mirror-image aliens do not live in Mercy experiences. Instead, they live in Teacher words. Thus, if angels are to be ‘saved’, then the Christian plan of salvation has to be translated from the Mercy language of people to the Teacher language of theories. And that means—here we go again—treating the Bible as a textbook instead of a Holy Book. So, as long as Christianity is based in a Holy Book, no plan of personal salvation can exist for angels. But, if a Teacher theory of Christianity could be found, then theory predicts that this would make it possible for Jesus to save angels as well as humans.

But does the Bible really say that angels can be saved? According to the following passage, yes:

“For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him… For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.”[12]

Yes, I know that is a long quote. But, I don’t want to have theologians breathing down my neck. And this passage clearly states that the salvation plan of Jesus applies to all created beings, and not just humans.

If the Bible teaches that Jesus’ plan of salvation applies also to angels, then why does almost every Christian book on UFOs seem to teach the opposite? The answer, I suggest, lies in the Teacher idolatry that treats the Bible as a Holy Book.

How does Mercy idolatry view people from a different tribe who worship the wrong idols? It sees them as evil and bad, people with whom we should fight. Similarly, how would Teacher idolatry view Teacher-based creatures who worship the wrong Holy Book? It would view them as evil and bad, beings with whom we should fight.

In other words, if you treat the Bible as a Holy Book, then you will instinctively believe that angelic beings cannot be saved and you will think that a continual state of warfare exists between angels and demons—regardless of what the Bible actually says about angels. Thus, not only does treating the Bible as a textbook translate Jesus’ message into a form that makes it possible for angels to be saved, but it also makes it possible for humans to conceive of angels being saved.

So, would angels have the same concept of God as humans? No, instead their image of God would be the mirror image of the human view of God. In other words, what we humans regard as the Holy Spirit, angels would regard as God, and what humans call God, angels would see as the Holy Spirit.

Yes, that is also in the Bible. At the end of the biblical book of Revelation, John, the writer, tries to bow down to an angel and worship him. The angel responds, “Do not do that; I am a fellow servant of yours and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus; worship God. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”[13]

Notice the angel’s strange way of describing Jesus’ plan of salvation. First of all, instead of talking about Perceiver belief, he talks about Server action and calls himself a ‘fellow servant’. Second, instead of looking to the Mercy experiences of Jesus, he holds on to his Teacher ‘testimony’. And, instead of following Jesus to reach a Teacher God and gain Perceiver truth, he follows Jesus in order to reach a Mercy Spirit and gain Server prophecy. Thus, what we are seeing here is the mirror image of the human version of Jesus’ message.

So why would Jesus come to earth, a backward planet in an unfashionable arm of the galaxy, to live and die? My guess is that earth, with its godless fixation on the immediate, the physical, the external, and the natural would be the most unfriendly environment possible for a ‘living word’ who came from God and used internal content to pursue eternal goals. Thus, earth would be the ultimate challenge. If Jesus could carry out his plan of salvation here on human earth, then he would not have to do it anywhere else, because ‘passing the exam’ here would automatically qualify him in every other jurisdiction.

But that also means translating Jesus’ plan of salvation into every language—including the Teacher language of mirror-image beings.

And that will only happen if we stop treating the Bible as a Holy Book and start using it is a textbook.

Or have I already said that?

Let us review this final chapter. We began by describing the typical UFO abduction account. I suggested that the key to understanding this extreme strangeness is the concept of symmetry.

The human body and the human brain are both symmetrical—one side looks like a mirror image of the other. The diagram of mental symmetry is also symmetrical, and is itself based upon the concept of mental symmetry.

The interaction between the body and the mind, though, is not symmetrical. Instead, the right hemisphere modes of Perceiver and Mercy process input from the physical world of objects and experiences, while the left hemisphere modes of Server and Teacher sendoutput to the world through actions and speech.

If our model of the mind is to remain completely symmetrical, then we must postulate the existence of a mirror-image realm inhabited by mirror-image beings. Such creatures would have the same minds as us, but live in a world of Teacher waves and Server sequences, while using Perceiver power to control their ‘world’ and expressing themselves through Mercy images.

If we look at UFO stories, they appear to be talking about such mirror-image beings. Similarly, the Bible talks a lot about angels, and the word ‘angel’ means messenger. Jesus is called the ‘living word’, and humans are promised that they will receive names.

Humans often use names, such as butcher or doctor, to refer to other people, and these names define the area in which we have specialized. If one took away the physical body and left only the specialization, then this would be like a mirror-image being.

As for the physical universe, physics itself tells us that matter is equivalent to energy. Thus, it makes sense to postulate the existence of mirror-image universe composed of Teacher energy instead of Mercy matter.

We then looked at computers as examples of mirror-image thought.  The picture that we see on a computer screen may look real, but it is not. Instead, it is generated by a computer program, a sequence of words written in a computer language. Thus, in a computer, Mercy images are ephemeral, while Teacher words are solid.

We then realized that we are dealing with two totally different kinds of morality. Human morality looks at the pictures on the screen and the experiences that are being depicted, whereas mirror-image deals with the computer program, how well it runs, and how many bugs it contains.  

After I die, I no longer have a physical body with which I can inhabit the human universe. My only option is to enter the mirror-image realm of ‘cosmic computer programs’. So what determines the computer program in which I will live after death? I do. Whatever ‘mental computer programs’ I have developed during my lifetime, those are the programs that I will end up living in after I die—because those are the only programs which I am capable of handling mentally. Given a choice between pain and falling apart, a person will always choose something that holds him together, even when it brings great pain. That is because hyper-emotion takes precedence over normal feeling.

Unfortunately, the childish mind is incapable of writing mental computer programs that truly respect humanity. Instead, it is only the adult mind, which has gone through Jesus’ plan of personal rebirth, that is capable of truly taking care of both ‘me’ and my physical body.

We then asked whether the salvation plan of Jesus would apply to mirror-image beings. We realized that if the Christian God is a Universal Being, then He must be God of all living creatures. We then found that the Bible explicitly states that Jesus is above all namesand that the salvation plan of Jesus applies to both ‘earthly’ and ‘heavenly’ beings.

However, because humans live in a Mercy world of experiences and people, Christianity presents Jesus’ plan of salvation using the language of experiences and people. If this plan is to apply to Teacher-based beings, then this plan must be translated into the Teacher language of words and theories.

We then found a quote from the end of the Bible in which an angel refers to himself as a partner to humans Christians, but then uses mirror-image language to describe Jesus’ plan of salvation.

Finally, we asked ourselves why Jesus would come to human earth to carry out his plan of salvation. I suggested that earth is the most difficult location for him to perform this plan. If it could be carried out here, then it would automatically apply everywhere else.

But, this message still has to be translated into every language, including the mirror-image language of Teacher thought.

A lot of strange new concepts were introduced in this final chapter:

•        Physical Body Symmetry: One side of the physical body is a mirror image of the other. 

•        Mental Symmetry: Server and Perceiver are mirror images, as are Teacher and Mercy.

•        Mind/Body Asymmetry: Perceiver input; Server output; solid Matter, ephemeral words.

•        Angel: A mirror-image being that lives in a ‘solid’ Teacher message.

•        Angel, UFO, Alien, Demon: All inhabitants of a mirror-image energy-based universe.

•        Alien Existence: Server is input; Perceiver is output; Energy is ‘solid’, matter is not.

•        ‘Computer Program’: A Teacher structure that creates Mercy experiences for humans.

•        Death: Leaving the physical body and universe and entering the mirror-image realm.

•        Heaven: The part of the mirror-image realm with human-friendly ‘computer programs’.

•        Hell: The part of the mirror-image realm without human friendly ‘computer programs’.

•        Judgment: Driven by hyper-emotion to enter a ‘program’ that protects mental structure.

•        Angelic Plan of Salvation: Jesus’ plan of salvation translated into a Teacher theory.

Questions to think about:

1)    Have you seen a UFO or had a supernatural experience? How did you respond? Why?

2)    What do you think about angels? Why?

3)    Do you think that UFOs are angelic or demonic? Why?

4)    If an alien came to you and asked about religion, what would you say?

Homework:

Try to analyze the main ‘computer programs’ and fantasies that you have within your mind. Describe these ‘programs’ on paper. What would it be like if you had to live as a disembodied soul within these mental programs? Be as honest as possible.

---