To say that the Absolute does not exist is like saying that we human beings consist of organs, cells, molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, thoughts, feelings, emotions, and so on, but we do not exist as a whole, as individuals. Indeed, the Absolute not only exists, but it is also the only true Reality.

See also Wholeness, Oneness, Truth, Life, Freedom, Love, Peace, Stillness, Emptiness, Fullness, Datum, Context, Source, Now, and Ground of Being.

As individuals, such a radical transformation of consciousness can only happen when we feel discontent with traditional religious, scientific, and economic belief systems of both West and East. Using the metaphor of The Matrix, we need to take the red pill rather than the blue one. How bright the redness of this pill depends on the level of our discontent. We can suddenly switch from blue to red in a revolutionary discontinuity of evolution, an abrupt apocalypse or revelation. Or this process of transforming blue into red, or in the alchemist’s language, base metal into gold, can be more gradual.

However, at the social level, there are now clear indications that we are rapidly heading towards a deep-rooted awakening of Love, Consciousness, and Intelligence, which will most likely come about through the breakdown of the global economy at the beginning of the 2010s. As few are as yet prepared for this evolutionary inevitability, it could well prove to be every bit as tumultuous as John the Divine prophesied in the Apocalypse or Book of Revelations in the Bible, although he was thinking of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire at the time, not of the American economic hegemony.

[Sanskrit ‘ignorance’, Pali avijja.] A term used in both Hinduism and Buddhism to indicate our conditioned minds, unable to distinguish the relativistic, phenomenal world of form from our Immortal Ground of Being, to differentiate transient maya from intransient Reality. Ignorance of the Truth thus prevents us from using our Divine Intelligence to understand what it truly means to be a human being. There is no equivalent word in European languages because these reflect a culture living in ignorance, unaware that we are not separate from the Divine for a single instant in our lives.

An example of the circle of duality is the range of different political systems. At the extreme are the totalitarian regimes, which we can call communism and fascism on the left and right, respectively. Moving down the circle, we can call the less political extreme systems socialism and conservatism, on the left and right, respectively. Then at the bottom of the circle, we find the middle way, or liberalism, the political system with the greatest freedom for its citizens, one where conflicts between the opposites can be dealt with for the benefit of all.

See also the sphere of duality, which specifically illustrates the relationship between Wholeness and Oneness.

Using the language of mathematics, those data patterns that have some quality or attribute in common, we can put in one set, while those with different properties we put in another set. For example, a child can learn to distinguish red, green, and blue blocks in the shape of circles, triangles, and squares, putting them in groups of blocks with similar characteristics. There is no other way to learn. This glossary has been formed using this very simple process.

Using these concepts, we can then ask the question, “Could a computer program itself without human intervention?” The answer is a resounding NO! Our creative thinking and learning activities are a gift of Life arising directly from our Divine Source. So if we are to realize our fullest potential as human beings, it is essential that we be free of our collective, cultural, and personal conditioning, which leads us to behave more like machines than the divine, cosmic beings we truly are.

First, we can view Consciousness as the ocean of Consciousness, a great ball of water, whose centre is Stillness, the absolute, divine Source of all existence, which we can call the Godhead. When we live in union with the Godhead, we realize Oneness in unity consciousness. The surface of the ocean of Consciousness is the physical universe of our senses. In between the surface and the centre lies the psyche, a multitude of nonphysical energies which mostly cause us to behave as we do. When we learn to integrate all knowledge into a coherent whole, we become one with the whole ocean, realizing cosmic consciousness. The ocean of Consciousness is thus an extension of the concept of the holomovement, which David Bohm introduced to unify quantum and relativity theories.

Secondly, we can view Consciousness like a sun, whose rays radiate from the centre, again our divine Source. But the light from this sun is not scattered or dispersed, like the light from the Sun; it is coherent, rather like the light from a laser. When we use the coherent light of Consciousness to view the Totality of Existence, we can use our Intelligence to view the Universe holographically.

The cross of duality illustrates these relationships. A and not-A are rational and irrational, respectively, while B and not-B are masculine and feminine, respectively. If we then add Jung’s concepts of extrovert and introvert, the cross of duality would then be three dimensional. In principle, there is no limit to the number of dimensions.

Another example of the cross of duality is Ken Wilber’s four-quadrant model of beings to their environment. In this model, A and not-A are individual and social or communal, respectively and B and not-B are interior and exterior, respectively. The four quadrants are then intentional, behavioural, cultural, and social, each of which contains a hierarchy of concepts.

In computer science, data types are regarded as classes of data, originally determined by the architecture of the hardware, such as integers and floating point numbers of varying precisions. In IRL, these are passive data types, for in a stored-program computer, programs are also data types, which we can call active. Because programs are stored in the computer, unlike early computers in the 1940s, active data can be processed by programs just as passive data can. We can further distinguish two different types of program, those that have been generated, which process passive data, and those that process data in active form. These we can call active-passive and active-active, respectively.

By comparing these data types with the corresponding cognitive types in human beings, we can show that human beings are the leading edge of evolution, not computers. The health, well-being, and even survival of the human race is thus dependent on us changing the focus of our attention; away from technological development towards the awakening of human love, consciousness, and intelligence.

[Old English, from Teutonic verb base *dau, ‘die’, and noun base *-thuz, ‘act, process, condition’. So death “means literally ‘act or process of dying’, in the same way as birth means ‘act or process of bearing’”.] Ever since we human beings were given the exquisite gift of self-reflective Intelligence some 25,000 years ago, we have been preoccupied with death. For we are the first species to be aware of the death of our own bodies, a situation that can generate great fear and anxiety when we egoically become separate from our immortal Ground of Being.

Historically, our fear of death has been appeased by various immortality symbols, the dominant one in the world today being money. However, with the inherently unstable global economy about to self-destruct, these immortality symbols will no longer have any psychological strength. The health, well-being, and survival of our species is thus dependent on recognizing that all beings in the Universe go through a conception/birth, growth, decay, and death process, arising from and returning to Consciousness, the seamless, borderless continuum that is Reality. So both birth and death are an illusion, an appearance in Consciousness, not real in an absolute sense. This principle applies to all beings in the Universe, including bodies, civilizations, species, stars, like the Sun, galaxies, and universes.

[Sanskrit, ‘carrying, holding’, in Pali dhamma.] In Hinduism, “a comprehensive term used to refer to that which determines our true essence … the lawful order of the Universe, and the foundation for all religion”. A central notion in Buddhism, along with shunyata, with various meanings: (a) The cosmic law underlying our world, specifically the law of karmically determined rebirth; (b) The teaching of the Buddha; (c) Norms of behaviour and ethical rules; (d) Manifestation of Reality; (e) Mental content; and (f) Factors of existence considered as building blocks of the empirical personality and its world.

These definitions indicate that the dharma is closed related to what are called Life and the Logos in the unified relationships theory. See also Tao and Rita.

A familiar example of duality is John Gray’s book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, helping women and men to understand their differences and so live more harmoniously together. Another example is Niels Bohr’s notion of complementarity, introduced because light sometimes displays itself as a wave and sometimes as a particle. David Bohm’s theory of the implicate order, which unified quantum and relativity theories, is another example growing in acceptance.

See also nonduality.

This is most critical when we believe that God is on our side when politicians wage war, typically expressed in the phrase “God bess America”. For such behaviour, which has characterized the me-epoch during the past 4,500 years, illogically leads to holy wars, wars about the nondual Whole, the union of all opposites.

[French en- in, from Latin in-, ‘in’, Old English, leoht, from Indo-European *leuk-, *louk-, *luk-, ‘illumination’, and -en, suffix for ‘make’.] “What is Enlightenment?”, John White asks in a book of that name and Andrew Cohen asks in a quarterly magazine that he publishes. So can we answer this question? Well, it is easier to say what enlightenment is not than to say what it is. Enlightenment is not Wholeness, for Wholeness is a cosmic concept and enlightenment is an anthropocentric concept. So when we say that one individual is enlightened and another is not, there is separation, which is not Wholeness.

Therein lies the paradox of enlightenment. J. Krishnamurti and John White came close to defining enlightenment in an interview in April 1984. We can adapt their dialogue and say that enlightenment is direct and immediate perception of Reality and the Truth, when there is perception, but no perceiver as a separate entity. For Krishnamurti, enlightenment means complete freedom from the conditioning that separates, that leads to fear, guilt, pride, and other such emotions. There are no ideals in enlightenment, for ideals arise from thought and Ultimate Reality transcends thought. So enlightenment is the ability to see what is, to see situations just as they are, without filters or clouds that impede our vision.

[Latin evolvere, ‘to roll out, unroll’, from ex, ‘out’, and volvere, ‘to roll’, originally denoting the unrolling of a papyrus or parchment roll.] Evolution is an accumulative process of divergence and convergence, proceeding in an accelerating, exponential fashion by synergistically creating wholes that are greater than the sum of the preceding wholes through the new relationships that are formed, apparently out of nothing. What is driving this entire process is the creative power of Life arising directly from the Emptiness of our Divine Source in the Eternal Now. For evolution doesn’t really take place over time; everything that happens happens in the moment.

This does not mean that there is an intelligent designer directing the entire process, like an information systems architect in business, for no being in the Universe is separate from any other. The Universe is designed, but there is no designer thereof. At any one moment, Life is normally working on structures that already exist in a gerontomorphic process, but sometimes going back pædomorphically to some earlier point.

If we human beings are to model this entire evolutionary process from Alpha to Omega, we need to go back to our Divine Source and start afresh at the very beginning. The potential to undergo what might appear a massive undertaking is present within all of us. It is in this sense that evolution is a process of unrolling or unfolding, making explicit in the explicate order what is implicit in the implicate order. But it does not really begin in the Void. As by the Principle of Unity, Emptiness and Fullness coexist, we can just as well say that evolution arises from Wholeness. For everything that exists in the manifest world of form is simply an abstraction from or appearance in Consciousness.

See also involution.

[Greek holos, ‘whole’, and graphicus ‘belonging to writing’ from graphein, ‘to scratch’.] A holographic view of the Universe is created by self-reflective Intelligence lit by the coherent light of Consciousness, which is analogous to a laser beam, which both creates a hologram and enables it to be seen in three dimensions. Because the Universe has a deep, underlying, unifying structure—described as an infinitely dimensional network of hierarchical relationships—the Universe can be seen as a whole in greater or lesser detail within all forms and structures, depending on the breadth of light being applied at any one moment. When the light of Consciousness is at its utmost breadth, there is an experience of ineffable, nondual Wholeness, realizing that all beings in the Universe are also Divine Wholeness, embodying and transcending all forms and structures.

In Auguries of Innocence, William Blake exquisitely expressed the holographic nature of the Universe with these opening lines:

   To see a world in a grain of sand,
   And a heaven in a wild flower,
   Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
   And eternity in an hour.

All such attempts [to create such a theory], of course, are marked by the many ways in which they fail. The many ways in which they fall short, make unwarranted generalizations, drive specialists insane, and generally fail to achieve their stated aim of holistic embrace. It’s not just that the task is beyond any one human mind; it’s that the task is inherently undoable: knowledge expands faster than ways to categorize it. The holistic quest is an ever-receding dream, a horizon that constantly retreats as we approach it, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that we will never reach.

Ken then goes on to ask, “So why even attempt the impossible?” To which he replies, “Because, I believe, a little bit of wholeness is better than none at all, and an integral vision offers considerably more wholeness than the slice-and-dice alternatives.” Panosophy provides an integral vision that truly embraces the Totality of Existence for it is based on the concept of being, all other categories of learning being subclasses on this concept of utmost abstraction and generality, necessary to develop a complete model of the relationships between all beings. Most particularly, the cross of duality shows how the four-quadrant model, the framework for the Integral Institute, is just a special case of the Principle of Duality, the fundamental design principle of the Universe.

Using the notation of the UML, this diagram is a comprehensive, self-inclusive model of the Totality of Existence, of the entire Universe. It shows that every being is related to every other being in potentially an infinite number of ways.

This means that if the coherent light of Consciousness is occluded with fragmented and deluded concepts, then Intelligence cannot function. Most particularly, it is Intelligence that enables us to know ourselves, the motto of the Paragonian University, to understand the evolutionary energies that cause us to behave as we do. This understanding is of the utmost importance, for otherwise, we are living our lives blindfold, rather like driving down the highway at ever increasing speeds with our eyes closed.

In panosophy, this unification can be realized by distinguishing the two forms of knowledge, inner knowing and symbolic knowledge. This inner knowing tells us of the existence of the nondual Absolute. To make this real in our experience, we follow the fundamental principle of the jnani—neti, neti, ‘not this, not this’—to realize in a process of negative discrimination that nothing in the world of form is who we truly are; not our bodies, or our thoughts, or our souls.

Taking the second first, the essence of knowing, in the words of the OED, is to perceive a thing or person as one identical with one perceived before and to recognize or distinguish one thing from another. This ability is key to clarity, one of the fundamental principles of concept formation in integral relational logic. But if our learning is based on recognition, on knowing again, on seeing similarities between data patterns over time, how can we ever learn anything that is radically new, that is unprecedented?

Well, this is done by basing our knowledge on the Truth, distinguishing inner knowing from symbolic knowledge, the Absolute from the relativistic world of form with our Intelligence. If the Absolute or Consciousness does not provide the overall Context for all our learning, then we can only live in delusion, out of touch with Reality.

When we have organized all knowledge into universal order, we have reached the summit of the mountain of all knowledge in Wholeness at the Omega point of evolution. This is the mirror image of Oneness at the Alpha point of evolution in the depths of the ocean of Consciousness. The Norwegian fjords provide a metaphor of this relationship. Some mountains there are sheer cliffs up to 1000 metres high, plunging into the fjord, which can reach 1000 metres in depth, enabling ocean-going cruise liners to travel up to 100 kilometres into the fjord.

Despite these numerous meanings, the ancient Greeks gave logos two distinct meanings, a mystical and a mundane. To Heraclitus, the mystical philosopher of change, logos signified “the rational principle governing the cosmos”. Everything is in constant flux, related and ordered through the universal Logos, which is also manifest in the human being’s power of reason. The Logos is thus the organizing power of Life, emanating from our divine Source.

However, Heraclitus’s contemporaries clearly did not understand what he meant, for he was called the ‘Obscure’. Furthermore, Aristotle accused Heraclitus of not reasoning. Yet, Heraclitus was much closer to understanding the way we actually reason than Aristotle, an understanding we can express in the modern language of integral relational logic, which has evolved from computer science.

As John was the most mystical of the four evangelists, it is probable that he was referring to the mystical meaning of logos when he wrote, “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God”. However, when the Bible came to be translated into English, logos was translated word, one of the many mundane meanings of logos.

This does not completely unify all opposites, for the Absolute can be viewed in terms of Wholeness and Oneness, which unify in Wholeness. Going the other way, the relativistic world of form consists of the physical and nonphysical worlds, which also unify in Wholeness.

But because Wholeness is the union of all opposites, if we as individuals and as a species are to reach evolution’s glorious culmination, we must start afresh at the very beginning, at the Alpha point of evolution. And as this diagram illustrates, the Alpha and Omega points are not in the past and future; they both exist in the eternal Now. It is with this realization that we can say, with John the Divine in the Apocalypse or Revelations, “I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

It is often believed that Oneness is the ultimate goal of the spiritual path because in Oneness we realize the most exqisite sense of bliss, complete freedom from fear and suffering. It would therefore seem that once we become enlightened with the coherent light of Consciousness, there is nothing more to do in life. However, we have still to reach Wholeness as a species, at the Omega point of evolution.