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Thank you.
Wow.
What a great feeling bunch of people.
Thank-you for making some time for me.
The title of this talk is “How to Explain Everything”.
And of course if you’re going to explain everything,
you need a good paradigm.
A paradigm is a way of structuring data
so that people can understand you better;
it’s a storytelling tool.
Paradigms are created to bridge unknowns;
like, you go “so this”,
“so this” ...
“so probably that”.
You know, they’re organized word lessons
built of data and conjecture.
And the paradigm that I’m going to show you
will help you structure the history and evolution of life.
And you can superimpose it on consciousness,
or personal development,
human evolution,
societies,
spiritual paths,
governments, religions, just about anything,
and it will reveal new insights.
And if there’s some philosophic
or metaphysical subject that
you want to know more about,
just start structuring what you know
with this paradigm
and more will be revealed.
So here’s the basic paradigm:
When I look at this I think,
“Man, this is just too simple”.
But then the more that I play with it
the more excited I become.
And I know some of you are thinking
“there goes Harry again,
trying to explain everything”…
and he draws a line and he
starts having epiphanies with it.
But this is so much more than a line!
It’s an interaction between
the two foundations of everything;
it’s heaven and earth;
it’s alpha, it’s omega;
it’s God and creation.
So yesterday I showed it to Avra:
“Hey, come here, come here…come here, come here.
Look at this!”
She says, “It’s a line, Harry”.
I go, “Yeah - but it’s a line that’s got everything on it!”
And she has one of those phones
that you wear over your ear,
and I can’t tell whether she’s talking
to me or to somebody on the phone.
Ok. I’ll be the first to admit that
I do get carried away sometimes.
And I know I went overboard on the triangles thing,
and probably I went off the deep end with the circles.
But, this is a line!
This is what I have been working up to.
How much trouble can you get into with a line?
At the bottom you have
“Physical Universe”,
at the top you have
“Infinite Being”.
And in between is everything.
Ok, so - all right, stick with me.
Let’s put the evolution of consciousness on the line.
Did you ever hear the expression
“dull as a rock”?
We’ll put “rock” down here.
Or “bright as an angel”?
We’ll put “angel” up here.
And everything else
goes in there.
I mean, doesn’t that just explain it all?
Ok, some more details:
imagine that these two poles
...imagine that these two poles
are broadcasting a signal.
That’s the broadcast from the physical universe pole,
it’s lots of physical laws and solid stuff.
Here’s the broadcast from infinite beingness,
and that’s undefined awareness.
And where the two meet
life happens.
At the physical universe end
you have life focused on physical cells,
organs, bodies;
and at the upper end
life enjoys infinite, eternal beingness,
source.
And in the middle,
you have this complex mixture of
physical universe and awareness.
Now at the lower end,
the mixture of physical universe and awareness is called
“Animal Consciousness”,
in the middle,
the mixture of physical universe and awareness is called
“Intellectual Consciousness”,
and at the top,
the mixture of physical universe and awareness is called
“Spiritual Consciousness”.
So you have three domains here.
And as you go up from the physical universe,
up this line,
the influence of the physical universe becomes less,
and the influence of infinite being becomes greater.
Most respected teachers will tell you that
the most important undertaking of life
is the journey that you make across these three domains.
The Buddhist follows the path of dharma,
which means in essence,
taking those actions that you believe will result in the most good.
Always do what you believe is right.
This has a strong element of personal responsibility, because
what you believe is right
depends upon where you are in a domain.
Animal consciousness is sometimes called the savage mind.
It’s a stimulus-response mechanism
that is controlled almost entirely
by the physical broadcast,
and awareness at this level is focused on
physical perceptions and body sensations.
A savage mind is very good at
organizing and developing biological functions,
it controls heartbeat, breathing, and digestion.
And by manipulating these biological functions
it stimulates the animal level instincts of
fear, hunger, and the mating drive.
And depending upon what instinct is stimulated
the organism exhibits either a submissive behavior
or a dominant behavior.
So life at this level down here
is controlled by external circumstances.
It’s savage, it’s predatory,
and it’s selfish.
And response is determined by pleasure or pain.
If something or someone triggers a pleasure response,
the animal will repeat the behavior.
If the pain response is triggered,
the animal will stop the behavior.
Response is automatic,
no thinking or decision is required.
And the closest that the savage mind
ever comes to thinking is:
“Can I eat it?
Will it eat me?
Can I mate with it?”
And if it doesn’t know the answer to these questions
it just waits for the next stimulus.
Now, if this is beginning to sound like some people you know,
I’m not surprised.
By my estimation about 50%
of the current human population
operate at this level.
Which means that the subjects of greatest concern are:
“Can I eat it?
Will it eat me?
Can I mate with it?”
Here’s an ideal beer advertisement for animal consciousness:
“It tastes good,
it won’t hurt you,
and it will make you look sexy.”
Well, doh - give me some of that!
The transformation from animal consciousness
to intellectual consciousness happens
with the awakening of an awareness of being aware.
Intellectual consciousness is not only aware,
it’s aware that it’s aware.
Suddenly an “I am” has materialized.
And this “I am” not only knows,
but it knows what it knows,
and it knows what it doesn’t know.
On one hand it can use the body’s perceptions
to look outward into the external universe,
and on the other hand
it can look inward into this new thing
called a rational mind
which begins as a copy of the external universe.
Now, whatever modification happened right here
that suddenly our DNA
gave birth to this “I thing”,
and made us more receptive to the
broadcasts coming from awareness,
is a subject for speculation.
Was there some extraterrestrial engineering that took place?
Or did a great ape eat a magic mushroom?
Or did something in the atmosphere change?
The ancient Greeks believed that gods seduced humans,
and maybe that’s how it started.
But whatever it was,
it was a miracle moment in time.
In the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”,
Stanley Kubrick speculated that the transformation
from animal consciousness to thinking
was triggered by this mysterious monolith. Remember?
And it broadcast an eerie melody;
and it was transforming music.
I mean, why not?
“Music has charms to soothe the savage beast…”
So I can’t overstate how
important and unique to our species
it was to cross this threshold.
It gave humans dominion over all other animals.
And when the moment had passed
the concept of “me” rode in the rational mind,
and it rode mostly as a passenger.
And humans moved from
identifying with a body
to identifying with a mind.
Did you ever buy a car or a computer
and discover there was something
that the salesman didn’t tell you?
That’s what happened with the rational mind.
It contained a hidden element.
And underneath the chrome and the equations
and all the pretty dreams
the savage mind still lurked there.
And beneath the reasoned decisions of the new rational mind,
the old stimulus-response mind of pain was still running.
The savage instincts remained as a sub-conscious influence.
So our interpretation of the world
carried old judgments based on past pleasures and pain
and we used the reasoning power of the new rational mind
to justify them as right.
This is the tragic flaw in the human drama.
If you operate on instincts,
and the instincts aren’t right,
you’ll go extinct.
Right?
Now that got carried over to the idea
that if you operate on beliefs,
and your beliefs aren’t right,
you’d go extinct.
So the computation of the rational mind became:
“well, if I believe it, it must be right”.
And that’s what we’ve been running on.
But still, the awakening of the rational mind,
it was a landmark event.
So now come forward
through the next half-million years,
through the discovery of fire,
the spear, the bow and arrow,
the domestication of animals,
smelting of metals, gunpowder,
creation of alphabets,
great works of art,
up to the dawn of psychiatrists and psychotherapists.
The major contribution of
psychiatrists and psychotherapists
was the recognition
that there might be something wrong
with the rational mind.
Duh - you think?
I mean, what was your first clue?
Could it have anything to do with our
history of wars and atrocities
that we commit against each other?
Half a million years is a long time
before you discover that there’s a bug in the program.
And way too many of us have been running
on the indoctrinated beliefs,
which of course if we believe them, must be right,
which are nothing more than the leftover artifacts
of animal consciousness.
We’ve used our brilliant technology
to destroy each other and sabotage our future.
And, of course, with good and reasonable justification.
We’ve been justifying and indoctrinating each other
with beliefs for a really long time,
without coming together.
And the problem is our savage minds keep pulling us back,
this is the broadcast that’s coming from the savage mind.
Trust is not an element of animal consciousness,
keeping agreements is not an element of animal consciousness
and we’ve been tuning in to the wrong broadcast.
You could call this “Give Me” Radio.
Need some.
Get some.
Give me some more.
Need some.
Get some.
Give me some more.
Need some. Get some.
Give me some more.
Need some. Get some.
Give me some more.
Give me yours. Give me yours…
That’s not the song that’s going to save us.
The world’s problems
do not start with scarcity or greed.
They start with this savage influence
on human consciousness.
And the thing we have to solve
is how to make care and compassion
more valuable than self-importance
and impermanent things.
And the ultimate solution is broadly awakening
the enlightened mind of spiritual consciousness.
We need another miracle moment
in which everyone realizes
that we’re in this all together,
and that the earth is the only spaceship that we get.
And Star’s Edge has laid the foundation,
future generations need to
direct their greatest efforts
toward coming together.
I mean, the world needs
less superpowers
and more friendly tribes.
And the “me” that showed up
with intellectual consciousness
needs to change from being
an indoctrinated passenger
in the rational mind
to being a responsible owner and driver
of the rational mind.
And you will play a major role in that transformation.
You’re part of the construction crew
for the next miracle.
You deliver Avatar® properly
and your students will realize that
they are more than minds,
and they’ll move beyond the influence
of indoctrination.
Thank-you.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
the product of Avatar is a Source Being.
And that is the gateway
to a spiritual consciousness
and the awakening of an enlightened mind.
I mean, the route up is not always easy
what with the forgetting of
our most important lessons between every lifetime.
But the road ahead is now wide open,
and it leads to an enlightened planetary civilization®.
And you’re making very good progress.
So, are you ready to go out in the world and make more source beings?
Good…
Karen Pryor recently introduced a style of animal training
called “Clicker Magic”.
And it’s so amazing and appropriate to this talk
that I asked her permission
to show you some excerpts from her DVD, “Clicker Magic”.
Karen: Clicker Magic,
well it’s not magic, it’s science.
But sometimes it can be pretty amazing.
Clicker Training is slang for what scientists call
“Applied Operant Conditioning”,
the principles that underlie how animals and people learn.
Clicker trainers use a little plastic clicker,
a noisemaker,
to “mark” any behavior that we like.
We mark the behavior when it’s happening,
and then we give the animal something it wants,
like food or petting or praise.
With our clicker we can build behavior step by step
in a process known as “shaping”.
Trainer Catherine Crommer came to one of our seminars
and then went home and rescued
an abandoned pet at the animal shelter
in order to practice her own shaping skills.
She videotaped the process,
step by step,
and I’d like to use Catherine Crommer’s video
to review the process of Clicker Training.
The first step is to establish the conditioned reinforcer
or the marker signal
that you’re going to use to tell the animal when
it’s done the right thing.
Catherine: Get the cat to associate this noise for that food.
We’re also pairing clicking
with petting,
which she enjoys just as much as the food.
I’m sure not all cats do, but this one does, so we use it.
Karen: It’s important in the beginning
to use things the animal really likes,
specially good food, for example.
The next step when you have a signal
is to shape a behavior, in this case, targeting.
Catherine: Now we’re going to get her to touch, or target,
a - in this case - a magic wand.
You don’t need a magic wand to train a cat, but
this one seems to enjoy it.
Karen: In the first few lessons the
animal is going to be a little inattentive.
That was true of some of the puppies that we started with in gusto,
that will improve with time.
Catherine: First we show it to her, she touches it,
she hears the click,
which by now means that she is going to be eating or being petted.
Now she’s fairly consistent on touching it,
so we’re going to add a cue to it,
a command to do it,
“Touch it”.
We’re going to move it to different
sides of the table, “Touch it.”
so that she learns to come at some distance.
“Touch it”.
And then in order to increase
her enthusiasm we put it on
an intermittent schedule of reinforcement,
which means that she’ll do it more than once,
"Touch it."
to get a reward.
"Touch it."
Karen: Watch what she does with a really long behavior chain.
That was really interesting, wasn’t it?
Ah, you guys are too aware.
It would take something more than a clicker to shape your behavior.
Would you smile for me?
Would you smile for me?
Would you smile?
Hmmm, money… Money
Money,
money,
money…I could train myself.
Do you suppose that’s what we’ve been doing?
I started clicker training my German Shepherd to sit and stay,
and she caught on right away.
I mean, she really caught on.
She started experimenting with various behaviors
to see if she could elicit more clicks from me.
“How about if I rub my nose with one paw, boss?”
“No - how about if I put an ear out like that?”
“Come on, boss, hit the clicker - I can do this…”
She cleaned me out of 'yummies'.
But that’s what we’ve been doing with each other,
doing things to get more clicks or
more attention or more money.
And, there’s nothing wrong with that,
as long as we do it honestly.
But the solution that we’ve really been looking for
is more alignment and cooperation,
more attention on service to others.
We need to become citizens for the planet.
Have you ever felt the warmth of the morning sun on your face?
That’s what the broadcast from infinite awareness feels like,
it inspires goodness and love, and compassion.
And it brings tears to your eyes,
and compassion to your heart.
Here’s a review video for you:
Power up!
Power up.
Power up!
There are wonderful possibilities ahead.
Hoo-rah.
Thank-you…