The Holistic Program
by Peter Shepherd
Let us revise the development of imprinted programs as discussed earlier, and see how that relates to the further ideas of brain structure, reversal theory and pan-determinism.
Ist: Bio-survival program. We all began as infants in a one-dimensional world, a protoplasmic consciousness, orally hooked to Mother. The further away from Mother we crawled, the greater was our bio-survival anxiety, and we generally returned to Mother as quickly as possible for telic recovery. The key imprint incidents of this period determine, concretely, how much we generally exhibit of:
anxiety or self confidence
rootedness or explorativeness
dependency or independence
telic dominance or paratelic dominance
Resolution of negative bio-survival imprints - the unfinished business of childhood - needs to be handled on an ongoing basis as the charge becomes available, as the individual's awareness, responsibility and confront continue to develop.
2nd: Emotional-territorial program. Then when the DNA sent the appropriate RNA messenger molecules to the glands, endocrine system, etc. a mutation occurred: our whole body changed and our minds changed in the process. Our reality-tunnel dilated into two dimensions when we rose up and began to walk about the house, and started learning who we could dominate, who could dominate us, under what circumstances, and so on. We developed a stubborn individual ego, imprinted and conditioned with a particular style of emotional-territorial 'politics', tending to be:
strong ego or weak ego
dominant or submissive
top-dog or under-dog
giving orders or taking orders
mastery-state dominant or sympathy-state dominant
We were subsequently conditioned to switch between these states depending on whether the person we were dealing with was higher in the pecking order or lower in the pecking order. This is the Adapted-Child. Work on Transformational Psychology helps to resolve problems in this area, as breakdown in inter-hemispheric communication is the primary symptom of second program malfunction, where feelings and needs are repressed, along with guilt from misdeeds.
3rd: Semantic program. After this reality-tunnel is wired in, the individual mutates again into the verbal stage, we acquire a human mind, which is creator of and created by human artifacts and speech. We also fall into all the traps of semantic distortion affecting our early (primary) version of an Adult belief-system, complete with an array of musts, shoulds and can'ts, many of which are forced on us by the Parent-figures, or imitated from them. In the semantic stage of imprint vulnerability we acquire either a degree of:
fluency or inarticulateness
dexterity or clumsiness
self-determinism dominance or other-determinism dominance
Control of mental images and semantic links encourages appropriate specialisation of left and right hemispheres, so the semantic program may be revised at a high level of efficiency.
4th: Socio-sexual program. At puberty another DNA mutation of body-mind occurs, the Adult personality is further imprinted and conditioned with respect to social and sexual orientations. We become somewhat:
'moral' or 'immoral'
'Parental' or anarchist
conformist dominant or negativist dominant
This is the domain of individual Transformational Psychology therapy and work on Meta-Programming where cultural (secondary) belief systems are re-examined, and primary (early) beliefs and associated trauma are resolved. The mind-body split is also repaired by various techniques to get fully in touch with bodily sensations and needs.
Child rearing within society strives to imprint appropriately for class and gender, to maintain the status-quo. Traditionally, society did not need, could not use and in many ways discouraged the development of high verbal (rational) skills in the majority of the population. People who want to know why? will not be easily led into dull, dehumanising, traditional jobs. The rebellion against all the follies of the past will only succeed if we evolve into a society which needs each human to function well on all programs. And we will only be able to get on well together when we understand why we each acquire such idiosyncratic reality-tunnels, and how to communicate between them. Each of us has a 'favourite' program that has been imprinted more heavily than the others, but we tend to assume that the person we are interacting with is on the same program too, so misunderstanding results.
5th: Holistic program. Further programs are much more recent than the antique programs discussed, and do not manifest in all human beings; they are states beyond current evolution and must be consciously developed.
The fifth program is 'non-linear' and 'global'. That is, it is not limited by the one-thing-at-a-time sequences of the left-brain semantic mind; it thinks in gestalts. It is a function of 'intuition', which is a way of thinking between and around data-points, sensing what total field the points must be part of. It is about going beyond dichotomies, to be able to adopt a pan-determined viewpoint in which both sides of a dichotomy are experienced simultaneously. This requires a non-verbal understanding, since language is based on mechanistic dichotomies. It also requires the ability to process many strands of thought simultaneously, which requires ready access to high arousal in the right hemisphere and to the processing power of the limbic system. This gives the maximum amount of contextual information to provide the global view, and furthermore, information which is not hindered by mental blockages or distortions on the first four programs.
This fifth program is bonded into the right cortex and neurologically linked to the limbic system and the genitalia. These neural links explain the sexual metaphor of 'kundalini' or 'serpent' energy used to describe this program in systems as varied as Indian Tantra, Gnosticism and Voodoo, and the Chinese yin/yang (male-female) energies associated with it. Prolonged sexual play without orgasm usually triggers transient fifth program consciousness.
A permanent holistic program can only be imprinted by prolonged practice of incremental techniques that facilitate the growth of the new neural pathways, and which enable blocks on these routes to be resolved. This is achieved by special techniques that stimulate whole-brain arousal at gradually increasing rates of information processing (corresponding to brain rhythms) whilst maintaining arousal at the lower frequencies simultaneously. New pathways develop to handle this information in parallel streams; cognisance of verbal messages is realisable without inner speech, and arithmetical answers to problems simply appear intuitively without the need for step-by-step working out. Concepts that before were merely intellectual, now have reality in this 'no-mind' state. Work with advanced binaural Monroe stimulation and energisation of the brain with CES devices is of great assistance here, along with resolution of fixed patterns of dialectic thinking on Meta-Programming.
In general, fourth program problems take the form of guilt ('I cannot do what I am supposed to do'). Third program problems take the form of perplexity; due to lack of symbol space in the inner mind, data cannot be arrayed and order made out of confusion ('I cannot understand how I got into this mess or how to get out of it'). Second program problems take the form of bullying or of cowardice ('I will put him in his place' or 'I can't tell him that in case he doesn't approve'). First program problems often take the form of bodily feelings ('I feel sick'), gradually centering in, under enough stress, on one acute disabling symptom.
Fifth program consciousness temporarily bleaches out all these problems at once; as a corollary, for the state to be permanent, the problems need to be adequately resolved first, so that work on fifth program development can proceed effectively. It is at this point that we integrate all the previous work. The next stages have to do with spiritual steps forward; but unless a very stable case has been attained first, the subtle stages can be quite ineffective. So at this point we go back and pick up all the pieces we discarded, as it were, in the previous stages; we fill up the holes in our personalities, we heal the splits in our personalities, and ultimately we transcend our personalities. In other words, it is safer and better to do our personal growth work before attending to our spirituality, rather than leave it to later or try to avoid it altogether. Part I of Meta-Programming fulfils this role.
It turns out that personal-growth work is not an optional extra, it is an essential step on the spiritual path. In the past, people often embarked upon the spiritual path without having done this work, and promptly fell prey to demons, devils, elementals and so forth - which were delusory projections of their own shadow, their own nastiness, their own unhandled negative beliefs of early childhood.
In the individual counselling which precedes Meta-Programming, or alternatively work on the New Life Course, we deal very thoroughly with all the big questions about oughts and shoulds and have-to's, throwing out all those compulsive guilts that plague us, and taking on instead an alive conscience which lives by direct observation rather than by rules. So for the first time we can have a clean spirituality, not cluttered up by womb-stuff, birth-stuff, oral-stuff, anal-stuff, oedipal-stuff, shadow-stuff, anima-stuff, parent-adult-child stuff, character armour and all the rest of it. We can relate to the Universal without wondering and worrying about whether what we are relating to is our parents.
Move on to Dynamic Consciousness.
Return to Transforming the Mind - Contents.