Back in graduate school at Boston Universty, which I attended from 1966 through 1972, gaining my PhD in philosophy in the process, not because I learned anything in my classes, but because even in the first year I was asking one seemingly simple question, genuinely puzzled, “But what is learning, real learning?” In the second year I began to grok that academic philosophy functions as the abstraction of our “common sense,” where, supposedly, we have no senses in common!
Oh yeah? By this time, I knew, intuitively, that this was not true. I knew that the ether is real, that it pervades and surrounds everything. That the universe is one, is alive, and conscious. Which means, none of us is alone. Each of us is connected to the all-one (alone), psychically, as a single unique spark within the collective unconscious.
Later, by the time I got around to reading Jung, I also knew that I wasn’t crazy.
In other words, I woke up. And it was not fun.
So it’s August, and school is about to start again. I feel for the kids, those of all ages. What will it take for real learning to begin? What will it take for us to break through the walls of convention, of “common sense,” and begin to explore, each of us, in the direction the universe beckons — no, insists, is ours, and ours alone.
For when we do, it’s as if the universe bends in the direction of our intent.
For example:
