The Schools of Wisdom worldwide focused on "Understanding" as the dominant theme for the 1995 school year. Understanding in the new paradigm of our technological age comes from personal application of knowledge, from "walking the talk." By taking action on what we know, we can integrate our knowledge into our being. In today's world this is the fastest and surest way to true understanding. Without acting on what we have learned, the information is just knowledge, merely information. It has not become a part of us. We have not truly understood it. Understanding is now a personal affair which comes from experience, rather than faith, from experiment, rather than dogma.
This is a dramatic change from the approach to understanding which dominated in the past. This is apparent in the field of culture primarily concerned with understanding - Science. Until recently, Science was primarily concerned with study of the material world. Scientific understanding was based on data from the material world, with sensing the body. Everything was measurement and classification. Almost all of Science in the old paradigm was oriented around information about matter. For this reason physics became the dominant science, and we came to understand the Universe as a giant materialistic clock. Only matter was real, and it actions followed rigid, deterministic laws. Everything was cause and effect.
The usefulness of this type of understanding has now passed. There has been a complete paradigm shift in Science, indeed in all fields of culture, which allows a new type of understanding, an understanding based on energy and events, not just matter and data. The old world view based on materialistic causal determinism is crumbling. Since Heisenberg we have known that we do not stand separate and apart from the material world, like some kind of godlike observers. We are part of nature, not alien masters. We interact with the world we study. Our very observation of the subatomic world changes that world. The scientist is inevitably part of the experiment. The closer we look at the material world, the more elusive it becomes. In the last analysis there is no solid thing, only quanta of energy and events in time. Matter is just an bundle of energy governed by the speed of light. m=e/c2 e=mc2
New Science is now primarily concerned with dynamic energy events, not just static sense data. In the specialized language of the Wheel as developed by Arnold Keyserling, the frame for understanding has moved from body-sensing to soul-willing. Thus to attain deep understanding in today's world we need to focus on how we can act on what we know. That is one reason Metapolitics has become important for the Wisdom Tradition. We need to build upon our understanding of the material world with a new understanding of the world of energy, the world of psyche - the soul. We need to develop a new type of understanding based on fractal self organization and chaos.
This represents a shift in emphasis in Science from physics to psychology. Many of the mysteries of matter and time have been revealed, but the questions of the psyche and space are just beginning. The focus of understanding has passed from knowing our body - the material world in which we live - to knowing our energy.
Accordingly, in the guest speaker program this year many of the guest speakers will focus on psychological topics. But regardless of the field of knowledge, each speaker will talk from personal experience, and hopefully each will include reflections upon the topic of understanding itself. Each will try to go beyond academic knowledge, to speak and write from Wisdom, from the practical expertise they have gained by trying to apply this knowledge in their life.
The original program of the School of Wisdom in 1920 was based on a similar guest speaker program. Each speaker spoke on a general topic from out of their own field of special expertise. For instance, Carl Jung would speak on the annual topic from the point of view of depth psychology, Richard Wilhelm from Chinese culture, etc. Many different and seemingly contradictory points of view would be offered. Consistency and objective answers were not important. There was no dialogue or exchange between speakers or attempts to resolve differences. That was left to each listener to process internally. There was no one right answer, but a variety of right answers. On the surface it was a contradictory morass - a chaos of differing answers. This program continued successfully for many years and was later continued in Switzerland by the Eranos lectures.
Over the last 75 years we have learned that this non- disputive format raises questions in the listeners, questions more important than any pat answers or claims of objective truth. The attempt to resolve the apparent contradictions of world culture, to form cosmos from out of chaos and put it all together for yourself, is a process designed to facilitate personal transformation and deeper understanding. This years program on the general theme of Understanding will be no exception. I have presented my ideas on Understanding, ensuing speakers/writers will present their own, differing ideas. There understanding is different from my own. If they are sincere, it is right for them. There is no one right answer. The best test is pragmatic and individual. The new age is based on spiritual democracy, not autocratic hegemony.
By hearing or reading what each speaker/writer has understood, we can synergize our own understanding to a higher, more complete level. We can start to ask new, more interesting questions. We can begin to see connections between what we have understood, the knowledge which we have incorporated into our being through our personal efforts and action - our soul-willing - and the understanding, the soul willing, of others. As we share what we have understood with one another, we will start to see a higher nexus. New possibilities and opportunities to work with each other in mutual service to the Earth will open up. A higher fractal order unifying the apparent contradictions will appear. We will have created a solid basis of real understanding which can serve as a launch pad for future Metapolitical action of all kinds. Let us work together this year, in friendship and joy, to deepen our understanding of ourselves and our service to others.
