Develop the document in a sequence from general to particular, i.e. from premise to consequence (a) metaphysics (b) principles of psychology (c) nature and dimensions of psychology (c) psychology of the realizations (d) mesh and integration with the final sections of the template (e) specifics of the path.

Psychology for realization

The metaphysics shows the nature of the ultimate and the necessity of its realization. Yet the bare metaphysics does not show how to engage fully—with enjoyment—and efficiently.

What is the attitude that facilitates full engagement? Together with the metaphysics the realization of such attitude is central among the ways, mechanics, and elements of realization.

Aim

A psychology founded in practical metaphysics (fusion of the pure metaphysics, valid tradition, and their principles) that is optimal with regard to realization.

The aim of this document is to serve the realizations by developing specifics of a path of realization.

The principles

First principle

Explicit statement and development of the aim above derives template for realizations, specifically its aim and metaphysics.

The statement of the aim of the realizations is:

The AIM of the realizations is, as far as it is good, to know the range of being and to realize the highest immediate and ultimate forms.

Though stated as a goal, the aim allows that the goal—to know… to realize—may be more process, perhaps eternal process, than a final and perhaps timeless state of being.

Note: the aim already anticipates the metaphysics—that the ultimate and immediate mesh; the way to the ultimate is living well in both: living wholly in the present so as to realize the ultimate in the immediate while also being on the way to the ultimate.

The essence of the metaphysics is that the universe and so the individual is the realization of possibility. This implies that the individual is the ultimate but that while in limited form realization is most effective and enjoyed when undertaken in the light of the mesh of the metaphysics with tradition (the practical metaphysics) as intelligent engagement in an incremental mechanics of becoming (inclusive of ways, catalysts, disciplines, elements, etc).

The essential conclusion of the metaphysics is stated above. The important aspects of the metaphysics here are

Its implications for psychology.
The cognitive and affective (mind-heart-body) realization of the metaphysical principle.
Mechanics, ways, and elements of the path…

Introduction to principles

Psychology is a modern western term. Academic psychology emphasizes a narrow instrumental range of concerns and is grounded significantly in a secular and instrumental world view. This is rather characteristic of western psychology generally. However, these limits are precisely some of the limits to be overcome.

Eastern systems have their ‘psychologies’ as well. They tend to emphasize holism of mind-heart-body and individual-nature-community (civilization). There is a tendency to grounding trans-secular and intrinsic (transformation of being over transformation of external form via technology).

This description is perhaps clichéd in its comparison of east and west but it points to some distinctions that we want to avoid. These distinctions include those just noted as well as emphasis primarily on the individual vs. civilization, the instrumental vs. the intrinsic (being), and holism vs. compartmentalization (e.g. cognition separate from emotion, percept from concept, mind from body, and individual from community).

The principles

These principles are recognized:

The goal of the psychology is (orientation to) living in process in the ‘many worlds as one’.

What does this mean?

While we are the ultimate, the immediate adaptations of our being have particularities. It is not intrinsically separate from the ultimate but ‘political economics’ (and perhaps other factors such as inadequate understanding of our life and death) tend to conservatism and narrowness. This narrowness is not merely intellectual and perceptual but is woven organically with feeling as much as words into our bodies and selves (this includes the various stories we have about our world, our selves). One goal of the psychology is liberation from these constraints without violating what is real in the secular side of our being. Therefore the practice of the psychology will not be merely intellectual but shall also be active as in the Tibetan practice of realizing self in remote nature (‘Beyul’) which is an amalgam of action and ritual (ritual is significant but not merely the formula of ritual).

The approach should recognize that for limited forms realization is eternal process.

Therefore it should be progressive (while recognizing the ultimate truth seen in the metaphysics and while adopting traditional including modern understanding and practice).

Even among the best of our traditional and modern ways we find a formulaic approach to a limited realization. In the better ways the goal of formula is not formula itself but transformation. But realization tends to be limited due to limited understanding.

A progressive approach requires that any way be supplemented by experimental action and reflection.

The approach will be equally for ‘leaders’ and ‘followers’, ‘teachers’ and ‘pupils’

The aim is a psychology that will be useful and used.

While a disinterested psychology is useful, the metaphysics is in a sense ultimate in its inclusion of all being and of neutrality and engagement. Therefore, regardless of the approach to psychology it will benefit in learning from and orientation toward the real revealed in the metaphysics.

These aims require holism.

The approach is not intrinsically against atomism or compartmentalization (i.e. a structural approach). However, the aim is understanding of individuals and community (civilization) in the world (universe). What emerges will derive from this more than it will inform it. If a structural approach is employed, we anticipate holism:

Nature-civilization-universe.

Individual-community.

Soul and its forms (body); death—its reality but non absolute character.

The dimensions of experience: experience-body-world; cognition-emotion (and, particularly, concept-percept and emotion-feeling); and attitude-action.

Secular vs. trans-secular grounding and function

The principles: details

The following are to be revised for later use. They require extensive editing.

Pure and applied psychology

Pure psychology is said to be uninterested in application. However, psychology would not study human being only in isolation but also and especially in interaction with the world which includes the individual. Therefore pure psychology is uninterested in any particular specific application but interested in the general situation—i.e. in all applications. Pure psychology is vast.

Holism and compartmentalization

There are different aspects of psychology—emotion versus cognition, feeling versus perception. However in the organism these occur significantly in interaction. The issue is not of holism versus atomism or compartmentalization but of structural or functional or other markers of difference within an interactive whole.

The kind of holism

The interest is in function as much as structure (‘atoms of psyche’).

Mind and body are fundamentally indistinct (see the section Mind)

Cognition and emotion are at least functionally integral. Which has preferred status (re: issues such as rationality is king vs. honor your feelings)? Neither—and this follows from function. In certain conventional senses, perception is of the world while ‘feeling’ is of the interior—the body, the person. Emotion is binding to our nature, to others, to the world; but so is the freedom of thought (concept formation and manipulation) for if we do not know the entire world then free concept formation (and of course, experiment and exploration) enable us to ‘bind’ to the unknown.

Some possibilities for development of pure psychology

To develop an account of the nature (e.g. mind-heart-body) and dimensions (e.g. cognition, emotion, and will) of psyche.
For the dimensions to attempt universality and trans-cultural notions. Universality should stem from the universal metaphysics and the trans-cultural feature from study and immersion.
To have the dimensions be in process.

Some of my sources

To use various sources (see the archive and site) such as dynamics, catalysts and catalytic states, system of human knowledge, categories in metaphysics, central statements, journey in being-detail (see, especially, the section Dimensions of mind), and dreams and vision.

Are we adapted to the greatest world revealed in the metaphysics?

The answer is that we are in some ways but not others.

Freedom of concept formation is at the root of the metaphysics itself—and at the root of ongoing adaptation in this life and after.

However, the metaphysics also reveals that for limited forms realization is ever a process. Thus adaptation is incomplete—but when we recognize this it is a form of adaptation to non-adaptation.

The present ‘applied’ interest stems from the aim of the realizations

Here the interest is primarily in the aspects of psychology that enable the aim of the realizations—that of living in all worlds as one… of being on the way to the ultimate in and from the immediate. Therefore there will be focus on some aspects over others.

Note: there is of course one world and the phrase ‘all worlds’ refers to divisions such as the immediate vs. the ultimate or process vs. being as though they were real (this note is repeated below).

Preliminary specific thoughts on what supports the applied interest

Focus on the whole being

Break down of limiting world views—not a merely intellectual exercise for these world views form part of the not consciously held but well integrated background, emotive and cognitive.

Overcoming specific limiting factors—‘vikalpas’.

Approaches to overcoming—spiritual openness, intellectual, ritual, ways and catalysts

Being in community (civilization) and openness to small and significant increments in knowledge and being—explicit and integrated, heart and mind.

The present pure interest

However, there is ignorance regarding psychology and what aspects will be needed and so there should be balance between the ‘pure’ and the application. In so far as the pure is kept general there will be room for overlap and grounding for development.

Psychology and adaptation to the world

No doubt psychology is adapted to our immediate natural (physical including physicochemical and geographical; and biological) and social (including civilization). However, psychology is not merely the mechanical product of environment and this is trivially obvious from differences among species. The history of species affects their differences that, once they begin, small differences are magnified in interaction with different environments and in self-interaction. Via its characteristics of concept formation-manipulation and communication including language, our species has two further aspects—on the one hand its social and cultural systems and on the other what may be called ‘adaptation to the adaptive process’—i.e., human individuals and cultures are especially though not exclusively adaptable as a result of but over and above biological change.

Dimensions of mind and personality

JOURNEY IN BEING-DETAIL lists the following dimensions:

In trans-secular accounts—spirit as an aspect of essence, transcendent or higher being, and soul as persistence of being and identity.
Free concept formation—intuition and thought (thinking or higher cognition; higher in the sense of easy though not necessarily deep malleability); connection to perception and emotion.

Separation of free concept formation and feeling and perception (below) would be artificial.

Potent cognition (creativity) is invariably associated with intuition (for efficiency) and feeling (for relevance).

Unbound feeling in interaction with cognition—‘emotion’ and ‘intuition’.
Perception (normally bound cognition) and (normally) bound feeling.
Neural and endocrine system and paths and intensities (typically associated with mind).
Deep body.

Personality refers to enduring characteristic patterns of cognition, emotion, and action. For realization the dimension of ‘openness’ is perhaps the most significant among the factors of a common five factor model (the five which I mention as an example are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism; which may be compared with the Jungian personality dimensions: perceiving vs. judging—which refers to openness, thinking vs. feeling—modes of inferring, intuition vs. sensing—modes of information accumulation, and extraversion vs. introversion—of focus).

Systems—east and west—and incompleteness

The incompleteness (ignorance) above probably holds for all systems of psychology—western and eastern. The west tends to distinguish mind and body and within mind to compartmentalize—mind and heart or cognition and feeling and within mind to separate cognition and emotion. The east has a tendency to holism but some of its systems are very elaborate. Thus relative to grounding eastern and western systems are over-elaborate. Still, each system can learn from others and all can learn from general principles. Importantly, I can learn from all.

What are the elements of a ‘psychology’ of realization?

The vision from the practical metaphysics—the ultimate is given, we find ourselves bound in normality, but there are ways from the normal to the ultimate; and these involve mind-heart-body-community (civilization).

The modes of knowledge, especially myth-holism and its containment of and particularization into literal-atomism-analytical… and capacities for these… and their roles in process.

Particularly important is the fact that the universe is not one of good or evil or love or matter or mind. It is there for realization and realization is creation as much as it is passive becoming. The greater population of significant forms is one for which the created ‘universe’ is good; we can align ourselves with this world but should not think it is the entire universe. This is empowering (but may be thought disempowering—as though real truth could be disempowering and must bow before ideology).

We must live in the immediate—including the normal (it is ground to the way). We do live in the way and perhaps too much. We do so in terms of world view, thought, and emotion. Catalysts, ways, rituals that free us from the excess of such binding but also recognize its significance are essential.

Then there is the mechanics, the ways, and the catalysts themselves. There are disciplines and teachers but the ‘way’ is in process—at root all disciplines are experimental, there are no final masters. Science (not understood to exclude metaphysics and philosophy) of the west are ‘external’, ‘yoga’ is the internal established discipline.

Civilization and individual are mutually enhancing.

The practices from the disciplines are significant—catalysts, ways, and mindfulness and so on.

Ways out of the traps of personality.

Motivation derived from (a) knowledge—especially of the real, of death and its real but relative nature, and of the ways to proceed from the local good to the universal and from (b) being in ’being’.

The importance of thought and action, of experiment and ritual, of engagement of the entire world, of seeing us as authors of and authored by creation.

Selection of a path of mechanics, ways, catalysts—and their relation to psychology

Tantra

Dzogchen—a central teaching of Bön and the Tibetan Buddhist Nyingma school

Tibetan Buddhism (esp. Beyul)

Technology (phase: artifact)

The elements and so on.

The psychology I

Our minds are embedded in—part of—the body (but while particular mind is of particular bodies, mind as such and its trans-normal connectivity may have a diffuse and general embodiment). Cognition and emotion are integrated—neither is ‘privileged’ and their aspects tie us into the world of nature and civilization which have predictable and unpredictable aspects. Fixed aspects of cognition and emotion are adapted to the predictable and given aspects, the free aspects (thought including ‘free’ concept formation, cognitive-emotional response to art) are creative and adapted to the unpredictable and unknown. Understood this way, mind is the place of significant being and the instrument of significant realization. It is the place and instrument of living in all worlds as one. Our minds may become fixed on one world, e.g. the normal and the function of a psychology of process is then to find the appropriate balance between adaptation to the stable and the transitional aspects of the universe.
Culture is especially important in this process—it includes the instrument of language and disciplines, intrinsic and instrumental, of adaptation to stability and change. Civilization and mind together are instrumental in this adaptation which emphasizes not only particular institutions or disciplines but also the cultural and innovative process of establishing and changing disciplines. Where there seem to be a priori aspects to our knowledge, the fact is that the apparently a priori is merely opaque to us. From experience, science reveals given worlds and in this it is factual and local. But the process of science is ever revealing new worlds (e.g. from Newtonian to post-Newtonian) and in this it is tentatively universal. Revealed science is thus factual but it is the height of error to think that only the revealed exists. The spiritual is an attempt to move in what is materially unrevealed and remote. That there is a greater world—of this there is no doubt. Religion is shared spirituality and to be a shared guide in the greater world it must have tentative elements of cosmology (in addition to other functions). Religion need not have the self limitation of science; its function includes that of negotiation of the unknown and the dimly sensed and must thus be experimental—it may even serve its function temporarily by being irrational or arational but in the end cosmological irrationality is corruption (and this is the case for most world religions). What is the greatest system of realizations that the universe may be? It is the realization of all possibility. The universal metaphysics shows this to be true and is thus an ultimate metaphysics (a) in showing the universe to be ultimate and (b) in capturing the essence of the universe. The cosmological function of the universal metaphysics is to reveal the variety and extension of being, to show its tie to the normal, to show—together with valid tradition—an approach to negotiation in the worlds as one, and to show the absence of the a priori.
The positive functions of the psychology are two. First to free us from bondage to limited if adaptive views of self and world (‘freeing’ does not imply full jettisoning) and so to live in all worlds as one. Second, to be in process since while in limited form realization is an eternal journey in being. The function of the ‘path’ below is to realize psychology in practice. It will be selective in that it will not address every element of culture and life but only what is essential and efficient in transformation. It need not go against received culture except of course where what is received is defeating to the goal of efficient and enjoyed realization. To this end it will recognize needs for correction (of cultural attitudes and practices) but the aim is correction and not antagonism; and for all other matters it will be placed in culture so as to not be over- or under-concerned with the details of normal life.

Note: there is of course one world and the phrase ‘all worlds’ refers to divisions such as the immediate vs. the ultimate or process vs. being as though they were real (this note is first stated above).

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the psychology is the balance between freedom and binding in cognition, emotion and behavior (which may be seen as an aspect of personality). The psychology of realization is concerned with this balance—some attention to the bound may be required but given life in a culture this may not require significant attention; it is in the nature of a cultural organism to mix binding and freedom; the function of the psychology will be to liberate from excess and distorted binding and to cultivate freedom—cognitive, emotive, regarding self and world—that sculpted and sufficient to the truth required to be on the way to realization of the ultimate.

The psychology II

Preliminary comment

The function of psychology of realization is to further the aim of the realizations that as far as it is good, to know the range of being and to realize the highest immediate and ultimate forms.
The most effective psychology to this end seems to be a system of concepts, practice, and action (practice will include ‘ritual action’) aimed at living dynamically in all worlds as one. That is, for the purpose at hand, a conceptual psychology—one that is not supplemented by explicit practice and action—will be inadequate.
The psychology may of course derive its practice and action from a system of concepts or elements, western and / or eastern and / or other and / or experimental, but—so far as these are tentative—the development of practice and action will emphasize direct derivation from the aim and its subsidiary metaphysics and will remain experimental.
Since the psychology is ‘experimental’ in terms of both facts and ideas—percepts and concepts and thus not merely empirical—it must apply not only to living as such but also to self aware living. That is, its parameters must allow for its own development—i.e., it is as much a psychology of learners / followers / students / initiates as it is of leaders / direct learners at the front / teachers / gurus.
It will recognize the distinction of cognition and emotion. However (a) each suffuses the other and there are perhaps very few pure states (without low level feeling cognition is free wheeling) and (b) the two, each being adaptive to phases of environment-other-self, are interactive in courses of action and giving full privilege to one over the other leads to imbalance. Further distinctions to be recognized but de-emphasized are mind-body—the function of mind is embodied and mind-body vs. soul: the soul is, I think, diffusely embodied but not disembodied (see the template for discussion of soul). The psychology will emphasize mind in nature, individual in society, and our world in universe. The psychology will thus recognize many of our traditional distinctions but will attempt to recognize where they are reifications and will, especially, emphasis holism in action.

The aims

The aims are (a) creation of a psychic space in which all worlds are as one which amounts to the identity of individual discrete psyche limited in what is experienced as real and time and space and that of universal psyche including discrete and diffuse cases and (b) limited form on the way to the ultimate.

An intermediate aim will be the creation of that psychic space which is the ultimate in the here and now. And this will be foundation for the in process and eternal endeavor of realization as long as individuals remain in limited including individuated form.
The universal metaphysics has shown the realizations of the individual and civilizations as play within the dynamic unity of the many worlds as one. The aim of the psychology will be to realize this in process for all aspects of psyche. If there is spiritual integration—say intuitive emotional—it will seek further integration with cognition; if there is cognitive wholeness it will seek further integration with intuition and emotion; where there is focus on particular aspects of cognition—e.g. the material and the instrumental—it will seek unfettered understanding of all being.

Means

To this end the psychology will deploy ways and catalysts and endeavor to further develop and / or re-establish such disciplines (it was seen in developing the metaphysics how development and principles of development arise together and that in an ultimate way there is no a priori even if there are practical ways of the a priori).

The WAYS are grounded in a MECHANICS OF TRANSFORMATION and being which employ the RISK of EXPERIMENT, REFLECTION on outcomes, and re-experiment in the INCREMENTAL and SINGULAR process of realization (at root the process is not a priori and therefore A-RATIONAL—neither rational nor irrational—which is empowering because there is no dependence on some more fundamental principle). The ways included ESTABLISHED WAYS which in turn include DISCIPLINES and CATALYSTS. Simultaneous to—as part of—process, the mechanics initiates, establishes and enhances the disciplines, ways, and catalysts: the mechanics is simultaneously a discipline of action-practice and a DISCIPLINE OF DISCIPLINES.

The ELEMENTS of transformation include: VEHICLES (individual and civilization), MEANS (ideas and action), MODES (intrinsic and external to identity—e.g., the focus of YOGA and the focus of science), DISCIPLINES (accumulated-formal and oral-mythic—and their mechanics; also classed as conceptual and active which includes technology and ritual), and PLACES (intrinsic: psyche, and external: nature and civilization—i.e., society). These suggest PHASES: IDEAS, transformation—INDIVIDUAL-CIVILIZATION, and ARTIFACT-TECHNOLOGY.

Tentative template

The following template for practice and action incorporates the above considerations and more. The template is designed to be as complete as is reasonable and so for any particular instance some entries may be omitted. In the template the vertical stroke | distinguishes practice from development of practice and may be omitted when the focus is one or the other.

The template is now in template.html.

Path

A path or program of realization may employ a set of instances of the template that is designed to adequately cover aspects of life and phases of development. A typical set would cover a way / practice for all times and places and phases on the way to the ultimate.

I list the instances; the actual instances are now in template.html.