7.3.1 The model of reality

The model analyses reality in terms of ten fundamental conditions which influence the life of each person. These conditions are the inescapable forces which shape each moment we experience. Just as the ten sefirot express an intuitive understanding of the formative forces shaping everyday experience from a Jewish mystical viewpoint, so, too, does the meditative system taught in these books express an understanding of the same forces from a perspective rooted in ordinary experience.

The diagrammatic representation of the ten conditions, which shape daily experience, differs from the traditional Kabbalistic ways of representing the ten sefirot. In the secular model of reality, the ten conditions, as discussed in chapter 3 of Beyond the personality: the beginner’s guide to enlightenment, naturally fall into a pyramid shape in four levels:

Karma Level 1

Space Time Level 2

Physical Intellectual Emotional Level 3

Moral Social Economic Political Level 4

Karma, as discussed in detail in chapter 4 of Beyond the personality, is the shaping or formative aspect of reality. In religious terms karma represents the will of God, to which we are all subject. Karma is the process whereby reality structures the circumstances of each person’s life, to guide each person towards the next step along the path to re-union with God, or enlightenment.

On the mundane level, the conditions of space and time represent where and when events occur. As practice in meditation-enhanced analysis advances, space and time become understood as the constantly fluctuating context within which events unfold. The advanced meditative practices in Towards effortless activity teach two points: firstly, that the understanding of events is relative to their context, and secondly, that in the final analysis of the meditatively-enhanced mind, both space and time are illusory products of mind in its unenlightened state.

The conditions represented in levels 3 and 4 are already accessible to ordinary intelligent people. The personal limiting factors shaping the individual’s life, in level 3, are a familiar part of many people’s thinking about themselves. The wider cultural constraints and pressures, in level 4, are the constant subject of much of our television, radio, cinematic and printed output.