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The Middle East,
the Big Question,
and the Star Key

Michael McDermott

Co-edited by Juan Schoch, Dick Richardson,
and Jan van Puffelen

Introduction

In the whole universe of events, none is more wonderful than the birth of wonder, none more curious than the nascence of curiosity itself, nothing to compare with the dawning of consciousness in the ancient dark and the gradual extension of psychic life and illumination throughout a cosmos that before had only been. An eternity of blindly acting, transforming, unconscious existence, assuming at length, through the birth of sense and intellect, without loss or break of continuity, the abiding form of fleeting time.

Discrimination, as the proverb rightly teaches, is the beginning of mind. The first psychic product of that initial psychic act is numerical: to discriminate is to produce two, the simplest possible example of multiplicity. The discovery, or better the invention, better still the production, best of all the creation, of multiplicity with its correlate of number, is, therefore, the most primitive achievement or manifestation of mind . . . Let us, then, trust the arithmetic instinct as fundamental and, for instruments of thought that shall not fail, repair at once to the domain of number.[1]

Part One.

The Middle East: what a mess.

Let's start at the very beginning. By that, both you and I can only mean our current respective understandings of the way the very beginning was seen back then—at the very beginning of mankind's addressing of the Big Question by those we shall call “the ancients”.[3] That being understood, this is my interpretation, based upon my dreaming up almost twenty years ago of a very simple set of integrated arithmetic and geometry I have called the “Star Key”.[4] I have subsequently discovered several intriguing parallels with it in ancient texts and traditions, relating to the following: at the beginning of mind, one end of existence was matter (seen as water-mater-mare-matter); the Big Question was: “how did some matter get to be alive, and conscious?” It remains the Big Question to this day—the so-called “hard question” of consciousness studies. This paper is an exploration of the question:

Is using the Star Key to reveal those true but partial—and false—answers to the Big Question given along the way, up to and including the present, preconditional to understanding and ultimately resolving the problems in the Middle East?

Further, our thesis is that the above process inevitably involves understanding and even resolving our own perceptions of those problems.

It seemed to the ancients that life and consciousness were a-material: that is, they were not matter in any meaningful sense of the term. Or rather, not just matter. A person could die and the matter still appear intact for a time: what went missing?

Breath, for one thing: the person expired—breathed no more. The spirit left them—they were no longer inspired, they became inert matter and decomposed. What on Earth was going on there? And how did they get to be inspired in the first place? Breath thus became an allegoric base note for much higher harmonics—those of Spirit. That was a big part of the Big Question, but the Big Question transcends even those of life and death, and addresses Creation itself: Matter and Spirit—how do they relate to each other?

As William Blake noted—without contraries there is no progression. As Neumann noted[5], creating contraries begins consciousness: self and other, lightness and darkness, yin and yang, male and female, good and evil, spirit and matter … The ancients saw Spirit entering through Mind by creating a space beyond “water-mater-mare-matter” by designating front and back, left and right, and up and down as opposites, with itself at this created centre between body and spirit, thereby inserting consciousness into “water-mater-mare-matter” (a slipping between the waters in “water”, or a cleaving of the rock in “matter”—the upper rock symbolising Eternity, the lower, matter's durability). With that set of three opposites in place, we can then superimpose that framework upon the material, and thereby better manoeuvre within it and manipulate it.

While this could be both visualised and constructed as a model in three dimensions, it was seen as easier to portray with less dimensions, in line with a creative process from the dimensionless. So they started with zero dimensions with the point or the bind(u)—“binder”[6]—of spirit into matter. They then portrayed a one-dimensional line—a binder moving through time. This line could be used to portray three dimensions—front and back, left and right, and up and down from the binder, as Spirit had at Creation. Thus Spirit was the infinity behind the manifestation of the dimensionless binder. Then where Spirit had got to when tracing out each line could be revolved and would trace out a sphere. That is, Spirit went out in six directions in straight lines while also, being infinite, remaining everywhere, in the centre and, in particular, throughout the sphere.

Portraying this sphere in two dimensions led to a circle around the binder. Then the ancients discovered something quite astonishing. If you take one of the lines that revolved to form the sphere, and revolve it from the edge of the circle, the other end (from the centre of the circle, the binder representing Spirit), it intersected the circumference at precisely one-sixth of its length! That is, a radius divides a circle exactly into sixths: and thereby, you can get a two-dimensional representation of front and back, left and right, and up and down!

Continuing with this duality, the ancients looked at every second binder around the circumference. They found that, by joining them, they traced out two triangles, one pointing up, the other pointing down, which, following this train of thought, they took as one triangle pointing up to Spirit, the other pointing down to water-mater-mare-matter. The two triangles, joined together, formed a six-pointed star—the star hexagon—which with its intersections allowed the division of the circle into twelve. Moreover, it created three levels—the lowest below the base of the upward-pointing triangle, the middle between the bases, and the highest above the base of the downward-pointing triangle.

This setting of “a compass on the face of the depth”[7] is the process described in Genesis 1:

“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, 'let there be light' and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.”

Starting from the topmost binder dividing the circle, God then on the first day brought the radius around to one side of the circle, marking on that side the uppermost level, of light: on the second day, He drew from the second binder to the third, saying “let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters … and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so.” On the third day, He drew from that third binder on the circumference down to the bottom one, and said “let the dry land appear, and the seas”—water-mater-mare-matter—and the earth brought forth grass and herbs and trees with their fruits.

Then, on the fourth day, God started at the topmost binder again, and swung the radius around to the other side, saying “let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years”, and the lights of the sun and the moon and the stars, “to divide the light from the darkness.” On the fifth day, He went down to the next level and then created the creatures that live between the land and the heavens—the birds suspended in the air, the whales and fishes above the land in the sea. And on the sixth day, he went from that central level to meet exactly the bottom binder again, creating:

“every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind …

And God said 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness …in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

And on the seventh day, He returned to the central binder, and “rested from all his work which God created and made” and thereby returned to the heart of the circle, the sphere, and the six-pointed star—and thereby at the centrepoint of male and female, Matter and Spirit, and all the other dualities identified in the founding of consciousness.

The base of each of the triangles turns out to be two-thirds of the way along the radii joining the topmost and bottommost binders on the circumference—the diameter. This implies the existence of two more binders along that diameter, denoting the remaining thirds. There are therefore seven binders along that diameter, denoting the divisions between the seven levels of existence pervasive in the ancient texts. The Hindu charkas, for example, use the symbol of the star hexagon in a circle as the yantra (sacred geometrical symbol) for the heart chakra.

With these thirds, the triangles, and the three spatial dimensions, the ancients picked up the trail at the number three. There are three lines, marked by the four intersection points—along the base of both the upward and downward pointing triangles. Again, the ancients felt the diagram leading them towards a further division, but this time numeric, of each of those three lines—lines one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and nine: nine lines, but ten points.

They being along the base, once again the diagram seemed to be pointing in a direction—down the triangle to the base binder—that triangle representing matter. The steps down were marked by each of the levels, and taken by adding contiguous numbers and placing them on the level below. When their total exceeded nine, in line with the discipline of the diagram they were again added to total a number of nine or less. The remaining triangles were infilled by the same means. The result, using our conventions and nomenclature[9], was as follows:

It did not take long for the ancients to count up the total of those numbers, and find it to be 120 sets of three—360—quite close to the number of days in a calendar year—and find that number to be highly useful in its divisibility for the division of the circle into degrees. Moreover, the numbers contained a host of other applicable data, including that all of the seven binders along the diameter are marked by nines, and that the threes, sixes and nines trace out again the two-dimensional portrayal of the three dimensions required for front and back, left and right, and up and down (pointing as they do to the six bound divisions of the circle's circumference).

From information within the diagram a five pointed and an eight pointed star can be constructed and thereby, proceeding to three dimensions, the three base ratios required for the construction of all five of the Platonic solids can be determined (the square root of two, the square root of three, and the golden ratio, which is the square root of five, plus one, both over two). Moreover, all three stars have fractals, from the infinitely large to the infinitesimally small, available at different ratios via inversions—of the star hexagon into or beyond interior or exterior hexagons, with the same process applicable with pentagons and octagons to their containing stars. Such mental maps were therefore considered to be applicable to any phenomena at any scale.

Furthermore, this process is not dependent on a time and place for it to happen. That is, no matter when or where you do it, the result is the same. So with its simplest of beginnings the ancients would see it as being just as true at the time they did it as when God did it, and just as true at the point I am writing this as the time you are reading it, and applicable to all times and all places. That is, it could and still can be seen as being at the Ur source of distinctions as expressed in geometry and number, being at the Ur source of all our conscious understandings in all our “hears”, and all our “nows”. Furthermore, because contraries begin consciousness, and the interaction between consciousness, memory, and our environment constructs our identities, our very selves, it was a necessary precondition for Adam and Eve to be tempted.

Hence its implicit placement at the beginning of Genesis.

I have named this diagram the “Star Key” for many reasons: this paper applies the Star Key to the Big Question and applies its framework to Middle East questions. In so doing, the diagram sets a framework for contemplation upon this division between Spirit and Matter addressed by the Big Question. I submit that this diagram from the beginnings of Mind—utilising the base dimensions of one, two, three and the base numbers of one, two and three—has been used and abused, applied and misapplied, in part or in whole, through the millennia. However, in this context it is important to note that the diagram has already gone beyond the contraries to put them at the opposite ends of a seven-stage gradation, a heptarchy. So dichotomies are no longer to be seen as dichotomies, but “heptchotomies”: further, within those heptchotomies, there are further heptchotomies – steps within steps to a higher one, to be taken at a particular pace and scale, from the infinitesimal to the infinite. By this means also—as well as increasing through dimensions—the mental map could be universalised. These heptchotomies are surrounded by spiralling serpents (also metaphoricised as whirls in water or air), as the numbers 142857 and 857142 around the central spine or column of seven nines—the 142857 being six-sevenths of 857142, and the two comprising unity. I shall refer to them later as the serpents of seven. This referred to in Genesis 28:

“And Jacob” (the name means “deceiver”; he was later called Israel) “went out from Beersheba (“sheba” being cognate with seven), and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth; and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again to this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.”

In the Middle East, the three great vessels whereby this numero-geometric framework has implicitly persisted are the three great religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Amongst many other examples, the imagery persists in Judaism in the Star of David and the seven-candlesticked Menorah[9], in Christianity in the symbolism in churches—in stained-glass windows for example, and in particular the cross—and in Islam in the extraordinary geometric patterns of Islamic art, particularly stars. However, each of these great religions has had its great successes and its great failures in addressing the Big Question, and right now it appears possible that those great failures could lead to massive destruction via that Gordian knot of Middle Eastern politics and religion. So let us return to a fundamental document of those religions—the Pentateuch—through the lens of the Star Key, and note that after the dream of Jacob's ladder in the Biblical narrative, the twelve tribes of Israel (the twelve binders around the circumference) set out to the Promised Land, finding it occupied by seven alien tribes. The symbolism of this in the above context is profound (the spiritual twelve “tribes” conquering the matter-generating seven): its abuse in current affairs is not. Let us proceed to examine whether or not this ancient map of creation can make a contribution to resolve current conflicts. With the immediate future at stake, the question we are examining in this paper is: is this Star Key map sufficient, if correctly used, to adequately address both the Middle East Problem and the Big Question?[10]

Part Two.

I re-stress that an important question for the ancients was: when is this Star Key diagram? The answer was that it stood outside of time, and could be brought into time whenever required. That is, whenever one did it, if one followed the same rules the Star Key would come out the same way. So the creation referred to in Genesis is not something any more or less true in 4004 BC or at the Big Bang of modern cosmology many billions of years ago than now. Creation happened then, and happens now. This conscious eternity—outside of time, entered time by this means. That was the beginning, whenever that beginning occurred or occurs. So creation was not so much seen in terms of a historical point than as creation in its current instantaneity—the eternal now. Each of us is Adam, and each of us is Eve, Adam being represented in the Star Key as the upward pointing triangle, and Eve as the downward pointing one (as in Tantra).

The Star Key is not unique in that trans-temporal and trans-locational respect. In fact, if anyone has any idea at all, it can be expressed in matter by means of the body—by the tongue in speech or, even more concretely, by a writer, architect, artist or engineer. However the Star Key, as the template for Genesis, was generalised to be the template for all generation—in particular, the entering of spirit into matter and time. This was therefore seen to be the one (Spirit) entering by means of a centre forming a line forming a circle, then a division of the circumference by two threes to form the star hexagon, with points and six divisions along the diameter. Then, after the insertion of the numbers the central spine of seven nines emerged, and the threes, sixes and nines pointed not only to the six fold division of the circle but also, via the joints of the Star (also marked by threes and sixes), confirmed the circle's twelve-fold division.

These seven binders were regarded as the progenitors of all life[11]—bringing spirit into matter—which progenitors were seen as really one, just as the binding points are really the one at different points in time and space and density. Density is mentioned here because each of the seven binders along the spectrum between spirit and matter—marked by the seven nines down the spine of the Star Key—were seen as emanating successively lower, denser vibrations (viewing them from the top down), resulting in ever deepening viscosity and materiality, with a reciprocal of lessening degrees of freedom and consciousness. And humans, as the main medium of Spirit on Earth, the speakers and shapers of matter, were placed midway along that spine, finding themselves thereby in the centre of the circle at the human scale, the same position wherein the Creator rested on the seventh day in Genesis.

However, man's soul was seen as not being bound at the centre but able to travel up to rarified heights and down to viscous depths in response to challenges, just as the progenitor binders were, and have them vibrate together—harmoniously or discordantly. Moreover, the resultant potential integration of the seven was one of the two essential preconditions which could, if successful, lead to the illumination of the twelve.[12] Then and only then, it was considered, could a meaningful answer to the Big Question be understood: that is, when the person or persons concerned resonated with the music of the spheres—not those of astronomy, but of Spirit. Some then applied that same twelve fold division to the skies, in the form of the zodiac, each sign of which were read as influencing a soul in its ways and means of realising Spirit – becoming such a fully-functioning example of the integration of matter and spirit. Not just the zodiac, but all the constellations, influenced that process, and the tracing of the sun, the moon and the stars, and the noting of correspondences between above and below—for example, the phases of the moon and menstruation (c.f. measuration) and the relationship of the sun and the seasons—had several important consequences: making agriculture and ultimately civilisation possible, for example.

There were also many downsides with the application of this model, including some of those that have happened because the ancients then went further and applied those maps from the skies to the land as well, and peopled it with the characters of myths and legends. These were not necessarily separate from historical personages, insofar as the lives of those personages exemplified the various levels between Spirit and inert matter. In the spirit of bringing Spirit down to Earth, they applied the maps of the heavens to Earth: in the right hands, they would have been highly instructive and profound, but when removed from their contexts and applied by the ignorant,[13] they became catastrophically abused. This was a double example of the error that Whitehead has termed “misplaced concretedness”—firstly, in reducing Spirit to the material sky, and secondly in applying that map to Earth—or, more damagingly still, exclusively to the portion of Earth upon which the relevant group stood, or wanted to stand. The wise doing that did not misunderstand: the ignorant applying misplaced concretedness to it did.

Perhaps history's most egregious example of misplaced concretedness is that of Aztec and other human sacrifice. There was a spiritual belief—evidenced in far older Mesoamerican civilisations, such as that of Teotihuacan—of being born with a heart and a body but having to build a new heart and a new body by opening one's heart to the Spirit—symbolised by the sun. Thus the Spirit was betrayed by the ignorant literalism of tearing open the chest and showing the still-beating heart to the physical sun!

The corollary of misplaced concretedness is misplaced abstraction—when, in words from Shakespeare's Hamlet,

“And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action”[14]

How is one to distinguish one misplacement from the other? As shown above, the answer of the ancients was by moving beyond that distinction of “one or the other.” The ancients had a heptchotomous map for that, with, if required, heptchotomies within heptchotomies to further refine reading the appropriateness of an action. We are not reading that too well at the moment, but then again, nor have we been for a very long time. Cultivation of such capacities resulted in wisdom which, together with compassion, resulted in the integration which was an essential precondition for the enlightenment referred to above. Ken Wilber defines wisdom as the seeing of the One in Many, compassion as the knowing of the Many as being One, and (crucially) one without the other as being catastrophic.[15] Misplaced concretedness, misplaced abstraction, and dissociation and disdain can topple the potential for such balanced discernment and embrace.

The story of Jacob, as referred to above, can be read as such an exemplar, and its misplaced concretedness as being at least as destructive as that of the Aztecs. Jacob's very name means the deceiver, the liar. As such he stole the birthright of his brother, Esau. Through the Star Key's lens, this can be seen as the animal side of man's nature gaining victory over his spiritual by deceit. But then Jacob wrestled in his darkness with an unnamed man at Peni'el, his animal nature was conquered after a long struggle in that darkness by a touch to Jacob's thigh,[16] and the dawn broke enlightening Jacob and he became an Israel—a son (prince) of God—and became joyfully reconciled with Esau. To achieve that involved considerable struggle, the result of which was that he was no longer centred as the deceiver, but had become an Israel. He was thereby no longer a vessel of deception, but of truth. And from that truth, on his deathbed he said of his sons Simeon and Levi,

“cursed be their anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath, for it was cruel”.[17]

That is, one does not become an Israel by birthright, but by overcoming the deceiver and growing to integration of body, mind and spirit. This spiritual integration is often portrayed as being born again—becoming a “twice born.” Those not born into spirit are once-generated, body and mind at the physical birth alone: Gentiles. In Star Key terms, the body is 333, the body plus the mind is 666, and the body plus the mind plus the spirit is 999. 666[18] is therefore the number of a man who is still a Jacob, not an Israel, a body and mind that has locked itself out of spirit, to become thereby a functionary of impulses via lies.

Note that I am using the word “Israel” in what I consider to be its true sense. The word, possibly of Egyptian origin, means “issue of the ra (god) El”[19], a local Cannanite deity whose name was borrowed by the Hebrews. Here I am using the term not to refer to the childish perception of the “my god can beat your god” variety—a larger scale, but equally shallow version of the puerile assertion, “my dad can beat your dad”. I mean it in a far deeper way: as referring to the God of all, the nondual, not dead gods, but the living One. So, although to become an Israel it is necessary to be born into matter, that does not imply birth into any one tribe, nation, locality, religion, caste—or any other such Jacobean deception. Spirit was seen to be in all things, all life, everywhere, having entered through the seven binders. Man was created in God's image through seven binders, and created to make that image real by becoming an Israel. However, different environments facilitate or retard the realisation of that creation to different degrees. Likewise, rituals and rites of passage may help facilitate, but are not, the real thing, and can be profaned as power instruments of the Jacobs (for example, by asserting that only those who have submitted themselves to such rituals can be Israels). We were seen as conceived as 333, born as 666, and born again as 999 to grow towards the realization / spiritualisation of the seven and the twelve. The ancients saw physical birth as a dire struggle, and recognised that spiritual birth into the potential to realize the zodiac could be an even more dire one.

Part of that post-bodymind-birth struggle was simply to stay alive long enough for that potential to be fulfilled. That was not a simple task. We have those ancients as well as all our intervening ancestors to thank for the fact that it is now a so much simpler task for so many more of us.[20] Even before the establishment of agriculture that time-measuring facilitated, the ancients needed to be hunters and warriors to survive, and thereby dissectors. Our citified repulsion to such processes, though in many ways laudable, was a luxury they could not afford. Being minds dissecting prey, they could not help but to have noticed similarities and differences in the structure of their several victims. Nor could they have survived as hunters without a most diligently learned understanding of the behavioural strengths and weaknesses of the various species that they interacted with.

It cannot be authoritatively stated precisely what correlations the ancients made between behaviour and anatomy. That they did so is evident by the animals used in the symbolism of the zodiac itself (the “zo” in the word relates to our “zoo”). However, it can be authoritatively stated that we moderns—with less immediate need for attention to the subject and with no greater anatomical equipment for the task—have noted a great many correlations indeed. There are many animals with sensory equipment and other capacities far greater than ours, and with brain development to match. All are unique in different ways and scales—and not just all species, but individuals within species—but nonetheless, certain general inferences and observations can be drawn.

One such is that reptiles possess brains that are similar to interior parts of the brains of mammals. Along with these parts of their brains, mammals possess brains that are similar to interior parts of ours. That is, we possess large brains with a small core part similar to reptiles, and a larger, middle part similar to mammals, and the higher the mammal the greater the similarity. However, man has a type of brain that no other species has: our frontal and temporal lobes.[21] These parts have resulted in the human brain being the most complex thing in the known universe. Each of us faces a monumental task in coming to grips with its potentialities. For example, it has been established that the frontal lobes do not come “online” until our late teens.[22] By use of the capacities bestowed via them to build machines and techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging, we are finding ourselves able to note correlations between behaviour and the anatomy of the brain.[23] In very broad approximation – yes, oversimplified - terms, the reptilian brain deals with behaviour we share in common with reptiles, the mammalian brain with behaviour we share with mammals, and the other parts of the brain behaviour that we only share with other humans.

What is striking is that these brains appear to facilitate greater degrees of freedom and consciousness the higher they go. While we are not conscious of, for example, anything but a tiny proportion of the smells that a dog can discriminate, the absence of a frontal cortex in dogs severely limits the degrees of freedom available to them through the capacity to “use stored facts to solve problems, plan and think reflectively”.[24]

The following quote provides the general flavour of this approach:

“The most complete description of the human brain's …components … is Paul MacLean's, A Mind of Three Minds: Educating the Triune Brain (1978). In this classic work, MacLean describes behaviors associated with our most primal brain which he calls 'reptilian'; our limbic brain and; the new brain or cerebral cortex.

“Many behaviors most consistently vexing to teachers and parents are associated with 'primitive' brain structures: structures that operate in reptiles and mammals, including primates. Grooming, personal adornment, display in courtship or team victory, ritual, dress, establishment of personal territory all have roots in primitive reptilian brains.

“The limbic brain itself which mediates both higher and more base functions also directs our daily lives …

“Primitive behavior finds expansion in slavish conforming to routine … personal day-to-day rituals, superstitious acts, obedience to precedent, ceremony, deception and aggression.”[25]

MacLean has been highly criticised lately, but the fact remains that we share certain behaviours and certain degrees of them with some animals and not with others. Importantly in this context, MacLean also notes that there are strong territorial defence motives expressed through the reptilian brain as well—as a crocodile would say if he could: “This is MY space: get off it—Trespassers will be eaten!”—and a compulsive need, for example, for ritualistic displays regarding pecking orders. The reptilian brain covets stability, continuity, “do not disturb”, and the closing of minds, along the lines of “this works—do it, and naught else: do not get ideas above your station.”

In not only in their naming of the constellations of the zodiac, in totems, and in countless other ways that there resides evidence that the ancients were aware of the behavioural qualities of different animals. Hence the correlation of this triune division of the brain in terms of the relevant behavioural characteristics, and the heptomal divisions of “ever deepening viscosity and materiality, with a reciprocal of lessening degrees of freedom and consciousness”.

A tentative conclusion can be tendered, therefore, that the denser and denser vibrations travelling down these seven binders regarded as the progenitors of all life were seen as reflected in animal and human anatomy and behaviour, similar to that articulated by MacLean, and that this conclusion remains robust even where MacLean may not.

Part Three.

We have submitted the possibility that the ancients used the Star Key as a universal template for creation and generation in all the contexts available in creation (like the x, y, and z axes are still used in mathematics today). We have taken the example of Genesis, where it is used for the creation of both inert matter and living things. One is to imagine those same seven binder/generators in all sorts of contexts and scales—and not just then but, crucially, now.

Historically, the category errors caused by conflation of contexts have been disastrous. For example, the spectrum of good and evil has been conflated with that of spirit and matter, resulting in spirit being seen as good and matter evil. That is preposterous: spirits can be good and evil, and matter is neutral. There is no more sense in saying there is more evil in dense matter such as earth compared to less dense matter such as air than in saying a low note in music is more “evil” than a high note. There is a similarity in that one can become mired in the viscosity of materiality as well as mired in the viscosity of evil, but they are along different spectra.

With that distinction made, and the groundwork established in the first two parts, let us now proceed to examine one of the spectra I have just mentioned, and apply it to examine the Middle East situation. The spectrum I am referring to is that between absolute good and absolute evil.

Probably coincidentally, in English “evil” is “live” reversed. Not coincidentally, the second star generated by the Star Key (the three being the six, five and eight-pointed stars) is widely used as a symbol of good: the pentacle. This is a particularly apt symbol for life and growth, as it contains the golden ratio—a ratio evident in many forms of life and growth. Its inversion, therefore, was taken to symbolise anti-life (and, with its two “horns”, “ears” and “beard”, saddled the unfortunate goat with its evil symbolism). In the context of this “good versus evil” spectrum, it points up to “good” in the Star Key's circle one way, and down to “evil” the other way (but note again that in another context, the upward is female, the downward is male). So I am content to use the term “evil” in the sense defined by Jim Garrison:

“Some inner or outer act that in some way deeply violates and destroys life.”

The opposite, good, I therefore define as

“some inner or outer act that in some way deeply enhances and builds life”.[26]

As mentioned above, the ancients put both the Mind of God and the mind of man at the Star Key's centre (once again, a potentially dangerous conflation of contexts when misunderstood). In binder terms, that is at the fourth binder up, which is also the fourth binder down.[27] Mankind, starting out at this centre as 666—halfway between 333 and 999—with his brain comprised of a part of a type shared with reptiles, another of a type only shared with all mammals, another of a type only shared with the higher mammals and another unique to itself—is on the horizon, and can travel up or down via the the spiralling serpents to grow in wisdom in facing the challenges at the various levels. However, there are other kinds of serpents, those that poison, or suffocate and devour one. The former are the “wise” dragons and serpents essential for growth (those in the caduceus, the emblem of the medical profession): the latter are malignant. They are the symbols of that which “deeply violates and destroys life”, and again by dint of misplaced concretedness, snakes (which have an essential role in ecology) are conflated with them by the ignorant.

Using similes, therefore, the ancients saw the wicked as having poison “like the poison of a serpent” …

“Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man: preserve me from the violent man; which imagine mischief in their heart; continually they are gathered for war, They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders' poison is under their lips.”[28]

Once again, conflations are to be avoided: there is nothing “wrong” or “evil” about having a reptilian brain. It is essential to our body's very existence biologically, and manifests energies and behaviours which can be highly positive—even essential—in their contexts. Moreover, continued deaths are essential to continuance of lives[29], and death can be a blessed release from violation. However, every level has its pathological manifestations, and it is the pathological manifestations of the lower levels of the brain that identify those who are slaves of the serpent: the “wicked”, the poison-lipped “deceivers”—the manifesters of evil, deeply violating life, destroying life. They permeate life in general, and religions in particular, because we are all vulnerable to succumbing to it.

The vibrations of these different levels of mind can be readily observed by means of exercising one's thoughts. You can get to “feel” a spectrum of thoughts, from coarse reptilian ones to highly refined frontal lobe products. Try it. Certain thoughts of yours will trigger certain responses, and other ones other responses. For example, you may be stimulated by the thought of an intellectual challenge, or calmed at the thought of a sunset, or enraged by summoning other thoughts. You may vigorously disagree with me on some—or all—of the contents of this article, and that may do it for you. If you are still having difficulty, remember Aristotle's observation that the source of all enmity is the feeling of being slighted: then remember being treated in that fashion, and feel your reaction to that memory. While you are at it, you may also take note of the prevalence of such behaviour—and hence the relevance of Aristotle's observation—in the Middle East.

What works for me in that 'enraging' context is the story—accurately reported or not, I cannot say—of a fire in a Saudi Arabian school, wherein girls fleeing the fire were forced back inside to their deaths, because they had emerged immodestly attired.

Let us attempt to understand what part of the mind was operating in the perpetrators of those killings. Their behaviour clearly fits the definition of evil as behaviour deeply violating or destroying life. Such behaviour also appears to be a pathological manifestation of primitive behavior, “finding expansion in slavish conforming to routine … personal day-to-day rituals, superstitious acts, obedience to precedent, ceremony, deception and aggression.” Although it is impossible to be conclusive from here, indications are that these killings were therefore examples of pathological reptilian brain behaviour. At the time, therefore, the perpetrators were slaves of the serpent.

Such slavery is not confined to any groupings of humanity that we care to apply (and, in our self-deception, we love to attempt to extirpate it from ourselves by lying to ourselves that it is confined to others). No such grouping can rightly claim to be always free of the serpent: we submit that not one individual alive today can substantiate that claim. The fact that so many claim so by dint of their religion, their race, their little toes or their whatever-allows-them-to-feel-superior merely establishes that they are Jacobs, not Israels. We all have reptilian brains; we all misapply their responses.

So when I said at the beginning of this article “The Middle East: what a mess”, I was applying a universal aspect of the human condition to a particular area of focus, and chose that because of its potential to cause worldwide catastrophe. It is not a mess just because it is Palestinians versus Zionists, or private terrorists versus state terrorists, or whatever other dichotomy you care to name. We are a mess because we have not yet come to grips with the management of the most complex thing in the known universe. It is a species thing, just as much as categorising and then demonising others is a species thing. Nevertheless, some are enslaved by such behaviours, and others are not. Some serpent-slaves have learned to manipulate us by activating such pathological behaviour from our reptilian brains towards their own ends. That behaviour fits our definition of evil. Our manipulation is greatly facilitated by what Eckhart Tolle terms the “pain-body”:

“As long as you are unable to access the power of the Now, every emotional pain that you experience leaves behind a residue of pain that lives on in you. It merges with the pain from the past, which was already there, and becomes lodged in your mind and body …

Some people live almost entirely through their pain-body, while others may experience it only in certain situations, such as intimate relationships, or situations linked with past loss or abandonment, physical or emotional hurt, and so on … [it] can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it. It can then rise up, take you over, 'become you', and live through you …

It will feed on any experience that resonates with its own kind of energy, anything that creates further pain in whatever form: anger, destructiveness, hatred, grief, emotional drama, violence, and even illness.”[30]

It is therefore a snip for evildoers to manipulate pain-bodies, because the pain-bodies want to gain such experiences. In contradistinction to the one, living God, these pretender gods are the gods of death.

What behaviour, therefore, best fits our definition of good—that being “some inner or outer act that in some way deeply enhances and builds life”? We submit that it is by not manipulating others, but instead offering inner or outer acts that in some way deeply enhance and build lives. In support, in Psalm 82 it is claimed that the good defend the poor and fatherless, do justice to the afflicted and needy, and deliver the poor and needy out of the hand of the wicked. That means that, to be an Israel, it is insufficient to be able to say that you did no harm: ACTION is required to fix the mess. But if one is a mess oneself—how can one little mess added to a big mess not make it a bigger mess?

For instance, after expressing this insight, the writer of the Psalm went on to identify, in his tribal way, the “wicked” as being confined to other tribes. In this, he should not be condemned. He was writing in a primitive society which was, by all indications, under great threat; under such conditions, to retreat to the defensive mechanisms available within the armoury of the reptilian brain is natural—especially when the not-wicked, if any, within the declared enemies have not made themselves visible by opposing the designs of the wicked amongst them. Those wishing to enslave others to their cause know this well as a highly reliable technique towards having others kill and be killed for their purposes. But now, after the intervention of thousands of years, we must ask the question:

Have we learnt anything that could be more nuanced, informed, and proportionate?

Why, yes. Lots. So much, in fact, that if we—you the reader and me the writer—spent the rest of our lives examining everything mankind has learnt germane to this, by the time we died of old age we would have barely scratched the surface. Under such circumstances, another model is required: one to make a framework towards being able to make orienting generalisations towards further enquiry.

In 1995, the developmental philosopher Ken Wilber proposed a model—a map—to allow such explanatory power to emerge from all the data. He called his model “AQAL”—all quadrants, all levels. By “all quadrant”, he meant that we should examine the world from four main perspectives. Following Arthur Koestler, he defined this world as being comprised mainly of holons—whole/parts—the term emphasising that everything that manifests does so in relationships—so that as well as being identifiable as a “whole”, it can also be examined as a “part.” Using the four-quadrant approach, these holons could be examined towards discovering their interior individual qualities, their exterior individual qualities, their exterior socio-environmental qualities and their interior socio-cultural qualities. His focus was upon the kind of holon called human beings. Naturally, in each quadrant there are myriads of different quantities and qualities. As a developmental philosopher, Wilber decided to focus upon those that can be qualitatively developed. In doing so, he used, as shall we, a key insight of the psychologist Werner:

All development proceeds from a situation of relative globality and lack of differentiation to one of increasing differentiation, articulation, and hierarchical integration.[31]

So by “all-levels” of AQAL, he meant to relate to emergent qualities at different levels of complexity in each of the quadrants. For example, with the exterior individual quadrant, we have atoms in our molecules, molecules in our cells, cells in our bodies … Just as we can use maps at different scales to help us travel about, so depending upon our needs we can thereby direct our focus to whatever level of complexity we choose, and chart increasing levels of differentiation, articulation, and hierarchical integration, part of which is the emergence of new wholes at different levels of complexity. Historically, as in the Star Key, people have used 12 or seven levels, but these can be changed or adjusted according to the foci required. We can use the Star Key's seven binders along its diameter for that, as well as for the abovementioned traditional use as “successively lower, denser vibrations resulting in ever deepening viscosity and materiality, with a reciprocal of lessening degrees of freedom and consciousness”. That is, we are submitting that Werner's insight applies to the development of the brain—part of the individual exterior quadrant—and also to the mind—part of the individual interior quadrant.

We have discussed these levels above, now let us provide examples of the causes of evil from each of the perspectives mentioned in the AQAL approach. In doing so, the interaction of the quadrants should be kept in mind (and, in the case of matter, recalling that matter is neutral in essence, but can be good or evil in effect).

Having already just touched upon it, we shall begin our tour at the exterior individual quadrant. Clearly, a disease such as cancer can be seen as “deeply violating and destroying life”, and so qualifies as a manifestation of evil in this quadrant. However, it is not only the biological part of us that has an exterior manifestation: we communicate externally via our skilled movements—including language. Hate speech, lies, etc. would therefore be other forms of manifestation of evil in this quadrant. There are many such examples. We will only provide sufficient to establish the typology.

The exterior socio-environmental quadrant addresses the material environment as it affects the relevant holon. The computer that I am using for my interior individual thoughts to be translated through my exterior individual fingers to this exterior socio-environmental keyboard onto my monitor is an example. Many things in this quadrant can deeply violate and destroy life: for example—lead has irreversibly stunted the intellectual and physical development of millions worldwide, and iodine deficiencies can have similar effects. A knock on the head can manifest as criminal behaviour decades later. Drugs, viruses, and bacteria of various kinds can also induce severe pathologies, and instruments such as weapons of mass destruction are designed specifically for the purpose here defined as evil.

Similarly, cultural attitudes prevailing to a human holon's socio-cultural quadrant can greatly facilitate such destruction, insofar as they can cripple, stunt, or retard those subjected to their power. In particular, totalitarian states can provide examples of the imposition of the reptilian brain pathologies of the dominators upon the dominated, and insofar as they deeply violate and destroy the opportunities of any of their subjects to achieve their highest potentials, they too are manifestations of evil. On the other hand extremities of permissiveness, thereby also allowing conditions that facilitate the dominance of serpent slaves with their reptilian brain pathologies, are evil insofar as they achieve similar results: not intervening to prevent a predator such as a bully or a parasite such as a spoilt brat from violating others, for example.

Finally, let us examine the interior individual quadrant. Internalised judgments can have both positive and negative effects upon the individual interior and how it manifests, at that time or later. The trauma that can result from the sexual violation of a child, for example, could gestate for years, even decades, in that person's individual interior before manifesting by the violated becoming an evildoer in turn. Physical, sexual, or emotional violation, real or merely perceived, can fester within the interior of an individual to form the pain-body, which can grow to dominate the “switch” to turn on pathological reptilian responses as referred to by Tolle.

Initiation into evil can therefore come from any quadrant.[32] Moreover, it can enter at any level, and spiral downwards around the quadrants to the violation and destruction of life. Similarly, however, remedies for evil, and facilitation of growth towards the light, can also enter anywhere within the territory described by the AQAL map and spiral up around the quadrants. It may be an intervention within a quadrant, or in the relationship between quadrants. But how is one to decide where to intervene: at what quadrant, and at what level? We propose a model for this in Part Four, but before doing so it is important to stress not only what interventions where, but how much and when.

So, while keeping the background of so much evil manifesting in the Middle East at present, note that another psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,[33] provides another key insight that can be applied to weaning people away from being serpent slaves. He notes that the self evolves by an incremental growth process, too much information causing anxiety and regression (too highly stressed), too little information causing boredom and stasis (insufficiently stressed). Traumas, such as are being inflicted constantly in the Middle East, are an extreme example of the former. Excessive permissiveness, as described above, is an example of the latter. So one of the best ways of making people serpent slaves is to traumatise them, and another is to understimulate them.[34] Csikszentmihalyi notes that the opportunity for happiness lies between those extremities in a state he refers to as Flow, noting that:

“the best moments are those spent in trying to achieve something difficult and worthwhile.”

For development to occur between quadrants, the challenges to spiral up them cannot be either too large for accomplishment, or too small for interest.

So providing a good education is a key means of directing people away from pathological manifestations of their reptilian brains. By “good” here is meant towards the above definition of good, and geared within Csikszentmihalyi's process—balanced, proportioned, judicious action. At the same time and pace, it requires complementary mental development of increased capacity for critical thought in accord with Werner's definition—gaining developed understanding of the subject matter, not mere crude dichotomies such as “us” versus “them” (an understanding, for example, that two opposing illusions do not add up to one truth). That is why that quote by Keyser has pride of place atop this article. This other quote concerning abstractions from Keyser is similarly germane:

“Absolute certainty is a privilege of uneducated minds—and fanatics. It is, for scientific folk, an unattainable ideal.”

We trust it can now be seen why that should be so. Absolute certainty is the crude response typical of the primitive levels of our brains, which does not understand that the vehemence with which a view is held is unrelated to its truth or falsehood. It is our minds' attempts to assert the absolute, which is the property of none but God. In other words, it is indicative of slavery to the serpent. Moreover, being driven by this interior individual response bears the highest risk of manifesting evil of all of our minds' responses—irrespective of what exterior socio-environmental object, or socio-cultural creed, it attaches itself to. For example, in the twentieth century enormous destruction was wreaked by such attachments to the creeds of fascism, communism, and my-country-right-or-wrong nationalism. In the context of the Middle East, the most dangerous current blasphemies are attachments of that response to the Bible (both the Old and the New Testaments), the Talmud, and the Koran.

Your reaction to the above may be another opportunity to examine what part of you, if any, attaches itself to any of those books. For some, it may be the pain-body, just as it was in the story of serpent slaves trying to stone Jesus.[35] The true inheritors of the first discoverers of the Star Key, the true chosen people of God, are not such boisterous bigots, but those who can say, with Jesus:

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free … to this end I was born, and for this cause I came into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.[36]

With that, Jesus was claiming to be not a deceiver—a Jacob—but an Israel, one of the truly chosen people, who are not, and were never, confined to any one tribe or grouping—religious or otherwise—of the human race, despite the term “Israel” being currently used almost exclusively with reference to the Jews.[37] We submit that Israels are those who bear witness unto the truth: that doing so is a necessary but insufficient precondition to be one. Jacobs are not Israels. In that respect, scientists, insofar as they act within scientific protocols and insofar as they match the ideal as described by Keyser, are far closer to being the chosen ones than those claiming absolute certainty to the extent of killing others. The Absolute is claimed by the serpent, but is the property of God alone. It follows, therefore, in humility before God's domain, that “an active consciousness holds all ideas lightly”,[38] even - and especially - the ideas behind the Star Key and similar models with potentially “sacred” applications. In contrast, one who is a serpent slave, for the reasons described above, snatches claims of divine omniscience by whatever means at their disposal, especially by pain-bodies attaching themselves to sacred texts, and also especially, given the obsession of the reptilian brain with territory, by claiming ownership of sacred places.

From such a perspective, much of the historical wrangling over Jerusalem can be seen as examples of misplaced concretedness every bit as ludicrous, and often as evil, as the Aztec priest tearing out the still beating heart of the victim and showing it to the sun.

Part Four.

The ancients considered that this battle between good and evil took part in their souls. These souls were conceptualised as spheres.[39] As possessors of active, not arrested, consciousness, we shall hold these ideas lightly, and look at the world in general—and the Middle East in particular—from the perspective of the souls within it, represented as spheres under the broad sphere of the starry sky.

Each soulsphere has an individual interior, the brain, body and skills of the individual exterior, and relates to the world by that exterior, in turn being permaeted by the world, resulting in identity construction. Its two social quadrants thus record its “umwelt”—the world of its experience—not the world as a whole.[40] So, from each soul's point of view, the centre of its sphere has the four quadrants mapped out by its front-back, left-right divisions, and grows in span insofar as experience and understanding from the exterior quadrants enriches the interior quadrants—absorbing those by the process described by Csikszentmihalyi. Growth can be inhibited or stopped or reversed by a mismatch between any of the four quadrant capacities within a soul, and by the capacities of that soul to deal with new realities faced—those not within their umwelts. The vertical axis, in terms of each soul, is the axis going from 333 to 666 to 999, as defined above,[41] along the Star Key's spine of seven binders marked by nines, representing energies of increasingly higher frequency from 333 to 999. Starting at the centre (666), it contracts back down the vertical axis when its challenges are too great to bear, or sinks into them like into quicksand when the challenges are too boring. Or, in opening its heart and mind in curiosity and wonder as described in the Keyser quote beneath the title, it grows from 666 (bodymind) to 999 and beyond by means of infusion of spirit, and lives life more abundantly—the goal of all good education.

The influx of spirit into that soul sets it turning. So now I am asking you to visualise the Star Key as three-dimensional—a sphere—with the contents sent spinning through time and space by the spiralling serpents of seven. The upward and downward-pointing triangles in 2D thereby trace out cones in 3D, both cones being “containers” of life experiences which variously shrink the soul into the mire of ignorance and selfishness, or expand it into wisdom and compassion.[42] So these spheres are not to be visualised as being of uniform size between souls, or the same size at different times during its serpents of seven-induced passage through time. Their health is a function of their four-quadrant interactions—not merely externals, but how they deal with externals.[43]

There are over six billion of these spheres spinning through time on Earth at this moment. Many of those are not in the region that we are focussing upon—the Middle East—and those with the power to influence the course of events in the Middle East do not all reside there. Each of them, individually or in concert, are addressing matters in all four quadrants at different levels along the spectrum between ignorance and hardheartedness at one end, and wisdom and compassion at the other. Insofar as there is a reasonable match between the realities “out there” and the perception of those realities “in here,” it is possible to react with some wisdom in the context of that match. The issues that these souls have to deal with come in a myriad of different guises and scales. Dealing with many such issues often requires inter-soul cooperation. In such circumstances, leaders arise—to various degrees, by fair means or foul and with fair designs or foul.

Most such leaders have the capacity to address the spectrum at different levels for different issues at different times. On the one hand, there must be very few who can act with complete ignorance and hardheartedness at all times and under all circumstances, and, we would argue, even fewer who can act with complete wisdom and compassion at all times and under all circumstances.

Even to one such as I, whose track record confirms that one assuredly cannot claim to have been in the class of those who act with complete wisdom and compassion at all times and under all circumstances, it is patently obvious that the current leadership is not within that category either. It is not clear that some current leadership is not within the former category, however—even if they mask it by transposing or translating it via some or other tribal, religious or national affiliation. Most of us are somewhere in between. We can thereby see that it would be not only unfair but also extremely counter-productive to demonise the leaders involved in this Middle East mess on the basis that their behaviour appears indistinguishable to us from that of one of those benighted souls in the former category. If we do so, we may thereby be embarrassingly exposing our own perceptual limitations.

However, as Jung said:

“where love reigns, there is no will to power, and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking; one is the shadow of the other.”

The pain-body obsessions can garner money and power. That is why it is said that the love of money is the root of all evil (not money itself), and why Jesus said it was easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. As the Buddhist prayer says it, “Lord, make me neither too poor nor too rich.” So the rich and powerful should have a higher proportion of those driven by their pain-bodies than the normal population, especially as the opportunities to temporarily slake the pain-body's rabid thirst for pain is that much greater.

All that is needed to demonstrate that there is hope of one's soul being seemingly overwhelmed by one's pain-body is evidence to the contrary from any context. Such leaders can gain dramatically sudden insights into the error of their ways, and be led to those insights or to incremental change by the process described by Csikszentmihalyi (it is said that “he who persists in error becomes wise”; but that assumes being willing and able to learn; at what cost, and for how long, must we wait?).

If such evidence is not forthcoming, then the abovementioned Psalm 82's (defend the poor and fatherless …) description of them as wicked applies:

“They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course”.[44]

Such are extremely dangerous, and must be removed immediately from their positions of leadership: but by whom, and how?

The “gut” reaction is removal by the use of force. Leaving it at that reaction, however, is not even engaging the higher functions of our brains. From the narrower set of those who can do that, then, who is to make the call? It should be clear by now that those most likely to do it are not the Jacobs, but the Israels (but the Lord moves in mysterious ways). Not the “Israelis”—who seem to contain at least their fair proportion of Jacobs—but the Israels among all the people of the region of whatever faith or political persuasion, including but not limited to Israelis: including but not limited to denizens of the Middle East. Another “gut” reaction will be to point at the deficiencies of the leaders of the group one opposes, rather than the more uncomfortable task of examining one's own leaders and, even more vitally importantly, one's self or, in particular, one's pain-body.

Israels can be identified by their works. They will not be “do-gooders” in the derogatory sense of what Wilber terms catastrophic “idiot compassion”—unbalanced by wisdom—nor will they be “do nothings”—cultivators of wisdom without implementing it. Nor will they be the logical opposite of do-gooders—do-badders—who usually identify their ignorance and hardheartedness as their selves, and that pain-body is quite put out when others are not comfortable being as ignorant and hardhearted, and extremely vexed if accused of being in a state of something less than perfection.

In Star Key terms, Israels will be from inside the limited set of those who are “firing on all seven binders”—that is physically, mentally and spiritually developed[45]: 999s, not only 666s—and not only 999s. They are those who can manage their seven binders, but the ancients looked not just for such people, but for those who have realized the twelve, not just their seven: that is, those who have realised the zodiac—who have become fully—functioning examples of the integration of matter and spirit.

Are such paragons yet Israels? No, Israels are from an even more limited set. A set that Wilber describes as living in “One Taste.” And it is here that we must leave the Star Key behind, because the Star Key is a mental construct and here we must leave all mental constructs behind, because here we are speaking of access to the nondual, sufficient of which is the criterion for being an Israel.

The word “Islam” means “surrender”, and it is through surrender that spirit can enter, and it is from the set of those that can surrender that Israels emerge. However, believing in Islam or Israels is no more a passport to that than being a Christian, a Jew, or any other believer. It is a trans-egoic, trans-mental, trans-belief process, and, in particular, trans 666.

Let us go back to Genesis and ask: before the binders, what? Before the point, the first binder, moved making time and the other dimensions, what was there? And that question is just as much a question for now as it was when Genesis was written, or any other sacred book, for creation is now—not then any longer: not when you started to read this, not when you had just read that, but now.

When you ask what is there—“from whence the binders”—and see the question deeply enough to be silent in response then, if only for an instant, feel the energy of that silence. That is a fleeting glimpse of the silence Benjamin Disraeli termed “the mother of truth”. That is the “elected silence” that sang to the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, which is “from there where all surrenders come” and within which “you shall walk the golden street, and … unhouse and house the Lord.” It is that which prompted Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) to state “there is nothing more like God than stillness”. It is the door to the Father's house that the Jacobs have taken the key of knowledge from, where they enter not in themselves, and those that attempt to enter, they hinder.[46]

Just as cycles of sleep and activity are required to keep our 333-666 levels going strong, so cycles of silence and activity are required to develop our souls. As Eckhardt Tolle put it:

“There is a place for mind and mind knowledge. It is in the practical realm of day-to-day living. However, when it takes over all aspects of your life, including your relationships with other human beings and with nature, it becomes a monstrous parasite that, unchecked, may well end up killing all life on the planet and finally itself by killing its host.”[47]

The pain-body portion of that monstrous parasite is the beast. That is why the number of the beast is that of a man: 666. Body? Yes. Mind? Yes. Spirit? The beast enters not, and those that attempt to enter, it hinders. Humanity is “neither angel nor beast”, said Blaise Pascal, “and it is unfortunately the case that anyone trying to act the angel acts the beast.”[48] When Jesus said:

“Why callest thou me good? None is good, save one, that is, God”[49]

he was referring to that same difference between acting, and truly Being. That statement of Jesus further implies “do not think yourself to be better than anybody else on whatever basis—clan, creed, colour, spiritual pride, status of development or any other nonsense whatsoever: your beast is conflating itself with God if you do that.”

Ken Wilber calls this imperialism of the mind “The Atman Project”:

“At any sufficiently developed point in an individual's development, a radical leap (Eckhart's “breakthrough”) into the Formless can occur. The higher the development, the easier and more likely the jump will occur. Yet the Formless itself is not the result of that jump, nor does it then come to be. It is there, from the start, as one's own Original Face ..

Evolution seeks only this Formless summum bonum—it wants only this ultimate Omega—it rushes forward only and solely in search of this—and it will never find it, because evolution unfolds in the world of form. The Kosmos is driven forward endlessly, searching in the world of time for that which is altogether timeless. And since it will never find it, it will never cease the search. Samsara circles endlessly, and that is always the brutal nightmare hidden in its heart.”[50]

This brutal nightmare from the beast is in the Middle East. There, there are Jacobs, posturing as holy, acting the beast. I know that because there is a Jacob in me; and you know that because there is a Jacob in you. Life and the Atman Project inevitably involve giving and receiving pain. But, as Csikszentmihalyi points out, they have to be proportionate for growth. Spurs are one thing, daggers quite another. As Jacobs, we all stash away pain-bodies for later absorption. Problems arise when, instead of managing them, they manage us. But we can, with the Now: the Now can short-circuit that four-quadrant spiral down and allow a rebalancing to facilitate ever more skillful means.

It is time for us to drop just being Jacobs, to awaken into that Silence. As Meister Eckhart put it:

“all our perfection, our whole happiness, depends on our traversing and transcending creature, time, and state; and entering the cause that is causeless.”

It is time to mind the mind, transcend the creature—the Jacob, the beast—and as Tolle says transcend time and discover the power of Now. It is time to transcend the Star Key's binders, to enter the cause of all Genesis.

So the answer to the question at the end of Part One is “no”.

Now is not where an Israel stays, however: Israels are not here only for quietism or mysticism—there is eternity for that: they are here for action. As with our breath going in and out, spirit goes in and out of time and the eternal now. As Hopkins said, we “house and unhouse the Lord.” As A.B. Kuhn put it in India's True Voice:

“The distinction as to whether the exalted feelings are wholesome and salutary, or the opposite, is to be discovered by noting whether they spring from baseless fancy, of purely subjective origin, or from the experience with actualities. Such forms of mysticism as the moving power of music, the emotion of friendship, the love of beauty, romantic passion, love of nature, feelings generated by the awesomeness of natural phenomena, the highest transports of delight, joy, wonder, awe, the noblest elevations of feelings, our divinest upliftments—all these are forms of a mysticism that draws its genuineness from sources undeniably real …

As long as this link is maintained the influences flowing from the original precipitation of the divine ideas into embodied forms will be beneficent. But if the currents from the actual creation be cut off, if the psyche be uprooted from its supporting ground-bed in nature, the fruit of the psychological tree of life will be hybrid at best and unnourishing. To be maintained in health, minds must be kept rooted in the actual world …

And if it be remembered that one's own mentation, if it be wayward, can hypnotize one, with the dire result of making an imagined fiction world turn into a real world for the subject, the danger of tragic mental aberrancy looms large. It becomes increasingly evident that the great prevalence of psychic neurosis in the present world can be traced largely to the gross and massive tendencies in the religious culture to exalt the spirit and disparage matter, the world and the body, which thus destroy the healthful relation between the two ends of the polarity in the individual's life. It is true enough for restatement that millions of people have wrecked their lives by accepting the religious infatuation that nature and life itself are hostile to the interests of their immortal souls.”

Millions of those wrecked lives are in the Middle East. Meister Eckhart again:

“Practice is better than precept; but the practice and precept of eternal God is a counsel of perfection. If I wanted a teacher of theology, I should go for one to Paris, to its learned university. However, if I came to ask about the perfect life, why then he could not tell me. Where then am I to turn? To pure and abstract nature, nowhere else: that can solve your anxious questions. Why, good people, search among dead bones? Why not seek the living part that is directly connected with creation and that gives eternal life? The dead neither give nor take.”

Despising people is an action of the beast: despising women, subjugating woman, despising sexuality, is one behaviour of Jacobs trying to act the angel, but acting the beast. The Star Key, and the process described in Genesis, shows a balanced conjunction of male and female in the upward and downward pointing triangles, needed for the soul's balanced growth. Similarly, hating people because they are Palestinians, or Zionists, or Americans, or any such primitive enboxings—that is manifesting as slaves of the serpent again. Despising water-mater-mare-matter makes one a slave of the serpent, a worshipper of the dead, a searcher amongst dead bones, whereas an Israel honours and includes the past, but in a creative advance into novelty.

So the course of an Israel in the Middle East can now be seen, albeit “through a glass, darkly.” Provide multi-dimensional, all level, all scale interventions towards reintegration of fractured souls and societies within the chains of time and space, but, especially, get back to the people the key to their Father's house: the eternal Now.

Eckhart Tolle provides this key with respect to how to address the pain-body:

“The pain-body, which is the dark shadow cast by the ego, is actually afraid of the light of your consciousness. It is afraid of being found out. Its survival depends on your unconscious identification with it, as well as your unconscious fear of facing the pain that lives in you. But if you don't face it, if you don't bring the light of your consciousness into the pain, you will be forced to relive it again and again. The pain-body may seem to you like a dangerous monster that you cannot bear to look at, but I assure you that it is an insubstantial phantom that cannot prevail against the power of your presence …

The moment you observe it, feel its energy field within you, and take your attention to it, the identification is broken. A higher dimension of consciousness has come in. I call it presence. You are now the witness or the watcher of the pain-body. This means that it cannot use you anymore by pretending to be you, and it can no longer replenish itself through you. You have found your own innermost strength. You have accessed the power of Now.”[51]

That is Tolle's injunction: one of the most reliable ways to establish a truth is to go through a process of injunction, apprehension, and confirmation. It could all be really that simple, but we will never know unless we try. Note, however, that Tolle is referring to the power of Now: when it comes to the power of the not-Now, meaning within the Atman Project and the increasing levels of unconsciousness wherein we mainly dwell, the scenario manifests more as A.B. Kuhn describes in India's True Voice:

“Spiritualization, he [Radhakrishnan] says, is a greater and more difficult integration. And this may take long to mature, 'for the lower parts of the being have their own rights; and if they are to be truly transformed, they must be made to consent to their own transformation. This is difficult to bring about.' It is in fact so difficult that it involves the whole 'agon', as the Greeks called it, of the polarity conflict; it is the agony and the bloody sweat in the garden of the world; it is the great and continuing battle of Armageddon; it is the wrestling of Jacob with the angel, or of Horus with Sut; it is the struggle of the soul with sense, of spirit with the flesh. We must ascend a long winding stairway; it has many steps, 'for it is an incessant gradation and there is no gap anywhere'.”

That is Armageddon[52]: between the living God, of the Now, available by surrender to Being, and the pain-bodies' gods of the dead past: between Truth and the Lie. But the first thing a deceiver will say to this is: “Well, then, the God of the Now, your One and Only God, told me THIS.” Together with using our discernment between good and evil, how are we to discern the truth? A.B Kuhn again states:

“When … the lower bodies become capable of affording free course to the influx of the higher influences … a practical identity between the two is established … and an elevated consciousness arising from the double sense of the word “remember” should lift humanity once more to an awareness of its mission, which is to bind up the broken and dismembered body of the Lord of Hosts, by welding together the nations in the spirit of a lofty fraternity. In the light of restored sublimity to the doctrine, every individual will know that the appeal to remember his deity comes not from an isolated figure in ancient Judea, but from the living god within, begging all to drink the cup of communion with him and thus hasten to forge that recollection of him which alone will effect his release from the dreary grave of the body …

“The human mind may safely and profitably advance into the field of speculative truth if it proceeds with the manual of nature's instruction in hand. Mind has essayed to explore the immense reaches of possible discovery in the area above nature. But to proceed into that terrain without nature's manual as a guide is to risk aberrancy at every turn. Henceforth, investigation must start from nature, and as full and comprehensive a formulation of nature's cardinal principia, her representation of the divine archai, as can possibly be outlined and organized in systemic form must be constructed as primary knowledge. Every speculative theory must be held up to nature to see if nature endorses it. Nature must be made the criterion of all judgment and decision. If no analogy or correspondence with a theory can be found in nature, or phenomena contradictory to it are found, it stands discredited. Somewhere in nature will be found a parallel to whatever is true.”

By such means—by a rigorous wielding of the sword of truth, scything through the troughs of delusions of vanity so pervasive in all our quadrants, and so often defended with a passion in inverse proportion to their truth—can we discover not only the answers to the Middle East crises, but also the Big Question. Once, again, as Jesus put it:

“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free … to this end I was born, and for this cause I came into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth … except except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

That is, whether we know it or not, our cause, too. Our troubles arise when our pain-bodies hold us back from opening our hearts and minds to spirit because of having been hurt in that open state before – hurt beyond their capacity for Csikszentmihalyi's absorption process. Those pain-bodies may then confine us to that seasonless land (as described by Kahlil Gibran) where we laugh, but not all of our laughter, and weep, but not all of our tears. It is in transcending that pain-body reaction by the increased consciousness of choiceless awareness whereby we become as little children, and are born again.

Wisdom born of experience learns that it is pointless to argue with a pain-body: that only serves to increase its dominance in its victim – be it self or other - further barring its body and its mind from spirit. Yet compassion sees all those screaming, writhing pain-bodies and wants them, and their captive bodyminds, to find peace at last. Together, gently, growth in wisdom and compassion can lead us into the light of truth.

We may even find that we can't see for looking! That the truth that shall make us free is that the kingdom of heaven, if anywhere, is nowhere else but Here, and if anytime, is nowhen else but Now.

NOTES

[1] Cassius J. Keyser, as cited in Alfred Korzybski's Manhood of Humanity.

[2] Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. “Bokonon”, from Cat's Cradle, 1963, Dell, New York.

[3] We are using the term “ancients” to emphasise their prehistorical nature: for example, they could well predate Nabta Playa—that being an application of it to astronomical observations. I am also using the term “we” because I am having this draft reviewed by others before publication on the Internet.

[4] The articulation of this view has been greatly facilitated by the works of Dr Alvin Boyd Kuhn—an early to mid twentieth-century author I discovered earlier this year (2002). That acknowledgement no more says that I agree with all his views than that I agree with all those of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam (which harbour several mutually exclusive assumptions).

[5] Neumann, E. 1995, The Origins and History of Consciousness. Bollingen series, Princeton University Press. Princeton, N.J. In turn, that interaction between consciousness and environment creates our selves - constructs our identities.

[6] While the binder can be considered as zero dimensions in the abstract, the line as one, the plane as two etc, this conceptualisation follows current practice from the Greeks and is unnecessary for perception of this evolution. The subjective view of the binder can be seen as a function of scale—what may seem zero dimensioned from afar, emerges as a sphere in time from up close. Moreover, the binder, and the line, etc. all in fact enter three dimensions as soon as they are concretised.

[7] All my Biblical quotations are from the King James version of the Bible (1611); this one is from Proverbs 8:27: unless specified, all others are from Genesis.

[8] Note also that the evidence is strong that the zero used in my notation of the Star Key was an Indian invention of the first centuries of our calendar. In this context, it the notation, and not the substance of, the ten-point, nine-line process of the Star Key. This point/line relationship—identical around a circle, one different on a line—also relates the heptave and the octave, the octave being a seven-note progression, the eighth being a return to the original note, one octave higher.

[9] See 'the Golden Candlestick' at Exodus 25:31-40.

[10] Note how the numbering also allows 13 levels, as well as linear divisions of six and twelve (as with points on the circumference). There is support for the view that the Star Key is reflected in the story in Genesis in terms of Hebrew language and Gematria (which is available to the reader upon request to me or by independent research).

[11] The Jewish traditions refer to them as the Seven Elohim.

[12] There are many examples in the mythological/historical records of humanity concerning this centre and the twelve. One less noted correspondence concerns the diagram that the Pythagoreans called the Holy Tetrakys. It consists of a triangle like so: