Suppose zandtao was Gaia consciousness - imagine the planet Earth as a single entity with all kinds of life on it. And this Gaia consciousness looks at all and says what is it all for? Then there’s no sense in what Gaia sees. It might view humanity as the dominant species, and see this dominant species destroying the Earth. But not only that it would see that species fighting wars amongst itself. And they are fighting wars for resources and territory that Gaia gave them. At least originally Gaia gave it to them, but now some say that parts of Gaia belong to them so they say they fight wars to defend their parts.
But that is not straight forward. These parts are called countries, and countries defend and attack other countries. But the people in those countries don’t know why they are attacking. Some say for one reason, others say another. So there is confusion as to why they are fighting. At the beginning of the fighting there is not usually confusion because those in charge of the countries repeatedly message why there is fighting and there is usually significant acceptance. It is confusing, what’s it all for?
Then Gaia looks at how people live in these countries. Most live in similar ways even amongst the countries that are at war. Most people need money to live - to buy the things humans need to survive - food and shelter - and other materials goods if they still have money. So even though Gaia gave these humans enough food and shelter, they now have to get money to live. Historically these humans got money from landowners by working on land or defending the land of these landowners - or taking land from other landowners. Whilst there are still some of these landowners most people now get money from corporations - either directly or indirectly from corporations. These corporations are very powerful, and it is not clear whether they control countries or not. This is confusing, what’s it all for?
Gaia might ask:- there is a world here for food and shelter, why do people have to work for money? In my world no money was made yet now most humans are working for money. Who has this money? Corporations, banking corporations and governments (system) of countries. What do they use this money for? Is it used to benefit the people? Is it used to make the world - Gaia - a better place? Mostly not, Gaia sees this money stored in bank accounts - doing nothing. What’s it all for?
But some people want to help others - maybe even want to make things better. So these people try to do good things - healing, caring, teaching etc. They are paid money but even though such things ought to make things better they don’t. They tend to heal and care for people so that those people can work to maintain the system - get money for themselves. That makes some sense. Why would powerful people pay money for others to work to end the system? But again what’s it all for?
None of it really makes any sense, and historically different people and institutions have tried to affect this system. Many people have joined religions but it is not clear what these religions are for. To be fair to these religions all modern religions have moral components to them. If you ask the followers of these religions whether they are moral and caring, many will point to the moral codes of the religions and say we are caring. Yet some of these modern religions have been excuses for war, and if not an excuse for war these religions will often support governments fighting wars despite having moral codes that are against war. Within these religions there are many good people but they do not affect the system that includes war. There are also non-religious ideologies that describe the system to a greater or lesser extent, and followers of those ideologies seek change. But their direction is often confusing. People proposing change through these ideologies will disagree with each other, disagree with institutions, and disagree with religions. Meanwhile the system continues with rich people seeming to have more, and the poorer seeming to have less.
On top of this system of flaws and confusion, the rich people of the system are investing in technology and automation. Firstly there is automation that fight wars - drones now and AI coming. Secondly these rich people invest in machines and plant which take away jobs so that people cannot get money for food and shelter. Not only has the system forced people to work for money, now the system is taking that away from people. At present governments are able to give some of these people food and shelter but because of automation fewer and fewer people are working. The corporations need to make profits, they are moving in the direction where automation will make the products more cheaply and more efficiently but who will buy them? Who will have the money to buy them? None of it makes sense, what’s it all for?
Based on this type of vision of society there are answers to what’s it all for? Historically it was all for landowners, people worked as serfs and soldiers so that landowning families could keep their land. With the development of money, owning land was not the only way for greed to be satisfied. Over time a new but similar system-for-the-rich developed in which people worked as wage-slaves and soldiers to maintain the wealth of the corporations, banks and aspects of government (see Addon 1 as a process for understanding and developing system-for-the-rich).
Over time increasing numbers of people have questioned whether their own lives and the lives of people in their communities can have this dubious purpose of maintaining this system-for-the-rich. Quite sensibly the system adopted strategies to maintain itself using a mechanism of divide-and-rule to turn people against each other rather than questioning the direction of the system itself. This scapegoatism involved manipulations of perception concerning the nature of the people they were trying to scapegoat. This scapegoatism started in the earlier landowning wars where neighbouring peoples - who are now parts of the same community - were vilified. Over time proximities of war have changed. It is far easier to vilify people you don’t know so we now have the inhuman acts of it being acceptable for drones to target family events in order to target an individual.
But divide-and-rule scapegoatism exists within communities as racial difference, gender difference, religious difference are all manipulated as a means of redirecting attention away from the system-for-the-rich.
Apart from divide-and-rule scapegoatism there are various levels of delusion involved in maintaining this system-for-the-rich, and these delusions usually revolve around materialism. Simplistically society has generally accepted materialism as a raison d’etre - what's it all for. It is quite understandable that materialism has become the benchmark because to survive we need food and shelter - basic material survival. At the same time greed comes into play through appropriating various materials - simplistically land initially now the accumulation of money in bank accounts. So people delude themselves into accepting this materialist measure whilst there is ongoing social pressure to maintain this materialist delusion. They accept the delusion that this system-for-the-rich is somehow the best way with the delusion often being fuelled by increasing material advantages.
What's it all for is basically a materialist system-for-the-rich in which we are all deluded to strive for some measure of materialism such as a wealthier home lifestyle. Meanwhile within this delusion we ignore those who have suffered because of war, those who suffer with poverty within many societies. Significant in the creation of this delusion is a process of upbringing that conditions this delusion, and as adults an ongoing process of conditioning that maintains the delusion.
Mentally how do people accept all this delusion and cope with all this questioning? When they ask what’s it all for?, they have few answers. Many turn to religion - as zandtao said, and whilst their questions mostly remain unanswered they stay with the religion as it offers some hope. But most aspects of these religions support the system-for-the-rich so hope and some solace is all that can be expected from most aspects of religious institutions.
Many people have presented similar visions of life on earth. Some have argued for revolution so that Gaia’s original food and shelter can be spread to more people - Gaia’s intention? But such revolutions have never been endorsed by all the peoples in these countries, often just leading to more death for the people the revolution was meant to help. When the revolutions were more popular that country still had to survive in a world that is system-for-the-rich so that country found itself isolated through trade, blockade and propaganda.
zandtao perceives this vision is fundamentally true but it does not attempt to reflect the levels of complexity that involve many societal interactions and conditioning in order to maintain the system-for-the-rich. But this intro-vision is not for complexity, it is there to see the wood for the trees. From this point on zandtao will base development on this intro-vision and delusions associated with it - this vision-with-delusion is a starting point for understanding possible improvement.
Intro-vision of human infrastructure
In this thezeer introduction we have put forward a vision of society, and throughout thezeer we will be examining human development in terms of that vision. But it is also necessary to have a vision of human infrastructure - how can we consider practice in terms of awareness and awakening if there is no vision of human infrastructure? This human infrastructure needs to be added as an intro vision for a human being, the infrastructure in which that human being functions and develops.
As with the societal intro-vision we will keep the human vision as simple as possible - as few assumptions as possible; remember that the egoic mind tries to make attached complexities of ego to confuse and divert. Biologically a human being comes from the father and mother, and this has many ramifications for the Sacred Wound, but this biological description does not address ontological infrastructure - what a human being is and aspects of their functionality. If we don’t have a vision of this then awakening and practices are relatively confusing.
As the biological process is happening there is a consciousness evolving; consciousness joins the biological seed and begins the aspect of conscious evolution associated with that human. How a human lives their life is part of evolving consciousness. Once consciousness unites with the human seed development occurs on a conscious and subconscious level - mind-consciousness and brain-consciousness. The baby’s body grows eg its liver grows. Of course other aspects of the baby's body grows but this is not intended as a detailed analysis of every aspect of human growth - this is an intro-vision of human infrastructure. Whilst brain-consciousness enables life’s development of ageing unconsciously, Unity-consciousness uses conditioning for its own ends - primarily survival. As part of that conditioning to a greater or lesser extent mind-consciousness develops self-esteem for survival in society. As adults the path of Unity-consciousness expects us to lose that self-esteem, and simply evolve consciousness but as explained in the intro-vision of society that doesn’t necessarily happen because of society’s defilements.
Unity-consciousness provides us with graces to help us follow our paths, and these graces are described differently depending upon your practice. The purpose of our own consciousness and life’s development is to consciously evolve Unity-consciousness through our mind-consciousness. Our mind-consciousness expects to work with those graces to evolve consciousness once mind-consciousness has released conditioning.
For zandtao’s own discussion of how consciousness evolves zandtao wants to describe a partial vision that he calls characteristics of consciousness, and wants to give a description of a human to show how those characteristics function. If the graces worked without restriction there would be no need for a description, but once there is conditioning the functioning of the graces becomes restricted. For the human being conditioning creates restrictions that limit the evolving mind-consciousness - restricts mind-consciousness from evolving Unity-consciousness. In detail the restrictions of conditioning can be mentally confusing but in terms of vision zandtao wants greater simplicity and indicators of what the main restrictions are and how mind-consciousness can work with the graces to end those restrictions.
A human being experiences those restrictions as attachment to ego, a spectrum of suffering and long-term clingings to contents or characteristics. Ultimately if mind-consciousness can end these restrictions then mind-consciousness can evolve Unity-consciousness. In terms of practice then mind-consciousness looks to release these 3 restrictions of egoic attachment, suffering and clingings thus evolving Unity-consciousness. Throughout thezeer how these restrictions appear in humans and how mind-consciousness can end these restrictions through practice will be detailed.
These two intro-visions of societal and human infrastructures are intentionally minimal so that anyone reading is not forced to believe too much or make too many assumptions. In terms of zandtao's own practice these visions have greater development. But how your practice fits in with your own visions of societal and human infracstructure is up to you. It has to be your decision, your understanding, your work.
Questions concerning awakening and practice could be presented in a vacuum, and perhaps often are because the presentation of the way things are - tathata - is contentious and therefore enabling triggers of division - see Ch6. zandtao has considered What’s it all for? as human development within a social context. Even within one social context paths of human development can be very different, how does one examine paths globally? zandtao writes in English, was brought up in the UK, and his discussions generally relate to seekers in the West. Making any description of western society has become intentionally triggering because of the investment in division, but without some consideration of the nature of western society how can human development in the West be considered. zandtao has chosen the word infrastructure with its definition “basic physical and organizational structures and facilities”; whilst he has spent time in his practice on this vision, his intro-vision is not in any way meant to be definitive and detailed. Whether his awakening and practice works within a different intro-vision or infrastructure is up to the seeker to find out. Similarly his intro-vision of human infrastructure is basic, again it is up to the seeker to consider awakening and practice within their own vision of human development.
Given development of a human (infrastructure) within society (infrastructure) a seeker can consider awakening and practice that can lead to a path of peace and harmony whilst evolving consciousness. Such development will lead to their own detailed and deeply-understood visions. For zandtao such vision can be improved through practice that ends restrictions but would like to note this final anomaly. He knows of a person - not even a seeker - who has such a clear vision of society (tathata) yet this vision has developed in a restricted vehicle of non-seeking where path is barely understood, where there is limited mind control and no practice, and where restrictions are not consciously recognised.
What zandtao discusses is for those seekers interested. It is up to them what they do with it but be absolutely certain - whatever comes from awakening and practice can only come from determination and dedication; dabbling - light reading around - and sporadic practice has no connection with this work.
Intro-vision of societal infrastructure 