Essay: Your Current Theory on Life?

How Did You Acquire Your Current Theory On Life?

The Romans had an axiom “caveat emptor” which means let the buyer beware. Early English speakers translated that axiom into the phrase - “don’t buy a pig in a poke”. In order not to be tricked into selecting a new theory of life we should inquire into the process of theory creation and the authenticity of those who contribute.

Surely in your lifetime many people have asked you questions, and you too have asked yourself a lot of serious questions. Where did I come from? Who do I think I am? What am I trying to prove? How do I know I’m on the right track? Why do I have to get sick and die? The answers to these and other questions have contributed immensely to your personal theory about life.

There are many people who make it their business to not only ask questions but also provide answers – like family, clergy, teachers, counselors, politicians. Generally they are well-intentioned people and try hard to help us formulate a workable theory. Over the years, however, you’ve probably discovered that some of them didn’t always ask good questions or give the right answers. Also, you’ve no doubt wondered whether people tied into institutions are sometimes intimidated by a need to conform to cultural norms and are constrained by vested interests like power, fame and wealth. Then it becomes difficult to believe and trust them.

So sooner or later we have to face the fact that all people and institutions are human and fallible. Consequently we have an obligation to sift and sort what they say – “caveat emptor”. In the end, we alone have to put our personal theory together and live by it.

First of all, it is encouraging to know that we do have very reliable assistance in this theory making process. Somewhere on your journey you’ve run into the word and reality of conscience. The word comes from two little Latin words, con=with and scire=to know at the highest level. So, what or who is it that we “know with” when our conscience is activated? Briefly, that Other is like a hard-wired inner and challenging voice. But whose voice is this? There are many names for the owner of this voice – The Higher Power, Creator, Deity, God, Great Mother, Yahweh, Love, The Self, etc. Whatever we name the voice of conscience the name makes us aware that superior direction is available for helping us to understand who we are and what our life is all about?

Hopefully you have already read in the previous essay a very brief summary of the new Great Theory – “Everything is one, alive and old.” That statement is brand new information for a whole lot of people. So now we have a conscience decision to make. Are we going to check out the new theory or ignore it? To ignore means to be deliberately ignorant. To encourage you to get your theory updated and compatible with current reality, it might be helpful to know something about the people who discovered this Great Theory and learn why you can trust them.

This new theory developed over a long period of time and many people have contributed to the content. Up until the 1500s people believed that the earth was the center of the Universe. From 1514-42 Nicholas Copernicus worked on a small book that demonstrated the opposite - the earth revolved around the sun. His ideas were repressed and he was persecuted. In 1610 Galileo Galilei affirmed the research of Copernicus and spent 22 years clarifying and expanding his ideas. In l633 he was condemned, sentenced to house arrest and denied Christian burial. Like many other scholars they went with the truth and suffered the consequences. Truth comes piecemeal and at a price. So the best criterion for evaluating contributors to The Great Theory is to consider the price that they paid to generate their expression of truth.

The man who described the core of The Great Theory was one of the most brilliant scholars of the 20th century -- a Swiss psychiatrist named Carl G. Jung (1875-1961). His major area of competence was the psychology of religion. After 25 years of interviews, observations, experiments and study this is what he had to say about his discovery. “I had been looking about without hope for a theory of our own. Now I knew what it was. Human beings are indispensable for the completion of creation, in fact, they themselves are the second creators of the world. Human beings, in an invisible act of creation put the stamp of perfection on the world by giving it objective existence. Human consciousness created objective existence and meaning, and human beings found their indispensable place in the great process of being.”

Because the brilliant young Einstein questioned one of his professors he spent seven year after his graduation as a third class clerk in a patent office. After he published his work on relativity he spent the next eight years in torment working out its implications. Edwin Hubble unwillingly became a lawyer and only after his father’s death was he able to pursue his bliss – five years of study in astronomy. Once he had secured a job in CA he spent four years of freezing nights looking through a telescope at the Mt. Wilson Observatory before he discovered that the Universe was full of galaxies and had a beginning.

During the past six hundred years many others like Copernicus, Galileo, Jung, Einstein and Hubble followed their conscience and challenged the world taken for granted. They were courageous people who dared to examine and follow the evolving processes of art and science in order to discover and establish a new theory of creation and life that made factual sense. Their names and contributions are too numerous to list in a short essay, but here is a brief list of some of the more important contributors that you might want to check out – Eckhart, Rumi, Hildegarde, Kepler, DaVinci, Newton, Darwin, Mendel, Curie, Chardin, Aurobindo, Berry, Campbell, Woodman, Fox, Swimme, Margulis. Good luck on your search, and follow YOUR bliss, as Joseph Campbell advised and Edwin Hubble did.

1. Do you have a meaningful theory of life? Where did you get it?
2. How do you feel about change, process, evolution?
3. What does conscience mean to you?
4. What are your reasons for trusting some people and not others?
5. How much history have you read since you graduated from school?

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