A New Model of Man’s Conscious Development

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A New Model of Man's Conscious Development Theodore Dimon

Day Street Press

Illustrations by G. David Brown Cover illustration by Hermann Cuntz Cover design by Jennifer Govan Copyright © 2015 Theodore Dimon ISBN: 978-0-578-16681-0 All rights reserved No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations ................................................... 1 Introduction The Need for a Unified Model.. .............................. 7 Chapter One The Unity of Mind and Body in Action ............... 21 Chapter Two The Child in Action ................................................ 37 Chapter Three Skill and the Art of Non-Doing ............................. 61 Chapter Four Psychophysical Health .......................................... 87 Chapter Five Awareness in Living ............................................ 109 Chapter Six A Unified Model of Conscious Development .. 131 About the Author ................................................. 145

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Chapter One Fig. 1. Dualistic v. unified concept of mind and body. Fig. 2. Our dynamic upright design, or PNR system ChapterTwo Fig. 3. Head balance in cat versus human head balance. Fig. 4. Well-coordinated child. Fig. 5. Harmful coordination Fig. 6. Infant spots an object of interest and immediately moves toward it. Chapter Three Fig. 7. Our versatile and complex upright design Fig. 8. The architecture of our upright support system. Fig. 9. An example of locomotive design in quadrupeds. Chapter Four Fig. 10. Coordinated working of the upright (PNR) system. Fig. 11. Ideomotor action Fig. 12. Relaxation methods versus conscious control in living.

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INTRODUCTION THE NEED FORA UNIFIED MODEL Emerging from its animal past, the human species is advancing in every phase of life to a more conscious way of living and a more conscious command of the faculties and capacities that make us human. We know, for instance, that through meditation it is possible to quiet the mind and to become, in the process, more calm and receptive. Martial artists are able, through the discipline of waiting, to achieve high levels of skill and bodily control. As we mature, we gain the ability to act more consciously and reflectively. And if we have explored the subject in ourselves, we know that it is possible to go beyond normal states of consciousness to achieve a transpersonal level of insight that makes it possible to rise above personal needs and to understand more deeply our own and the human condition. In a general way we can identify two basic approaches to the problem of conscious development: the spiritual or top-down and the scientific 7

A New Model of Man's Conscious Development

or bottom-up approaches. The spiritual or topdown approaches are based on knowledge that has been handed down by individuals who claim to have accessed higher states of consciousness, and take the form of internal systems, based on meditation and supporting bodily disciplines for achieving heightened states of awareness and insight. The scientific or bottom-up approaches, in contrast, appeal more directly to scientific evidence for how to influence bodily systems and mental states, and usually take the form of relaxation and non-judgmental forms of observation designed to bring about relaxation, improved functioning, and control of bodily systems. But what is the connection between the two approaches, and which should we choose? Both approaches have something to offer and are even necessary. Knowledge of higher states of awareness, according to individuals who teach it, can only be gained through months and years of disciplined work. Control of bodily systems, on the other hand, cannot be gained through meditation but requires objective study of the body. Together the two approaches offer critical insights and knowledge, and new and open-minded attitudes among scientists and philosophers offer the hope 8

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of bridging the two points of view, showing that they are not mutually exclusive but can share insights. Yet even if we grant validity to both approaches, there are still problems with each of them. Scientific models describe bodily systems in increasing detail, but this knowledge is almost entirely divorced from any practical understanding of our potential for conscious development or purposeful development in this direction, and of the relation of these faculties to a truly holistic model of health and living. Experientially-based meditation sys-· terns, on the other hand, affirm our higher faculties and states of consciousness but lack a true appreciation of the dependence of these faculties and states on our complex mental and physical design, and of the fundamental role of this design in our conscious development. Also, these experiential, spiritual approaches affirm our higher purposes, but tend to come to us embedded in a religious context, and thus present a great barrier to their inclusion in a free, secular society. In short, both perspectives have been inadequate to fully explain our higher-order capacities, which are neither purely spiritual nor purely mechanistic but the outcome of complex biological processes which 9

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are part of our highest capacity for consciousness and which, thus far, have been understood only in: their barest outlines. It is not a coincidence that the top-down systems, being based on a sense of spirit or occult thought, tend to view the material world as, in some sense, a reflection of energy or consciousness. In contrast, the bottom-up systems tend to assume the primary existence of matter, and view life forms as a complex variation of matter built exclusively upon that substrate. It is easy to assume that the bottom up approach is the more practical and grounded of the two, especially since the top-down approach invokes mystical concepts and views of the universe. But there are two very compelling reasons why this isn't necessarily true. The first is that it is reasonable to assume that, just as we can develop our ability to think or master skills, we are also capable of developing our capacity for awareness. We may question ideological points of view or debate the significance of individual claims, but the claim that we possess undeveloped faculties is reasonable enough in itself. The second reason is that, although the bottom-up approaches draw upon an inexhaustible fund of factual knowledge, in practice they almost 10

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always end up trivializing the subject so that, scientific or not, they always leave us wanting more. What, after all, do I gain by practicing relaxation or meditation methods that have been proven through science but do little more than produce therapeutic results? Surely there is more to our human potential than my ability to relax muscles or lower heart rate? Why should we be content with mind/body methods that make grandiose claims about the healing power of the mind, or the subtle link between mind and body, but do little more than relieve strain? Whatever possibilities science may hold for the future, it has so far given us little real practical advantage in the search for conscious knowledge--a fact that should not surprise us, since these approaches almost always fail to frame meaningful questions that can yield correspondingly significance insights but, on the contrary, are usually aimed simply at reducing symptoms. In any case, what is wanted is something pointing to man's higher potential, and this has not yet come from the scientific quarter. The top down approaches, in contrast, seem to possess something superior to the bottom up methods in that they can freely invoke our higher potential. Man, they say, is in sleep-like state and, 11

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in this condition, is unable to perceive his true nature and the nature of reality. Through disciplined practice, they say, it is possible to access a higher state of consciousness that opens the way to perceiving reality as it is, to live in a more harmonious state, and to become free of suffering. Yet these spiritual disciplines are lacking something critical as well, something that we often overlook in our zeal to promote them--namely, the foundational knowledge of how we function as biological systems essential to a complete model of conscious development. Buddhist philosophy, for instance, offers very subtle and profound insights into the human condition, on the basis of which we have one of the most well-developed psychological models of development on the planet. Yet this system lacks fundamental biological knowledge and is therefore not equipped to address stress related issues faced by most of us in the modern world and not part of the monastic lifestyle of serious Buddhist practitioners. One of the problems that comes out of the separation or distance between the top-down and bottom-up disciplines is the disparity between religion and science. We who have been exposed to so many ideas take both approaches for granted even 12

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though they co-exist uneasily. How is it that we can subscribe to a spiritual view of the world in the face of the knowledge of biological evolution, which demonstrates so conclusively that man is nothing more than an animal gone up on two feet, with a bigger brain than his primate relatives? Are we not precisely what Darwin seemed to say we are: fancy, big-brained primates, and simply part of the tree of life that spawns life forms indiscriminately? This biological insight was perhaps the single most influential intellectual breakthrough of the 19th century, and it created a terrible quandary for a great many thinkers, most of whom did not suffer over the question of human origins before the 19th century, when God and man sat side by side quite comfortably, and when man was seen to have rational and spiritual attributes that fit perfectly with religious ideals. All this ended when Darwin convinced the average educated person that we are indeed part of the natural world, related to all the other animals on the planet, and no more elevated from them. This observation is considered a great advance in human intellectual history, since it seemed to account for so much about who we are and where we came from, and put to 13

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rest unfounded assumptions that did not agree with the facts. Yet it has also left us bereft, orphaned from a sense of spirit, and has given rise to the separation of which I just spoke. Occult and Christian thinkers like Rudolph Steiner, and many Eastern ideologies, have proclaimed in one voice, "Don't believe it! This materialistic conception is a degeneration from man's knowledge of the higher world, from an appreciation of the subtle faculties that kept him in touch with the spiritual realms, from his sense of connectedness with life and with a higher reality. We are of the spirit, not mere animals, and the only way to rescue us from this coarse materialistic conception is to affirm our essentially spiritual nature and reject scientific materialism." Hence the continued separation of religion and science, and the attempts--in theosophy, in Hindu and Buddhist thought, in Christianity and occult philosophy, in shamanism and New Age thought--to insist on the spiritual in man as the foundation for a true model of our humanity, our higher purpose, and our higher nature. And yet, if we are to truly advance, we cannot reject scientific materialism--not simply because much of it is factually and incontrovertibly true but because, as a purely practical matter, we need 14

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the knowledge it can provide. The autonomic nervous system, for instance, plays a critical role in health; to arrive at a complete model of awareness and health, we must come to an understanding of the relation between awareness and this crucial aspect of our biology, between behavior and autonomic functioning. But precisely because the two domains are separated by such a wide gulf, we have only a crude understanding of this connection. Innumerable studies, for instance, have demonstrated a link between mindfulness and lowered stress, but exactly what is the nature of this link? Is mindfulness simply a force for overcoming mindlessness, and if so, why? We need to understand the connection between the two, without falling back on the superficial, bottom-up models that give us simplistic methodologies without explaining the connection, and which promise results without explaining the true potential of awareness as a new stage in human evolution. Two larger questions must be answered if we are to arrive at a complete model of conscious development. First, we have to understand how awareness functions in the context of larger systems. In animals, for instance, we can see that 15

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awareness is entirely linked with the ability to act and respond within its environment. In humans, awareness attains to such subtle levels that it seems to function as something apart from motor activity; yet we learn from the bottom up models that it is part of and continuous with bodily systems and not separate from them. This may seem an obvious thing to say, but it challenges the very basic notion found in most spiritual, top-down models, which claim that the body is the vehicle or shell for the soul and that the spirit is tethered to the body which then hinders the spirit--a notion we find in different forms in Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and occult disciplines, which insist on overcoming or quelling bodily appetites in order to overcome the limitations the body imposes on the soul. But awareness is not contrary to or opposed to the body because it is in our complex evolutionary makeup that we see awareness emerge in its higher forms in humans. All animals possess some kind of awareness, an ability to perceive and respond to what they perceive in their environment. In humans, awareness functions in ways that seem to operate almost entirely independently of activity, as when we have insights, visualize objects, or 16

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meditate on our thoughts. When examined in these mentalistic forms, it is not easy to articulate how awareness relates to our conscious development, and what role it can play in a model of health. Yet even in humans, awareness is entirely dependent on our biological design, and our challenge is to understand how awareness operates in this broader biological context as the basis for arriving at a more complete model of health and development. The second question is to understand awareness itself--what it is and how it is to be developed. In Buddhist philosophy, for instance, the attainment of higher levels of attention is often supported by bodily disciplines but, in its essential elements, this philosophy is a distinctly psychological study, as we can see from later Buddhist works, which make subtle and insightful comments on how the mind works and have little to say about physiology. But inattention and mindlessness are not merely mental, as we can see when someone who is reactive and out of control tries to become more aware in action. Here we can see that attention is closely linked with motor function and cannot be developed apart from the study of the body in action. For the purposes of 17

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developing a fully fleshed-out model of conscious development--and particularly one that relates to health--we must understand what this means in definite and concrete terms, so that we can develop a truly psychophysical model of functioning that can place the problem of attention within everyday conduct, education, and child development and recognize its full role in healthful and balanced living. In this context, the practice of nondoing, which as we'll see is a critical element in a model of conscious development, is not merely a way of quieting the mind but part of a larger educational process that is fundamental to balanced action, to learning, and to the development of awareness in general. To study attention as a purely cognitive process is for these reasons highly limited, since this leaves out the foundational psychophysical knowledge necessary for a fullydeveloped model of awareness in living. In these talks, I will present a model of our conscious development that puts these elements together: our potential for higher development, coupled with and based on scientific knowledge of the biological organism, and coming from practical study of the organism in action. In humans, both mental and motor functions have risen to a 18

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more conscious level of control, yet we learn about the world and ourselves, and learn to do things, with an inadequate and incomplete understanding of how we function, of the design characteristics on which these functions are based, and on how to bring them fully under control. We are clearly capable of higher levels of awareness, just as the mystics have claimed for centuries; at the same time, these forms of awareness are not entirely mental or cognitive but involve bodily control as well--an element that has been understood only crudely if at all. Approaching the subject from this point of view requires experiential knowledge that cannot be gleaned from experimental and descriptive science and which, when it is achieved, places scientific knowledge in a new light. This new kind of "embodied knowledge" is thus both experiential and rooted in biology. Nor does its practical nature place it at a lower level than purely descriptive or theoretical knowledge; on the contrary, such knowledge is, in some respects, of a more subtle and advanced nature than theory in the usual sense, possessing greater meaning and depth, revealing new aspects of function and de-

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sign, and bridging the scientific perspective with personal, lived knowledge. Viewing the problem in this way also emancipates the study of this subject from religion and monastic practice and thus makes the study of consciousness available to everyone as a matter of normal educational growth. Unless we place this subject within reach, we cannot have a truly educational and enlightened approach to the subject, which must remain mired in a context that is either unrelated to the natural world and divorced from everyday life, or else purely clinical and incapable of doing justice to our full potential.

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CHAPTER ONE THE UNITY OF MIND AND BODY IN ACTION Although interest in mindfulness and conscious development has exploded in recent decades, the subject has been hindered by an inability to bridge the gap between subjective, nonscientific approaches on the one hand and materialistic, empirical approaches on the other. In one, we have approaches of a very high level of subtlety that, nevertheless, have little relationship to biology and health; on the other, we have the insights and knowledge of medicine, physiology, and neuroscience, but a definite inability to connect meaningfully with consciousness and to arrive at practical approaches that are more than palliative or remedial. Part of the problem, as we just saw, is that although we can demonstrate a link between forms of awareness and lowered stress, we are left with little explanation of how the two things are connected. As I have suggested, awareness has a very 21

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definite function in the context of our biology--in fact, far from being separate, the two realms can be seen to be part of one and the same system. To understand why, however, we must do more than show a demonstrable link between mental functions and bodily states but show how awareness functions as part of a larger system, how this system works, and what it means to bring this process under greater, conscious control. This requires, in turn, the articulation of new subject matter, providing the basis for a new model of conscious development. To begin with, awareness exists for a definite reason: to make it possible to respond to environmental cues. Cats have remarkable vision; dogs rely heavily on scent; bats detect insects with echolocators. In each case, the animal senses what is happening in its environment, on the basis of which it can respond for the purpose of getting food or avoiding danger. An animal's attention to its environment is instinctively driven, as in the case of cats, who seem to be automatically alert most of the time, especially when they detect movement and the promise of food. In this case, the cat begins to attend selectively, becoming highly focused on a particular object as opposed to 22

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more generally alert. Yet all of this happens at an instinctive level in response to stimuli to which the cat automatically responds. In contrast to cats, humans can voluntarily attend to things within a complex field of possibilities. Like cats, we are capable of being instinctively interested in things, as when something exciting and colorful draws our attention. But unlike cats, we can choose to be interested in things and so are driven at a more conscious level. We are in this sense more aware than cats and capable of much more sophisticated kinds of attention--as when we listen to music, look at a painting, or listen to a conversation. Yet human action is not on this account more but in some ways less conscious than that of a cat. Consider what happens, for instance, when you are working at a computer and become completely "drawn in" by the problem you are working on. You are attending to the task at hand but are nevertheless fundamentally unaware of your surroundings, as you find out when you no longer hear the music playing in the background or people moving about, and two hours has gone by without your realizing it. This type of activity is what we would call voluntary and not instinctive, 23

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and when we are engaged in such activities we are not asleep but fully conscious. Yet we are not on this account aware because our activity becomes highly mechanical and exclusive of all else, until we are distracted by an outside noise or some internal need intrudes itself upon our awareness. Our awareness is of what we're doing and not of ourselves. The reason for this is that humans are designed to attend to things in very sophisticated ways, such as when we work on intellectual problems, make things with our hands, or listen to music. These are highly complex activities, cognitively speaking, and engaging in them involves a very focused kind of energy and involvement in what we are doing. It also requires a form of awareness that we do not see in animals, or what we describe as normal consciousness--that is, a general awareness or sense of our surroundings that includes an awareness of ourselves. We need this because, when we do things at this complex level, we have to be self-conscious in some way--that is, aware that it is we who are aware of whatever we are aware of. But as sophisticated as this kind of attention is, we have not yet evolved to the level of being 24

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consciously aware of ourselves when we do things, nor considered what this means as a problem in educational development. When we do things, we are designed not to have to think about the "how" of what we are doing so that, by simply intending to do them, they take place. In this sense, the force of evolution has pushed in the direction of organizing our attention toward the accomplishment of ends and not of ourselves. Being conscious does not mean we are aware of ourselves. Try this and you'll see: once you engage in an activity, it's very hard to remain aware of yourself for more than a few seconds. If, on the other hand, you stop doing whatever you are doing and turn your attention instead to some part of yourself-your back resting against the chair, your hands on the computer keys--it is in this case fairly easy to remain aware of yourself. But the moment you return to activity, you will again very quickly forget about yourself and become entirely absorbed in what you are doing to the exclusion of yourself, until an internal feeling or outer stimulus intrudes upon your consciousness to shift your attention. How then do we learn to be aware in such a way that we do not forget ourselves and remain 25

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more balanced in whatever we are doing? The first step is to learn to be kinesthetically aware of physical tensions that interfere with natural movement and functioning. If, for instance, we are sitting at a desk and using too much back tension, we have to learn to recognize this so that we can use the body more efficiently. This can't be achieved through specific control but only by learning to become aware of how the body works as a whole. We can speak all we want about awareness as a higher faculty, but awareness begins with the felt sense of the body in action, and if we want to learn to be aware as a practical matter in daily activity, we must understand how the bodily system works and to gain a felt sense of it, as the background against which we perform specific actions. The next step is to observe what we're doing in action because, even when the body is working better, it isn't going to stay this way. If, for instance, you have established a lengthened working of your back muscles when sitting, the moment you stand or raise your arms, the tendency will be to shorten these muscles as part of how we perform these actions unconsciously. To address this, we need to learn to recognize our own reactions and to subject them to a kind of stopping and 26

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noticing, which in turn raises the quality of action to a higher level of awareness. This also heightens our awareness of the part of the mind involved in performing actions, so that we are becoming aware not just of our actions but of our thinking. Both of these elements--the knowledge of how the body works as a whole and the heightened awareness of action--are based not on technical knowledge of anatomical and neurological systems but require the kind of knowledge that can come only from an experiential study of the system in action. The knowledge we gain from science is critical to advancement in this field but cannot substitute for practical understanding of how the body works as a whole in action. This kind of practical study yields a new kind of knowledge that is at once scientific and useful in a objective or descriptive way that purely knowledge is not, for the simple reason that science can explain how things work but cannot help us gain self-knowledge or direct the course of our activities. For this, we must study our action and conduct from the inside out. In looking at the problem in this way, we are speaking not of controlling or influencing bodily systems by meditating or relaxing but of heighten27

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ing awareness of action itself. Bottom up methods usually seek to influence bodily systems directly; top down methods influence bodily systems indirectly. Both approaches are responses to a perceived problem, which they address by utilizing consciousness in a way that reduces the effects of the problem. In so doing, however, they overlook the cause of the problem in our own activity, because they have not recognized that our activity is essentially subconscious and automatic and needs to be raised to a more conscious level. Identifying how the system works unconsciously enables us to gain control over a primary cause of stress and not just the effect. We can thus see that consciousness is not some kind of magical force that influences health, nor a higher energy we tap into, but part of a process of positive growth toward a higher level of functioning and conduct, and functions as part of raising the process of action itself to a more conscious level that begins to bring various functions and elements of learning within the sphere of conscious learning and direction as an essential factor in learning and growth. It may seem contradictory to suggest that our voluntary actions are unconscious and that we need to become more aware of what we're doing 28

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in action, since the entire meaning of volition is that our actions already are under control. But voluntary action is based on selective attention to and control over specific elements of what we're doing; it does not refer to action as a whole, which is highly habitual and unconscious because we have evolved to react and behave at an instinctive level, even when we are making conscious choices and feel completely in control of our actions. To address this, we need to learn to recognize our own reactions and to subject them to a process of stopping, which in turn raises the quality of action to a higher level of awareness. Understanding this, in turn, enables us to make sense of the mind and body in a completely new way. If something is wrong with the body, we generally want to treat or fix the problem; conversely, when we do things, our subjective sense that the mind oversees the body blinds us to the reality that our actions might play a part in how we function. But we are not entirely in control of what we do, and the only way to fully gain this control is to recognize that the body is not under our control and to take responsibility for this by learning to pay attention. The real meaning of mind/body unity is thus revealed through practi29

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cal self-knowledge and cannot be learned by read ing textbooks or treating the body but only by gaining an experiential and theoretical appreciation for the unity of mind and body in action, and applying this knowledge as a matter of ongoing learning (Fig. 1).

Dualistic concept of mind and body

Unified concept of mind and body

MIND

Fig. 1. Dualisticv. unified conceptof mind and body.

A key element that must be included in such a model is our upright anatomical design. We are all well aware that the upright human posture was an essential factor in the evolution of the human brain. The ability to travel efficiently on two feet, the expanded range of vision, the use of the hands to fashion tools--all of these activities led to the 30

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explosion in the size of the human brain, and to the emergence of many of the faculties we think of as distinctly human. What is easier to forget is that upright posture itself is a mechanism of amazing subtlety. To maintain upright posture, muscles all over the body must act on bones, producing a constant arrangement of body parts we know as posture. But this isn't simply a matter of contracting muscles because, if muscles simply tighten, we fix body parts and prevent the mobility needed for efficient movement; if they simply let go, we collapse and are forced to tighten other muscles to compensate. Muscles must do work, but they must do so in the context of length--a dynamic state that requires that muscles work in a lengthened way. Understanding how this system works is thus central not only to health and functioning but to learning how to become poised and balanced in action (Fig. 2).

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Fig. 2. Our dynamic upright design, or PNR system .

Another key element in the working of the musculoskeletal system is the complex feedback system required to monitor and adjust movement. Consider the example, mentioned earlier, of a child learning to draw. Mastering such a skill is not simply a matter of gripping and then moving a pen on the page; to control the movements of the pen, the system must send constant feedback so that, while attempting the act, muscle tension can be constantly adjusted. But what ensures that this process will take place at a reliable level? We have all learned to speak, run, write, drive, cook--in short, to perform all the innumerable acts of daily 32

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life--at an almost entirely instinctive level, and in all of this, the body's proprioceptive systems were faithfully sending feedback as part of making sensory corrections and adjustments, and in a way that enabled us, with varying levels of success, to master many of the actions necessary to living. Yet in all of this, we learn in a way that is not only harmful and unreliable; we also instill unconscious habits that become persistent and ingrained--so much so that, when we set out to become more mindful or thoughtful in what we do, the very mechanisms that made this learning possible now stand in our way. To reverse this, we must understand not just how the musculoskeletal system works; we must also learn to use our proprioceptive feedback systems at a more conscious level as the basis for bringing about the proper working of this system and learning not to interfere with it in action. This is not just a matter of relaxing or scanning muscles, which is simply glomming awareness onto the habitual use of the system in action; it must be based on a positive and informed understanding of how these systems work in action, and how to raise their working to a more conscious level.

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The most subtle aspect of this system is the way it links with ideas to produce action. We saw earlier that mammals in general possess quite complex cognitive and motor systems, on the basis of which they can act flexibly and intelligently in response to environmental cues. In humans, this system becomes vastly more subtle and complex, but precisely because humans can choose freely among innumerable alternatives, we assume that action is largely conscious when, in fact, even the simplest actions are mostly unconscious and habitual, as in animals. Learning to overcome this requires, at one level, a balanced use of the musculoskeletal system; at another, it requires that we subject our usual subconscious or habitual manner of doing things to a new kind of control, which raises the process of how we do things--and the unconscious part of the mind involved in this process--to a new level of conscious awareness and control. As we'll see, this is a new kind of model that looks not simply at mind, with the body as an added discipline, but that views the organism as a whole. Understanding this larger system involves a number of elements including physiology and anatomy, neuroscience, evolution, and psychology, brought together to form an educational rather 34

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than clinical approach to the problem of behavior, functioning, and consciousness that applies to the following four areas. Here is a summary of a few of the elements upon which a model of conscious development must be based, which form the basis of the new field of neurodynamics, or the study of the organism in action: 1. Physiology: anatomical design and the working of the upright support system, technically called the postural neuromuscular reflex (PNR) system 2. Proprioception: ways of consciously directing and restoring the PNR system 3. Psychology of action: deliberation, attention, and balanced action 4. Functioning and health: the relation of psychophysical function and awareness to bodily systems 5. Psychology of awareness: psychophysical function and states of attention

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CHAPTER TWO THE CHILD IN ACTION Our Western tradition has put so much emphasis in school on learning subject matter (as opposed, for instance, to the study of the arts) that it is difficult, if not impossible, for us to think about functioning and development, in both children and adults, in a truly holistic way. Many of us pay lip service to the notion of a healthy mind in a healthy body, but we have only to think about what we value in education, and what we pay attention to, to realize that, apart from wanting our kids to exercise, we almost entirely neglect the holistic development of the child, or even have any conception of what this means. If we are to arrive at a complete model of development, this must be changed, and changed radically, because when it comes to health and functioning, there is no such thing as a mind or a body but only a psychophysical functioning whole, and in spite of our scientific knowledge of the organism, we have no conception of what this is or why it matters in a real and practical sense as it applies to development. 37

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We saw in the last talk that one key area in the study of neurodynamics is that of physical design and coordination. To perform any action, the child must employ a physical mechanism of remarkable complexity. To pick up a pencil, for instance, the child must coordinate the muscles of the hand and arm, whose movements must of course be coordinated with visual input and constantly adjusted according to intention, perception, and so on. But this is only part of what is happening when the child uses his arms to draw. In order to develop the fine control of the fingers and hand that have become so eminent a hallmark of human activity, humans went up onto two feet so that, with the trunk now vertically supported over the two hind limbs, the arms became entirely freed for manipulative purposes. This is of course what led to the explosion in the size of the cortex, the increase in human intelligence, and the fine motor control of the arms that we see in this child who, even at the tender age of five or six, is capable of performing actions that far outstrip even those of a chimpanzee (see Fig. 4). At the same time, however, this new form of upright support required a very sophisticated kind of postural support that is unique in the ani38

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mal kingdom. The earliest vertebrates are organized in such a way that, to move, they take in perceptual data at the front end, or head, and move through the water by swaying their bodies sideways. A few of these fishes learned to survive on land by breathing air for short periods, and when some began to develop true limbs for supporting their bodies and propelling themselves forward on land, a whole new design was born, leading to an array of animals so marvelous and varied as to be fit for the book of marvels. Some of these animals, the reptiles, still moved like fish, swaying their bodies sideways to pivot their bodies on advancing limbs; some came further off the ground and brought their limbs ·more directly underneath them, which enabled them to move very efficiently and to becomes masters of terrestrial motion; some, such as birds and dinosaurs, even came up onto their hind limbs and could therefore move in bipedal fashion; but all were essentially arranged horizontally with heads at the front end and long bodies with two or four limbs that were used for propulsion and support on the ground. With the arrival of the earliest hominids, all this changed in a dramatic way. Humans are not the only bipedal animal, but they are the only tru39

A New Model of Man's Conscious Development

ly upright one. With the legs fully extended, the trunk supported vertically at the hips, and the head sitting on top of the spine, the human being is the only fully upright animal on the planet and the only one that moves with a striding gait. With the spine arranged vertically and the head rotating on top, we have a wide field of vision, can carry things with our limbs, and can walk and run very efficiently for long periods. We are also capable of sitting fully upright so that the arms become fully emancipated from their supporting function and can now be used to manipulate objects and shape the world in new and creative ways. To support this upright posture, the muscles and skeleton work in a completely new way. In a cat or dog, the head is cantilevered from the trunk and falls by its own weight; in humans, the head sits off balance on the spine, countering the action of the muscles in order to maintain the length of the spine (Fig. 3)--a very subtle and delicate system, and far more easily disturbed than that of dogs or cats. Which brings us to the issue of how children learn and how they perform tasks such as sitting at a desk and drawing, learning to make letters, or learning to read. We are liable to dismiss the act of sitting upright as rather mundane, a simple matter 40

A New Model of Man ' s Conscious Development

of maintaining the upright support of the spine and trunk, or what we call posture. But to view the action in this way is to grossly oversimplify

Fig. 3. Head balance in a cat versus human head balance .

the working of a highly complex and sophisticated system, and to give it far less attention than it deserves. To maintain balanced and efficient upright posture, muscles must remain lengthened, as they are in the child in this illustration (Fig. 4); if they do, the proprioceptive system can work efficiently and the child can perform this activity in a balanced and coordinated way. But precisely because this system is so sophisticated, and because children are being asked at such a young age to engage in activities that are so complex, it rarely works in such a coordinated way for very long. If, for instance, the child cannot successfully coordinate the movements of his arms, as this child is doing, he will instead try to control the movements of the brush or pencil by employing the 41

A New Model of Man's Conscious Development

larger skeletal muscles, interfering with the postural system by twisting and contorting the trunk. After a period of time, he

Fig.4.Well-