The purpose of this document is to increase mans awareness of his/her place in the cosmos, which will provide for a greater understanding and appreciation for our common home, planet Earth (E). This and this alone will ensure our future.
To understand this concept of a higher ecology we must think of man as an essential part of the environment. Man is a three-brained creature, consisting of intellectual, emotional, and physical qualities. Each part contibutes to both the problem and the solution.
Although we have a tendency to look upon man as being apart from nature mans entire existence is dependant on this world, its animal and vegetable food and it's oxygen and water. Man is so closely integrated with nature that man cannot harm nature without harming himself. But our vanity and self-importance keep us from seeing this obvious fact.
The concept of Reciprocal Maintenance is foreign to most people. Reciprocal Maintenance is a concept that will not only free us from the errors of incorrectly thinking about the world we live in but it will also give us a greater sense of purpose, confidence, and fearlessness. Being fearless is not being without fear but facing fear and use it to our advantage.
Understanding Reciprocal Maintenance will provide us with the knowledge that everything exists for a purpose and that mans part in all this, like all living things, is to transform energy. Your "job" on this earth is to transform energy, that is why you are alive.
We must no longer think of ourselves as being entitled to do whatever we want to the world we live in. This concept that "the world was made for man" is not only incorrect but is the cause of the environmental disasters we face today.
Because of this sense that it is "an inherited right" of ours to (mis)use the planet rather than an "obligation" to take care of it, we have lost touch with the sense and purpose of our lives. Once we correct our erroneous thinking about ourselves and the world we live in we will gain a glimpse our true purpose and acquire a confidence that we have sought but never found. There is no greater confidence than to know ones true purpose in life.
Mans need to dominate nature is deeply rooted in an insecurity about his survival. "If I can dominate then I can better survive." What has thousands of years of this conditioning done for us and why have we still not been able to successfully outgrow our basic fears so we can live in peace and not repsond like an animal?
The reason for most of the problems existing in the world today are a result of not knowing, not understanding, and not living within the paradigm of Reciprocal Maintenance.
Man has three types of experience, thinking, feeling, and instinctive. In the old Vedic story of the Horse (feeling), the Carriage (instinctive), the Driver (thinking) which are at the service of the "Passenger" or "Owner." The problem is that the "Passenger" has fallen "asleep" and the Horse, Carriage, and Driver go where they please rather than attending to the business of the "Owner." The purpose of the owner is not being fulfilled.
Once one accepts the reality of Reciprocal Maintenance and acknowleges their place in the world and their situation as being one of "being asleep at the wheel" they can begin to take action to correct their situation and in turn by correcting their situation the world and cosmos is helped.
No one sets out to make a mistake or do something wrong. A bank robber doesn't think "my goal is to go to prison and the way to do that is to rob a bank." No, they actually think that they will get away with robbing the bank and live happily ever after. We don't set out to destroy the environment. Without a correct understanding of the world and our place in it how can we expect things to be any different than they are?
All living things including man transform energy and either give off or absorb heat. Heat has been considered as an essential condition for change.
Every living thing eventually dies and when it does an energy is released. Man is equipped to not only produce this energy when he dies but while he is alive if he knows how to do so and to learn how to do so one must first understand the reality of Reciprocal Maintenance.
You might ask, "why would I want to do that when I can just live my life as it is, get old and die like everyone else." You can if you want, there's no one stopping you and no one putting a gun to your head and saying "you have to make the effort to evolve and help humanity, the world, and God." But if you do want to make some use of your life more than ending up being more or less just food for worms then there is a lot you can do, but first you have to find someone who knows how to teach you how to do it.
To understand Reciprocal Maintenance we need to know about three kinds of relationships: 1) What the thing is in itself, 2) from which and to which it evolves, and 3) how it enters into the evolutionary process.
Man consists of everything that preceeded man. Two-brained and one-brained living creatures, plants, germs, and earth. Part of mans brain called the "stem" is in fact a remnant of our prehistoric past and is called the reptilian brain. Man as we know feeds off of almost all things below him, including two-brained and one-brained creatures, and many of the plants that these two and one-brained creatures also feed off of.
The big question is "does something feed off man?" As most scientifically trained people will tell you that man lives in a closed system and that it is very likely that something does in fact feed off man and this is where the paradigm of Reciprocal Maintenance enters into the discussion. To believe in Reciprocal Maintenance requires that we assume that man does serve the purpose of providing food for something "higher" than man in the cosmos. But how can we prove it?
To be continued.
