First, a brief introduction: ‘Journey’ signifies the many paths and turns… indicates that the process has taken many paths and turns and covered much terrain and that even the explicit goals have been in constant evolution as my understanding has grown.  ‘Being’ is shown to provide the best foundation for the goals of the journey… I have used ‘Being’ to refer to whatever is most basic, most fundamental in the entire universe

I use the word ‘journey’ because the process has not been a linear one either as a whole or in its details. I have developed and abandoned two ‘world-views.’ Although I always have plans they are not always followed and are frequently changed as I come to understand their limits. I have made numerous studies, some planned and others out of pure interest that, although this was not always the intent, have made it possible to fill out the understanding of all being as a structured picture. The concept of being has been central to the developments. Although I have drawn from the traditions in the study of being, I have emphasized all connotations of ‘being.’ Additionally, I have had to re-fashion the idea so as to make it mesh with the overall development. The importance of being stems from its neutrality. It comes before such ideas as matter, mind, spirit, soul…

Use of the concept of being involves a tacit agreement that, at the beginning of investigation, the nature of the world is not known but that the nature of the world may be a result of the study: this is a prime source of the power of the idea of being. This is in contrast to the ideas of mind and matter whose nature is at least somewhat given before the study and, therefore, commitment to materialism, as an example, is premature. Such commitments are not only the source of traditionally recognized puzzles in philosophy but they are intensely limiting on the potential of thought. The approach from being is not a commitment to or against materialism or idealism (the view that the world is made of mind like stuff) and, therefore, if the world is made up of matter, this will be a result of study. In other words, if materialism is true, the approach from being strengthens its case. However, it turns out that the approach from being shows that the important ideas of mind and matter as traditionally understood are extremely limited and that the universe is infinitely more complex and varied than is realized in much of traditional thought and in what could be called normal science (roughly, science as conservatively practiced…) Although the process described began as a personal one it came to acquire the character of a universal journey. Although some of the essays (below) are primarily personal, the main essays include a personal narrative only insofar as it has been necessary to or enhances the universal aspect… continue: mission of journey in being