‘WE ARE WALKING NUGGETS AND

MAGNETS!’

HUMAN HOLONS
POWER-PACKED SYNERGIES

By Ed Aurelio C. Reyes
[This was developed from a paper presented at the Lambat-Liwanag Conference on
Synergism in Total Human Development held at the Asian Social Institute, Manila, on
January 29, 2003, under the joint auspices of the Lambat-Liwanag Network of Empowering
Paradigms, First Asia Institute of Technology and the Humanities (FAITH) in Tanauan City,
Batangas, and ASI. ]

Jointly Published by the

SanibLakas ng Taongbayan Foundation and the
International Academy of Management and Economics (I/AME)
Manila, Philippines

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 2009 Manila; Founding President, SanibLakas ng Taongbayan
Foundation; Consultant (formerly founding Convenor),
HUMAN HOLONS: Power-Packed Synergies
Lambat-Liwanag Network of Centers for Empowering
Pilot Edition
Paradigms; Convenor, Katipunang DakiLahi Movement
First Printing, 2003 for National Synergy-Building; Convenor, Love Life
Second Printing, 2004 Philippines Campaign and Services Network; and
First Regular Edition Founder, Kampanya para sa Kamalayan sa Kasaysayan
First Printing, 2009 (Kamalaysayan); among many other engagements.

© Philippine Copyright by Ed Aurelio C. Reyes

Materials in this book may be reproduced in full or in substantial

excerpts upon the written permission from the copyright holder. Short
passages from this text may be excerpted without written permission
provided that all quotes are correct, placed in the proper context and
properly identified with the full title and the name of the author of the
material and the publisher.

The Cover:
The cover shows the Human Holon, as a synergized
whole of three parts or dimensions: Spirit (represented
by the circular version of the logo of the SanibLakas
LightShare Program, the Mind represented by the
Holistic Health logo from the SanibLakas-published
Seven Flames of Holistic Synergies, showing chakras, Prayer
aura and mer-ka-ba, as designed by Ding Reyes and
Vivien Virata; and the physical Body from the classic Our Divine Parent,
drawing by Leonardo Da Vinci. At the same time, the Holy be Your Name, Your kingdom come,
triune figure is framed by the shape of a jigsaw puzzle You will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.
piece, indicating that the Human is also a part of a
grander synergetic whole. Cover design and execution
Give us today our bread for today,
by Ding Reyes.
And forgive us our sins,
As we forgive those who sin against us,
The Author:
Do not bring us to the test
Ed Aurelio C. Reyes, also known as Ding: Professor in But deliver us from
Applied Cosmic Anthropology, Asian Social Institute, All alienation and separation from You

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 And from one another. 6. Synergism as Reward for Re-membering?

PART TWO: Synergy of Person

Amen
Dimensions
Chapter 3. The Live Body—A Synergy of Active
Systems
1. A Crucially Vital Connection
2. The Silent Synergy
3. Dead Cells and Living Things
CONTENTS 4. The Whole World Alive
Author’s Introduction: Words, Words, Words!!! 5. ‘Electrochemical Machine’
Group of Consistently-Active Synergizers
Personal Study and a Personal Wish Chapter 4. Mind—Comprehending and Appreciating
Collecting, Synergizing Experiences Experiences
Crucially Vital Assertion 1. The Energy-Ethereal Body
Not for a Forced Readership 2. Synergetic Accumulation of Individual Thoughts
3. Synergetic Accumulation of Collective (Social) Thoughts
4. The Empowering Paradigms
PART ONE: Holons and Synergism 5. ImmeasurableValue of the Learning Process
Chapter 1. Synergism in Etymologies and Metaphors 6. A Dialogue on Reality
1. Word Origins 7. The Psychic and the Spiritual
2. Metaphors for Synergism: 8. ‘To be is to do’: Awareness Growing ‘Taller’
a. The Broom and the Mat
b. Schools of Fish and Formation Flying Chapter 5. Spirit— The Real Self
c. The Jigsaw Puzzle 1. Metaphor of the Pencil
d. Gravity 2. Spirituality and Religion
e. Magnets 3. Incarnation or ‘Ensoulment’?
3. Definitions of Synergism 4. Metaphors from Computers and Astronaut Systems
4. How Does It Work? 5. Evil and the Ego
5. Synergism Manifestations and Applications 6. Earth Life as Practicum of the Soul
6. Universal Preponderance 7. Character Confronts Circumstance
8. Creation’s Self-Appreciation
Chapter 2. Part and Whole: The Synergy Factor in
Holarchies Joined in Grander
PART THREE:
1. Holon: Part/Whole
2. Diversities and Commonalities
Synergies
3. Synergism as Crucial Factor in Holarchies Chapter 6. Intimate Personal Bondings
4. Layers of Information in Holography 1. Love—It’s All there is
5. Holon Quadrants in Evolution of Human Dynamics 2. Intimate Personal Bonds—Families and Friendships

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 3. A Heartwarming Case Study 5 The Primacy of Primaries
6. Coops as Teachers of Synergism
Chapter 7. Gender Harmony
7. Coops as Players in the Grandest of Human Synergies
1. Gender Harmony as Paradigm for Empowerment
2. Parental Teamwork: A Challenge Chapter 14. Consciousness Grids: Synergism in
3. The Feminine Principle Continuing Human Evolution
4. Counterproductive excesses 1. Earlier Studies, Developments
5. The Vision 2. ‘Consciousness Grids’ and Those Experiments
3. We have Come a long Way!
Chapter 8 Deep Ecology, Harmony with Nature
1. Dependence and Destruction
2. Rays of Hope
Walking Nuggets and
PART FOUR:

3. Synergize the Local Movements! Magnets

1. Human Gold
Chapter 9: Stable Tripod for Sustainable
Development: C-N-E Resources 2. Human Magnets
in Associative Economics 3. Synergism: Path Back to Conscious Oneness
1. A Bold Indictment from a Non-Economist
2. Separativeness is Ignorance
3. Three Types of Real Resources
4. Reviewing the Meaning of ‘Development’
5. Building-Block Synergies in Associative Economics
Chapter 10. Trans-Generational Bonding
1. Mandates and Accountabilities in the Flow.
2. Synergies from Shared Evolution
Chapter 11. Governance and Social Development
1. Basics of Governance and Politics.
2. The Holarchies of Governance
3. People’s Self-Empowerment
Chapter 12. Healthy Organizations & True Leadership
1. Essence of Organizations
2. Synergism Leadership: From ‘Bagani’ to ‘Balani’
3. Collective Will and the Matter of Discipline
Chapter 13. Cooperative— Social Synergy
of Personal Enterprises
1. Comprehension Needs Deepening
2. Your Will Be Done – What Will?
3. Some References
4. ‘Silent Soul’ of Cooperativism

4

Author’s Introduction:
Words, Words, Words!!!
T HE GREATEST obstacle to anyone’s learning often lies in the
inability or unwillingness to admit to self that one still doesn’t
have full knowledge about something worth knowing well. This
applies to the subject of synergism. The word synergism is no
longer a “never-heard” word to many English-speaking and
English-reading intellectuals. But having heard of this word or
having used it once or twice in conversation is still very far off
from having a working comprehension of the very potent
principle this word refers to. Oftentimes this word is dismissed
as hi-fallutin’ gobbledygook good only for purely academic
discourse one doesn’t usually have the luxury of time to engage
in.
This is unfortunate because synergism refers to a very
powerful tool that has always been available but has remained
largely unused or, at best, underused in human endeavors. Many
times, the very people most needing and most expected to work
in close and strong teamwork don’t seem to get their act together
for periods lasting months, or lasting even years. But just a whiff
of fragrance of this principle can make us seek to see more of the
beautiful wholeness and consistency of the principle where ev-
ery small nuance is a very important, nay indispensable, particle
of the entire synergy of nuances, which is the principle itself.
5
People can relate to the principle of synergism any which
way they want to, preferably in an act of choosing among a wide
range of options that are known to them, with a wide range of
degrees of intellectual comprehension and articulation.
The range in the degrees of comprehension is so wide. So
is the personally chosen approach in sharing it.
At one end are persons who would not even have any use
for the word synergism or for any word whatsoever, and yet
really live it in their lives that they become it, and people around
them can clearly appreciate it with only the term itself missing
from the picture. Many of these people are just smiling in
silence, enjoying the universe “unfolding as it should.”
Others choose to become part of that unfolding, in
various ways, including wordless ways: live and be your
message; unified consciousness of a critical mass (“square root
of 1 percent”?) etc. etc.
Some who are discerning midwife roles for them to play
in the hastening of that unfolding, and are ever zealous but ever
patient, because any pace of change they may be actively
involved in might necessitate periods of time longer than one
would tend to expect or wish for. In his Conversations With
God trilogy, Neale Donald Walsch keeps close to the theme of
doing everything we can in pursuit of a desire, as a “statement of
who we are,” but without any emotional attachment to the result.
At the other end are the people who choose to work in
the arena of the academe and intellectualization and apply the
stringent rigors to decisively convince the intellectual apologists
of separative ego and human divisiveness that fragmentation and
high walls do not define the essence of the human. The long-
delayed writing of this book, is an attempt in the latter end. It
originally came forth in the form of a paper for presentation at
the Conference on Synergism in Total Human Development
conducted by the mainly-Academe-based Lambat-Liwanag (a
Filipino term for “network of light”) Network of Centers of ab-
out a dozen school-based centers of research and advocacy for
paradigms shifts toward human empowerment, real development
and harmony.
My fellow presentors and the participants at that confer-
ence and all other people who have time and interest to read the
ideas and assertions presented here are asked to comprehend
them as fully as possible without the pressure to agree with them.
After the biting comes the chewing. Those who tend to agree are
asked to accurately bring the points presented here into appro-
priate venues of dispassionate discourse (starting at inner debates
within their own brains) and gather and send back to me (via my
personal e-mail address, dingreyes@yahoo.com) all points that
can directly and indirectly enrich these points or even correct them.
In this context, I not only welcome criticisms on this, I
even hunger for them, because all criticisms can be made useful,
and some of them are even valid. The synergy of all the nuggets
of truth lodged in all the comments will surely emerge as a very
powerful synthesis useful for many people who pursue empo-
werment for themselves and for “the least of (their) brethren.”
Group of Consistently-Active Synergizers
There is a small but growing group of people who are
committed to actively work together to mainstream the
consciousness on and application of the principle of synergism
in personal and community praxis in the Philippines. And along
a two-fold mission to propagate the consciousness of synergism,
bringing its message to the biggest number of people in the
shortest possible time — and to apply it everywhere, these
committed propagators of the principles of synergism have
realized that they have had to be the first and the most
enthusiastic students about this principle, that they have had the
responsibility to learn about its nuances well beyond the very
6
general, even if correct, notions about the principle, if this is to
be applied successfully and promoted accurately.
This has been both difficult and exciting. I have reason to
know of this, for I have been the main leader up to this time of
this synergism-focused organization called SanibLakas ng Ta-
ongbayan (Filipino words for “People’s Synergy”) Foundation in
the Philippines. Having such a two-fold mission as the Foun-
dation does, we members cannot afford to slacken in our own inner
education on this principle. Such education must cover theory,
tools-development, skills-building and values formation.
Actually, more and more of our members and other peo-
ple have started enjoying it all. Especially in recognizing the dy-
namics of synergism in all kinds of human interactions, includ-
ing their own empowerment. Foundation co-founder Joydee C.
Robledo said in 1998: “What kind of work does the SanibLakas
Foundation do? It’s the kind that enables one to rediscover
her/his inner will to achieve one’s maximum potential with the
greatest sense of fulfillment, the kind that enables one to believe
in herself/himself and to convince others to do the same, the
kind that enables one to build a stronger bonding with people
and with the whole creation for better relations and better
personal or group success, with the magnification of power
resulting from the coming close together of individuals thus
empowered. … Mine is not an opinion, it’s an experience, a life,
a reality.” Well said!
Personal Study and a Personal Wish
This entire work is intended and designed to be a person-
al sharing of the enjoyment, dedicated to all who would resonate
well in such enjoyment. In other words, I am not trying to con-
vince anyone who does not believe in the phenomenon of holons
and synergism. This is full of quotes not as any attempt to invoke
so-called “authority figures” to instantly resolve debates and
dilemmas, for such intellectual names can only bring a reader to
take this work more seriously, and cannot win any argument for
me. In any argumentation I get involved in I personally dislike
the practice of “hiding behind a coat of quotes.”
But there is really no heavy arguing being conducted
here, there is only this happy sharing among people who enjoy at
least a bit of intellectual articulation of what we can call a
resonance, which can convince without hard sell others who are
at least familiar and open to our ideas. And I sort of “invited” the
sources of my quotes here to join in the happy synergy. Much of
the contents of this book comes from various illustrious writers,
my only claim to authorship here is the attempt to choreograph
their ideas and relate them to the development and current
content of my own views.
There is a special personal reason I have had for desiring
to write a book to express my views about a lot of things. This is
the drive to be understood by people clearly and
comprehensively for what I have actually been trying to say and
trying to do in my earth life. I don’t want to be remembered in
my epitaph simply as “someone who was tireless and fast in
doing a thousand and one things,” while people will not
remember having understood what all that passion and energy
was all about.
Before mid-1997, I would have deserved such fate, for I
was then really still unfocused, unable to say “no” to causes
seeking my involvement. But with the crucial help of a person
who has become my dearest friend I was able to find, and even
to start to actualize, a clear focus, the focus of synergy-building
all around for human development and harmony. This personal
close-in adviser and associate did not suggest that I decrease my
activities, but to find a real focus for them. And I feel this fo-
cused “overexertion” of efforts in the past six years really de-
serves to be fully understood clearly by anyone to claim to have
known me, even if only in memory after I shall have returned to
7
the Source. People are most welcome to refute or dismiss me
anytime on anything, but I seek to be substantially understood
first before any such refutations or dismissals are made.
Some acquaintances have simply shaken their heads in
condescending amusement when they get to learn of this or that
collective effort that they simplistically equate to, or even
dismiss as, just my own personal passion and energy. “What
will he think of next?” they would ask rhetorically and with a
smiling shake of head. There is this hidden fear, admittedly
coming from my unslain ego, that during my wake the people
there would be wondering aloud or in whispers or in quiet
thoughts around my coffin what it was that I was spending my
hyperactive life on in a perpetually-hectic mode and in what a
close friend had once labeled as “unexplained poverty” (profuse
apologies to my two sons for the practical consequences of this
on their own lives!). And then they would give up altogether in
the wondering and settle for the thought that “well, he was a
good man – with inexhaustible energies and passion for some
noble personal aims or other, which now all die with him.”
I don’t want to be emulated or even remembered only for
my levels of energy, for my passions, because I sincerely feel
that if at least some of the people I would leave behind would
only comprehend clearly and fully at that point what I was
trying to do and why, there would be a better chance that the
torch I shall have carried to the end would be carried on with
whatever momentum and to whatever degree of attainment I
shall have been able by that time to help pursue these causes.
Thus, with this writing, people I am now working with would
have access to my mind after my graduation to the “Great
Beyond,” and they may choose to pay more attention by that
time to what I’ve been trying to explain to them, not because
these are universal truths but because these ideas might prove
useful to them in their work by that time. Of course, it would
help if the clear and full comprehending would be achieved
while I am still around in this world.
Of course, I am conscious that because this book is thick
(thicker than my usual writing output), as thick as my expla-
nations may have really been “too long” for some of my co-
workers to sustain their interest, considering their own hectic
schedules, memories of me may still be limited to that “…die
with him” possible epitaph. The writing of this book is just
another attempt to avoid that kind of ending of my earth life if it
can indeed be avoided.
For it is always better to try and fail than not to have tried
at all. Then, there is this line of thought from the “Sower and the
Seed” parable that says many copies of this book may indeed fall
on fertile ground. Are you willing and ready to be part of that?
Collecting, Synergizing, Experiences
Back in 1998, the SanibLakas Foundation management
team started a fortnightly light-sharing newsletter mainly for the
internal use of the Foundation membership. The introductory
editorial of the maiden issue of Sanib-Sinag (issue No. 1, Feb.
15, 1998) speaks about collecting and synergizing experiences.
(The periodical was later stopped and later found reincarnation
in live eyeball-to-eyeball sharing sessions also called Sanib-
Sinag. There is now an e-mail list group version called
“LightShare.”)
That editorial read, in part (underscoring in the original):
“A ‘collector of experiences.’ This was how a Saniblakas
Foundation officer described herself in a recent environment-
oriented forum. Of course, everybody is a collector of personal
experiences that accumulate as life memories and hopefully
wisdom that one would later carry into old age, but this is not
8
what she was talking about. As an active member of the growing
‘Saniblakas family,’ she is into collecting experiences and
lessons from many people to be shared with and among bigger
multitudes, for a synergy of experiences and lessons that would
redound to the empowerment of all who are directly and
indirectly involved in this process.
“As the Saniblakas leadership tries to pursue the Found-
ation’s mission ‘to help build a truly empowered nation of em-
powered communities and individuals through individual human
development and optimized synergies,’ it needs to learn fast all
the lessons on individual human development and optimized
synergies both for inspirational and practical purposes. Chances
are, many of these ideas are already within the present Board of
Trustees, each profound insight lodged in the minds of two or
three of them or most of the Board members. We all have
something profound and valuable to share. But opportunities for
their airing and sharing have been very limited.
“The distinct experiences and the lessons in the minds of
individual Board members, as well as of the other active
members of the growing ‘Saniblakas family,’ as well as the
Foundation’s friends and partners, are distinct bright rays of the
Whole Truth, ‘ang bawat kaisipang makatotohanan ay sinag ng
buong liwanag!’ We have to gather and forge all these bright
rays of thought together in a synergy of the minds to produce an
immense magnitude of knowledge and wisdom that the
Saniblakas Foundation needs badly and needs immediately for
the sake of pursuing our work successfully.”
Crucially Vital Assertion
A cursory look at the table of contents will reveal that the
book Human Holons is written in four parts. These parts are
aspects of one reality. Still, the whole exercise of expressing
that one seamless reality as I reflect and interpret it in my own
mind uses words. While thoughts and ideas, and feelings are
uncontainable, I have chosen to express them, from mind to
mind, in the form of sentences and paragraphs that have had to
be grouped in bigger clusters of points, each with its own
distinct focus, and labeled in this book as Part One, Part Two,
etc. I hope that this necessity does not erect high walls of
simplistic separation in the reader’s mind between such Parts.
Distinction should not be allowed to
mean separation; without distinction and
diversity all complementation, harmony and
teamwork cannot be possible; separation is
the intellect’s mistaken negation and denial
of the actual fact of Oneness. In synergism and the
reality of holons, this is a crucially vital assertion.
Not for a Forced Readership
Some people will surely find this entire work “too long
and wordy.” Well, “it’s only words, and words are all I have to
take your heart away,” go the lyrics of the popular smiling song
by the Beegees; and the Angelus Prayer celebrates the Word
becoming flesh. Writers like me (or a team of writers like us) are
seriously engaged in the human enterprise of putting concepts
into words hopefully for clearer communication, for those who
find such communication useful and even enjoyable.
The usual problem met by this effort is when the readers
are pressured to read, or at least feel pressured to read, what they
don’t really want to read, either because they find the topic un-
important or they feel they are already very, very, very familiar
with it, or both, and the first thing they do is to immediately find
the whole work “too long.” Instead of appreciating the amount
of work done to produce the book or article of considerable
length, they feel so much more the heavy burden of the sheer
effort they are “pressured” to exert just trying to read it through.
9
But because there are some other people who are receptive
enough even to long articles, or even novels, or books like this
one, for as long as they can derive something out of it, and
intellectual discourse does have at least some value among co-
learners of a concept, writers can still do their work, preferably
at times playfully so both writer and reader can enjoy the
interlude. No pressure, just enjoyment in sharing.
And the opportunity you may choose to use to help you
unlock the powerful potential of the cosmic principle of
synergism right within your own self — as a “human holon,” a
sleepwalking nugget and magnet, that you have been and will
be. The realization of us being holons with power-packed
synergies can help us all along the shift that Bob Dylan ap-
parently intended this line to help achieve: “He who isn’t busy
being born is busy dying.”
This goes along the same line that Ron Jenson challenges
readers with his book, right from the very wording of its title:
Make A Life, Not Just A Living (Broadman and Holman
Publishers, Nashville Tennessee, 1995). Right in the introduc-
tion chapter of his book, Jenson sets the goal of holistic success
for human life to pursue: “Think about it for a moment. You are
a whole person. You have emotional, volitional, spiritual and
relational sides to your being. Beyond that you have
responsibilities in various realms—business, family, community.
And each of these areas has its own sub-responsibilities. They
are all interrelated.”
This book was written to reach many people quite
probably including those whose reception would be one of
appreciation and conscious practical application of the
synergism principle on their lives and a felt imperative to share
the joyful message. Copies that get to them (to you?) may be like
seeds that fall on fertile ground.
 These copies might be instantly needing some protective
wrapping, for many readers might eagerly await their turn to
borrow and turn these pages, before seeking to have their own
copies (especially after I shall have graduated to the Great
Beyond.) I can dream, can’t I? The empowered lives of people
who shall have made good use of its contents may well be what
can give other readers and would-be readers enough reason to ‘WE ARE WALKING NUGGETS AND
give this book a second look. MAGNETS!’

HUMAN HOLONS
Ed Aurelio C. Reyes
Makati, Philippines POWER-PACKED
February 14, 2003
SYNERGIES
“Two can accomplish more than twice as one. If
one falls, the other pulls him up; but if a man falls
when he is alone he is in trouble. One standing
alone can be defeated, but two can stand back to
back and conquer; three is even better, for a
triple-braided cord is not easily broken.”

– King Solomon
[as quoted by Philip Holland in How
To Start A Business Without
Quitting Your Job (Ten Speed Press,
California, 1993). p. 148.]

H OLON is a new word. Coined by Arthur Koestler no more

than three decades ago, I only came across it a few months
before starting to write this book. It is not even familiar to many
of the intellectuals and academicians I have mentioned this word
to. The terms synergism and synergy are more familiar, that is,

10
many people have at least heard this word and some have even
used it once or twice in conversation.
It is unfortunate that people have been allowed to remain
at much distance from the potent realities being represented by
these words, for it is getting to be increasingly apparent that
these realities are actively present right within our very being as
humans, and very much alive in our interactions among one
another and with the other parts of the Cosmos, indeed, with the
very nature of the Cosmos itself!
There is an almost complete lack of awareness among
most humans about the power packed in the phenomenon of the
holon and in the operation of the synergism principle that packs
such power in everything, including the immense creative capa-
bilities of the human will. We are leaving virtually such dynamic
energies untapped. This while many of us sulk in frustration,
helplessness and defeatism amid heavy difficulties that can all be
overcome by consciously and properly applying the principle of
synergism. This is happening to a great number of us all the
time, and all the feelings of frustration and helplessness have
been understood to be the normal mode of existence for humans.
And this has been directly happening to each of us from time to
time. Don’t we all wish we could reduce the instances and
duration of these periods of darkness in our hearts and minds?
Consider this moving challenge for a decisive mindset
shift, raised by Dr. Leo F. Buscaglia in the first chapter of his
book, Personhood: The Art of Being Fully Human (Ballantine
Books, New York, 1978):
“The knowledge that we make our own life is not new,
still most of us will resist it for if we were to accept it, we might
be forced to change. We might have to face the pain and empti-
ness which arises from the knowledge of the unrealized self. We
might have to assume the frightening, the uncertain and demand-
11
ing search for its actualization. We may finally have to cease
blaming others and take upon ourselves the full responsibility for
creating our own lives. There is no doubt that it is much easier to
accept ourselves as we have been portrayed – helpless, hopeless,
frightened failures, impotent to realize our actualization needs.
“When we are born, we are almost all unrealized poten-
tial, and a thousand new possibilities are present in each one of
us. We can choose to be born again at any time and accept the
challenge of the selves we have yet to meet, for the same is still
true.
“The world, too, is mostly unactualized potential waiting
upon us for realization. The responsibility, then, is ours. The ma-
nifestation of every person and the world in which we live is the
minimum requirement of our existence, its major purpose and its
only hope. The negligence of any of us to become a fully func-
tioning part of the whole, no matter who we are or where we
may be, will be potential which will be forever lost. We are of
value to the degree to which we are constantly actualizing as the
unique persons we are at each moment of our life.”
We only have to realize the reality, to open our minds
and hearts to this constant truth: The Force of Dynamic
Oneness is in each of us. When anyone seeks that you
be conscious of this, she or he may say, “May the Force be with
you.” This is just one of the latter-day versions of the old Latin
“Dominus vobiscum,” which has been translated into English in
post-Vatican II Roman Catholic masses as “The Lord be with
you.” For God, Allah, Abba, Bathala, in my firm conviction, is
the Loving and Creative Synergy of ALL Synergies, our supreme
and complete oneness, the hand of which we are all the varying
but teaming-up fingers, the vine of which we are all the living
branches.
 Levels of human development, and harmony in this
world would undoubtedly soar to amazing heights if we could
only tap this reality fully, or even just partially. Actually, we
have started to comprehend these, thus words like “synergism”
and “holon” have emerged in human vocabulary to start to refer
to them. Actually, we have started to apply the principle, even if
largely instinctively and intuitively and therefore often
inconsistently. And success at such application of this principle
has been behind the sense of another word of relatively recent
currency: empowerment. PART ONE:
To further and help hasten the empowerment of the HOLONS AND SYNERGISM
individual humans and the masses of people making up various
communities of varying scopes, we have to successfully advance
paradigm shifts for empowerment in the thoughts, words and
deeds of at least a critical mass of the people. Chapter 1
Desiderata reminds us all: “whether or not it is clear to Synergism in Etymologies and
you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” But
whoever they may be among us who have learned to appreciate Metaphors
the process as a wonderful synergy of episodes or stages of such HEWING as closely as possible to how the majority of the
magnificent unfolding can opt to actively help to hasten the shift people would put their own meanings into the words they come
from periods of lessons-laden suffering to periods of widespread across, by using that alphabetical survey result of word-usage,
bliss in human actualization. called the dictionary, I seek to choose well my words as a writer,
The word holon is a new term. But there is a very old because words like the thoughts they represent, are powerful.
word that also refers to it. This term is applied to those persons Etymology, the science of word origins, is important in
who, aside from knowing that they are individual players in this any complex or profound study. So, when I decided to study the
world, also know fully that they are parts of one much greater phenomenon of synergism, I started with etymology. Synonyms
Whole, and are therefore not merely of this world. To their and near-synonyms are fine, like the words “teamwork” and
holistic mind-set and behavior a very old word has been “harmony” and even “love” for synergism and synergy, but I felt
assigned. That word is “holy,” and it is also directly related to I had something to learn, a nuance or even a basic element, by
the source of the words “heal” and “health.” Huli mo? looking at the origin of what has become my favorite word.
Of course metaphors are important, too. They are more
useful in explaining a phenomenon to others than in trying to

12
understand it in the first place. Still, my attempt to explain to
others may be a very important start for those others to grasp a
phenomenon. The problem with metaphors is that they can only
approximate certain characteristics of a phenomenon but not
really convey the phenomenon exactly as it is. That is why in
trying to explain synergism I use not just one metaphor but a set
of metaphors. Some of these metaphors may actually be living
illustrations of the principle in action.
1. Word Origins
My Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition
(1991), gives this definition for the prefix syn-
syn- (sin) Gr. <syn, with; earlier xyn> prefix with,
together, at the same time [synesthesia, syncarpous].
It becomes, by assimilation, syl- before l; sym-
before b, m or p; and sys- before or in words where it
reflects original combining with a word containing
an initial aspirate, or (h) sound. (Underscoring mine)
This togetherness is reflected in the definitions of many
words that start with this prefix: synthesis, symmetry, symbiosis,
syncretism, symphony, sympathy, and so on. And, of course, this
togetherness is reflected in the definition given by the same
dictionary for the words synergy and synergism. (By the way,
the pronunciation of this prefix is constant, where the vowel
sound is a short i and not a long one. Some people tend to
pronounce syn- in synergism as if it rhymed with “spine”.)
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary would add as another
meaning "the doctrine that in regeneration there is a cooperation
of divine grace and human activity."
According to Charles Hampden-Turner (Maps of the
Mind, Collier Books, NY): Synergy comes from the Greek
synergia, `a working with', and describes the capacity of two
13
forces, persons, or structures of information to optimize one
another and achieve mutual enhancement.
As I understand it, synergy refers to the coming together
at a certain high level of quality; and synergism is the principle
that explains what comes from this high-quality coming together.
The principle reveals and explains a "value-added" to the
arithmetical total of the respective magnitudes of individual
parts to result in synergy, with a perceptible increase in magni-
tude of the total combined effect of these same elements. We go
back to definitions of synergy and synergism in latter sections of
this chapter.
I had earlier searched high and low for a Filipino word to
capture this precise sense, and the closest I got was "bayanihan"
which has, over the centuries, largely lost its sting and original
meaning. That's why I thought of coining "sanib-lakas," a new
term altogether, the same thing I did in 1991 for "sense of
history" by coining the word "kamalaysayan." And like in the
case of that campaign for sense of history, I started an
organization in 1996, which eventually became a foundation,
and gave it the same coined-word name, this time in the form of
a proper noun that has done away with the hyphen. ‘Sanib,’ in
this case an intransitive verb denoting a mutual action, takes the
place of the prefix “syn-“, and “lakas” as the translation for the
word “energy.”
At least as much as I was proud to represent the Asian
Social Institute in the panel of presentors in that Lambat-Li-
wanag conference, I proudly represented, as well, the SanibLa-
kas ng Taongbayan Foundation.
2. Metaphors for Synergism
Using metaphors would be a good way to illustrate the
principle of synergism. At least some of these metaphors are
really synergies in themselves, actual illustrations of synergism
in action. Others, though commonly or at least occasionally
used, are not as appropriate.
a. The Broom and the Mat
The coconut-reed broom is widely used in the Philip-
pines where it is called "walis tingting" in the Filipino language.
The walis-tingting is a favorite metaphor in illustrating the
saying, "in union there is strength." After all, it is easy to break
all the reeds one by one but together they are formidable.
This broom goes beyond the saying and illustrates syn-
ergism. You would need the standard stoutness of such a broom
to sweep the yard, and it would be difficult to sweep even just
one-eighth of the same area with just half that stoutness. The
thinner that broom gets, the more difficult it is to use it even for
sweeping just a miniscule portion of the whole area.
Still, as a symbolic illustration of synergism, the banig or
our native mat made out of leaf-strips woven together is appar-
ently better. While synergizers are trying to kick the habit of
comparing things, at least judgmentally, the comparison between
these metaphors is important to point out a nuance. This is
actually an important nuance in the study of synergism as it
applies to humans. You may be wondering why…
b. Schools of Fish and Formation-Flying
Let us shift temporarily to a comparison between a group
of headless fish crowded really very close together in a can of
sardines and a school of fish that are swimming together. The
swimming fish are not as close together as the sardines in the
can, but the latter only crowd together because they are forced to
do so by the walls of the can. The swimming fish are together
by choice, or if you will, by instinct, not by any container. This
is parallel to the saying "birds of the same feather flock
together," and is more akin to some equivalent tendencies in
physics— cohesion and gravity.
14
Flying ducks and flying geese are not only symbolic of
synergism. Their V-formation flying actually illustrates a
measurable mechanical efficiency even though none of the ducks
has read any books on aerodynamics.
Back to the broom and the mat, the reed sticks in the
broom are crowded together by a "container," or more precisely,
by a band of some other material. And once some of the sticks
fall off, the band gets looser and more and more sticks "escape."
To instantly "free" all the reed sticks from the arrangement they
had been forced into, you just have to cut or pull off the band.
But you cannot "unweave" the woven mat as easily. The very
arrangement of the strips in relation to one another keeps them
together, and you don't really need an external container.
c. The Jigsaw Puzzle
Neither the reed sticks nor the leaf strips are predisposed
to unite and stay together. The sticks have to be kept together by
a band and the strips are kept together by the way they are
arranged (woven) around one another. The formation-flying
fowls and the schools of fish are much better illustrations of the
synergism principle because their natural wisdom or "instinct"
makes them social beings comparable to humans and or often
even better at it than humans.
The jigsaw puzzle offers another nuance or angle. Each
jigsaw puzzle is unique on two counts:
First, it carries its own distinct part of the total picture,
such that the whole picture cannot be complete if one particular
piece is missing. While there is some truth to the saying that "no
one is indispensable," there is at least as much truth to the
assertion that "every single individual is very important."
Second, each piece has a unique shape. Even with a
hammer, you cannot force-in any piece into the wrong hole, as
far as regular jigsaw puzzles are concerned.
 And yet in the uniqueness of each piece, all the pieces
have two commonalities: First, they are all carrying parts of the
same picture. Each piece reflects the beauty of the whole and
contributes to the beauty of the whole. Second, they are all
shaped to be "predisposed to unite and stay together." They are
interlocking. If you pull at the corner piece of a completed
puzzle, chances are the entire thing will get pulled too.
If all these points of uniqueness and of commonalities are
fully appreciated in the jigsaw puzzle piece as a metaphor for
synergism, the synergies we build among humans can benefit
greatly from this principle. At present, however, we see many
human groupings reflecting more faithfully the images of the
walis tingting and the headless sardines in the can!
Here’s how filmmaker and filmmaking educator Surf
Reyes discussed the jigsaw puzzle piece in a reaction paper
presented at a conference on the empowering paradigm for the
educational system in June 2002 (underscoring in the original):
“I’m sure all of you have experienced putting jigsaw
puzzle pieces together to form one picture. It all starts with a
cluttered jumble of separate and seemingly meaningless pieces
that, together, form one meaningful picture. Let us experience
the reality more closely. The pieces look quite alike in shape, and
some even in color, yet no two pieces are actually alike. Each
jigsaw puzzle piece is totally unique, with its own shape and
colors, and designed to precisely lock with other pieces to form
that one beautiful picture. Each individual piece has no real
significance or meaning except as part of the whole. So each ‘I’
has no meaning except within ‘We.’ Hold that in your imag-
ination for a while to serve as a mirror image of the core reality
of the oneness of all. Consider all of us and everything in our
environment, as the jigsaw puzzle pieces that form the one
universal picture. From this core reality naturally spring all the
core values.”
15
Actually, the jigsaw puzzle pieces do not really start out
as a cluttered jumble. A single beautiful picture is first printed
and glued on some thick cardboard and this undergoes the die-
cut process that cuts up the picture into those little puzzle pieces
we start with in every jigsaw puzzle session. After working on it
for hours or even days on end, we get to appreciate the picture
many times over, because we undergo the process of appreciat-
ing the individual pieces and their intended interrelationships.
The beauty and glory of the whole is always magnified and
appreciated manifold by appreciating its parts and the latter’s
process of coming together in synergy.
d. Gravity
Gravity is no longer simplistically viewed in terms of
"what goes up must come down," no longer just in the matter of
falling. It is an attraction force between two lumps of matter,
which Newton had long computed to be directly proportional to
the product of the mass of one object and the mass of the other,
and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between
the objects' respective centers of gravity. We don't have to go
any further on that.
What bears mentioning here is the fact that gravity exists
automatically between any pair of two objects (no matter how
far apart they are) and that this force is an attraction. There is
no known opposite equivalent to this, unlike in the case of
magnetic forces where there is both attraction and repulsion.
This should give us some hint about the grand design of the
Universe, or a clue as to why it had to start off with the
centrifugal momentum of a "Big Bang". We go back to this in a
later chapter.
e. Magnets
I actually agonized about magnets for some time. All
literature on magnetism that I have come across in books and in
the Internet state, as if as an overriding maxim, that “like poles
repel, and opposite poles attract." I could easily illustrate
synergies among like-minded people, among "birds of the same
feather flocking together," and as stated in another article, I am
quite comfortable to consider diversity as the dynamic element
in synergetic combinations. But how in heaven's name was I to
illustrate the synergy of opposite poles?
After months of searching for an answer to this puzzle, I
got one that I consider now to be the more valid view of
magnets. I no longer focus on the poles, for after all the poles
are just like entrances and exist points of a highway and what is
important is the movement of vehicles within the highway,
through and around it. I now look more on the direction of flow
of the magnetic force, what is also called the "magnetic flux."
And my own substitute to the usual maxim is this: Like flows
attract; opposite flows repel.
Like poles will repel as much as it would be illogical to
connect the south-bound lane of one highway to the north-bound
lane of another, or create a closed passageway between the exit
door of one building and the exit door of another (where would
all the people go?) or create a closed passageway between the
entrance of one building and the entrance of another (who would
use it?). The same is true with blood vessels regenerating their
connections after they get severed.
Having gone beyond the "attract-repel" puzzle, I studied
magnets more closely, and started moving completely away from
the "attract-repel" focus. As a kid I was always playing with
magnets, even dismantling the tiny motors in my toy cars just to
get the magnets in them. But I was endlessly experimenting on
making metal pieces stick to them, and magnetizing ordinary
screwdrivers and big nails and making metal pieces stick to
those. It was very recently that I started paying more attention to
magnets affecting metal pieces that do not stick to them, metal
16
pieces that do not even move towards them, the phenomenon of
the magnetic field and its invisible but very real effects.
Having experimented on magnets affecting metal pieces
that are just lying still close enough to them, and having read
about how some metal pieces gradually become magnets just
because a strong magnet nearby had started aligning a growing
number of their atoms along a uniform magnetic field, I plunged
into a deep study of magnets as metaphors of synergism in a
very profound way. It looks like it's going to be a long but ex-
citing study, and I’d be glad to share observations and ideas with
people interested enough to study applications of the pertinent
physics formulas similar to but more powerful than the formulas
involving gravitation.
But this early, it can be said that because of this phe-
nomenon of "contagious magnetism," the magnet is a unique
metaphor for synergism. After all, coconut-palm reeds do not tie
themselves together in a bind, the leaf-strips do not weave them-
selves together into mats and the jigsaw puzzle pieces do not
really jump into their proper places. But atoms in a magnetic
field do align themselves in bigger and bigger numbers and
strengthen that field to make more and more atoms do the
same. Thus, a magnet system grows stronger and stronger by
itself, untouched by human hands. The origin of lodestones bears
this out. And scientists are using the magnetic flux from
unmoved chunks of lodestone to triangulate past sites of the
magnetic/true north pole and the magnetic/true south pole of the
earth, where spin axis meets the earth surface.
Consider that in contrast to the force of gravity, which is
indirectly proportional to the square of the distance between the
attracting parties, the magnitude of the magnetic force is
inversely proportional to the cube of the distance between the
magnetic objects that are interacting. This means that a strong
magnet which is not near to any other magnet aligned or not
aligned with it can, by the influence of its magnetic field, align
atoms in all metallic objects all around it, and, by itself, create
many new magnets around itself and create a growing synergy of
a growing set of aligned magnets much closely positioned
around it. This is a case of a synergy ever growing by itself. If
the first magnet in the neighborhood is rather weak, the entire
process still ensues but takes much more time to complete.
3. Definitions of Synergism
Stephen R. Covey wrote in his The Seven Habits of
Highly Effective People (Simon and Schuster, NY): "What is
synergy? Simply defined it means that the whole is greater than
the sum of its parts. It means that the relationship that the parts
have to each other is a part in and of itself. It is not only a part,
but the most catalytic, the most empowering, the most unifying,
and the most exciting part."
R. Buckminster Fuller (in Critical Path, St. Martin's
Press, NY) describes synergism as "the behavior of whole
systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts."
And we have the simplest statement from Abraham
Maslow, quoted in Maps of the Mind (Collier Books, NY):
"Synergy is indivisible."
In his foreword to the SanibLakas Foundation pamphlet
on cooperative education on synergism (2000), former Bulacan
Gov. Roberto Pagdanganan described synergy as "a fusion to
create a newer dimension broader that the totality of the parts."
During a SanibLakas-convened “Sharings at the Park” in
2001, Dr. Ernesto R. Gonzales, secretary-general of the Lambat-
Liwanag Network of Centers for Empowering Paradigms, said:
“Synergism is a process where the essence of life grows. When
synergy enters her orbit, the life-giving process of persons, as
17
well as of institutions, begins to flourish. In our homeland, this is
the ignition point for genuine progress and nationhood.”
In another sharing, Dr. Mina Ramirez, president of the
Asian Social Institute in Manila, defined synergism as “the
interweaving of ourselves into the web of energies that are life-
promoting of all life-forms. It is being with the spirit of life
itself, harnessing ethical for the good and sacred in us and in all
of God’s Creation!” This dovetails with how synergism was
described by SanibLakas Foundation’s Palawan-based Board
Member Romy Lee B. Ancheta: “getting back to our Creator,
who is the essence of all synergies.”
Lambat-Liwanag Network Council Vice Chair Enrique
D. Torres, also the Board Chairman of the Philippine Human
Rights Information Center said that he “found synergism as an
effective unifier of both the individual and collective efforts to
advance human development and harmony,” and that his “cur-
rent commitment to human rights will be enhanced by a wider
awareness and deeper understanding of synergism.”
Luis B. Gorgonio, also of PhilRights and SanibLakas,
wrote in the March 1998 issue of the Sanib-Sinag journal:
“Synergism is a journey from the self to kapwa. Individualism
happens when the self is locked into itself, calls everything be-
yond its own narrow confines as the other, and separates from the
others. Synergism is a movement from an individualist self to a
shared self or kapwa. In synergism the other-ness is lost and the
self becomes a unique trait that innately longs for communion.”
Mila Reyes Garcia, chair of the SanibLakas Human Re-
sources Development Committee, describes synergism as “the
Divine Plan, the scheme of things.” She explains: We were
created with different personalities, gifts, talents, etc. The Cre-
ator apparently meant for us to complement and supplement one
another, to work together harmoniously. Look around us, it’s hap-
pening everyday. In building a house, there is an architect, an en-
gineer, the carpenters. Each one is an essential part of the whole.”
Further, she says: “We should flow together, like little streams
flowing into rivers, and rivers flowing into the sea, till there is
just one huge wave of harmony. That, to me, is synergy.”
And Maraya Chebat, who was behind the prize-winning
initial draft of the Earth Charter, emphasized the role of healthy
attitude on diversity: “Only when we can expect the differences
of one another can we learn to synergize.”
4. How does it work?
The definition of synergism would not be complete
without even just an earnest attempt to explain how it works.
It has been proven both in measurable and immeasurable
terms that operation of the synergism principle results in value-
added, in some sort of magnification of total value. The
eyebrow-raising arithmetical formula usually used to describe
the operation of synergism is "one plus one equals three," which
is akin to the quote ascribed to the wise King Solomon at the
very beginning of this book. And the question that may follow is
about the source of this "magic," where does this come from? It
took some years of hunting before I could arrive at an answer
that would do fine for me, at least for the time being.
Not all combinations of individual elements make up a
synergy, because the precise design or arrangement of the
combination may not optimize the performance of these
individual elements. We can see this in frequent manifestations
of "bad teamwork" (actually a lack of teamwork) or bad
management. In worst-case examples, the resulting equation is
"one plus one equals zero" because the capabilities or the actions
of the elements actually cancel out one another.
The legendary UCLA and NBA center Bill Walton once
said: “In basketball, you can be the greatest player in the world
18
and lose every game, because a team will always beat an
individual.”
It is not necessarily true that "in union there is strength,"
because synergy cannot easily be attained and sustained
accidentally. Ask the good sports team coaches and the good
managers. And they will agree that it does entail a lot of study,
experimentation, evaluation and painstaking improvement to
build the right "chemistry," the great winning teamplay.
The idea that organizations automatically generate
strength and empower their members is based on the illusion that
"all sorts of combinations are synergies." Wrong! In fact, the
behavior or non-behavior of many organizations all around us
has been giving the value of organizations a bad name. For this
reason, there are many people who have come to stay away from
organizations altogether.
I chanced upon my tentative answer to the question
where does the value-added come from when I listened to the
valedictory speech delivered by the outgoing president of a local
business club. She said the outgoing officers were proud to
report having fulfilled their induction-day promise to be a
"TEAM." She said that for them, "TEAM" as an acronym has
always stood for "Together, Each Achieves More."
Never mind the little syntax awkwardness here. The
meaning is unmistakably clear, anyway. The statement really
flashed inside my mind that here was the answer I had been
looking for — Really close togetherness can actually increase
the magnitude of capability or actual action of each individual
element. If teamwork or harmony, in short, the attainment of
synergy, can increase the capacity or output of each element,
why would anybody be surprised at all that the total would be
bigger or even much bigger?
 Take a look at the simple equation below. It shows a
simple arithmetical sum:
This other equation shows an operation of synergism,
represented here by the symbol of converging arrows, four in all
to resemble the plus sign just a bit. If we compare the two
equations, we can see how synergism works, at least in this
theory:
It is not as if the members just put in their best together
and then "a magical power from above" (as in "deus ex
machina") suddenly grants a "counterpart fund" to add to their
total. Instead, this "magical power" apparently works, through
synergism, through complementation or mutual encouragement
or both, to increase the output of each one in the synergy,
thereby automatically increasing the total. And this total belongs
to the entity collective really distinct from any which individual
member and distinct from all of them taken separately. This is
the distinct reality of their harmonious collectivity, of their
synergy.
5. Synergism Manifestations and Applications
The synergism principle pertains to a "value-added" to
synergy, a perceptible increase in magnitude over the total effect
the same elements would have if each were to be acting
separately.
The perceptible increase in magnitude is even physically
measurable. In his article "Synergism and the Holy Spirit," Rev.
Roy Shepherd shares with us how a police unit conducted a
physics experiment after losing their championship in the police
19
games. Using a special “pull meter,” they measured the
maximum force exerted by each member of their team. Then
they measured the force exerted by the whole team; the team
result was 1½ times more than the sum of the individual team
members.
Some other words are akin in meaning to synergy: team-
work, harmony, complementation, but the only principle I know
of that explains the magnification or "value-added" resulting
from the attainment of synergy, of harmony, of teamwork, of
complementation, is synergism. And the principle has much
more to it than simply knowing that "in union there is strength";
in fact the principle of synergism would qualify our notion of
"strength in numbers" to be conditional and would offer work-
able ways to raise the quality of unity and consequently attain
much more "value-added," much more magnification of capa-
bility or effect.
A certain Dan Zedra was quoted (in an attractive poster
showing wild geese in formation flying), saying: "Instinctively,
the Great Northern Geese travel thousands of miles in perfect
formation — and therein lies the secret. Formation flying is 70
percent more efficient than flying alone."
Sean Covey (Stephen's son), in his own book The Seven
Habits of Highly-Successful Teenagers, gives a slightly higher
figure for the aerodynamic efficiency of formation flying — 71
percent, explaining that when a goose flaps its wings, it creates
an updrift for the goose that follows. "Whenever a goose falls
out of formation, it immediately feels the resistance of trying to
fly alone and quickly gets back into formation. As the lead goose
gets tired he will rotate to the back of the 'V' (formation) and
allows another goose to take the lead position."
(He adds something else that goes beyond aerodynamics:
"The geese in the back honk to encourage those in front." And
this: "Finally, when one of the geese gets sick or is wounded and
falls out of formation, two geese will follow it down to help and
protect it. They will stay with the injured goose until it is better
or dies, and they will join a new formation or create their own to
catch up with the group.")
Diversity is not something to be tolerated or "solved" in
the context of synergy-building. While commonalities among
the elements provide the bonding element, the glue or the
magnetic waves among them, diversity is the enriching,
catalyzing factor that gives the collectivity its dynamism.
In chemistry, a chemical reaction can only occur when
non-identical substances are combined. In an orchestra, the rich-
ness of the musical sound produced comes from the wide variety
of instruments played simultaneously in the arrangement. In
choral group singing, the blending of voices cannot occur and be
enjoyed if all would sing only the melody, the "first voice."
Despite the diversities there is need for some common-
ality over certain ground rules. Despite the divergences, and
especially because these divergences exist, diverse people or
groups coming together into the process of building partnerships
and sustainable unities must have at least a modicum of
agreement that:
(1) diversity is richness and not necessarily a conflict;
(2) diverse groups actually have essential commonalities;
and
(3) these diverse groups make up a great whole.
Manifestations of synergism abound in Nature, where
every ecosystem, the complex sum of all symbiotic relationships
among all species in a given area, exists and thrives in greater
stability the more harmoniously interacting and interdependent
species participate and the more diverse these species are.
Harmony in this sense does not imply that predators would hunt
20
and kill their prey very gently; rather it is in the interdependence
preponderant in the entire food web, in pollination processes, in
seed dispersal, in umbrella canopies and carpets of grass bushes,
in everything that makes a jungle a jungle.
Applications of synergism abound in physics, chemistry
and engineering. The very term synergism was first popularized
as it pertained to the combining of substances as active
ingredients in pharmaceutical preparations. The substances in
tandem were proven to work wonders in synergy so much so that
the medicines were approved for marketing according to their
therapeutic claims.
Synergies in engineering pertain to mechanical advantage
and durability from precise combination and arrangement of
elements. Stephen Covey (in his Seven Habits of Highly Effect-
ive People) mentions that: If you put two pieces of wood toge-
ther, they will hold much more than the total of the (maximum)
weight held by each separately.
Synergies in Substance Complementations or “Compo-
site materials” (combined characteristics of plastic, glass, metals,
ceramics, etc., in various uses, especially in construction and
electronics.) From “How Things Work Today” (published by
Scientific American, 2000): “Composites are made by
combining two or more materials in order to maximize their
useful properties and minimize their weaknesses.
One of the earliest composites was developed by the
ancient Greeks who inserted iron rods into marble to strengthen
it. Steel rods are now used in this way to reinforce concrete.
Modern composites were developed from light and strong ma-
terials for the aerospace industry. Most modern composites con-
sist of fibers of one material tightly bound into another material
called a matrix. The matrix binds the fibres together like an ad-
hesive and makes them more resistant to damage, while the
fibers make the matrix stronger and stiffer.”
From R. Buckminster Fuller’s website on synergy and
synergism: “Synergy alone explains metals increasing their
strengths. All alloys are synergetic. Chrome-nickel-steel has an
extraordinary total behavior. In fact, it is the high cohesive
strength and structural stability of chrome-nickel-steel at enor-
mous temperatures that has made possible the jet engine. The
principle of the jet was invented by the squid and the jellyfish
long ago. What made possible man's use of the jet principle was
his ability to concentrate enough energy and to release it sud-
denly enough to give him tremendous thrust. The kinds of heat
that accompany the amount of energies necessary for a jet to fly
would have melted all the engines of yesterday. Not until you
had chrome-nickel-steel was it possible to make a successful jet
engine, stable at the heats involved. The jet engine has changed
the whole relationship of man to the Earth. And it is a change in
the behavior of the whole of man and in the behavior of whole
economics, brought about by synergy.”
The physical reality of physical synergies is illustrated in
a reversed sort of way by a new technological product from
Korea that claims, with statistics from satisfied users, to reduce
the total electric energy consumption of a crowded set of
appliances and other electric equipment. The technology applied
is called “electromagnetic field harmonizer.”
The way I understand it, this is how it works: All electric
currents in all electric appliances and equipment create elec-
tromagnetic fields around them that are vectorial, that is, with a
definite direction. Crowding many appliances and other electric
equipment that have strong electromagnetic fields in varying di-
rections, create a certain degree of clashes among these fields,
and creating more resistance in each of the electric circuits
(appliances, equipment) involved, and turns part of the electric
21
energy into unutilized heat energy. The gadget solves this prob-
lem by harmonizing these electromagnetic fields (I still don’t
know how it does that), instead of allowing them to clash all
around with one another. This does not only prevent the “clash-
ing-fields” effect, it allows each of the circuits to be helped
along by the harmonized electromagnetic fields, and the mutual-
helping for greater mechanical efficiency is synergism at work.
6. Universal Preponderance
Gravity is an attractive, centripetal, and cohesive force. If
gravity is not being countered by an opposite, repulsive force, it
would be logical that the expanding Universe would be slowing
down in its expansion, eventually to stop and then begin to
contract. But some scientists perceive faraway stars to be
receding at an apparently faster rate, “the farther away these
stars are, the faster they are receding.”
Still, any such repulsive force opposite gravity, which
may answer for any such perceived acceleration has not been
found (said Stephen Hawkings in his Time magazine article on
Einstein as “Person of the Century”), implying that the Universe
is predisposed to cohere. Many years after Sir Isaac Newton
wrote in the form of formulas his observations on the effects of
gravitational force, he was said to be wondering aloud: “Whence
is it that the Sun and planets gravitate toward one another?”
My own analysis is that those stars that have been
moving faster from the time of the “Big Bang” would therefore
logically have receded farther, and the observation that “the
farther away these stars are, the faster they are receding” does
not prove acceleration in the rate of expansion of the Universe
after the “Big Bang.” This is a reinterpretation of a specific
“Red-Shift” observation, which in many pieces of literature is
used to imply an acceleration, and therefore infinite, expansion
of the Universe. Viewing the “Red Shift” observation this way it
cannot be made to convincingly rebut the belief that cohesion is
apparently the most basic force, and Gravity keeps the oneness.
How is the entire complex system energized? Aside
from the momentum created by the hypothetical “Big Bang,”
there are the thermonuclear reactors that give off light and heat,
much like what our own star, Sol, does for us and the rest of the
Solar System. Some, like Don Miguel Ruiz, have even advanced
the view that light and heat create stars and not the other way
around.
Toward the middle of the last century, human scientists
were able to split the atom, create the nuclear bomb and
construct nuclear reactors using atomic fission. Does this imply
that energy comes from division, which is the opposite of syn-
ergism? No. Drunvalo Melchizedek, in his The Secret of the
Flower of Life, asserts that “all known suns in the Universe are
fusion-type nuclear reactors,” implying the primacy of unifica-
tion, rather than fission, in natural generation of energy. Our
own sun fuses pairs of hydrogen atoms to create helium atoms
and release energy all around. It is a fusion-type nuclear reactor
like all the others, if we are to believe Melchizedek.
About a quarter of a century ago, Arthur Koestler coined
the word “holon” to mean anything that is a whole composed of
parts while it is itself a part joining other parts in making up a
bigger whole. In his Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilber
supports Koestler’s assertion that everything is a holon, and that
the hierarchy of holons (which both Koestler and Wilber call
“holarchy”) goes infinitely down and infinitely up.
In the succeeding chapter I seek to explain the essence of
holarchy in terms of the operation of synergism, and conclude
that because all of the Universe are holons, the synergism prin-
ciple is at work throughout.

22
Chapter 2
Part/Whole, and the Synergy Factor
in Holarchies
1. Holon: Part/Whole
EVERY whole is but a part of a bigger whole. And every part is
a whole made up of smaller parts. That is apparently the design
of the universe. Earth is our whole planet – including our oceans
and landmasses, core, mantle, mountains and atmosphere. But
Earth is but a part of the whole Solar System, which is, in turn, a
minor part of the Milky Way Galaxy, even as molecules are
made up of atoms that are made up of electrons and nuclei, the
latter being made up of subnuclear particles like protons,
positrons, neutrinos, etc. etc.
Each unit is a synergy of smaller units; and every
component of synergy has the “innergy” of its own
complementarily interacting and therefore dynamically united –
in other words, synergized – component parts. Arthur Koestler
coined the word “holon” to describe something that is both a
whole and a part, a whole of smaller component parts and while
being a part of a bigger whole. The first syllable of this word
pertains to its being a whole, and the second syllable pertains to
its being a part (from the “–on” ending of the words “electron,”
“proton,” “neutron” and “positron”). Then Koestler, and later
Ken Wilber, explained that everything is a holon.
 In my own version of this thought I would say that
everything is a synergy of other things making up its “innergy,”
and it dynamically interacts with still other things in a bigger
synergy. And whenever I bring in the principle of synergism, it
shows that a whole is not just the sum total of its individual parts
because it includes the quality and quantity (degree) of the
interrelationships among these parts. Used appropriately, where
the interrelationships are of the harmonious and complementary
kind, synergism promises a value-added to the total output, as in
the eyebrow-raising equation “one plus one equals three.”
What’s the difference between a house and a home? One
is a container and the other is the contained synergy. Without the
bonds of love and interactions of warm cohabitation, you have a
house being used as a hotel with rooms occupied by virtual her-
mits. If we have neighborhood, there are some households inte-
racting. If they are not interacting, you have no neighborhood. If
you move all of the households away except one, that one
household cannot be called a part of any neighborhood. If
spouses decide to separate, you cannot call either one of them
“half a couple.” If they had earlier bought a car as part of their
conjugal properties, divorce can not make them drive separate
half-cars! There are things, like bread, cakes and pies, that can
easily be sliced and you just get smaller pieces of bread, cake or
pie. Many other things have to have their synergized components
together or they don’t exist at all as such things. If we stop all
this talk about dividing, we can shift to the processes of joining
together. That is the whole point of the phenomenon we call
creation.
Wilber speaks of creation in the emergence of new hol-
ons from the coming together, the communion, of pre-existing
holons. And I add that these pre-existing holons are each a
synergy at its own level of existence, but once they come toge-
ther in a new arrangement, they create a new reality which is
23
higher in magnitude than the simple sum of the original holons,
thus exalting them – exalting their collectivity and even exalting
each of them individually through transcendence of their earlier
limited reality — but the new holon is totally dependent on the
original holons for its very existence as such. To paraphrase
Jose Rizal, a stone is exalted as it becomes part of an edifice.
It is a hierarchy in a sense but not in the usual sense we
use the word hierarchy. Top bricks in a pyramid are higher than
the bottom ones, and these top ones exalt the lower ones by
making them part of a structure higher than if there were no top
bricks. But while the bottom bricks can lie in peace without any
top bricks resting upon them, the top bricks cannot be there
where they are if there were no bottom bricks to depend on. And
in any pyramid, lower bricks always outnumber the higher ones.
Wilber prefers the word holarchy to hierarchy. While
Koestler also uses the term holarchy straight out of his own
coined word, he speaks of a part being “sub-ordinated” to the
whole (while parts of the same whole are “co-ordinated”), and is
therefore consistent to the usual sense of the word hierarchy, as
in a hierarchy of ranks.
But Wilber apparently refines the concept of holarchy to
be very distinct from hierarchy. He explains that atoms can exist,
and have in fact very well existed for a long, long time, without
molecules forming among some of them, and that molecules
exist can exist and have in fact very well existed for a long time,
without substances forming, and substances can exist and have
in fact very well existed for a long time, without organisms
emerging, and so on and so forth. He speaks of depth of ho-
larchy to refer to the number of qualitative or quantum layers of
holons; and he speaks of span as the ratio of the members of
holons at one holarchic level to the number of members at the
immediately higher holarchic level.
 The assertion I dare make here is that the operation of the
synergism principle is the decisive factor for the emergence of a
new distinct holon to exist at the next higher holarchic level--the
synergy achieved from the dynamic togetherness of previously
separate original holons. Synergism is the great magnification
factor in all the holons from infinitely down to infinitely up
throughout the great holarchy we refer to as the Cosmos. From
this, I dare say, adding to Koestler and Wilber, that everything is
a holon and every holon is a synergy, and that the universe is
synergized infinitely-many times over through all the levels of
the holarchy!
It is therefore quite impossible for human minds to com-
prehend fully the sheer magnitude of what I can only just start
describing towards the end of the poem Smile for Synergy
which I wrote in May 2000. Here are those final lines:
Smile…
for collective wisdom, the synergy of diverse learnings
of diverse minds,
for the Universe, the synergy of all that exist,
known and unknown,
for the great and glorious Cosmic Consciousness,
the loving Creator and Synergy of ALL synergies…
Smile for the synergy of all our smiles, happy and proud
to be part of it all.
We can only smile after we close our mouths first. They
might have opened on their own in gasps of amazement at the
overwhelming immensity of the very thought of this “Synergy of
ALL synergies,” the glorious reality of which we can only dis-
cern to an infinitessimally small extent.
Nobel prize winner Herbert Simon adds the matter of
new holons emerging more rapidly. He concludes in his “Parable
of the Two Watchmakers” that complex systems evolve from
24
simple systems much more rapidly if there are stable inter-
mediate forms than if there are not.
I seek to add the matter of holon stability. A sand castle is
more easily toppled down if right below the full castle form as a
holon we immediately have the individual grains of sand. If such
grains are somehow grouped first into more or less firm “sand
bricks,” then we can have a sturdier sand castle made out of
these bricks. This is the principle of the building blocks.
Building blocks made up of building blocks that are in turn made
up of building blocks, enjoy the operation of synergism at every
holarchic level, and the more levels there are, the more stable all
these holons become and the more stable the holons they create.
Stronger is the nation that is made up of strong tribes,
that are, in turn, made up of strong clans and communities that
are made up of strong neighborhoods that are made up of strong
families, than a nation made up directly by individuals with no
intermediate-layer groupings. No wonder large organizations see
it prudent to build chapters and even clusters of chapters!
2. Diversities and Commonalities
In every set of elements or particles, there would be com-
monalities which would be the bonding element for any synergy
to exist and persist. And there would be the diversities which
cause dynamic interactions among the elements or particles, the
dynamism that makes complementation possible, the dynamism
that makes life possible, the dynamism that makes a synergized
whole greater in quality and much greater in magnitude than the
mere sum of its separate and unsynergized parts.
3. Synergism as Crucial Factor in Holarchies
The quantum leap that occurs when separate parts
synergize, a leap that these parts now interacting would make
together, and only in togetherness, exalts every single one of
these parts that now are elements of a greater whole. The ranking
in quality, in such quantum exaltation and value-added
magnification, provides basis for synergies to be ranked as in a
sort of hierarchy, which both Koestler and Wilber call holarchy.
The word “holarchy” is coined and chosen over the word
“hierarchy” for a deliberate reason, which I understand as this
latter word’s being prone to be misinterpreted as a simple
ranking of value. The word hierarchy, as we have gotten ac-
customed to its usual usage, cannot clearly carry the sense of
wholes being dependent on their parts for their very existence.
Thus we have representatives of bigger synergies condescending
upon smaller ones.
Still, I dare add that the phenomenon of holarchy is de-
pendent on the operation of the principle of synergism. Without
synergism, that is the creation of exalted and much greater re-
alities from the coming together of smaller ones, such coming
together of the parts will just be equal to the simple sum of the
parts.
When Henry A. Virkler, Ph.D., a professor of Psychology
in the Palm Beach Atlantic College in Florida, USA, came
across the word “non-summativity” intended to mean that the
workings of the whole are greater than the sum of its parts, he
said “I think the word ‘synergism,’ (i.e., that as two or more
people interact they sometimes produce results that none of them
would in isolation) is clearer than the word ‘nonsummativity.’”
Wilber does not use the word synergy. But a highly-
successful ecological-enterprise leader in West Africa does. Fr.
Godfrey Nzamujo of Benin not only mentions the synergism
principle, he explains it in the quantum context, as he discusses
the empowering shift from the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm to
the quantum paradigm. In a visit to the Philippines early in 2003,
he presented at the Aquinas Research Complex of the University
25
of Sto. Tomas a paper that explains something like a holarchy of
interconnections:
“The solid material objects of classical physics dissolve
at the subatomic level into wavelike patterns of probabilities.
These patterns, moreover, do not represent probabilities of things
but rather probabilities of interconnections. The subatomic
particles have no meaning as isolated entities but can be
understood only as interconnection or correlation among various
processes of observations and measurements. Subatomic parti-
cles are not “things,” but interconnections among things, and
those, in turn, are interconnections among other things, and so
on. In quantum physics, we do not end up with any “things”; we
always deal with interconnections. So here, nature does not
show us any isolated building blocks but rather appears as a
complex web of interrelationsips among the various parts of
unified whole. …”
Fr. Nzamujo’s paper presents a contrast between the
“mechanistic view of the world” and the “systems view of
reality.” The figure presented for the first one has its component
particles encircled, with this explanation for the “mechanistic
view”: “This view is a collection of objects (which) interact with
one another and hence there are relationships among them, but
these relationships are secondary.” He explains that it is the
lines connecting the particles that should be encircled, instead,
and offers this explanation: “In the systems view, we realize that
the objects themselves are networks of relationships embedded
in larger networks. For the systems thinker, the relationships are
primary. The boundaries of the discernible patterns (objects) are
secondary.”
The paper says further down:
“According to the systems view, the essential properties
of an organism, or living system, are properties of the whole,
which none of the parts have (like sugar, for example). These
arise from the interactions and relationships among the parts. CD
Broad highlights this point with the term ‘emergent properties’ to
indicate these properties that “emerge” at a certain level of
complexity but do not exist at lower levels. These properties are
destroyed when the system is dissected, either physically or
theoretically into isolated elements.
“Although we can discern individual parts in any system,
these parts are not isolated and the nature of the whole is always
different from the mere sum of the parts. …Synergy! Principle
of Synergy!
“What a revolution from the dominant western scientific
thinking that ‘In every complex system the behavior of the
whole can be understood entirely from the properties of its
parts.’ This is the Central Concept in the Cartesian Paradigm, the
celebrated Cartesian method of analytic thinking.
“The great shock of the twentieth century was that
‘systems cannot be understood by analysis.’ The properties of
the parts are not intrinsic properties but can be understood only
within the context of the larger whole.”
It is this innergy, the internal synergy of the parts, their
dynamic interrelationships, that accounts for the synergy that, in
turn, accounts for the levels in the holarchy. The dynamic
interactions would differentiate a whole from a mere set (con-
sisting of systems of subsets of subsets, etc.) that we study in
algebra. They turn what is literally a mere collation of people,
like the silent persons in an elevator or an inactive crowd, into a
screaming mob or a wining team.
4. Layers of Information in Holography
Dr. Ibarra “Nim” Gonzalez teaches Semiotics (science of
symbols in communication) under the Applied Cosmic Anthro-
pology doctoral program of the Asian Social Institute, after a
26
long stint as chairman of the Communications Department of the
Ateneo de Manila University. He describes a hologram to be
layer upon layer upon layer of information concentrated by
superimposition on a single flat area, where each layer as
viewed from a distinct angle shows information on how a three-
dimensional object looks from that exact angle of view. Because
there is some amount of distance between the two eyes of
everyone of us, the two eyes are looking at the flat area from two
different angles and are seeing two different layers of the holo-
gram, exactly the way the two eyes triangulate to perceive depth
in actual three-dimensional objects, thus producing a simulation
of that triangulation and what we see as a convincing illusion as
if the object being viewed were indeed three-dimensional.
How holograms are produced is something I won’t ven-
ture to explain here. And in the light of Nim’s explanation, I
don’t really know if the word hologram should also be used to
refer to those three-dimensional images, with cathode-ray
television-screen texture, used in many episodes of the Star
Wars series.
I view the set of layers of information synergized by su-
perimposition to be a hologram, the way I view a set of still
photos synergized by quick-paced strobe-succession to produce
the convincing illusion of motion. Viewed on the big screen, the
illusory motion really affects my mind (“fools it a bit for some
moments”) and heartbeat (many times quickening its pace).
A stereophonic system produces for the mind-ears tan-
dem an illusion as convincing as a hologram produces for the
mind-eyes tandem.
While I know each one to be just playing with illusion,
that is “fooling my mind a bit,” I know that the fooling is just “a
bit” and I can afford to choose to just fully enjoy the experience.
I can intellectually understand the illusions employed in “sensur-
round” movies but I have yet to enjoy the actual experience of
one. This makes me look forward to suspending my thinking
about the multiple synergies involved and just enjoying that ex-
perience.
I bring up here the matter of holograms for another rea-
son. And this is related to the illustration on the cover of this
book. I would have preferred to present the three figures of the
human (the physical body, the ethereal body called Mind, and
the Spirit) as three layers upon one reality, and they should all be
in exactly the same spot. But while the “flatten image” com-
mand in my PhotoShop program integrates all the distinct layers
into one, the unified image shows basically just the first layer
and only portions of the second layer that are not covered by the
first, and only the portions of the third layer that are not covered
by either the first or the second layer.
Only a hologram would allow such superimposition of
complete images of all three layers with each layer accessible to
the eyes from certain specific angles of viewpoint. I’ve seen a
promotional sticker of Star Wars Episode One: Phantom Me-
nace with a hologram superimposing the two images of Anakin
Skywalker and Darth Vader.
But putting a hologram of whatever size on the cover of
this book would make it quite expensive for my publisher to pro-
duce and for readers to buy. So we just have to be contented with
what I actually came up with for the cover illustration, showing
three layers of the Human Holon in a triangular arrangement,
with arrows to show motion towards precise superimposition. In
Part Two I share my thoughts on the reality behind what I
wanted to portray in the cover illustration in the first place.
5. Holon Quadrants in Evolution of Human Dynamics
The highly respected nationalist economist of contem-
porary Philippines, Dr. Sixto K. Roxas compresses into a few
27
paragraphs Ken Wilber’s application of the holon principle to the
evolution of human dynamics. In his unppublished monograph,
Sustainable Development and the National Interest: Intra-
Country Regions and a Four-Quadrant Eight-Level View of
Local Integration (May 18, 2002), “SKR” writes, with all
underscoring in the original:
“Briefly, Ken Wilber takes the term coined by Koestler
(The Ghost in the Machine) to subsume the universal charac-
teristic of all things as made up of units, each a whole in itself,
and a part of larger wholes. Holons have evolved over the
millennia from the time of the ‘Big Bang’ along a trajectory
tracing their passage toward greater and greater complexity and
manifesting ever greater capacities and deeper and wider inter-
connectedness.
“To trace that passage, the holons have to be viewed
under a combination of four aspects: as individuals, and as
collectives, and as having external properties and internal struc-
tures and functions. The combinations of four aspects describe
four quadrants: the individual having two aspects, interior and
exterior, and the collectives having their own interior and
exterior aspects. The system describes four sets of combinations:
an Upper-Right quadrant encompassing the exterior properties
of the individual holon and an Upper-Left, the interior
properties of the individual. A Lower-Left describes the interior
elements of the collective and the Lower-Right the exterior-
collective combination.
“Along each quadrant there is an axis marking the stages
of development the holon undergoes from its simple origins to
the higher degrees of complexity viewed from the quadrant’s
perspective. These axes mark out stages that the internal and
external functions, properties and structures of the individual and
the collective holons have traced as physical particles, chemical
elements and compounds, biological cells, organs, plant and ani-
mal organisms, into human individuals, societies, clans, tribes,
nations, empires, economies, trading networks and so on up the
scale. That passage is viewed from four perspectives represented
by each of the quadrants: individual external, individual inter-
nal, collective internal and collective external.
“When applied to specific communities/organizations in
a specific geographical space and along a particular historical
time segment, the four perspectives provide an integral view of
the development process. For the human societies, at every stage
of development, there are physical, physiological, psychological,
ideological, values and behavioral, organizational properties and
patterns that are relevant to the understanding of the develop-
ment process and its pathological aberrations.”
Dr. Roxas proceeds after these paragraphs to explain
what he calls “Spiral Dynamics.” Readers interested to see Wil-
ber’s full text, with graphic presentations, may read his second
edition of A Brief History of Everything (2000), pp. 63-75.
6. Synergism as Reward for Re-membering?
Let me add my own recent thoughts about the operation
of the synergism principle. I have come to believe in Oneness
and Love as, in the words of Walsch, “all there is.” If indeed the
cosmos is one seamless reality, oneness of all is the reality that
does not have to be changed as we move everyone and every-
thing to unite. All disconnections are in the mind, and the efforts
for unity are all efforts to reawaken awareness to that constant
reality, something like humans do not have to “go to the heaven”
of blissful oneness but we just have to “wake up in it.”
The explanation and appreciation of the synergism prin-
ciple may, therefore, be better if we note well that there is really
no new value-added energy created from the coming together,
just a new value-added energy realized, remembered, rediscov-
ered.
28
So if we are to start from the seamless reality as the
premise, we can see that the Oneness of All is of unimaginable
power worthy of the full sense of the term “almighty.” Further,
we see that all alienation and separation from the Oneness of All,
the Great Whole, the Great Synergy of All Synergies and from
one another drastically weakens us.
To use an analogy that is puny compared to the mag-
nitudes we deal with in the previous paragraph, it’s something
like plucking out John Lennon from the Beatles. We couldn’t
have John Lennon himself anymore the way we had him before.
And the Beatles as such could never be the same ever again.
To use another example much closer to my own experi-
ence, it’s something like what happened when my column-
writing partner was sick and there was even a gap between us.
When I was writing the column item that had to be submitted on
deadline time, but had to do it all alone in that situation, I felt so
weak and found it hard to produce enough sentences to make up
even just half of what I had earlier felt “too limiting” as the
maximum prescribed length for our joint-column submissions.
I was that time not half a two-member “super team”; that
time there was no team at all to speak of. Before we teamed up I
was already a prolific and even overly-self-confident writer. Was
I in effect disempowered by the team-up into overdependence on
it? I could not accept that, “No way!” And I proceeded to pro-
duce what I could consider as a “good-enough” submission. But
having experienced the enhancement of capability brought forth
by the team-up, I had raised my standard of what to call a good
output, including the enjoyment of the process of shaping it.
No, I had not been disempowered by years of synergy
experience into overdependence on the team-up. I was given a
reward, actually we were both rewarded, for teaming up. I think
it was a clue of some sort saying we have been on the right track
in re-membering and enjoyably experiencing a glimpse of the
Oneness of All. I still have to get her view on this, though. But
just to share a bit of a happy ending to that story, I want to assure
you that the gap did not last very long, and our team emerged
into existence anew, a lot stronger than before.
Ponder this: There is no such thing as half a helium atom.

PART TWO:
SYNERGY OF PERSON DIMENSIONS
Virkler also agrees with the concept of characterizing
humans as holons, i.e., that people are both a whole and part of a
system simultaneously. This is the point of this entire work being
titled “Human Holons: Power-Packed Synergies” and the last
part being titled “Walking Nuggets and Magnets.”
As a “walking nugget,” each human being is a very
valuable synergy by itself, of value almost infinitely more times
over than that human being’s “weight in gold.” On the other
hand, as a “walking magnet,” each human is affected by
magnetic fields all around, and creates one’s own magnetic field
to affect all else, and the total picture is one of dynamic
interaction among humans that create and characterize their
synergies such as their families and friendships, their
neighborhoods and communities, and commercial systems and
arrangements for collective self-governance.
Each human is an organism, a cluster of differentiated
cells, acting in a smooth symphony with the least intellectual
supervision necessary. Cell colonies are clusters of identical cells
that can cohere together for survival but are very unstable as
groupings when compared to organisms.
As far as common turn-of-the-millennium reckoning is
concerned, each human is a synergy of three person dimensions,
namely, the body, the mind and the spirit. I have frequently
29
described the human as a soul wearing a matter-energy body.
This, until a student of mine countered by saying the human is
the synergy of soul and body, and I had to agree. I still
maintained, though, that the soul has apparently been the more
decisive of the two elements because of these two elements’
respective developments across a stretch of time where the soul
is immortal and the body, the very useful tool of the soul for
experiencing earth life, grows old, dies and decomposes after it
is left by the life-composing force of the soul.

Chapter 3:
The Living Body— A Synergy
of Active Biosystems
THE BODY itself is a great synergy of dynamic systems (like
respiratory, circulatory, skeletal, muscular, digestive, nervous,
etc.), each of which is itself a synergy of
organs (like the heart, arteries, veins, etc.),
which are made up of widely varying
tissues, each of which is a synergy of cells,
with each cell being a synergy of molecules
of organic elements and compounds, etc.,
etc., down in size to the atoms, atomic nuc-
lei, protons, positrons, and so on. The body
is also a synergy of electrochemical and bio-physical systems.
Information lodged in the DNA of every cell carries as
memory the evolution of each cell, or tissue or organ or system
and therefore embraces a synergy of evolutionary processes, in
dynamic interaction with widely varying kinds of climates and
terrain.
1. A Crucially Vital Connection “What are you doing right now? If your first answer was,
‘nothing’ you are badly mistaken. Right now while you sit quiet-
One has only to breathe consciously while feeling her
ly, a myriad of wonderful events are taking place necessary for
bloodpulse to be challenged to see the vital connection between
your survival. Right now your heart is beating. If you're in ave-
the two ever-ongoing body processes we are, usually, totally
rage physical condition, it beats between 60 and 70 times per
unconscious of. We are sure to see the connection once we
minute, 93,000 times per day, 655,000 times per week, 34 mil-
reaffirm the obvious fact that we do not breathe only so that our
lion times per year, and 2.4 billion beats in the average lifetime.
lungs could live, and the obvious fact that we do not eat only so
What's so amazing is that, most of the time, it fuels itself, paces
that our stomachs and intestines could live. The whole set of
itself, repairs itself, and alters itself in response to lifestyle chan-
intertwined systems is orchestrated so that all the living cells of
ges, with no conscious effort on your part. In addition to your
the body, every single one of the millions and millions of cells of
heart, your liver is detoxifying your blood, your brain is storing
our bodies that we have mostly forgotten about, could eat, drink,
away information, cells are being formed and cells are being
breathe, and continue to live. Let us contemplate all our bodily
destroyed, energy is being used and produced, and many other
systems, and pause for a moment of appreciation for them—
tasks vital to life and function all carry on in a wonderful, har-
could the body survive if any which one of these basic systems
monious way.”
were not there?
Further Bishop says:
Even with our knowledge of the larger holons synergiz-
ing to form our body, I dare say we are all still almost absolutely “Your eyes, your ears, your heart, each of these together
ignorant about our body synergy. Even physicians have had the with its intricate function should inspire awe. The heart of man,
tendency to approximate working comprehension of very spe- from a functional viewpoint is a miracle of performance. Through
cific functions and systems which are their respective specializa- a complex nervous and hormonal feedback regulation system,
tions. Teachers of Biology tend to focus on making sure their the heart and circulatory system maintain the exactly correct rate
students get to memorize names and workings of very distinct and output to supply the correct blood flow for both the mara-
parts but not really the living orchestration. thoner and the couch potato. The parts of you that are func-
tioning at any particular time receive a share of blood in propor-
2. The Silent Synergy
tion to their need, and those that are resting quietly receive their
Before I came across the essay of Dr. Phillip Bishop, carefully metered due.
professor of exercise physiology at the University of Alabama, I
“Your nervous system, too, is marvelously complex. It
could not possibly have even imagined what he was saying.
has the ability to communicate the feel of pain resulting from in-
Bishop has served as a visiting scientist in the NASA Exercise
tense pressure, yet adapts appropriately to the pressure of sitting
Countermeasures Program at Johnson Space Center, Houston.
or standing without distracting neural traffic. A nervous system
He says this, in an essay “Evidence of God in Human Physio-
just like yours precisely controls the muscles of the concert pia-
logy: Fearfully and Wonderfully Made”:
nist playing Chopin, the baseball slugger making contact with 98

30
mph fastball, and the gymnast performing a triple somersault to
a precise landing.
“Your red blood cells, which ‘incidentally’ happen to be
the ideal shape for transporting oxygen, are manufactured and
destroyed at an incredible rate. Approximately 10 million red
blood cells are made every hour, and an equal number destroyed.
If either supply or destruction becomes out of synchrony by as
little as 1%, before long, your life ends due to anemia, or poly-
cythemia, which is to say, your blood gets so thin that oxygen
transport is insufficient or it gets so thick that it can no longer
circulate. Blood clotting is similarly complex requiring coordi-
nated function of at least 11 chemical factors. Should blood clot
too readily or should clots which are formed fail to dissolve, you
die. Should it clot too slowly, again the result is death. Our body
contains hundreds of complex feedback loops whose precision
and reliability are vital to life. Even the most talented design
engineer would be reluctant to undertake such a complicated
project. Too, the margin for error isn't very great. Without know-
ing it, we tread a very narrow path where the smallest error
produces death. Fortunately, the vast majority of the time, we are
not penalized for our ignorance.”
This wonderful orchestration, which I call body synergy,
is established at conception, when the mother’s ovum, with only
half of the mother’s DNA is penetrated and fertilized by a sperm
cell carrying only half of the father’s DNA. The two halves join
up in a single cell, and a new person emerges in that physical
merger. We return to discuss further this miracle of the emerg-
ence of a new life incarnation towards the ending of Part Two of
this book.
What powers this synergy? In The Complete System of
Self-Healing: Internal Exercises (San Francisco, California,
Tao Publisjing, 1996, p. 32), Dr Stephen Chang likens the human
body itself to an electrolytic battery, composed of three parts: (1)
31
the structure, referring to the cells, tissues and the organs, and all
other physical structures that they form; (2) the intra- and inter-
cellular liquids that play important roles in the phenomenon of
generating and conducting electrical energy; and (3) the electric
charge that activates the body and its structures, and is called
different names, like, “life force” or “Chi,” “life energy,”
“spirit,” or “electromagnetism. “Of the three components, the
last – electrical energy – is least understood since its presence is
not immediately obvious to the naked eye,” Dr. Chiang says,
adding that: “Electrical energy is detected only in a roundabout
way. Because it is most obvious when it is absent.” If there is a
partial absence of energy in the body, weakness or disease
invades and grasps hold of the body. “When there is a total
absence of vital energy, there is death.”
Harmony in fully-functioning synergy is like the very
quiet purr of a machine where no parts are worn-out or mis-
aligned. This quiet synergy is the status of ease in healthy
bodies; malfunctions in the system brings about the gasps,
whezes, coughs and knocks an engine makes when it is no
longer a “new and well-oiled machine.” And without smooth
and quiet ease, there is dis-ease.
3. Dead Cells and Living Things
Living cells are the ones that actualize the properties of
being alive in the classic biological sense. The cells, and their
synergies called tissues, and the synergies of tissues called
organs, and so on, are the ones that breathe, eat, digest, repro-
duce, and eventually die, all activities that are exclusive to what
we call “living things.” But wait! The living body combines both
the living and the dead.
Now, what makes me say that? Because some important
parts of your living body are dead cells. All your hair, apart
from the roots, are dead cells. So is the epidermis, the outermost
layer of the skin. So are fingernails and toenails. All these have
protected members of the animal kingdom either from the
elements or from their predators or from both. Neither is this
confined to the animal kingdom. Tree barks are dead cells.
Pushed outward by the growth of the living cells in the
meristematic region, they get all cracked up while staying
together among themselves and with the living cells in an
obvious synergy of functions.
But isn’t the whole tree alive? And would a living tree
be complete and survive without the dead cells that make up its
armor called bark? Would any animal be alive if there were no
“non-living” water at all in its stomach, apart from all that water
making up the bulk of its living cells?
This is where the nature of a part is essentially deter-
mined by the nature of the whole, in the quantum context ex-
plained by Fr. Nzamujo as quoted extensively in an earlier sec-
tion. To be an essential and working part of a living system is to
be alive. In this same quantum context, we can see the blurring
of distinction between what high school Biology simplistically
classifies as living and “non-living” things. Why do I put the
latter term between quotation marks? Because its supposed
status as “non-living” is, at best, controversial and increasingly
getting debunked.
4. The Whole World Alive
If in this sense, therefore, we can consider to be alive the
oxygen in the cells and the oxygen in the lungs, because these
form part of a living animal, what about the oxygen that has left
the exhaling plant but has not yet been breathed in by that ani-
mal? Do we say that the oxygen is alive while inside the plant,
then it dies after it gets expelled by the stomata, and then begins
to live again in the animal’s nasal cavity? No! We can say that
it never left the living thing, which is the synergy between the
32
plant and the animal. The two organisms in life-partnering
synergy, called symbiosis, make up a system the same way a pair
of stars so “far apart” make up a single binary system. This
symbiotic system is actually part of a much larger and much
complex living system called the “ecosystem” or “web of life.”
The web of life does not merely weave together living organ-
isms, the web of life is itself alive! The entire, contiguous, syn-
ergetic, ecosystem is alive!
According to inventor-scientist James Lovelock, Earth is
alive and functions like a superorganism in which living things
interact with geophysical and chemical processes to maintain
conditions suitable for life. Lovelock's theory, named the “Gaia
Hypothesis” after the ancient Mother Earth goddess of Greek
mythology, is a revival of the theory first put forward by James
Hutton in 1785, with one major difference: at the time Lovelock
was heard out and given a standing ovation by the American
Geophysical Union in 1988, science was already in possession
of tools to explore some of the vast interactions that govern glo-
bal systems. (Source: Eugene Linden, “How the Earth Maintains
Life,” Time Magazine, Nov. 13, 1989.)
As an organism, Earth is said to have all its waters —
contiguous in all three forms — as its grand circulatory system,
the ground which harbors all the animals as its digestive system,
etc. etc. And what has the Earth got for its mind? Let’s save that
for later.
Yes, I firmly believe that the ecosystem itself, with all its
component and dynamically interacting parts, is alive! The
planetary ecosystem called Earth is alive, and we have also
named her “Gaia.”
5. ‘ElectroChemical Machine’
To be an essential and working part of a living system is
to be alive. It is however foolhardy to conclude that we can
conclusively extrapolate the essence of life of the living body by
analyzing from the perceivable charactertistics of the parts of
that living body. It is foolhardy to view electrochemical pro-
cesses in the functioning of a healthy heart, for example, and
view the electrochemical processes of the brain and the nerves,
and then confidently, even arrogantly, conclude that the living
body is simply an “electrochemical machine.”
Even if we were to acknowledge the somewhat mys-
terious workings of magnetism and various fields and energies,
we cannot afford to be that dismissive of the still-unknown but
consequent realities behind the workings of the living body and
say with an air of total certainty: “the living body is simply an
electrochemical machine.” After all, the most advanced of our
bio-technical sciences have not fully understood what, precisely,
is the “life force.” We can only describe it, acknowledge whe-
ther it is still there from one patient case to another. But we still
don’t know what “makes it tick.”
Mentally reducing a partially-perceived reality to the
confines only of those parts of the reality that are perceivable is
reductionism. Both the noble attempts of medical professionals
to palliate, to manage uncomfortable or destructive symptoms,
and the noble attempts to “cure the root causes” of those symp-
toms, may all just be in the realm of symptoms, after all, of pal-
liation of shallow symptoms and deep symptoms. Without fully
understanding the life force, we cannot really know for sure. So
while I thank the doctors for all their efforts, I cannot easily go
along with the belief within the profession and in broader society
that they cure me, that they are the ones curing me, or that I am
really getting cured.
In his book, A Guide to Creative, Responsive and Self-
Reliant Medicine (Manila: Anvil, 1995), Joaquin G. Tan ob-
serves:
33
“The root problem orthodox medical science faces then
is directly connected with this reductionist image of the human
being. Since we are all affected by this reductionist view, we
must think through and take a stand on what kind of being we
truly are: a biochemical one or a four-fold interweaving being….
The first image cannot heal and will ultimately reduce the
human being into its limited chemical material image. The battle
for the 21st century is then a battle for the true image of the hu-
man being. Medicine is only one arena of human life where this
battle is raging. In agriculture, psychology, sociology and other
sciences involving life, a revolution in thinking and practice is
underway.
“Whatever we discern ourselves to be will determine not
only our disease or health tendencies and the kind and conduct
of therapy but also the way we will bring the rest of humanity
towards a certain direction in evolution. Clearly, the biochemical
image of the human being (if we allow it to continue as the
leading thought of development particularly in medicine), will
bring humanity towards self-mutilation and self-destruction.
Thus this identity crisis is critical and each one's stance is equal-
ly crucial. Once this direction is resolved in each individual, he
or she must militantly stand by it and live it or else others will
push for their own version, consciously or unconsciously, with
all their power and might.
“For those who have the will to take a stand, this true
image must then guide one towards adjusting one's lifestyle,
work situation, and relationships to be worthy of such an image.
It should give one the insight to help others to get rid of their
blinders and together work in dismantling the illusion-making
structures that exist. We should replace them with new structures
and relationships worthy of the true human being.”
There are indicators that Humankind is going in that
direction. Large groups of people are rediscovering the wisdom
of indigenous knowledge systems and traditional health care
modalities, paying more due reverence to the “primitive” tribal
guardians of these modalities, and increasingly wisening up to
the lucrative business angles behind well-funded campaigns to
discredit holistic health practices that no longer depend on dip-
loma-carrying professionals or on factory-made and chemical-
based medicines.
More and more people are increasingly prepared to pay
full heed to these words of Tan in his work just cited:

Chapter 4:
Mind—Energies Comprehending
and Appreciating Experiences
THE VERY soft gray matter called the brain is thought to be the
“hardware,” and the “program software” is even much softer —
it is actually a non-matter reality (or “matter” in the form of
energy). The “data software” is composed of
all the memories, thoughts, ideas, etc. that
the mind can store, retrieve, combine,
synthesize, analyze, and judge in terms of
veracity and significance. It combines the
operation of the electrochemical operations
of the brain, which is part of the body, and
the whispers from the innermost real self, called the spirit,
barely discernible under the noise of information gluts and near-
total preoccupation with the involving tasks of rational analysis.
The mind has been compared to a precisely configured
bundle of energies functioning as an energy distribution and
utilization system, a mobilizer of certain physical body subs-
tances into the body which register as emotions and feelings, a
34
datafiles storage system we know as memory, a data analysis
center, and an analysis-reprogramming center.
As a precisely-configured bundle involving electric, elec-
tromagnetic and electrochemical triggers for these and for our
densely-physical body functions, the mind or psyche resides in
our psychic or ethereal body, where the energy patterns create
definite markings and emit wave patterns in the etheric medium.
1. The Energy-Ethereal Body
This ethereal-energy nature of the psychic body also
includes the aura, which is usually seen as a faint glow of color
extending some inches outward from the densely-physical body
beyond the skin, chakras or centers of energy, from which points
we make our choices and decisions (we go back to this later),
and the energy channels that have been thoroughly mapped for
acupuncture healing.
About the aura, W.E. Butler in How to Read the Aura,
(Northamploshire, England: The Aquarian Press, 2nd edition,
1979, p. 10), tells us of at least two that a person can have: the
more commonly seen and what relatively is practically unseen.
Interpreting the dictionary definition of aura (as a “psy-
chic electro-vital and electro-mental effluvium,” Butler says: “It
is now well established that all activities of our physical body
are associated with electric currents which circulate throughout
the organs, and which actually form a definite electric ‘field’
around us. … So we have in and around us an ‘electrical field of
force’ which make up a composite emanation which we call the
‘aura.’ Although the term is one which is objected to by those
who have had training as physicists, there is a name already in
use, and this is the ‘etheric aura.’”
Further down (p. 13), Butler writes: “Occultists claim
that, as well as controlling the intake and egress of physical ma-
terial from the body, the etheric body also draws vital energy, or
Prana from the sun or other other forms of energy from the earth
itself, for use in the living economy of the body cells. These
energies circulate throughout the etheric body and its dense
material counterpart, and having supplied the needs of the
organism, they are radiated out of the etheric body in a particular
haze which extends all round the body for some inches beyond
its surface. This haze, which is usually the first part of the aura
to be seen, is known as the etheric aura. Since the etheric body
is so closely connected with all the vital processes of the (dense-
ly-physical) body, the appearance which the etheric aura presents
is usually a good guide to the physical health of the person
concerned….”
Dr. Stephen Chang (The Complete System of Self-Heal-
ing: Internal Exercises [San Francisco, California: Tao Publish-
ing, 1986, p. 32.], corroborates this. He says energy “can be seen
by the naked eye to emanate from the body and act as an
indicator of health… The colors of the aura have been deter-
mined to be reflective of the owner’s health and energy level.
Light clear colors indicate good health and high energy levels.
Dark heavy colors indicate disease. The color of death is black.”
Butler (p. 16) also talks “what we may describe as the
‘spiritual aura,’ and here the area over which it extends beyond
the (densely-physical) body varies from a few feet in the case of
(spiritually) unevolved people to yards or even miles in the case
of highly developed people. It is said in the East that the spiritual
aura of the Lord Gautama Buddha extended by two hundred
miles, and they say that this whole planet is held in the aura of
the very great Being. This is also Christian teaching, though it is
usually restricted to the presence of Deity: ‘In Him we live and
move and have our being.’”
Let’s talk about the chakras.
35
Butler (1979, p. 35) shares with us a comparison and
contrast of two schools of thought on chakras. Butler writes: the
“general occult teaching is that the etheric body draws vitality
from the sun and distributes it to the various parts of the body.
Another teaching, the western esoteric one, teaches that the
etheric body is drawing energy not only from the sun but from
the earth as well.” This western thinking, which Butler considers
to be “a fuller exposition of what happens in this drawing in of
vitality, affirms that there are certain points within the etheric
body, all located along the spinal column, through which this
dual stream of energy is passed into the physical body. This is
also taught in the other school, but the number of nature and
number of ‘distribution ponts’ of chakras, as they are termed in
the east, are differently described in the two systems.
Butler continues: “In ordinary theosophical teaching,
there are said to be seven of these chakras or ‘centers,’ namely,
the center above the head known generally as the ‘thousand–pe-
talled lotus,’ the center between the eyes, the throat center, the
heart center, the solar plexus center, the spleen center and the
sacral center at the base of the spine. In the western teraching,
the centers are given as the center above the head, the center at
the throat, the heart center, the sex centre, and the center below
the feet. (In both systems the center above the head is located in
that part of the aura which extends above the head, and in the
western system the center below the feet is also said to be in in
that part of the aura which extends downwards below the soles
of the feet.)’
The mind also carries the “data files” in the crudest form
simply for storage purposes. But absolutely thorough this data-
storage function is. All data fed by all the senses are stored in the
memory banks of the brain (memory is also stored elsewhere,
like in the DNA sequence, as discussed in chapter 10), but there
are varying degrees of facility in memory retrieval due to a large
number of intervening factors including age and particular state
of mental alertness (whether or not one is sleepy, intoxicated, or
mentally exhausted), but everything is stored and can be called
forth by speaking to the psychic body through hypnosis or other
means.
The mind also carries feelings and emotions in the form
of understood thoughts or of half-conscious thoughts. Butler
(1979, p. 16) shares this insight on the interrelationship of mind’s
mental operation and the matter of emotion which we associate
with separate parts of the body, that is, respectively, the brain
and the heart, but are actually “all in the mind”:
“I think we may safely say that seldom indeed do we
think without some admixture of emotion, and seldom do we
react emotionally without some thought entering into the pro-
cess. The two aspects of consciousness – emotion and mind –
are closely linked together….”
The mind is a basic human faculty for “making sense of”
one’s own experiences and appreciating each one negatively or
positively. With the mind, one somehow understands and appre-
ciates one’s own direct experiences and other people’s experi-
ences shared by various means. There can be appreciation with
deep feeling, as in direct experiences, and also appreciation in
terms only of considering an experience (usually a vicarious
one) a chunk of information just important enough to store on
file under an active folder in your mental hard drive. And yes,
the human mind also stores (memorizes) and analyzes (it thinks),
things that human-made tools like computers and calculators can
do much faster and more accurately, but without appreciating.
The mind is also the basic human faculty for experiencing appre-
ciation.
Computers can never learn appreciation. Moreover, the
mind is wont to value more the person’s direct experiences than
36
all other sorts of relatively irrelevant data a computer operator
makes it process (“garbage in”) and has no capacity for any such
valuation. All professional assurances that “This won’t hurt one
bit” cannot convince the mind of one who had earlier actually
experienced being traumatically hurt by an injection needle. You
can make him read all the books and Internet downloads telling
him the shot is not supposed to “hurt one bit” and his past
experience will still dominate his mind.
“Mind and body must be as one,” says Surf Reyes, who
presented a paper before the Lambat-Liwanag Conference on
Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education. “People who have
become attached to the thinking process, suffer the loss of
synchronization of body and mind. You see people eating while
thinking of problems. Their bodies are in the present, breathing,
walking, etc., while their minds are in the past or the future,
regretting and worry ing, analyzing and planning in the virtual
reality of thought. Even in bed at night, the body remains
restlessly awake while the mental process uncontrollably
continues. There is stress, dis-ease. In this state of fragmentation,
of internal conflict, being in the awesome miracle of creation is
ignored. Ignoring turns to ignorance.” @@@
He adds: “This brings us to the need to redefine the term
‘intelligence.’ True intelligence certainly can not be measured,
and the term ‘I.Q.’ is a typical example of verbal delusion. The
intellect only appears to have intelligence, much like a computer.
It has no intelligence of its own, like the moon does not have its
own light but merely reflects light from the sun. True
intelligence is creative consciousness. It expresses itself on a
practical level in creative work, in unconditional love, and in
knowing how to live in unconditional happiness. However much
they know, those who can love or be happy only if certain
conditions exist cannot be said to have intelligence. They are
enslaved by conditions and consequently, by fear, pain and
suffering. And if that be intelligence, then what use do we have
for it?”
2. Synergetic Accumulation of Individual Thoughts
Ayn Rand speaks about “Conceptual Integrations.” She
writes: “Philosophy is a system of ideas. By its nature as an
integrating science, it cannot be a grab bag of isolated issues. All
philosophic questions are interrelated. One may not, therefore,
raise any such questions at random, without the requisite
context. If one tries the random approach, then questions (which
one has no means of answering) simply proliferate in all
directions. ….The difference between an infant’s mental state
and yours lies in the number of conceptual integrations your
mind has performed. You have no choice about the necessity to
integrate your observations, your experiences, your knowledge
into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles.” (underscoring supplied)
And R. Buckminster Fuller says: “Children conduct their
spontaneous explorations and experiments with naive
perceptivity. They have an innate urge first subjectively to sort
out, find order in, integratively comprehend, and synergetically
memory-bank their experience harvests as intertransformability
system sets. Thereafter they eagerly seek to demonstrate and
redemonstrate these sets as manifest of their comprehension and
mastery of the synergetic realizability of the system's physical
principles. Consequently children are the only rigorously pure
physical scientists. They accept only sensorially apprehensible,
experimentally redemonstrable physical evidence.”
I would add that the intellectualization of the separative
ego comes to a child being applauded by current society to have
reached the “age of reason.” At this age, the child imbibes a
rationality that rejects the reality of anything that is not
measurable and perceptible by any of only five of the human
senses. With human civilization having gained confidence in the
37
collective mastery of these only five senses, the level of
confidence has grown to the level of absolute certainty that
whatever cannot be so perceived by any of these only five senses
are not real and that whatever cannot be understood and
established by human science cannot be accepted as real. A child
then learns to take her or his individual self as a completely
separate entity that interacts with everyone and everything
around him or her, being wary of some and being friendly to
others, on the basis only of self-interest, and to look at human
groupings only as human-created mental constructs for purely
practical selfish interests.
Upon reaching this so-called “age of reason,” the child
begins to stubbornly reject the reality or importance of all that
society’s only five senses and finite brain-use cannot grasp and
consider as acceptable reality. In short, we can say that when a
child reaches the “age of reason” he or she becomes unreason-
able. Honest admission of reasonable levels of uncertainty with-
out the drive to find out fast, and the appreciation of exhilarating
experiences without intellectual comprehension, are discou-
raged. Wonderment and imagination, and appreciation of what
is indescribable in society’s very limited existing vocabulary, are
to be ignored or at least increasingly “outgrown.” No wonder
Peter Pan has refused to grow up!
There is this novel, The Little Prince by Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry, which has been described as a mirror held up to
us, telling us how far we have strayed from the in-born wisdom
of the child. Since recently, the pejorative term “childish” has
had an appropriately positive twin: child-like.
3. Synergetic Accumulation of Collective (Social) Thoughts
Ken Wilber (A Brief History of Everything, Second Ed.,
2000, pp. 15-16) offers this explanation of a profound process:
 “The human at birth is not yet socialized into any sort of
moral system—it is ‘preconventional.’ The human then learns a
general moral scheme that represents the basic values of the
society it is raised in—it becomes ‘conventional.’ And with even
further growth, the individual may come to reflect on his or her
society and thus gain some modest distance from it, gain a
capacity to criticize it or reform it—the individual is to some
degree ‘postconventional.’
“Thus, although the actual details and the precise
meanings of that development sequence are still hotly debated,
everybody pretty much agrees that something like those three
broad stages do indeed occur, and occur universally. These are
orienting generalizations: they show us, with a great deal of
agreement, where the important forests are located, even if we
can’t agree on how many trees they contain.
“My point is that if we take these types of largely-agreed-
upon orienting generalizations from various branches of
knowledge—from physics to biology to psychology to theology
—and if we string these orienting generalizations together, we
will arrive at some astonishing and often-profound conclusions,
conclusions that, as extraordinary as they might be, nonetheless
embody nothing more than our already-agreed-upon knowledge.
The beads of knowledge are already accepted, it is only
necessary to string them together as a necklace.”
Victor McGill shares his own insights on Wilber’s basic
concepts. He says, in this portion of a download from McGill’s
website.
“Aristotle first developed the idea of thesis, antithesis
and synthesis. Hegel later rephrased this as a “Dialectic.”
Whenever something new arises (thesis), such as when we arrive
at a new level of being, a shadow will also develop that seems to
contradict it (as its antithesis). These two opposing aspects must
38
be understood from a more encompassing understanding that
embraces both the thesis and the antithesis (synthesis). This
process describes how growth along the spectrum of
consciousness happens.
“We begin on something new. We struggle to understand
it. Wilber calls this stage pre-conventional. As we do come to
understand it we become conventional. But, as we come to
understand it, the antithesis appears and we realise the thesis was
not fully correct and we must move on to the post-conventional
when we go beyond the previous understanding - and the
synthesis.”
McGill gives as an example the entire epoch since
slavery first appeared in the pre-conventional stage and it
appeared to be a wonderful new innovation, much better than
simply killing fellow-humans defeated in war.
Slavery, he says, enabled structures like the pyramids to
be built and was unquestionably accepted as an integral part of
the social fabric of societies for several more millennia - it was
conventional all that time. Eventually we came to realize that
slavery was not a good thing – the human race reached the post-
conventional stage — and slavery was abolished, albeit not quite
easily (it caused the American civil war), but decisively and
permanently.
4. The Empowering Paradigms
The unifying, embracive and empowering paradigms or
frameworks of thought and behavior are being proposed to the
Philippine academe and society as a whole by the Lambat-
Liwanag Network of Centers for Empowering Paradigms. These
are promoted as alternatives to currently-dominant paradigms
that are divisive, eclectic, and disempowering. They were earlier
collated and created by the SanibLakas Foundation, which
convened this mainly-academe-based network under its program
thrust for Human Development and Harmony. By the
Foundation’s act of collating these as underpinned by the
principle of synergism, the movements and organizations
separately advocating equivalents of these paradigms are given
the basis for pursuing their separate efforts together, thus
synergizing them to pack more power than they separately ever
had before.
It has long been observed that the currently-dominant
paradigms tend to divide people, things, and human concerns
into disconnected or even conflicting groupings or categories.
The currently-dominant paradigms restrict the growth and
actualization of the human potential in most people. Thus
divided and stunted, these people are vulnerable to domination
and exploitation.
The Empowering Paradigms remove artificial and
unnecessary walls of division placed among people, things, and
human concerns. They promote strong synergies among diverse
factors/elements with commonality as basis of unity and
diversity as the enriching dynamic force (not at all as a problem
to solve or as anything to tolerate). They support the return of
total human growth toward the full rediscovery and realization
of the human potential. Thus the Empowering Paradigms are
deemed most helpful for the full flowering of the human
potential, for individual self-actualization and the continuing
collective evolution of human civilization. They promote total
human development and harmony.
A few examples: “Holistic Health Care,” instead of the
currently-dominant eclectic, overspecialized or narrow health-
care systems; “Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature,”
instead of wanton environment destruction or, at best, purely
human-needs-centered, utilitarian view of environment; “Light-
Seeking and Light-Sharing Education,” instead of the current
data-focused, teacher-centered, grades-indicated, competition-
39
driven, purely-intellectual educational approaches; “Civics and
Democratic Governance” instead of the condescending
accommodation of token “citizen participation” in the affairs of
government.
Lambat-Liwanag Network did not invent these
paradigms, but merely tried to sharply articulate certain ideals
that are both achievable and very desirable, in contrast to the
currently-existing paradigms. The Empowering Paradigms are
therefore nothing new. What the Lambat-Liwanag Network may
have been able to contribute is pointing out the threads of con-
sistency among these and also among the paradigms that we
want them to supplant.
One afternoon in October 2001, the University of Sto.
Tomas hosted a Lambat-Liwanag general conference on all the
paradigms, and these were discussed simultaneously by para-
digm-specific workshop groups. In June 29 the following year,
the network started a monthly series of 15 paradigm-specific
conferences, with each paradigm given plenary focus for a
longer period. Before each of these paradigm-specific con-
ferences is over, we form and commission a Lambat-Liwanag
task force on the paradigm concerned. By the time the entire
series ends sometime in September 2003, we will be having 15
task forces all working to further enrich, refine, propagate, and,
mainstream them.
Beyond using words, the best way to fight for freedom is
to will ourselves to be free and start behaving accordingly. Be-
yond explanations, the best way to promote any ideal is to
joyfully live that ideal. Beyond all our work, as the Network
Council, paradigm task forces, member-entities, etc., the best
way really for us to refine, propagate and mainstream the
Empowering Paradigms is to write them out daily, from moment
to moment, with our very own thoughts, words and deeds.
 The titles and component points of all the “15
Empowering Paradigms” are presented in the Appendices
section of this book. But I want to underscore here that all these
titles uphold and describe synergies and that is what makes each
of these paradigms empowering. They either show tandems,
where I underline here the conjuction “and”, or place crucially-
important synergy-oriented qualifiers (which I italicize here), in
these examples: “Sense of History and Sense of Mission”
(Paradigm 4, which should not be allowed to bore us with
historical details, because the point is, and only is, the dynamic
relationship between sense of history and sense of mission, not
either nor both of them separately); “Gender Sensitivity, Equal-
ity and Harmony”(Paradigm, 8, where the term gender harmony
is not supposed to be mistaken simply as a substitute for
women’s liberation, although the paradigm should include that);
“Holistic Health” (Paradigm 2, where even the word health
consciously revives the sense of wholeness that should be
intrinsic in it); “Human Dignity and Harmony: Human Rights
and Peace” (Paradigm 14); Associative Economics, Social
Capital and Sustainable Development”(Paradigm 10); “Syn-
aesthetics: Art From the Heart” (Paradigm 15). The paradigm
title “Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships,” is not
referring to families or to friendships as separate topics both of
which have already been discussed and belabored to death, but is
precisely referring to the dynamic mutuality of enrichment.
Talking about friendships alone without relating this
topic to family dynamics, or talking about families alone,
without relating this topic to friendships, or talking about
aesthetics without the need to break down two sets of divisive
walls, or talking about culture without bringing in the role of the
community itself as its ultimate creator, have all been ongoing
for the past decades, comfortably within and even in support of
the disempowering dominant paradigms. Doing any of that does
not even touch the empowering paradigms.
40
This view may have started off as my own personal view
long ago, and I am glad that it has very long ago stopped being
a personal passion that can die completely if I were to die
tomorrow morning or even within the next hour, something none
of us has any control over. The very good news is that this sharp
clarity, along with the needed passion to pursue it, has been
categorically adopted together in the very first and in the
succeeding meetings of the Lambat-Liwanag Network Council,
which has collectively adopted adjustments in the paradigm
titles and component points, the only body authorized to adopt
such changes for the network. The Council does not meet often,
but when it does, all its members commit to devote quality time
in passing upon the policies and recommendations on the agenda
because the whole network is officially committed to what the
Council approves.
We have indeed come a long way from the time the
passion for pushing these paradigms through was perhaps mostly
a personal one, for Lambat-Liwanag as an organization has
turned this determination into a movement of the “expanding
we.” To mistake this as a personal view of this author is
therefore to insult the Network itself. And my very recent
formal exit from the Council as Network convenor (to continue
relating afterwards only as lead consultant, while focusing on
other synergism-oriented networks) should underscore this point.
This is the reason why efforts have had to be exerted to
make the Lambat-Liwanag paradigm-specific conferences and
the task forces they create very much aware of this crucially-
important point: that the living application of the principle of
synergism in these areas of human and social concern is the
niche and raison d’etre (reason for being) of Lambat-Liwanag,
the mainly-academe-based alliance, and of all the research work
it seeks to dynamically-direct and orchestrate. All other
purposes of the alliance are to be merely supportive of and
secondary to this focus. Otherwise, Lambat-Liwanag will
become still another addition to the already overcrowded world
of “do-everything-good” and “research-everything-worth-
knowing” entities, and Lambat-Liwanag would have no unique
value for human development and harmony, and no reason to
exist.
Since the subculture within the academe can be expected
to be already accustomed to the disempowering state of affairs,
and considering the state of the educational system in most
countries including the Philippines (as discussed by Alvin
Toffler in his The Third Wave), the academe as a social
institution is expected to confront our efforts with multifaceted
and even subliminal resistance. For example, the academe or
individual academic institutions or individual professionals, for
example, may choose to meet the concepts of challenge of
“phenomenological research” or even the quantum paradigm,
with a closed mind, even with self-righteous contempt, and
continue to uphold the Cartesian-Newtonian frameworks making
hard statistical data the only indicator of acceptable truths.
Such a heavy task, therefore, of seeking to inject the
empowering paradigms into the academe challenges all its
leading proponents to have two things: (1) very sharp clarity of
mind and heart on the essence and basic points of the
empowering paradigms (which they might at any point
overconfidently feel they have already known fully from the
very start), and (2) much patience so that the work, despite all
the big and small subcultural, institutional and personal
obstacles, can be pursued, even if gradually, on the basis of
firmly uniting on such very sharp clarity.
Aside from relating with the academe, all researches and
social conclusions collected by Lambat-Liwanag ought to be
viewed in living synergy with praxis on the personal level. This
is the synergy of the whole LightShare program of the
41
SanibLakas ng Taonbayan Foundation in partnership with the
Lambat-Liwanag Network which was spun-off to full organi-
zational autonomy from the Foundation in February 2003. The
Foundation’s “Mandates of Program Thrusts and Programs:
Clarifications, Refinements and Updates,” issued in January
2003 states:
“Develop (research, collate, refine) and popularize the
synergism-oriented paradigm shifts for human development and
harmony for personal application, and for academic adoption
and social application. Both the personal and the academic com-
ponents of this process and of all its subprocesses have to be
intertwined in synergy, the personal component being the experi-
ential basis and ultimate usefulness of the output, and mobilizing
the academic component as the broad and prestigious social-
mainstreaming mechanism, which would otherwise remain in
the full service of effectively perpetuating the dominant (re-
strictrive and divisive) paradigms.” (emphasis in the original)
This mandate is in a much broader synergy-oriented
framework of pushing forward human development and har-
mony. The same document quoted above says the following
about this thrust:
SanibLakas shall seek to “(e)ducate and facilitate for
synergy as many people as possible, in the shortest time
possible, to popularize and apply the synergism-oriented
paradigm shifts for personally-rooted human development and
harmony,” thus promoting human individual and collective
actualization, empowerment and harmony. (underscoring in the
original)
Yes, the synergism principle and its empowering
applications in the various areas of human concern can only be
valuable if active and felt in personally-rooted human
development as the underpinning for broader and broader human
synergies.
5. Value of Experience in the Learning Process
Conventional Christianity had many defects, in the view
of Martin Luther, so he had not just one but as many as 95 new
theses nailed to the church door. Teilhard de Chardin had his
own new theses. Both men had to suffer the antithesis in the
form of expulsion and persecution from the powerful Church
organization, before members of the Second Vatican Ecumenical
Council saw the light of synthesis and much of what the two had
said has since been officially integrated in the contemporary
teachings of the Catholic Church.
One cannot simply lament the terrible mistakes of the
past, as in the record of the Christian Church in, for example,
persecuting Copernicus and Galileo for opposing the “flat-
world” geocentric dogma, or wish subjunctively that human
wisdom could leap directly toward the correct perceptions and
analyses. The period of official ignorance, once such darkness
of ignorance ends, adds to the profoundness and weight of the
lesson learned. Publicly admitted or not, the debacle must have
taught many powerful people the value of honest humility.
Edison is said to have discovered almost 300 ways how
not to make a lightbulb before he discovered how to success-
fully make one. And Robert Kiyosaki writes in his Rich Dad’s
Cashflow Quadrant (Warner Books, 1998, p. 232.): “Just inside
every problem lies an opportunity… inside every disappointment
lies a priceless gem of wisdom. Whenever I hear someone say.
‘I’ll never do that again,” I know I am listening to someone who
has stopped learning. They have let their disappointments stop
them. Disappointment has turned into a wall erected among
them instead of a foundation from which to grow taller.”
Swedish tennis player Bjorn Borg, who won six French
Opens and five-straight Wimbledons (1976-80), once said: “My
greatest point is my persistence. I never give up in a match.
However down I am, I fight until the last ball. My list of mat-
ches shows that I have turned a great many so-called irretriev-
able defeats into victories.”
These are happy stories. There are tragic ones, resulting
from inability to get over traumatic failures in childhood and
youths. Some of these stories involve trained animals. Jim Dor-
nan, initiator of the super-successful “Network 21” alternative
marketing and education system, said this in one of his
inspirational tapes, titled Posture:
“The world is full of stories like this. In the circus world
there’s a story of the elephants in their early youth chained with
big chains to big stakes so they won’t leave. And you know,
circus elephants are then able to be kept in captivity with small
little ropes and small little sticks. Because they had learned so
well as babies that that they couldn’t free their legs from this
chain that they will not try as grown elephants to free their legs
when all they’d have to do is take a step and it would break. But
they are so conditioned And there are stories written about
elephants that have died in circus fires, chained only by a small
rope and a small stick. And all they would have has to do is to
walk out But because they were so sure it wouldn’t work, they
just stood there and allowed themselves to perish because they
had been conditioned in their youth it was not possible to move
that leg, because they tried before.”
Dornan used the parallelism to underscore that in the
business system he started, that has grown worldwide and made
thousands of people in various countries happy millionaires. The
difference between those who succeeded in the business and
those who failed was that the latter ones quit after initial dif-
ficulties they were dead sure they could never recover from.

42
Initial failure should always be a challenge to learn more and do
better the next time, Dornan said. Apparently Bjorn Borg
became what he is in the world of sports because he took up
such a challenge instead of letting himself be drowned by early
difficulties.
Some of a novel’s episodes can really be tear-jerking
dramas, but the entire novel can be a happy one; in the same
vein, some parts of a process may indeed look ugly, sound ugly
and feel ugly, but the entire process, a “synergy of episodes,”
may well be very beautiful. Such may be the process of learning,
the process of moving from not knowing to knowing, a process
that may pass through long periods of earnestly mistaking some
falsehoods for the truth.
Experience has a crucial role in the learning process, in
fact I would dare say it is the only real teacher. For example,
experience is the only factor in the discernment of reality
through the smokescreen of perceptions.
As the last speaker in the launching lecture series of
SoPHIA (SOcial Praxis Holistically Integrating Asia), held in
commemoration of the Ruby Anniversary of the Asian Social
Institute (ASI) where I teach in the doctoral program, I said:
“We need to help the Academe grow well beyond the
confines of school campuses, the better to gather, process and
spread a unified and unifying Wisdom instead of mountain heaps
of supposedly-objective raw data. Let the Academe earnestly
embrace into its ranks the masters and doctors from the kulan-
dong (a Filipino word for a makeshift tent), from the University
of Real Life, the organic intellectuals who are active practi-
tioners of profound human actualization and whose knowledge
is, therefore, ‘really real.’ Let such a drastically expanded Aca-
demic community seek out, observe fully, earnestly embrace and
respectfully synthesize the actual experiences of the ordinary
43
people, learn well from them, and spread far and wide the Light
of Wisdom from them. Let this growth be reflected in the
breadth and depth of its research and community service acti-
vities as well as in the enhanced content-worthiness of its ins-
tructional endeavors. Let the Academe, thus greatly improved,
learn well to heed, to think, to speak, and even to breathe, in the
language of the ordinary people’s very own daily lives.”
This was in response to the first lecture in that series,
titled “Theorizing from Experiences: Focus on a Research and
Pedagogical Approach for Social Transformation” delivered by
Dr. Mina M. Ramirez, ASI President. Under the leadership of Dr.
Ramirez, SoPHIA seeks to move the academe into a paradigm
shift to empower and uplift the people. This is, indeed, a big
challenge. But one that can really be done and must be done. My
level of confidence that this can indeed be done, even if
painstakingly, was explained in the third to the last paragraph of
my talk:
“We are not alone. Some have started out before we did.
Last year, ASI joined six other schools who had earlier come
together to work together in developing, refining and main-
streaming about a dozen empowering paradigms. That network,
called Lambat-Liwanag, which is the Filipino equivalent of
Network of Light, is committed to suppoprt the efforts of ASI
and each one of a growing number of other member-institutions.
Just this week, up to yesterday, a conference was held in Quezon
City by E-Net, another education-oriented network, to address
the obstacles blocking millions of disadvantaged children from
having access to formal education. There are many such efforts
in the Philippines both within and beyond the formal educational
system, and there are much much more throughout Asia.
SoPHIA emerges to seek out and join them, not to claim
leadership of any sort over them, but to contribute what we can,
in a grander synergy of Light purged of any tendency for even
friendly but nontheless self-serving competition. We cannot em-
ploy separative means for embracive ends! The wisdom that is
SoPHIA knows that much. SoPHIA is therefore a gift to be
shared with all, among all. We will continually endeavor to make
it a very valuable gift to substantially help integrate all of Asia. I
believe that we are indeed on the right track on this.”
Earlier, during her launching talk for the series, Dr. Mina
M. Ramirez lamented the obsrved lack of impact of the Phil-
ippine higher education system:
“We have five hundred graduate schools and two hund-
red universities, 95 percent of which are Christian schools. In
these schools we teach the language of the monetized economy;
we teach democracy; we teach religion; we teach all the skills
and competencies to be able to be on par with our Asian neigh-
bors and our western counterparts. Yet there is empirical evid-
ence of a long-standing monetary poverty, of voiceless citizens
in a democracy, of rampant violations of anti-graft laws.”
That same SoPHIA Lecture-Forum Series received well
the inputs of Dr. Florentino Hornedo, the leader of Filipinos
working with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO), who spoke about Culturally-
Rooted Education.
Dr. Hornedo described the present-day (“now”) thinking
of Filipinos about Transcendence/Divinity; Nature; other people;
and Self, and contrasted all this with their equivalents in an
empowering/desirable (“not yet”) mode. That would spell a
profound paradigm shift in viewing these realities, from the
“now” to the “not yet”: From viewing Transcendence/Divinity or
God as a patron to run to for help, to viewing God as a horizon
by which one discovers countless opportunities for self-
upliftment; from viewing Nature as a simple resource to viewing
Nature as an organic system one belongs in and blends into;
44
from viewing others also for patronage to viewing others as an
organic structure of human interrelationships; and, finally, from
viewing oneself as a cut-and-dried artifact, into a project, a
work-in-progress that can welcome, undertake and enjoy real
changes within.
Dr. Hornedo also declared that he favored the Oriental
consciousness of Truth as “not something to learn, but someone
to become.”
These paradigmatic shifts he presented before the emerg-
ing SoPHIA movement resonate well with the Lambat-Liwanag
empowering paradigms discussed earlier in this chapter.
Towards the end of her abovecited lecture, Dr. Mina
Ramirez, who heads ASI and its SoPHIA projects and sits as a
Network Council member of Lambat-Liwanag, enumerates the
following recommendations for transformative education:
“The extension program in our schools is not to be con-
sidered just an appendix to academic studies. Immersion of both
the faculty and students in the reality of marginalized commun-
ities and indigenous groups is more than ever called for now.
Local contexts where community organizations become success-
ful should be exposure and immersion sites. This immersion
experience should be material for reflection in all pertinent
courses.
“Quantitative approaches in research should be
complemented by qualitative ones such as the phenomenological
and other culturally rooted research approaches, such as, for
instance, the Kulandong.
“The Philippine School System should be able to keep
the bi-lingual system of education. Each language should keep
its discipline and grammatical correctness. More importantly, we
should be able to take pride in the underlying life-values and
world-view of the Filipino language. The best elements that will
promote life for people must be consciously integrated.
“At a time when we are bombarded by negative images
of the Philippines through media, positive mapping should be
undertaken of how leaders in various institutions have made
policies and successfully implemented them, showing their
groundedness in people’s lives.”
One of the most-remembered lines from The Little
Prince is that “It is with the heart that one sees clearly. What is
essential is invisible to the eye.” Of course the “heart” in this
quote is just a metaphor for the viewpoint of the Real Self which
viewoint is often distracted by what the eyes and the others of
the “only-five” senses perceive. As is well known to all
illusionists, to be distinguished from magicians with real magic,
these only-five senses are very easy to trick and confuse. Their
hand is quicker than our eye.
Still, it is in the interest of the mind’s overrated intel-
ligence that its getting fooled become rare and short instances.
The mind’s unreformed tendency to simply process signals from
the sensors of the “only-five” senses has consistently challenged
the human claim to deserve the term sapiens in the species name,
homo sapiens. To be of real wisdom, the human mind has to be
ever-alert not to be misguided and led to error by total reliance
on the perception of the “only-five” senses.
Let us review that passage from R. Buckminster Fuller
quoted in one of the previous sections above: “Consequently
children are the only rigorously pure physical scientists. They
accept only sensorially apprehensible, experimentally
redemonstrable physical evidence.” (underscoring supplied)
Note that Fuller qualifies the term “scientists” here as purely
physical and connects them to the acceptance only of sensorially
apprehensible physical evidence. Such a qualifier implies that
45
Fuller could not inflict that sort of very limited rigor on all
scientists and on science itself. Human knowledge is now much
broader than what the human eye can see, what the human ear
can hear, what the human nose can smell, etc. Two things can be
checked out here for the purposes of this book. The first is the
matter of “seeing to believe,” demanding evidence to be seen,
touched, heard, tasted, and/or smelled before believing anything.
And the second is the matter of the credibility of the senses –
whether what your “only-five” senses can actually see, hear, etc.
is a credible reflection of reality.
6. A Dialogue on Reality
Allow me to present here partially a dialogue (I’m not
sure if it is an actual conversation or it was literally composed to
deliver a strong message). We can actually derive lessons from
both sides of the conversation here. It was shared with members
of the light-sharing e-mail list group by a special friend of a
special friend of mine. It begins with a professor debating with
one of his students about the existence of God. The professor, a
self-proclaimed atheist, was proving God does not exist because
none of the five senses have perceived it and because “evil exists
in this world” created by an “all-good and almighty God.”
The old man shakes his head sadly. "Science says you
have five senses that you use to identify and observe the world
around you. Have you ever seen him?"
"No, sir. I've never seen Him."
"Then tell us if you've ever heard your Jesus?"
"No, sir. I have not."
"Have you ever felt your Jesus, tasted your Jesus or smelt
your Jesus... in fact, do you have any sensory perception of your
God whatsoever?"
[No answer]
 "Answer me, please."
"No, sir, I'm afraid I haven't."
"You're afraid... you haven't?"
"No, sir."
"Yet you still believe in him?"
"...yes..."
"That takes faith!" The professor smiles sagely at the
underling. "According to the rules of empirical, testable,
demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn't exist.
What do you say to that, son? Where is your God now?"
[The student doesn't answer]
"Sit down, please."
The student sits...Defeated.
Another student raises his hand. "Professor, may I
address the class?"
The professor turns and smiles. "Ah, another Christian in
the vanguard! Come, come, young man. Speak some proper
wisdom to the gathering. "The Christian looks around the room.
"Some interesting points you are making, sir. Now I've
got a question for you. Is there such thing as heat?"
"Yes," the professor replies. "There's heat."
"Is there such a thing as cold?"
"Yes, son, there's cold too."
"No, sir, there isn't."
The professor's grin freezes. The room suddenly goes
very cold.
The second student continues. "You can have lots of heat,
even more heat, super-heat, mega-heat, white heat, a little heat or
no heat but we don't have anything called 'cold'. We can hit 458
46
degrees below zero, which is no heat, but we can't go any further
after that. There is no such thing as cold, otherwise we would be
able to go colder than 458 degrees. You see, sir, cold is only a
word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure
cold. Heat we can measure in thermal units because heat is
energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of
it."
Silence. A pin drops somewhere in the classroom.
"Is there such a thing as darkness, professor?"
"That's a dumb question, son. What is night if it isn't
darkness? What are you getting at...?"
"So you say there is such a thing as darkness?"
"Yes..."
"You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is not something, it is
the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light,
bright light, flashing light but if you have no light constantly you
have nothing and it's called darkness, isn't it? That's the meaning
we use to define the word. In reality, Darkness isn't. If it were,
you would be able to make darkness darker and give me a jar of
it. Can you...give me a jar of darker darkness, professor?"
Despite himself, the professor smiles at the young
effrontery before him. This will indeed be a good semester.
"Would you mind telling us what your point is, young man?"
"Yes, professor. My point is, your philosophical premise
is flawed to start with and so your conclusion must be in
error...."
The professor goes toxic. "Flawed...? How dare you...!"
"Sir, may I explain what I mean?"
The class is all ears.
"Explain... oh, explain..." The professor makes an
admirable effort to regain control. Suddenly he is affability itself.
He waves his hand to silence the class, for the student to
continue.
"You are working on the premise of duality," the student
explains. "That for example there is life and then there's death; a
good God and a bad God.
You are viewing the concept of God as something finite,
something we can measure. Sir, science cannot even explain a
thought. It uses electricity and magnetism but has never seen,
much less fully understood them. To view death, as the opposite
of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a
substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, merely the
absence of it."
The young man holds up a newspaper he takes from the
desk of a neighbor who has been reading it. "Here is one of the
most disgusting tabloids this country hosts, professor. Is there
such a thing as immorality?"
"Of course there is, now look..."
"Wrong again, sir. You see, immorality is merely the
absence of morality. Is there such thing as injustice? No.
Injustice is the absence of justice. Is there such a thing as evil?"
The Christian then pauses."Isn't evil the absence of good?"
The professor's face has turned an alarming color. He is
so angry he is temporarily speechless.
The young man continues. "If there is evil in the world,
professor, and we all agree there is, then God, if he exists, must
be accomplishing a work through the agency of evil. What is that
work, God is accomplishing? The Bible tells us it is to see if
each one of us will, of our own free will, choose good over evil."
The professor bridles. "As a philosophical scientist, I
don't view this matter as having anything to do with any choice;
as a realist, I absolutely do not recognize the concept of God or
47
any other theological factor as being part of the world equation
because God is not observable."
"I would have thought that the absence of God's moral
code in this world is probably one of the most observable
phenomena going," the Christian replies. "Newspapers make
billions of dollars reporting it every week! Tell me, professor.
Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?"
"If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process,
young man, yes, of course I do."
"Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes,
sir?"
The professor makes a sucking sound with his teeth and
gives his student a silent, stony stare.
"Professor. Since no one has ever observed the process of
evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an
on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are
you now not a scientist, but a priest?"
"I'll overlook your impudence in the light of our
philosophical discussion. Now, have you quite finished?" The
professor hisses. "So you don't accept God's moral code to do
what is righteous?"
"I believe in what is - that's science!"
"Ahh! science!" the student's face splits into a grin. "Sir,
you rightly state that science is the study of observed
phenomena. Science too is a premise which is flawed..."
"Science is flawed..?" the professor splutters.
The class is in uproar. The student remains standing until
the commotion has subsided.
"To continue the point you were making earlier to the
other student, may I give you an example of what I mean?"
The professor wisely keeps silent.
 The young man looks around the room. "Is there anyone
in the class who has ever seen the professor's brain?"
The class breaks out in laughter.
The Christian points towards his elderly, crumbling tutor.
"Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor's
brain... felt the professor's brain, touched or smelt the
professor's brain?"
No one appears to have done so.
The student shakes his head sadly. "It appears no-one
here has had any sensory perception of the professor's brain
whatsoever. Well, according to the rules of empirical, stable,
demonstrable protocol, science, I declare that the professor has
no brain."
The class is in chaos.
Relying on perceptions as reported to the brain by our
“five-only” senses is actually imprudent. The subject of
perceptions as poor reflections of reality has been the focus of
Surf Reyes in presenting his paper at the Lambat-Liwanag
Conference on education. According to his paper, titled “Learn
to Experience Appreciation and to Appreciate Experience”:
“As all communicators know, there is a world of dif-
ference between perception and reality. If there was a thick
piece of rope in the grass and one perceived it to be a snake, in
reality it remains a rope, but his perception of it as a snake
becomes his reality and would affect his feelings and his actions
toward it. He would avoid it in fear, and maybe have sleepless
nights worrying about its slithering into his room. Perception is
an intellectual interpretation or judgement, and due to its
inherent limitation and vulnerability to distortion is subject to
error. The lack of awareness, or experiential knowledge, of the
truth of reality tends to make one dependent on perception.
48
“To illustrate further, let us use another experiential
model. Most of you have probably experienced viewing
stereovision pictures in books entitled ‘Magic Eye’. To those
who haven’t, these are computer generated pictures which when
you learn to view with a certain unfocused look, you suddenly
discover beautiful 3D objects within.
“It is not easy to learn the method of diverging the eyes
to experience this unbelievable visual phenomenon. And you
need to keep that altered way of looking or you lose the vision
when you focus on the surface picture. People without
experiential knowledge of the phenomenon would see only the
flat outer picture, but those who have learned the “magic eye”
look, see through the surface and into the inner 3D image. In the
same way, perception can only see the outer surface of this world
of appearances, but there is a way of seeing through the outer
appearances and being aware of the inner core reality. To borrow
from The Little Prince, only with the heart can one see rightly,
what is essential is invisible to perception and the intellect. This
experience has changed my life. It has provided me with an
experiential model to realize that all of the saints and ascended
masters actually see a common core reality that they have
difficulty in describing to those who have not yet learned to see
with ‘magic eyes.’ And so they talk in parables, in profound
abstractions. But how else would you describe light to those
who, blindfolded from birth, have no experience of it?”
I now present to you a download from the Internet. It is
somebody’s idea of the wording of a memo issued to a human
being upon enrollment in “a full-time informal school called
Life.”
1. You Will Receive A Body. You may like it or not, but it
will be yours for the entire period, this time around.
 2. You Will Learn Lessons. Each day in this school you
will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the
lessons or think them irrevelant and stupid.
3. There Are No Mistakes, Only Lessons. Growth is a
process of trial and error, experimentation. The "failed"
experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment
that ultimately "works."
4. A Lesson Is Repeated Until It Is Learned. A lesson
will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned
it, then you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning Lessons Does Not End. There is no part of
life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are
lessons to be learned.
6. "There" Is No Better Than "Here." When your "there"
has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that
will, again, look better than "here."
7. Others Are Merely Mirrors Of You. You cannot love or
hate something about another person unless it reflects to you
something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What You Make Of Your Life Is Up To You. You have
all the tools and resources you need; what you do with them is
up to you. The choice is yours.
9. The Answers Lie Inside You. The answers to life's
questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen, and
trust.
10. Whether You Think You Can Or Can't, In Either Case
You'll Be Right. Think about it!
If I remember right, the very last line (after No. 10) says:
“You will forget this.” And if I may now bring in a line from the
opening episodes of the Mission: Impossible series, “Your
49
mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it, is to remember who
you are.”
Apparently, God is helping a dear friend of mine, Dr.
Noemi Alindogan-Medina, who chairs the Lambat-Liwanag Net-
work Council, in her mission of re-membering who she really is
—a beloved child of God whose Earth life has seen a
combination of glorious triumphs and prolonged suffering. And
God is apparently doing that in a conversation with her. To see
what I mean, take a look at these excerpts of her yet-unpublished
“Reflections” after reading the first of three books of the
Conversations With God trilogy by Neale Donald Walsch:
“Then a very good friend of mine lent me the book
Conversations with God, saying I should read it. As I did I felt
that in many instances, God was really conversing with me,
giving me detailed answers to the many questions I had stored in
my mind. The answers are not totally strange to me though as
such thoughts already came into my mind but I consciously
disregarded them thinking that these were not Godly. What God
was saying perfectly fit into my own personal beliefs which I
had just suppressed thinking that they do not conform with the
way people think should be. Looking back I could say that such
thoughts and feelings were already God’s answers to my cries
and sighs.
“So now that God is telling me that feeling is the
language of the soul, that I should acknowledge and listen to my
feelings, that I should also listen to my experience and not to
what other people may say about them, that I should not deny
myself to experience joy or to celebrate life, then I am more
equipped to decide things for myself!
xxx
“The message is clear: I should not deny myself to
experience joy and to celebrate life, that God who is just does
not want me to go through an unending suffering, joylessness,
and sacrifice, even in the name of love, that I should put myself
first among my list of who to love, that I was confused because I
misunderstood what is best for me, … and that, for me to be
God-like, I should not be a martyr and should not choose to be a
victim as God Himself does not want me to be. God wants me
to be happy!”
7. The Psychic and the Spiritual
People have their own respective ideas and confusions
about the relationship between the psyche and the spirit. The
controversies are expected to remain for as long as there are
divergences in direct experiences (which accounts for a wide
variety of intellectual interpretations that the intellect cannot
possibly resolve with authoritative finality). Then there are
divergences in the use of language (based on cultural and
personal specificities in vocabulary choice and other nuances of
language, which should caution us all to resist being bogged
down in semantical debates).
Some people mix up spirituality with psychic capability,
and I personally believe there is a clear line of disctinction
between the two: psychic powers pertain to the special control of
energies in order to do certain things in violation of the rules of
classic Newtonian physics (including such “mind over matter”
feats as telekinesis or moving things by mental command from a
distance) or perceive realities not available to the “five-only
senses” (thus, the term “sixth sense”), like psychometry (which
my late wife Cita had learned to practice with impeccable
reliability) and mind-reading (which has been enough basis for
many to believe the claim of some practitioners to be divine
beings, regardless of behavior). Spirituality on the other hand is
the effortless praxis of Awareness of the Oneness of All.
50
In an article written for a magazine’s issue promoting the
“First International Psychic Congress in Manila” a few years
ago, I had reason to talk about what to me is a very important
distinction. The article says in part:
“What at least some of the psychics might be missing out
on is the matter of interconnectedness and interdependence of all
realities (the unity of all with Godhead), which the spiritual
people, whether developed psychics or not, really experience and
fully respect. Heightened intuition is not the same as spirituality,
although these are closely related. Psychic powers can therefore
be developed even by a person who has yet a very long way to
go in one’s Soulgrowth path and has not essentially slain one’s
separative ego. This results in vulnerability to the temptation to
use one’s (psychic) powers in divisive competition and in selfish
commerce.
“Of course, we have reason to be confident that the
collective positive consciousness of the cosmos, which the Star
Wars series calls ‘The Force’ has its ‘Celestine’ ways of
educating these persons further.”
The point of spirituality, I dare assert, is full, active and
consistent awareness of the oneness of all, that we are all unique
and beautiful members of the Glorious Oneness of the Great
Whole. When we forget this, we behave as separate skin-bound
or aura-bound egos in competition and even antagonism with
one another. When we re-member, we are members again, as
Walsch puts it, and behave accordingly. After all, all that we do
is a Statement of Who We Are, reflecting our Level (“Tallness”)
of Awareness. Add to this my very own “I think, therefore I do.”
(which I explain in the next section) and my own personal
version of the Our Father, where I substitute for the word “evil”
this entire passage: “(deliver us from) all alienation and
separation from You and from one another. (Amen.)”.
8. ‘To be is to do’: Awareness Growing Taller
I’ve been toying in my mind to compose a reminder
inspired by liquor ads: “Think moderately.” Brightest insights
often come when our rational mind is quiet and our greater
mind, ironically called “subconscious,” is afforded more
opportunity to listen to, and discern well, the whispers of the
Real Self (discussed in the next chapter). But the classic
philosophical quote from Descartes is “I think, therefore I am.” I
have my own sharply different version: “I am, therefore I do.”
I do. I’m doing some thinking, and I’m doing some
moving, and I think doing some thinking, just like the physical
acts, may either be voluntary or involuntary. Voluntary thinking
is when I knit my brows in conscious search for an answer to a
problem; involutary when my mind retrieves from active
memory the “current file” of the accumulation of conceptual
integrations (Ayn Rand’s term) my mind has performed on the
basis of direct and direct experiences from birth, including
unconscious prejudices and traumas. Such reflex thinking can
benefit from spending even a flash of time running through the
Hegelian dialectical process of thinking of a thesis, and then
having this thesis challenged by an antithesis, and finally
arriving at a quick tentative synthesis. Knee-jerk reactions to
instant and unchallenged thoughts have often caused us trouble.
Developing the habit of challenging one’s own thoughts by
activating reminders that one frequently is actually uncertain
about many things, one can develop effective thinking and more
prudent decisions and actions. In my experience, the biggest
obstacle to continuing learning is my mistaken thought that I
already know everything I need to know on the subject at hand.
On the basis of my idea of who “I am,” I do things the
way I do things—that is, I think the way I think and I act (move
my body or parts of it) the way I act. So, when I feel myself as a
noble and exalted being, no less than an embodied spirit, I do (I
51
behave) accordingly. And whenever I forget that Truth (as I
believe it now), I behave like a body that has a soul that I do not
feel, and decide all my actions on what will give the best
benefits, immediately or eventually, for my body and its living
extensions (in this case, my family), and I indulge in a lot of
sulking over past hurts and failures and worrying over the
perceived likelihoood of future ones.
Self-observation is very important here, and we get help
from Dr. Serafin Talisayon of the Asian Social Institute and the
University of the Philippines.
In his lecture for the SoPHIA Lecture-Forum series in
March 2003, Dr. Serafin Talisayon shares with us an insight on
how we help other people to be aware of the way they think,
how disconnected their thinking is deom how nature actually
works. “How do we discover our mental models?” he asks, be-
fore sharing this quote from Fr. Anthony De Mello, SJ:
“The only way someone can be of help to you is in
challenging your ideas. If you’re ready to listen and if you’re
ready to be challenged, there’s one thing that you can do, but no
one can help you. What is this ost important thing of all? It’s
called self-observation.”
Talisayon continues: “Our school system does not teach
us this most important skill. The academic system that produced
our development specialists, development workers and
development policy-makers is focused teaching students skills in
understanding and manipulating the outside world, but hardly
the world inside themselve. … In short, the academic and
empirical system had by-passed the most important skill of self-
observation.”
Who I really am has already been an established fact at
the instance of my being created; the entire problem is in my
lack of consistent awareness of it. Awareness is something
discussed by Walsch a column item carried in the July 1999
issue of Magic Blend magazine. He does it with a lot of play of
words:
“Awareness is a State of Being in which you may choose
to live. …
“Awareness has many levels.
“Awareness is about being aware of the level of
awareness of which you are aware, and it is about being aware
that there is no level of awareness about which you cannot be
aware, if you are aware of that.
“When you live a life of Awareness you no longer do
things unconsciously. … It is not difficult living a life of
Awareness when you are aware that it is not difficult. Awareness
feeds on itself.
“When you are unaware of Awareness, then you cannot
know what it is like. You do not even know that you do not
know.”
For this “awareness of awareness” thing, let me give
what I have come up with as a simple interpretation. Do you
sometimes recall your own behavior in some past incident and as
you recall, with the benefit of later realizations, new wisdom and
time-lapse distance, you are able to see imprudence and weak-
nesses in your own behavior in that incident? If you could time-
travel to that incident, you might wish to coach your earlier self
for better behavior. If you try to do the recalling, watching and
coaching on incidents more recent, as just a few days earlier, or
just a few hours, minutes or seconds earlier, you can slowly
develop your capability to do the watching and coaching in what
we now call “real time” and abort a bad start and so very quickly
shift to better mode.
52
Something like these lines will almost be simultaneously
coming out of at least six awareness levels of you:
OUTER YOU (your emotional personality-vehicle, in
conversation with another person): “That’s not
true, you blundering idiot!”
SOMEWHAT-INNER YOU (a bit more mature you):
Careful! You’re letting that pride rule you again.
You know that what she said is at least partly
true! Admit that part at least to yourself! And you
don’t have to lash back with an angry ‘You
idiot!”… you idiot! Ha-ha-ha!
INNER YOU (a much more mature you): Tell him! Tell
him! He needs reminding! But be gentle with
him. He was much worse before, like you were
once, and still are occarionally. Remember?
STILL-INNER YOU (spiritual you): The universe is
unfolding as it should, and he, too is unfolding as
he should. He will learn from this mistake of
forgetting that he and the other person “is one.”
But the learning will be forgotten afterwards, and
the opportunity for more learning will come back,
over and over again, and he will gradually learn
fully.
ALMOST-INNERMOST YOU (spiritual you approach-
ing masterhood): Is. Joy. Love. Harmony.
Oneness.
INNERMOST US:
The last three “speakers” here would be in the realm of
the spirit, for only the spirit can say this in all earnestness,
serenity and full appreciation, beyond all the linitations of the
intellect. It is in this “full appreciation” bit that I am having
problems with, personally, for likely it (this whole book,
actually) is coming only from my mind, a textual and academic
comprehension and not at all a full appreciation. If the “Still-
inner You” is saying its lines in serenity (from refusal to judge),
earnestness and full appreciation, these lines may be lying right
between the extreme wisdom the mind is capable of and what
the spirit simply knows intuitively with no effort. Discussion of
this belongs to the next chapter.
By the way, I change the pronoun with the innermost
core, because at that level the pronoun “you” is, I believe, no
longer applicable. And I place perfect silence after the colon
there because I would not even attempt to set my mind to
imagine what God would be saying (too immense for anybody’s
mind-heart to even attempt to capture in the human intellect’s
language of words). Moreover, I believe that God has no use for
words, for “He” is pure being, and has no need for doing or
saying anything. Because God is, we all are. Because God is
Creator, we are all created.
What of your own awareness levels are you now aware
of? Can you write a true-to-life script in the mold of what you
see above this paragraph to study your own behavior in a recent
or even not-so-recent but unforgettable incident? Of course, you
can! Try to be as personal (reflecting the uniqueness of your
personality vehicle) as you can, and then share it with others
who might be receptive to do likewise with their own awareness
levels.
Surf Reyes uses the metaphor of the blindfold to
illustrate how real Awareness can only be attained from directly-
experiencing reality: “(The ‘study of God’ in the field called
Theology) assumes that the immeasurable can actually be
measured. The words “study” and “rational” point to using the
intellectual mind as the instrument for knowing God and Truth.
It is like a group of people blindfolded from birth trying to learn
53
about daylight by going through lectures and studying books in
braille. Towards the same objective, it is obviously better to
make them aware of their blindfolds and how to remove them.
This will lead to direct experience of the truth. They can live in
daylight and not merely believe the truth about it. It is in this
light that I propose Egology as a kind of “practical theology”.
Ego is the attachment to the appearance or illusion of a self
separate from the whole. We define Egology as the study of the
ego, the block to awareness of Truth. It is learning to be aware
and be free of the veil that covers the Truth. It is learning to
grow from knowing with the mind to knowing with the heart.
I have been told many times by authors and friends that
there are seven chakras, and the reason I can respect this is that I
have reason to believe these people are talking from at least
some amount of direct experience about it. That is, of course, a
weak belief in the existence of these energy centers, akin to
being blindfolded from birth and learning about light purely
from reading about it in books in braille.
Still, from the way I understand the chakras, one’s
growth of awareness about them grows much like the tree, with
the roots as the underground starting point of growth. As the
tree grows taller and taller, it becomes a vantage point for seeing
broader and broader vistas, without losing sight and connection
with “realities on the ground”. There are chakras referred to as
higher chakras, while the root chakra, the sexual center, is at the
lowest. Growth is supposed to happen as we become more and
more aware of the higher chakras from the solar chakra, upwards
and decide things and even know ourselves from the vantage
point of all these chakras the “tallness of our awareness has
significantly embraced.”
This may be related to what a certain Jan des Bouvrie of
Opzij, the Netherlands (as quoted in the Reader’s Digest, Oct.
2001, p.81) on the relative depths of intimacy and romance bet-
ween sensuous interactions of the body and eye-to-eye together-
ness in the enjoyment of conversation: “My philosophy is that
true intimacy and romance always flourish at tables, not on
sofas. At the table you have the best eye contact, and that’s what
it’s all about. People push their empty plates to one side and
linger longer and longer at the table. Once, people used to move
from dining table to the couch. That was a disaster because all
the intimacy they had built up disappeared and they had to start
over. A table is the most beautiful piece of furniture there is.”
Imagine an interaction on many if not all of the chakra levels.
This may be the unconscious reason why in many reli-
gious belief systems, celibacy is the perceived value of shunning
the basal, and being preoccupied only with our Higher Being.
There is a problem however with demonizing the basal, when all
our levels come from only one divine Creator. The problem lies
with the self-limiting decision to choose a level, to levitate and
therefore to uproot. While it may very well a more exalted
decision to choose a higher than a lower chakra level from which
to decide things and enjoy experiences, we don’t even have to
choose only one level or another for extended periods, let alone
shun lower chakras for good upon a negative judgment of them.
Human experiences on all levels are available for
embodied spirits in Earth life, a beautiful, even physically and
psychically orgasmic synergy of experience at all these levels. As
the Tree of Awareness grows taller, it does not pull itself from
the ground or shed its roots altogether. So, the bird cannot
simply boast its wings and its higher viewpoint – bird’s eye view
– and “look down” condescendingly on the crown leaves of a tall
tree. After all, while the tree does stretch skyward but not as high
and not as fast as the bird does, the tree remains fully and firmly
rooted in ground-level earth experience. Writes Kilmer: The
tree’s “hungry mouth is pressed upon the earth’s sweet flowing
breast (while it also) lifts its leafy arms to pray.”
54
I recall coming across a challenge from the great Indian
spiritual leader, Sri Aurobindo, for us to “bring divinity to the
marketplace.” One can easily be a holy person while attending
mass or another religious service for about an hour on Sabbath
or Sunday, but that full hour of such “scheduled holiness” gives
way to real life’s “natural” behavior for the rest of the week until
it’s time again for the one hour for the same service a full week
afterwards. It’s difficult to bring divinity amid the noise and
haste of city living and to introduce spirituality and the Godhead
to people who have been living and would very likely be living
much longer in the messy and depressing context of the social
injustice, institutional violence, personal and class conflicts, and
other realities one cannot easily accept to be rampant under an
all-good and all-powerful Supreme Being.
My idea of wholesome human growth is in adding more
and more higher chakras to be experienced and appreciated in
synergy with, and not instead of, the lower chakras. There is,
after all, nothing bad or wrong per se with the lower chakras
aside from their initial limitation.
We are gradually transcending the earlier limits of our
awareness and of our very own active chakras. Let the Tree of
Awareness, therefore, grow taller and taller within our psyche,
our mind-heart, and develop increasingly stronger bonds with
the Real Self, the spirit. Our rootedness in the ground bridges
the gap between our real identity as embodied spirit and subs-
tantially contributing to the self-actualization of the Kingdom of
God on earth. We are in the world although we are not of the
world. It is not very difficult to understand what I am saying if
you remember Who We Really Are. And behave accordingly.
Before I end this chapter, allow me to share with you a
short piece I sent out by short-text messaging to my friends early
in 2003: “Choose ye not between the wisdom of the bird and that
of the worm. Seek instead the wisdom of the tallest tree,
breathing heaven while deeply rooted in earth.”
I have yet to discern this very clearly, but something
urges me now to rethink the Biblical episode where Adam and
Eve were supposedly being punished with banishment from
Paradise because they partook of the fruit of the Tree of Know-
ledge of Good and Evil. Could it be that having been given
choice through free will, our first parents decided to seek to
know more fully the inner Tree of Awareness of Oneness (good)
and Separation (evil), and having done so, were sent out not in
punishment but on a mission to bring that “shared divinity” to
the complex marketplace of earth, to experience and validate it
here, and in so doing, exalt the creative Kingdom of God in
themselves and in this world?
Ahh, but these musings of the mind cannot fully
comprehend reality, for how can the computerized astronaut
spacesuit fully know the astronaut himself, whose Real Self is
Spirit that is just wearing a bio-energetic earthsuit called “body-
mind”? Let me end this chapter and flow in smooth transition to
the next with a poem that I wrote very recently…
‘Cyber’-Discernment
You cannot download the entire Internet
To fit a compact disk, much less a diskette.
Choose well then what you really need to get
To carry around everyday in your own pocket,
For anyway, anytime you can access the Internet
So much like, everywhen, everywhere, the Innernet.

Chapter 5:
55
The Spirit—The Real Self
1. Metaphor of the Pencil
I HAVE been using the metaphor of the common pencil by ask-
ing groups of people what is the color of the pencil commonly
bought by Filipinos in neighborhood stores and they have almost
always been unanimously replying, “yel-
low.” When I ask them why a red ballpen
has to have red ink while a black-graphite
pencil is almost-unanimously thought to be
“yellow,” they gradually see the point of es-
sence, in contrast to the point mere ap-
pearance, in my question.
Then comes an opinion poll where I would ask them
whether or not they believed it true that “every human has a
soul,” and they are in instant unanimity that it is “of course,
true!” Their eyebrows ask me why I have to pose that question
in the first place, until I explain my own vote.
My own dissenting view is that “every human is a soul,
and it has a body,” and this instantly disturbs their feeling of cer-
tainty, and it even tends to reverse the collective view altogether
towards adopting my opinion. But of course, it is in the area of
souls (pardon the tentative plural here) that I have had the urge
to keep reminding myself and others that we do not really know
very much about this, and much of the dogma are, I think, a col-
lectivized, institutionalized official opinion of one group or
another. The Roman Catholic Church is one such group.
I don’t intend to foment a sense of defeatism and help-
lessness here. My call is rather one for honest humility, for re-
verence, instead of fear, of the unknown, for willingness to enjoy
what admittedly is not, or at least not yet, comprehended ra-
tionally. There are bodies of collectivized official opinions ab-
out spirits and divinity and I disagree with the proclaimed levels
of certainty especially when they would say that the human “is
created in His image and likeness,” while their teachings have
somehow created God in the image and likeness of the human,
complete with very human negative emotions I personally would
not associate with a Supreme Being deserving to be recognized
as one.
While I wouldn’t go into much discourse about a subject
I instantly concede to be beyond my mind to fully understand, I
value my faith in the existence of the spirit as created by divine
and loving Source as “His” own fulfillment and mirror to “His”
greatness, and I have described this creator as “the great and
loving Cosmic Consciousness, the loving Creator and Synergy
of ALL Synergies…” One cannot even begin to fathom the
greatness of this, if we consider synergetic magnification to be
quantum leap from one holon level to the next all long the
infinite holarchy.
2. Spirituality and Religion
And the importance of the spiritual dimension in our
apprehension of the human is something akin to appreciating the
pencil beyond the visually-perceptible color of its body paint
(“of course, it’s yellow!”), it is appreciating the human being
way beyond the good-looking face and healthy physique, beyond
the clothes and the color of skin, well beyond the apparently
separate and self-contained personalities housed by such phy-
sically separate bodies.
Leo Bugscallia writes in Personhood, p. 89: “…It can be
observed after reading (the book chapter that gives summary
descriptions of the various major religions that) there is little
dissonance among the several philosophical and religious
systems in their suggestions as to what it means to live in full
humanness.”
56
It is my humble opinion and personal faith assertion that
religions are human-made creations in the attempt to organize
the spiritual praxis of the people. But the designs and details in
the form of disctinct structures (intellectual dogma, official
policies, organizational hierarchies, finances, etc.), all come
from the human intellect, which is very vulnerable to the tempt-
ations of the various competing power agenda of religious lead-
ers. Raised as a Christian, I cannot miss the contrast between,
on the one hand, the early Church community founded by the
Christ having to hide in the catacombs for they had no worldly
political power and, on the other hand, the modern-day Catholic
and other Christian churches that are obviously more politically
and economically powerful but have, apparently, to a large
extent lost sight of the basic teaching of the Master, who had
said, “Love one another as I have loved you.”
It is a matter of both faith and opinion that I say we are
all literally interconnected as harmoniously team-playing “fin-
gers of the same hand.” For this reason I consider one indicator
of spirituality to be sine-qua-non (without this indicator there is
no spirituality to be indicated): the uniting effect. Unlike
organized religion, which almost always divides, true spirituality
always unites people.
3. Incarnation and ‘Ensoulment’?
About the soul-body synergy of the human, let me bring
up the conflicting views of soul incarnation (embodiment) be-
lieved to occur during the merging of the sperm and the egg, and
the process of ensoulment believed to occur three months after
conception or as late as when the baby breathes its first.
My view is that the soul is itself the power that moves
the sperm and the egg to combine their respective half-DNAs
into one and likewise moves this first cell to go through all
stages of cell division and cell differentiation and all the
processes of building and repairing the anatomy and operating
all processes studied by physiology.
In my view it is the soul that builds and composes and
orchestrates the physical synergy of the body from billions and
zillions of various molecules throughout the life of this human
being, until such time that the soul leaves the body and the latter
de-composes back into those separate molecules of the earth.
I believe that a central part of the soul’s orchestration
work is the flow of chi (life energy) from and along the chakras
and the meridian channels (anatomically invisible energy
channels studied and mastered by acupuncturists), and outward
to the colorful aura (photographed by Kirlian cameras since
before WW-II).
Thus, Ms. Robledo and I wrote in the SanibLakas Found-
ation’s “Motherhood Statement on Mother’s Day” in 1998:
“Far from being its mere location, the Mother’s Womb is
the conducive setting and protector of the great Miracle of Hu-
man Life: conception.
“Two synergetic fusions are said to take place.
“One is the synergetic fusion of an ovum and a sperm
cell — neither one a living organism, and both would
disintegrate and be discharged as waste if they had not fused in
fertilization.
“The other, dependent on the first, is the synergetic
fusion of the sperm-egg combining with the Spiritual Force, said
to be an individual soul needing a body for soul-growth experi-
ences in earth life. Both these synergetic mergers occur in that
one moment of conception.
“Although it may not feel as ‘heavenly’ as the ecstatic
synergy in copulation, let alone in simultaneous orgasms, this
quiet occurrence is no less than the very Miracle of Human
57
Life! For nine long months, the womb nurtures and protects the
new human life, passing on later to the next miracle: Childbirth.
And then, finally, on to the mother’s caring and nurturing arms
and nipples.
“This is the Miracle in the Womb, the Glory of
Motherhood.”
So, is it a soul incarnating or a body attaining “ensoul-
ment.” I now repeat for you this portion of a download from the
Internet, the choice of which tends to show which side of the
controversy I’m on. It is the opening item in somebody’s idea of
the wording of a memo issued to a human being upon enrollment
in “a full-time informal school called Life.”
“1. You Will Receive A Body. You may like it or not, but
it will be yours for the entire period, this time around.”
4. Metaphors from Computer and Astronaut Systems
The intellectual discourse about the matter of spirit,
which defies all intellectualization, is enriched by metaphors
from computer systems and astronaut systems. These items on
the cutting edge of current human technology are useful in
starting to comprehend the spirit and spirituality.
Computer systems are composed of hardware and soft-
ware subsystems. In human terms the brain is hardware, the
mind is program software, and thoughts, ideas, and some of the
feelings are data-type software.
Computers have operating systems. In this system, the
Random Access Memory carries information chosen by the
operator (through the program) to be under focus, and displays
part of this information on the monitor screen. But no one
would believe that this is all the computer can display. Like-
wise, the mind’s attention is focused on something usually as
chosen by that mind, and people know that the mind is capable
of carrying so much more than what is focused on. Stored
thoughts, etc. can be retrieved from the brain cells that function
as hard disk drives and floppies.
Although the memory capacities of these are already
quite impressive, our concept of the total memory capacity of
such storage systems cannot even come close to the magnitude
of information accessible through the Internet. Through a mo-
dem, a computer can “call up” and chat with all other computers
similarly hooked up, including large computer memory banks
called “web site hosts” and the volume of information that can
be accessed by each computer that are “on-line.”
Is the human mind as adequately-blessed as the computer
that is on-line with the Internet? Yes, because the human mind
has a tool called “computer that is on-line with the Internet” and
can access whatever this tool can access. Yes, because the human
mind could even invent a tool called “computer that is on-line
with the Internet” and invented the Internet itself as well. Yes,
because it can decide to shut up so that the real self, the soul, can
hook up with what my brother Jimmi Reyes calls the “InnerNet.”
We return to this after discussing astronaut spacesuits.
Computers are amazing human inventions with awesome
capabilities. They accomplish faster than an eyeblink what the
human mind can also do but very, very slowly. But each human,
with built-in capability for accessing the innermost of Truths,
surpasses any human-made computer. Still, some computers are
given the opportunity to “forget” this. Without having to wish
upon a star, these hi-tech Pinocchios are allowed to consider
themselves becoming, even surpassing, humans. Actually, all
that imagination is ours.
Now, what are “astronaut systems”? That is the unit
composed of a person (that has a body and has had training fit
for space travel) and that person’s computerized spacesuit. The
58
latter is a very important tool that enables the astronaut to sur-
vive in outer space and perform his tasks. Because the space out-
fit is computerized, it is sometimes called and oftentimes treated
as an “intelligent” equipment, a robot in the shape not of a per-
son like C3P0 of Star Wars but in the shape of a suit for a person
to wear. C3P0 always remembers his relation to his master,
Master Luke, as it speaks alternately like a diplomat and like a
butler in expressing obvious respect.
Sometimes, however, the intelligent built-in computer of
the astronaut’s spacesuit would forget that this entire outfit,
including itself, is just a tool. And sometimes the human occu-
pant-wearer, having allowed himself to be totally dependent on
the astronaut suit’s computer read-outs instead of relying on The
Force deep within him, would also forget who is whose tool, or
decide to sleep on the job nd put the spacesuit on auto-pilot.
And the robotic voice would then occasionally speak and refer to
“my occupant-wearer” or “my human operator,” and would
eventually even argue that “humans really exist” and that every
astronaut suit has one (astronaut) deep within itself.
Now, isn’t that as ridiculous as the brain commanding the
mouth muscles to say the phrase “my soul”? Isn’t it funny that
human brains sometimes have to argue spiritedly for the “belief”
that every human person “has a soul”?
Isn’t it much closer to the truth to say that “every human
is a soul and has a body”?
Now, back to the Innernet. The Innernet carries no mere
data and analyses, the Innernet carries wisdom much more
profound than what the mind can commit to thoughts and words.
Wisdom of magnitude that can only be hinted at by such words
as these that came from King Solomon: “Two can accomplish
more than twice as one.” Or such assertions as this one from the
presentation from Surf Reyes during the Lambat-Liwanag
Conference on Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education:
Perception is to illusion
as being is to reality.
Knowing the difference
is true wisdom.
If we do occasionally come across profundities of this
sort while surfing the World-Wide Web, it only means that some
people, with “downloads from the Innernet” whispered directly
into their heart-minds, placed them there. And the good news is
you don’t need a Service Provider to get you on-line in the
Innernet. You just have to quiet your mind (as in, “Shut up,
C3P0!”) and look for the loving presence of The Force in the
innermost recesses of your real self, the spirit, the Soul.
5. Evil and the Ego
“Evil” is the absence or near-absence of good (as their
homophonic pair, God and Devil, are conceptual opposites). Do
I take sin or evil to be the absence or the opposite force of
togetherness, integration and synergism? Yes, it’s just an absence
or a lack, and I go on to say sin is the simultaneous alienation
from God, the great Synergic Totality, and from one another. I
expressed this in the form of a segment in my own personal
version of the "Our Father," where we oftentimes mechanically
mouth the very last word, "evil," without giving it much thought,
without feeling any relevance of it to our own personal and
social daily lives. Here’s that version:
Our Divine Parent,
Holy be Your name,
Your Dominion come
Your will be done on Earth
As everywhere else in the Universe.
59
Give us today our daily bread
And forgive us our offenses,
As we forgive those who hurt and offend us,
Do not bring us to the test
But deliver us from all alienation and separation
from You and from one another.
Say you "Amen" to that? Can that be our prayer, as self-
proclaimed siblings, from now on?
Surf Reyes proposes Egology as a kind of “practical
theology”: “Ego is the attachment to the appearance or illusion
of a self separate from the whole. We define Egology as the
study of the ego, the block to awareness of Truth. It is learning to
be aware and be free of the veil that covers the Truth. It is
learning to grow from knowing with the mind to knowing with
the heart.”
6. Earth Life: The Practicum of the Soul
One subject assigned to me as a learning facilitator (the
title is “professor”) under the Applied Cosmic Anthropology
program at the Asian Social Institute is the three-unit Practicum
Course, for which I developed the concept of “Living
Learnings.” In this term, the word “living” carries one sense as
an adjective to refer to all the lessons conspicuously flowing
directly from a set of actual experiences, and also carries another
sense as a transitive verb to mean applying the learnings to one’s
own life. Then I added the bold assertion that Earth Life is the
practicum course of the soul.
There are varying but intersecting schools of thought
about the purpose of Earth Life. One, like James Redfield, a
disciple of Carl Jung and writer of the Celestine Prophecy novel
series, would have us believe that Earth Life is a great school
where we get enough reincarnation opportunities to repeat
courses that we do not learn fully well in the first attampts, for
which learning we even get to choose the circumstances to grow
in that are most suitable to really learning the lesson chosen for
that Earth Life.
Neale Donald Walsch, on the other hand, consistently
says in his Conversations With God trilogy that an Earth Life is
the opportunity to create ourselves according to our choice for
our respective essential identities, an endless stream of oppor-
tunities where our thoughts and actions are choiceful Statements
of Who We Really Are— God’s own body through which God
experiences and appreciates all the more all the specific facets of
His creation and His own glory.
Why the schools of thought would be seen to differ is
due to the operation of the intellect which sees more clearly the
lines of division than the commonalities in various realities; why
they intersect is due to the fact that they are all seeking to ex-
plain the very same realities. Language, after all, is differen-
tiated at cultural and personality levels and the uniqueness of
creativity in the employment of metaphors would logically result
in widely varying metaphors that essentially say the same thing.
To experience Earth, God uses a being that is a synergy
of spirit, energy body and physical body. Spirit like He is, phy-
sical bodies and like the flesh and blood “astronaut earthsuits”
that we have been wearing since conception. That is why the
“instructions” begin with the words, “You Will Receive A Body
You may like it or not, but it will be yours for the entire period,
this time around.”
But the usual problem is that much like the astronaut
taking a long long nap, going on auto-pilot, and depending fully
on the artificial intelligence of the built-in computers of the
spacesuit. The spirit slips into a half-awake fixation on the excit-
60
ing details of the body, warts and all, of the Earth and of Earth
Life, forgets its real self almost completely save for a haunting
“inkling.” Spirit, the real self, then leaves it up to the gray-matter
computer of the body to completely take over the spirit’s very
identity and command of the “education and self-creation
mission,” the very reason in the first place why the spirit had to
“receive a body” and wear it, and synergize with it. It is not at
all surprising, then, that the body’s built-in computer in the skull
can freely command the body’s mouth to say “I am hungry”
instead of “my body is hungry” and to also say, “I have a soul.”
What has happened? The spirit has forgotten the reality
that all spirits are not only interconnected but actually one conti-
guous reality. Only an inkling of it has remained. And the mind
of the body, paying more heed to illusion-prone perceptions of
the “five-only senses” and perceives humans only as skin-
wrapped (at best, aura-wrapped) separate but interacting indivi-
duals, not as individual parts of a glorious whole, of a seamless
reality.
Ken Cousens tells us more on this spirit-body synergy
teamed-up in continuing creation. He says in his The Doorway
to Alcyone (Capstone Publishing, Colorado, USA, 1998, p. 65):
“In the study of quantum physics a simple axiom was ar-
rived at upon which the whole study of subatomic universe is
founded. This axiom is that the object of observation cannot be
separated from the consciousness that observes it. The actual act
of observation affects the perceived nature of the object of ob-
servation. If this is true in the subatomic level, then it must be
true on all levels. All matter is made up of atoms and all atoms
are made up of subatomic particles. If the act of observing a par-
ticle influences the nature of that particle, then the very acts of
observing our world will affect the world that we observe. Stat -
ed another way, this perfectly describes how we are creating our
world. If it were true that we are separated from self. then we
observe the world through a filter that reinforces that picture of
reality. If we experience ourselves as separate from God or any
other description of the eternal and divine, then the world we
project outside of ourselves will reinforce that perception.
“That is why the foundation of this entire book rests on
the perception that we cannot fix that which is broken. By our
very acts of interacting with something that is perceived to be
broken, and a reality construct that supports that perspective, we
reinforce the nature of the problem. This has always been
understood and utilized by those in control on this planet. The
only solution is to focus on what is real. We must start from a
position that we are perfected and whole beings. That is real.”
But how can we tell what is real? Back in 2000, I wrote
a yet-unpublished mini-book, an anthology of short pieces of
profound thoughts from various authors, and said in the “Author-
Collector’s Introduction”:
“Into the new millennium, information gluts will be
flooding all the ‘RAMs’ and ‘hard drives’ of our mind, and only
those of us with Wisdom will know the useful from the useless,
and will thus be saved from drowning in the sheer volume of the
latter. Only those with reawakened wisdom will know how to
use whatever can be made useful. Only those with reawakened
wisdom can prevent their minds from degenerating into mere ex-
tensions of floppy diskettes and hard drives and Internet connec-
tions, and instead preserve their human identity and human
dignity in full exaltation of their greater capability and destiny.
“They would exalt the faculty for discernment and appre-
ciation that is far beyond the capacity of diskettes and state-of-
the-art computers equipped with whatever brand of ‘Intel
Inside,’ ”
Half a decade earlier, I wrote this ten-word “EdR Deka-
log ‘95” which says: “Information Superhighway good, but for
61
own Human Life seek Wisdom.” If we seek an enhancement of
wisdom, we keep ourselves above being mere extensions of the
storage spaces of copies of trivial data files from the Internet.
We can be that, too, why not, but well beyond that.
Downloads for wisdom resonate well with downloads from the
Innernet, where the whispers of bright realizations move us ever
closer, even if very slowly to remembering our real identity in
this convincingly-realistic virtual-reality Matrix of earth
experiences as packaged in a learning-experiencing-creating
program called “earth life.”
Remembering our identity is “re-membering” our iden-
tity, says Walsch in his Conversations with God trilogy. That
means being aware again that each one is a member of a Great
and Glorious Whole.
7. ‘Character Confronts Circumstance’
Why the “big fuss” about remembering our real identity?
Because almost all of us are in varying degrees of confusion
about who we really are.
Do you know this guy? “Of course! I know his face, I
know his name, I’ve been given his calling card long ago, I have
read in the news how much money he makes in a year, and just
recently I attended his talk and heard his full bio-data when he
was being introduced. He even knows me, too!” So, do you
know this guy? Then you’ll get shocked if tomorrow morning
he’ll publicly admit having masterminded a largescale scam or if
tomorrow morning he commits suicide. “I can’t believe this! He
looked so nice, and he looked so contented and happy with his
life!” Isn’t the world a stage where role-players pretend, and
then begin to believe their own costumes and charade?
 And you think he even knows you, just because he has
shaken your hand and exchanged smiles and calling cards with
you. How can anyone else know you when don’t even know
exactly who you really are, when you get confused with all the
layers of astronaut suits and costumes you’ve grown accustomed
to wearing like your body’s skin and mistaking your body for
your real self? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to insult, I’m
just trying to jolt. And the whole thing applies to me, too!
One of the dozen or so books I have written is titled My
NoveLife: My ‘Novel View’ of Life (Manila: Educar Enterprises,
1996), where I used the novel as a metaphor for life, where God
is referred to as the Great Author and myself as co-creator of my
life. This passage comes from Chapter 3 (p. 9):
“Well, I do have some thoughts now dancing around in
my mind since being triggered off by the question (what do I
really know about novel-writing?). If I am to run down some of
the thoughts, there would be seven words starting with “C”:
characters, who are reflecting culture, in confrontation with a
series of configurations of circumstances, reflecting bigger con-
texts, with consequences, in turn affecting some of these charac-
ters, configurations, and circumstances to varying degrees. That
is quite a mouthful when read aloud, but not so heavy, really,
when they are just dancing around in my mind.”
What came out as abovequoted started as a basic des-
cription of a scene, with only three words, and let me come back
to that basic description now: character confronts circum-
stance. For every human, the most basic awareness in moment-
to-moment episodes of one’s earth life can be described in terms
of character confronting circumstance. “There are two basic
challenges faced by writers of stories, especially of novels,” I
say further in that book. “One is the creation of very realistic
human characters… The other is the stringing up, or weaving, of
a complex set of circumstances to be confronted by the char-
62
acters….” In analyzing (while co-authoring and appreciating),
my very own earth life as an unfolding novel, where should I put
the boundary between character and circumstance? Isn’t my
face, long taken for granted as a part my identity, actually part of
my circumstance?
Yes, if I re-member who I really am — an embodied
spirit that is seamlessly an organic part, a jigsaw-puzzle piece
with boundaries healed enough to vanish, of the Great and
Glorious Whole. I am now circumstantially wearing a
personality vehicle called body-mind and synergizing with it in
earth life for actualization and further growth.
I am, therefore I do. Do what? I do re-membering.
And from the “whole-tree” viewpoint (involving all the
chakras from the roots through the crown), I become increas-
ingly aware of, and I increasingly appreciate from total body-
mind-spirit experience, my real identity, where the terms “my
body” and “my mind” will frequently be used to relate to most
of the earth experiences, and the phrase “my soul” will be
banished forever as a redundance.
Early on in the previous chapter, I enumerate “ins-
tructions” that start with “You will receive a body,” and include
a line that says “The Answers Lie Inside You.” And if I do
remember right from my first reading of this long ago, the last
line says: “You will forget this.” I bring in now in a line I com-
posed from the standard opening scene in episodes of the
Mission: Impossible series, “Your mission, Jim, should you
decide to accept it is… to remember who you are.”
For, as Walsch says, we don’t have to “go to Heaven”,
we are already “there.” We just have to wake up in it. And
Redfield says Hell is not to know this.
The answers lie inside each of us, deep within the very
core of one’s being as one whole human synergy of all our
respective body, mind and spirit synergies, while we individually
and together travel, amid all the noise and haste, down the path
of our Awareness Journey and gradually re-member fully.
After receiving your body and forgetting all this, your
mission is to remember who you are, an awareness so much
enriched and actualized in living experience of bringing glorious
divinity into the filthiest marketplaces of earth life.
8. Creation’s Self-Reflexive Appreciation
Soul of our spirit’s nature apparently chooses as
instrument matter of the nature of our living cells with mind and
energies of our personality, then this soul had to wait for matter
to evolve to such levels of refinement for its incarnation for
whatever purpose such incarnation would be. Cognition, emo-
tions, comprehension, appreciation, love bordering on uncon-
ditional, and joy that is profound – these are activities and
capabilities widely thought up to now as exclusive to human
experience, exclusive to the homo sapiens sapiens, or to the still
emergent homo universalis.
Brian Swimme (1984) tells us:
“Just as hoof is memory, the human body is memory.
Think of how many creatures are involved in the ancestral tree
for the creation of our fingers! When you lift your hand, you are
lifting all the vast experimentation that led to that hand. There
before you is the history of the great events in the universe: the
biological exploration, the supernova explosion, all the
significant moments of the last twenty billion years are
remembered.”
To emphasize this point beyond the Darwinian evolution
of the body, Swimme says:
“(F)rom a physical point of view, the movement of the
ions in your brain corresponds to your subjective experience.
63
Different ion flows would give you qualitatively different ex-
periences; or, equally true, a qualitatively different mood would
manifest as a different movement of iopns in your nervous
system. The question I want to ask is simply this. What enables
the ions to move? Or what enables you to think? On what power
do you rely for your thinking, feeling, and wondering?
“Ions don’t move by their own power: they have to be
pushed and tugged about. A close examination shows that an
energy-soaked molecule in the brain is responsible for the ion
movement. Closer examination shows that this molecule is able
to push ions around because of energy it got, ultimately, from the
food that you eat. The food got the energy from the Sun; food
traps a photon in the net of its molecule webbing, and this
photonic energy pushes and pulls the ions in your brain, making
possible your present moment of amazing human subjectivity.
Right now, this moment, ions are flowing this way and that
because of the manner in which you have organized energy from
the Sun.
“But we’re not done yet. Where did the photon come
from? We know that in the core of our Sun, atomic fusion creates
helium atoms out of hydrogen atoms, in the process releasing
photons of sunlight. So, if photons come from hydrogen atoms,
where did the hydrogen get the photons? This leads us to the
edge of the primeval fireball, to the moment of creation itself.
“The primeval fireball was a vast gushing forth of light,
first so powerful that it carried elementary particles about as if
they were bits of bark on a tidal wave. But as the fireball con-
tinued to expand, the light calmed down until, hundreds of
thousands of years later, the energy level decreased to a point
where it could be captured by electrons and protons in the
community of the hydrogen atom. Hydrogen atoms rage with
energy from the fireball, symphonic storms of energy held
together in communities extremely reluctant to give this energy
up. But in the cores of stars, hydrogen atoms are forced to
release their energy in the form of photons, and this photonic
showed from the beginning of time powers your thinking.”
I take note of two points from this lengthy description
from Swimme: one, that the origin of power for ion flow in brain
activity is the entire stretch of creation and evolution process;
and, two, the way ions do flow is determined by how we
organize that same energy coming to us from our Sun. The first
point underscores how intimately interlinked we have always
been and always will be with the rest of the Cosmos; the second
point underscores a cumulative process of the way we shape the
organizing of this energy, the cumulative consciousness which
synergizes all the whispers of our innermost selves with all the
experiences we undergo in earth life. The first is in the realm of
physics and bio-physics; the second is in the realm of developing
awareness and appreciation.
James Redfield, of Celestine Prophecy fame, gives us
this summary of the Tenth Insight, titled “Holding the Vision”:
“As the tide of remembrance (of our individual and collective
birth intentions) continued to sweep the planet, all humans began
to understand that our destiny was to discuss and compare the
perspectives of our relative religions and, while honoring the
best of their individual doctrines at the personal level, ultimately
to see that each religion supplemented the others and to integrate
them into a synthesized global spirituality." … "The key aspect
of this Vision is not a mere experience of it, although that's hard
enough. It's how we project this Vision of the future, how we
hold it for the rest of humanity.” [from "Remembering the
Future" and "Holding the Vision", The Tenth Insight: Holding
the Vision by James Redfield (New York: Warner Books, 1996)]
Holding the vision for the rest of humanity is immense
enough a task. But humans have apparently been designed to
hold the appreciative vision of global spirituality for a mandate
64
that goes way beyond the collective consciousness only of our
own species. Swimme goes on to attempt an explanation why the
universe took all the trouble of evolving the humans, or, put
another way, what the humans can accomplish for the universe
from hereon, given our unique capabilities that represent a
synergy of all earlier evolutionary stages:
“We need a new human in a new Earth, creating and
entering new relationships with the primary realities of the
universe. In the most obvious meaning, all our difficulty as a
species on this planet stems from our false relationships with
winds, seas, life, sunlight, and land. It’s not that we’re bad;
we’ve simply been trying to live outside our true relationships
with these primordial cosmic presences.
“But as you move into the full universe, you will
discover something stupendous. All these powers are yours!
They cost nothing! They do not depend on the color of your
skin, the name of your religion, or your place of birth. The
further development of the Earth community depends upon our
ripening as a species, but nothing is more natural for the human
person to accomplish.
“We sometimes fall into the delusion that power is
elsewhere, that it belongs to a different group, that we are unable
to find access to it. Nothing could be further than the truth. The
universe oozes with power, waiting for anyone who wishes to
embrace it. But because the powers of cosmic dynamics are
invisible, we need to remind ourselves of their universal
presence. Who reminds us? The rivers, plains, galaxies,
hurricanes, lightning branches, and all our living companions.”
(p. 150-151)
Earlier in his book, Swimme is more direct with this
point (all underscoring mine, except those set in boldface):
 “The human provides the space in which the universe
feels its stupendous beauty. Think of it this way: before the
human arrived, the Earth and universe were magnificent
realities. However, some of the depths of this magnificence had
yet to be felt, yet to be appreciated. We enabled some of the
depths of the universe to be tasted, and we have only just begun
our venture; much waits on our maturity. … “Think of what it
would be if there were no humans on the planet: the mountains
and the primeval fireball would be magnificent, but the Earth
would not feel any of this. Can you see the sadness of such a
state? The incompleteness? … (H)umans can house the
tremendous beauty of the Earth, of life, of the universe. We can
value it, feel its grandeur.” (pp. 32-33)
“We are the self-reflexion of the universe. We allow the
universe to know and feel itself. So, the universe is aware of
itself through self-reflexive mind, which unfurls in the human.
We were brought forth so that the experiences of beauty could
enter awareness. The primeval fireball existed for twenty billion
years without self-awareness.
“The creative work of the supernovas existed for billions
of years without self-reflexive awareness. That star could not, by
itself, become aware of its own beauty or sacrifice. But the star
can, through us, reflect back on itself. In a sense, you are the
star. Look at your hand. Do you claim it as your own? Every
element was forged in temperatures a nillion times hotter than
molten rock, each atom fashioned in the blazing heat of the star.
Your eyes, your brain, your bones, all of you is composed of the
stars creations. You are that star, brought into a form of life that
enables life to reflect on itself.
“So, yes, the star does know of its great work, or its
surrender to allurement, of its stupendous contribution to life,
but only through its further articulation – you.” (pp. 58-59)
65
If the living organism Gaia that is planet Earth has for its
circulatory system all its waters, and for its digestive tract the
soil including all the microorganisms therein, what makes for
Gaia’s mind? The preceding paragraphs seem to point to us
humans, to our consciousness. Are we now about to sigh, “Poor
Gaia!!!”? An English poet once lamented…
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom’d depth of oceans bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its fragrance in the desert air.
And this whole point dovetails with, and is elevated still
further by, what Walsch writes in Conversations (Book 3, pp.
50-51) as God saying to him:
“I am the Creator – That Which Creates. Yet I choose to
know Myself in My Own Experience.
“Just as I know my perfection of design through a
snowflake, My awesome beauty through a rose, so, too, do I
know my creative power – through you.
“Through you, I can know every aspect of Me. The
perfection of the snowflake, the awesome beauty of the rose, the
courage of lions, the majesty of eagles, all resides in you. In you
I have placed all these things – and one thing more: the
consciousness to be aware of it.
“Thus have you become self-conscious. And thus have
you been given the greatest gift, for you have been aware of
yourself being yourself – which is exactly what I am.
“I am Myself, aware of Myself being Myself.
“This is what is meant by the statement, I Am That I Am.
“You are that Part of Me which is the awareness,
experienced.
 “And what you are experiencing (and what I am
experiencing through you) is Me, creating Me.
“I am in the continual act of creating Myself.”
Before I end this section, let me recall that tree, that is
“breathing heaven while deeply rooted in earth.” No experience
of ours on earth is so petty that it would be useless in God’s
continual self-creation or in the self-reflexive awareness of the
universe. Cherished well are those experiences of ours in the
effort to rediscover and actualize who we really are, embodied
spirits experiencing earth for the greater glorification of its
Loving Creator and Synergy of All Synergies, incarnated souls
simultaneously aware of our body-mind experiences and of our
divine real selves as fingers of the same Divine Hand.
9. Appreciation Powerfully Creates
Just as the Human Mind can be seriously considered as
the self-reflexive appreciation organ of the entire Creation, the
self-reflexive experiencer-appreciator of God Herself/Himself,
the Human Mind is a powerful creator. This should not be
surprising at all for people who believe that we are all fingers of
the same Divine and Almighty Hand.
The Mind is not quite just the Intellect but it also
————has that intellectual part faithfully subscribed to its
self-developed force of logic. But it also has that other part
whose acts are not exactly always logically-defensible but
nevertheless very real, and often more creative and more
powerful than the Intellect. We call it Intuition.
Synergy between them, the synergy between the more
logical “Left Brain” thinking and the more intuitive “Right
Brain” feeling, makes the Human mind a super-creator in its
own right. In synergy, which I believe to be the natural mode of
existence of the Human Mind and of everything else, the Mind
as a holonic reality is at its best. However, disharmony between
66
the “Left Brain” and the “Right Brain” limits this power tre-
mendously. Remember my narration and explanation about
“halving a synergy”?
The usual culprit in preventing the synergy, actually
breaking the synergy in the realm of our consciousness, is the
logical part. While the Intellect — accumulating all of what
philosopher Ayn Rand calls conceptual integrations, including
the effect of the study of Logic itself as a basic subject in
Philosophy — is a very useful, universal and almost-exclusive
tool of the Humans, earning for us the self-edifying label, “homo
sapiens,” we also often allow it to be powerful a self-limiting
force. This is why most of the inventions of the mind often
comes more from the more creative and more daring Intuition
part of the Mind.
One lesson that has to be learned really fully by the Intel-
lect is honest humility that there exist realities that have to be
acknowledged even if our sciences have not developed enough
to fully comprehend them, and even if our sciences may never
actually develop enough to fully comprehend them. Veneration
of the unknown, instead of fear or resentment (and therefore
stubborn rejection) of it, is not at all a very easy lesson to learn.
Still, we are learning, albeit very gradually, to acknow-
ledge the Intellect’s innate limitations, and acknowledge as well
the very real power of Intuition. Quantum physicists are at the
forefront of the scientific community becoming more and more
spiritual and frankly admitting so with nary a tinge of guilt or
defensiveness. You’d hear “We don’t really know” more often
from them, in talking about the atom, than from the over-
confident student who had just passed an undergrad course in
Basic Physics. From experience, the leading practitioners and
academicians of Science have attained full agreement with the
realization that “The more you know, the more you know that
you do not know.”
 Psychologists were among the first to assert publicly the
power of the “mind over matter,” with the most obvious effects
of a person’s state of mind on his or her physical health. And
then the practitioners of the paranormal sciences followed suit,
with their studies on telepathy, psychometry and telekinesis.
Phenomena related to hypnotism, near-death experiences and
astral travel have since been documented with great levels of
consistency in patterns. Then came studies on “consciousness
grids” for humans and even for such animals as monkeys. A
chapter in Part Three of this book carries accounts on the
“Hundredth Monkey” experiment, and the “Hundredth Human”
experiment.
Because of increasing numbers of incidents unexplain-
able by the pure and hard sciences, more and more from among
even the most die-hard fans of pure-logic are being forced by
their very same logic to acknowledge as real many things their
own sciences cannot make sense of. The universe is unfolding as
it should, the inevitable is happening –Human consciousness is
increasingly ready to accord enough respect for Intuition.
Human consciousness is moving back to the synergy of Intellect
and Intuition to end the long mental negation of this perpetual
reality. This negation, though merely mental, is powerfully real,
because the Mind is powerful enough to create and to de-create.
Are there many people who still seriously doubt the
power of the mind? Then these people have not heard of doctors
employing fake pills, called placebo, that induce in patients a
sense of certainty in the efficacy of that pill and that sense of
certainty actually cures her. These people may not have heard of
cancer patients “dying on schedule,” that is, killing themselves
along the timeline predicted by their doctors. Or of people dying
of suffocation in stalled elevators just because they had not been
informed that air vents in those elevators were working all the
time to supply them with more that enough oxygen for days. Or
67
of that hitchhiker who “froze” to death after he found himself
locked in a refrigerator train coach and did not know that the
refrigerating mechanism wasn’t even working at the time.
A medical student was once charged with “excessive
happiness” and almost got expelled from medical school, before
he received fame for his very effective but unorthodox ways.
His name is Dr. Patch Adams, M.D. And he is quoted in House
Calls (of the Robert Reed Publications) saying (emphasis mine):
“Faith can have a profound impact on health. It is a very
personal experience of thought and surrender, which can comfort
in every situation. Faith is free and available to all people at all
times. It only requires that one fully embrace possibility, and the
ultimate value is in the depth of the embrace.
Dr. Adams speaks of depth of embrace of possibility. If
we can as much as be “simply open” to many possibilities,
including those we cannot logically predict, then that is already a
very good start, for we shall have decided to stop rejecting. We
can deepen the embrace by visualizing it vividly, by desiring it
fervently, and having enough faith to “thank heavens!” — well
in advance — for its coming to pass, the way we can thank the
waiter immediately after he says “Coming right up!”
Hey! Doesn’t that sound like a form of prayer, complete
with enough faith to say “So be it, thank you!” (Amen!)? Well,
isn’t it precisely that clarity of desire and strong faith in its
fulfillment that makes prayers powerful? And in praying, aren’t
we creating the desired reality by clearly recalling Who We
Really Are and talking to God within our very selves?
In Conversations With God, Book 3 (pp. 60 and 67),
Walsch has God telling him:
“In the creation of individual reality, thought control, or
what some might call prayer – is everything.
 “Thought control is the highest form of prayer. There-
fore, think only of good things, and righteous. And even in
moments when things look bleak – especially in those moments
– see only perfection. Express only gratefulness, and then
imagine only what manifestation of perfection you choose next.
In this formula is found tranquility. In this process is found
peace. In this awareness is found joy.
xxx
“… Assume a different perspective and you will have a
different thought about everything. In this way you will have
learned to control your thought, and in the creation of your
experience, controlled thought is everything. Some people call
this constant prayer.
“…dwell not in the negativity and darkness, though you
may be immersed in it.”
(Of course, I have no doubt that Walsch meant such
“thought control” to be self-control in favor of the positive,
based on wisdom gained from experiencing the effects of
indulging in negativity.)
When we pray, do we look upwards to some distant God?
Shouldn’t we look within, instead, and confidently invoke that
same almighty power of which we all partake within the reality
of the Divine Oneness of All?

68
PART THREE: JOINED IN
GRANDER SYNERGIES
“JUST as fully functioning persons write the script of their own
lives,” says Buscaglia (in Personhood, 1978, p. 104), “they also
respect the connectiveness of all things along the way. They
realize that the self is only the self in that it has a world, a
structure of which it is a part – a part, yet apart. We are a
community of persons and a world of things. We are what we
are because birds exist, plants grow, bees pollinate, winds blow,
tides change, rains fall, and accidents happen. Nothing occurs in
the world that in some way does not affect us all. Even the most
insignificant act we perform will have some effect upon the
world.”
Further down, Buscaglia adds: “… We are each a
singular person but we are each a universal person. Both are
equally important.”
In Part One we discuss various metaphors of the
synergism principle and their varying degrees of appropriateness
in representing this powerful principle. Human beings are
potentially the most excellent metaphors, nay embodiments, of
this principle considering our nature with its evolved capability
to unite dynamically for the full re-membering and full synergy.
However, human beings have been accorded free will,
and in the present stage of evolution of the use of this freedom of
choice, the stage of only a blurred inkling of our real identity, the
tendency has largely been towards separativeness, turning our
potential excellence for personifying synergism into the
actualization of its exact opposite. Two humans together can
have the team power of three, but if in the exercise of their free
will they choose to compete, they can easily cancel each other
out and the resultant capacity may be a big fat zero.
 Whenever a group of humans choose to ignore or even
reject the reality of our essential oneness, they are unable to avail
themselves of the ever-present power of the synergism principle.
Many human attempts at building mechanisms for united action
collapse when separative ego rears its ugly head. On the other
hand, whenever they do the opposite and actualize their essential
oneness as humans, they find synergism is instantly in operation,
increasing the capability of each one and of the larger holon they
create among themselves.
Synergies set up by humans are always at risk of falling
apart because of “evil” which I have referred to in my own
version of The Lord’s Prayer as “all alienation and separation
from (God) and from one another.” Synergies set up with
creation itself are only at risk from without, that is, from the
separative and therefore destructive tendencies of humans.
Like the Sun, which never actually sets and never
actually rises, the synergism principle is always there ready to
play its “magical role” whenever two or more of us are gathered
in the name of Our Divine Oneness. I expressed this of the Sun
in a short text-message I recently sent out to some of my friends:
“The sun constantly smiles upon the earth, but half the
time the earth turns away from its unconditional love. Sunrise is
when the earth begins to smile back.”

Chapter 6:
Intimate Personal Bondings
1. Love – It’s All There is
69
NEALE Donald Walsh (Conversations, Book 3, 1999, pp. 206-
207) had God saying:
“Love is that which is unlimited. There is no beginning
and no end to it. No before and no after. Love always was, is and
always will be.
“So love is also always. It is the always reality.
“Now we get back to another word we used before—
freedom. For if love is unlimited, and always, then love is…
free. Love is that which is perfectly free.
“Now in the human reality, you will find that you always
seek to love, and to be loved. You will find that you will always
yearn for that love to be unlimited. And you will find that you
will always wish you could be free to express it.
“You will seek freedom, unlimitedness, and eternality in
every experience of love. You may not always get it, but that is
what you will seek. You will seek this because this is what love
is, and at some deep place you know that because you are love,
and through the expression of love you are seeking to know and
to experience Who and What You Are.
“You are life expressing life, love expressing love, God
expressing God.
“God – Life – Love – Unlimited – Eternal – Free.
Anything which is not one of these things is not any of these
things. You are all of those things, and you will seek to
experience yourself as all of these things….”
2. Intimate Personal Bonds—Families and Friendships
Families are said to be “basic units” of society. In ancient
times, they were considered to be household units, where the
“man of the house,” the patriarch or the petty patriarch made all
decisions for the internal affairs of the family and represented
the latter in broader decision-making processes like exercising
the right to suffrage. It was only within the century just past that
women won that right and the basis of membership in society
became individuals as citizens. But families and their role in the
social structure were changed by social dynamics since the
advent of the industrial age, which Alvin Toffler calls “Second
Wave” and more so in the current transition to the Information
Age.
Meantime, with family ties getting weaker and weaker in
modern and post-modern society, friendships have been fulfilling
more and more of the needs of humans as social beings.
Frustrated parents are complaining that their children are
gravitating more and more to friendship circles, even as these
parents themselves are spending more and more hours with their
“associates, business partners, and potential clients.” Both sets
of associations are inherently noble and both deserve to be
developed instead of allowing the convenience drift to
completely obliterate the erstwhile “basic unit” of society. This
can be done by fully appreciating each of the two in their
commonalities and contrast, and by aiming for complementation,
for synergy, for mutual enrichment between the family dynamics
and friendship dynamics.
My article proposing a serious and wider study on the
mutual enrichment between family ties and friendships, which is
Paradigm No.13 (A Gathering of Light for Empowerment),
says that “personal bonds are developed by each individual on
the basis of shared experiences and according to that person’s
hierarchy of needs. All these are human synergies, where each
party enjoys from the interaction a magnification of her or his
own strengths and capabilities, and fulfills the basic needs of the
human person as a social being, including self-actualization and
70
self-affirmation.” The following paragraphs make up a
substantial excerpt from that article:
Although these personal bonds make up the reality of
community and society, the depth and nature of specific personal
interactions or ties vary widely. They range from the level of
being friendly acquaintances and functional interactions to that
of close friendships where bonds develop on many levels and
upon a set of mutual needs being satisfied, all the way to being
very close friends and close-in team-ups where the parties relate
with one another and are enriched at the deepest personal levels
or at levels deemed by these parties to be most important
(according to their respective value systems).
The personal bonds that we — often half-consciously —
develop with persons around us are shaped by our unique
personal needs within our unique personal circumstances. In a
way, there is at least a mutually-accepted, though unwritten,
commitment to a set of expectations from each party. These
range from the minimum expectation that the other person would
not do you harm intentionally, and would act in civilized
behavior, or would contribute something for a common interest,
or even assist in some way when the others need help, all the
way to formalized commitments of fidelity to relationships, like
marriage, or to common missions and tasks, like membership in
organizations.
When the expectations are not met, or especially when
one or some, or even all, could not or could no longer maintain
the commitment, the bond slides down in level or may even be
completely ended. Many of the expectations are frustrated
because they had not been clearly agreed to in the first place by
the parties. In many other circumstances the parties may have
benefited from a brief interaction and were satisfied with that
one-time pleasant interlude, and saw no need or possibility to
relate to each other any further. This happens very often with
simple acquaintances, too often in fact to be noticed and
remembered, that such friendly acquaintances really just come
and go in our lives.
Beyond friendly acquaintance, however, there are two
kinds of personal bonds that last longer and touch the parties’
lives at least a bit more deeply or profoundly. These are
relationships within a nuclear family, and relationships among
friends, let alone among or between close friends. Family and
friendship relations have their own respective characteristics that
make for advantages and disadvantages.
But these bonds do vary in texture and depth from one
familial relationship to another, and also from one friendship to
another, due to the specificity of their respective circumstances
and histories and due to the respective needs they satisfy or fail
to satisfy.
Both the familial bonds and the friendships play
important roles in the comfort, growth and happiness of each
individual. They both provide the circumstances needed by each
one for self-actualization, self-affirmation and overall growth.
They jointly hold up to each one a mirror of oneself.
What are the innate differences between family members
on the one hand and friends on the other? While family ties
automatically result from the shared blood circumstance, and are
therefore basically permanent, friendships are basically choiceful
and transient.
You don’t get to choose your relatives; you just get born
and find yourselves in the same family or in the same clan. They
did not exactly choose you, either, but you can make them glad
to have found you in the same family with them!
Although a common upbringing together under one roof
often results in a shared value system during the formative years
when the children are still generally receptive to influence from
71
the same pair of parents, commonality of genes do not at all
make for similarity of character, habits, tastes and peeves. There
would, therefore, be a lot of conflicts, including emotional ones,
while they are practically forced by circumstances of home
setting to continue sharing common bedrooms, using the same
toothpaste tubes, and tolerating one another’s personal habits.
Still, these are the persons who know you best, including
most of your worst personal habits, including how terrible you
look when you really look your worst. The problem with many
family members is that they tend to concentrate on remembering
your worst, and do not bother to express, or at times even notice,
your positive points. And because love is supposedly automatic
here, something “to be taken for granted,” many family
members, especially the siblings, don’t bother to express such
love with “terms of endearment.”
What often makes it worse is how the factor of perma-
nence of the bond plays out here. Siblings, for example, can
assume they don’t have to resolve emotional conflicts among
them, and may tend to just let time gloss over these. In some cas-
es, time does heal and they would be prepared to laugh together
later about their earlier conflicts. However, in some other cases
conflicts or at least the really deep resentments accumulate, and
the affected parties, or at least one or some of them, would feel
trapped in the permanence of their having to remain as siblings.
Instead of appreciating the permanence as an endless stream of
opportunities for endearment and mutual affirmation, and for
resolving conflicts when these occur, they tend to suffer the
permanence as an “endless period of mutual tolerance,” or even
a constant “cold war.”
In this situation, the feuding siblings often forget that
they have already shared years upon years of common weal and
woe and have helped and forgiven one another countless times;
they somehow accord more value to what friends have done for
them over much shorter periods.
(The tendency is to appreciate more the endearing
gesture from a friend, because it’s supposed to be essentially
“voluntary,” than a bigger favor or even a countless stream of
favors from a brother or a sister, because it’s supposed to be
essentially “done out of duty.”)
Close friends often start off as friendly acquaintances
who know only what one would choose to let others know or
have to let them know about one’s own personal habits and
history, generally excluding the most embarrassing parts.
Friendly acquaintances often afford you the comfort of “quiet”
companionship. There is the enjoyment of having some fun
together or even just laughing together about some very
forgettable thing or other. In this setting, they are happily away
from disciplinary lectures from parents or other authority
figures.
Such enjoyment is also available to family members,
especially between arriving home from work or school and
going to bed, but no effort is made to seek and give the
availability of family members for this, especially if pressure is
applied and is resisted. In some cases, the size of the family, the
age gaps between the siblings, or the necessity of focusing all
time and energy to breadwinning for survival, would become the
challenging factors. To some people, spouses have become
pressure figures they would rather be away from when they want
to relax. Even in the face of mounting problems in the family,
including its mounting expenses, married couples have to learn
to relax and enjoy together.
Many of us would tend to feel relaxed with friends or in
other words more “at home” with them than with those people
we live in the same house with.

72
 And you choose to develop close friendships with some
of these friendly acquaintances or choose to allow the deve-
lopment of such close friendship, calibrating which things to re-
veal about yourself at any given time, to ascertain their levels of
trustworthiness. And as a close friendship gets cherished, you
tend to be willing to walk the extra mile to maintain it. After all,
because friendships are transient, you are aware that you can still
possibly lose it anytime and you choose to try your best not to.
Here is where terms of mutual endearment and mutual support
are deemed as needed and expressively appreciated in a continu-
ing stream.
Still, when a conflict does erupt, friends have the option
to keep away from one another for a while, even for weeks on
end if needed, and then slide back to normal togetherness after
resentments cool down a bit. (This option cannot easily be
chosen by feuding siblings who have to share a bedroom every
night or by feuding spouses who share the same bed; here,
taking the option of keeping apart can be dramatically traumatic,
and one would likely choose to suffer the conflict in silence, and,
worse, just “get used to it.”)
As some of your friendships get closer, you get to be
known more intimately by your friends than by your parents and
siblings. While the latter tend to have a frozen picture of you on
the basis of your latest meaningful transaction with them, your
current close friends get front seats, even active roles to play, in
the drama of your life as it unfolds in real time.
This situation holds both the positive and the negative
potentials in terms of influencing the lives of young people.
On the one hand, friends provide you with listening ears
to vent your woes into, with shoulders to cry on, with sources of
affirmation, for persons who need such support badly. They
would even offer a lot of wisdom and prudence to the despe-
rately confused or self-resentful.
On the other hand, bad feelings and tendencies to rebel
can, and at times actually do, get mutually-reinforced and result
in the group members finding themselves together in more trou-
ble than before.
These two tendencies are often present simultaneously
and often contend with each other; the situation is often saved by
those group members who had been given enough moral
foundation by their respective families before they even ven-
tured out to bonding closely with peer groups.
The problem is there may be a growing number of pa-
rents who alienate themselves from such groups by exerting
pressure on their children to stay away from their peers who they
fear might be a “bad influence” on their children. Worse, a
growing number of parents have chosen to abdicate or have been
forced to abdicate on their role of giving the “good influence”
(moral foundation-setting) on their children much earlier.
Nuclear families generally live together under one roof.
Parents and the children, who are not necessarily the natural
offspring of either or both of them, are expected to do so, sharing
the family home and the food on the table. Close family relations
have been built in this kind of setting for centuries, even for
millennia, on end.

73
 Closely-knit families were still the rule much more than the
exception in the Philippines at the time the Katipunan was gather-
ing a synergy among the diverse communities in our archipelago to
birth our nationhood and win our national freedom. That is why
Andres Bonifacio, the Katipunan founder, chose the family as the
central metaphor for the nationhood that was being birthed: the
Katipuneros professed their love for “Inang Bayan,” called them-
selves “mga Anak ng Bayan,” and called one another kapatid or
sibling. But the Katipunan leaders were careful not to be racist, and
they even campaigned for relations among nations based on the
same bonds of symbolic siblinghood, which he explained as the
philosophy behind the ancient practice of having blood compacts.
They instituted their own version of such a compact by signing
their oaths of allegiance to the Katipunan in their own blood.
Up to much more recent times, closely-knit families were
giving meaning to the words “para ko nang kapatid” referring to
friendships so close that the bond is almost like that of siblinghood.
No blood compact accompanies such descriptions but the elements
of intimacy and mutual trust and intended permanence that we dis-
cussed above are realities lived and enjoyed by all concerned.
These, and the phenomenon of extended families that in-
clude close friends, are living metaphors of the family as a healthy
and happy synergy. They result from choiceful inclusion, intended
to be permanent, into a framework of unity that is both innately
automatic and permanent. The readiness of a family to “adopt
members” reflects a certain level of self-confidence and a generally
wholesome attitude to the rest of society outside its own bloodline
boundaries.
74
There are, however, some metaphorical allusions to close
family ties that do a disservice to the latter. One of these is in the
formation of many student fraternities (brotherhoods) and sororities
(sisterhoods) whose behavior as formalized friendships defined to
be dedicated to some social service is very much tainted by a long
tradition of mutual antagonism with some other parallel groups that
are basically identical with them, a sub-culture of war-like
competition that tolerates, even abets, violent initiations within the
organizations and violent rumbles among rival groups. Enjoying
the loyal tolerance of alumni who are considered permanent mem-
bers but whose development of personal maturity has not been
tapped as a moderating influence, these groups have apparently
been trapped in their glamorized traditions of violence that have
destroyed their social image.
The violent routines, and their constant preparations for
these, have dissipated energies that could have been focused, in-
stead, on the voluntary social services they have offered. Worse, the
rivalries have prevented many of these groups from achieving
magnified capabilities in working together. Such a mixture of
formalized and ritualized friendship, with the expected permanence
of narrow loyalties, has been an unfortunate one. There is hope for
change, though, if enough people in the position to influence these
groups would exert enough unified efforts to effect such change.
We can also talk of metamorphosis, of transformation,
where a close friendship actually develops into a family relation-
ship. This would involve something like a blood compact, but
blood from the parties to this kind of compact is mixed not in wine
as in the ceremony between our native King Sikatuna and the rep-
resentative of the King of Spain, and neither in signatures affixed to
a sacred document such as the Katipunan oath, but mixed in the
begetting and conceiving of offspring, of new human incarnations
and channels of Life. This is the delicate transformation of simple
friendship to romantic friendship, and finally to marriage.
 Within the friendship stage of this process, there is a trans-
formation of needs and expectations being mutually served. It can
and often it does in fact begin with some physical attraction and
gratification between the sexes, and seeking to fulfill the personal
and social need for steady dates and all-around companionship.
Then it gets more serious and develops into an exclusive
commitment for mutual courtship, and still more serious in
ascertaining and confirming compatibilities for a life and continued
growth together, including a comfortable and effective teaming-up
for joint parenting, and, once ascertained by both parties as “meant
to be,” preparing the relationship itself for the next stage, which is
marriage. If it does not reach that, the relationship gets ended.
The act of choosing one’s life-partner, and the quality of
mutually-supportive and mutually-fulfilling interaction between
parties of such a relationship before their marriage, would generally
determine the quality of interaction the partners would have within
the marriage and would thus showcase for their children what sort
of wholesome relationship can be developed and enjoyed within the
family. They can thus lead together by example.
What value systems are chosen by both partners for their
family to live by would not necessarily determine the stability and
level of personal fulfillment they can expect to achieve in the
marriage and in the family life. The more important factor is that
the partners are compatible enough to be able to resolve discrepan-
cies and really harmonize their respective personal values, and to
choose to live by a cohesive and consistent set of values.
75
Otherwise, they would be forced into a running competition
for influence on their children and/or into a permanent state of
mutual toleration, even if we assumed that they could manage to
stay “together” just “for the sake of the kids.” They suffer this,
instead of enjoying deep love and continuing mutual enrichment for
as long as they both shall live. And the children growing up under
the influence of such behavior would probably adopt this same
competition and mutual toleration mode among themselves as
siblings.
Searching for a life-partner, one may find it exciting to be
with, and try to change, a direct opposite in personality, values
and intended lifepath. However, as life goes on and maturity sets
in, sense of adventure in the mating game, which usually peaks
during one’s campus years, is eventually outgrown.
One increasingly longs to be in long-term romantic part-
nership with someone who has at least similar values, priorities
and direction in life, someone you wouldn’t have to spend the
rest of your life adjusting to. Someone you’d grow very comfort-
ably with, who would be your teammate in rearing the offspring,
someone you’d enjoy life with for many years and many
decades.
Many stable spouses start out being the best of friends,
and some do even before romance sparked in their hearts for
each other. And they have ensured that the friendship be conti-
nually nurtured and deepened. That’s why they have been stable.
 There are real opportunities for building friendships with-
in the family, friendships among family members, of varying deg-
rees of closeness and in varying levels of development. These
are real opportunities for loving one another really fully, in the
words of Jesus Christ, “as I have loved you.”
My Christian background makes me invoke the very first
two words of the prayer that Christ was said to have taught us:
“Our Father…” By starting with that phrase, this prayer invokes
the family as metaphor, and teaches us a profound lesson in
jointly acclaiming our personal choice to love one another as
members of one family.
Family members and friends are really living the lesson
from this when they love one another — “As I have loved you”
—- closely and consistently, whether or not they mention God or
Christ at all. I’m sure there would be equivalents of this in other
religions; but I’m not familiar enough with them to have the
confidence even just to attempt to discuss them.
Family-oriented programs and projects of Christian insti-
tutions and organizations, like the various Christian churches,
may consider adding to the effectiveness of their efforts by
helping their members see and love the Christ in each one of
them and the Christ in their midst, in their strong unity or
synergy.
Focusing their attention only on other matters, especially
“heavenly themes,” would somehow allow their members to
simply paraphrase the Lucy character of the Peanuts comic strip
and say: “I love God, I love Christ, I love the Church, I love the
Pope and the bishops and the priests and the pastors and the
deacons and ministers, and the nuns… and our benefactors and
friends and the poor and the sick. I love Mankind. It’s just these
people all around me everyday that I can’t stand!”
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I know of families who had prayed the rosary on sched-
ule everyday, but with most of the family members resentful of
being forced by their parents to be present for it. The approach
doesn’t work in having a family that stays together. To them I
offer this paraphrase: “The family that prays together, with its
members really living the prayers, stays together.”
In fact, this goes beyond families. The inner synergy
(“innergy”) of the family can come a long way in contributing to
the social synergy of the bigger community, in bigger and bigger
concentric circles of inclusive embrace all the way to the Global
Human Family and the entire Cosmic Whole (which we can also
refer to as “Creation”). In this manner, inner family relation-
ships can and still do contribute to the enrichment of all other
social relationships.
Indeed, there are countless opportunities available for
persons living under one roof to establish mutually-supportive
and mutually-fulfilling bonds of love and mutual support.
Unfortunately, many married couples and many siblings
feel more the pressures of permanence and of external factors
(like parental authority, or the marriage contract), forcing them
to cope with, to get used to, prolonged toleration.
Worse, a married person can become increasingly vulne-
rable to temptations of extramarital affairs when he or she finds
more emotional and spiritual (not religious) support or all-round
gratification and affirmation from friends of the opposite sex
than what his or her spouse is willing or able to give.
As mentioned above, siblings actually share years upon
years of common weal and woe and help and forgive one
another countless times, but they somehow accord more value to
what friends have done for them over much shorter periods.
Thus, many friendships are often given more focus in nurturing
and are allowed to substitute for family ties, often uninten-
tionally contributing to the latter’s further disintegration.
Both the bonds of kinship and the bonds of friendship
can be functioning side by side as complementary personal
bonds with their own varying levels and forms of mutual per-
sonal support, their own varying bases of endearment, and their
own varying opportunities for common enjoyment. If these are
handled erratically and reactively, or, worse, overreactively, one
can ruin the other and both can get ruined eventually.
In the history of human development, families had been
viewed as mechanisms for material resources accumulation, with
the royally wealthy often engaging in arranged or even incest-
uous marriages to keep the wealth in the family or in the same
small group of allied families.
In the more recent era of encouraging extreme individual-
ism, the stability and integrity of nuclear families have given way
to other, more choiceful, groupings of people for their collective
and individual needs, like informal or formalized friendships.
3. A Heartwarming Case Study
Considering that romantic love is something like a bridge
between friendship and family dynamics, considering that it
begins in friendship and has the perspective of teaming up for
family-building through marriage, there are various nuances in
friendships where at least one or even both parties would feel
romantic energies. About half a decade ago, I had an
opportunity to write about one such friendship. It is a
synergism-oriented essay based on true-to-life characters and
circumstances, and I carry it here in full:
77
“A close friend of mine came across a story that would
not be your usual mushy stuff for the Valentine season. This
friend wants to share it with people who might find it insightful.
I hope I do justice to this story both in my note-taking and
retelling.
“The story tells of a man who met by chance a young
lady whom he has since been describing as wonderfully beauti-
ful inside out, a child-fairy who was very much mature for her
body-age. He came to love her the way he was loving no other,
and dreamt of the day she would be his lifepartner. She found
him pleasant and inspiring, friendly and profound, his writings,
his articulated insights, struck her with ‘deep, deep awe,’ and she
asked that they be ‘celestine partners.’ Fondness sang in the way
she pronounced his name on the phone whenever he called her
up and identified himself, and he at first thought she was asking
him to identify himself further. She beeped him often with sweet
messages that he has cherished to this day as real priceless
treasures from his past.
“Why past? Because all that was to last only until she
heard it from him that he had fallen in love with her. To her, he
was supposed to be ‘simply a friend.’ Still, she continued trust-
ing in his integrity like no one else ever did outside his family,
and went on long working trips alone with him. Finding him too
precious a friend to lose, and feeling fulfilled about its happy
and practical effects, she stuck it out in a close work partnership
with him, in a productive synergy of thoughts and efforts, of
sighs and cheers, of laughter and songs. They’ve practically been
inseparable, through a string of widely-varied jobs and projects
together, in a happy synergy and close-in companionship others
would admire aloud or quietly envy. How they clicked! People
around them noticed. Some started wishing they’d become
lovers someday and others imagined they already were in some
secret or subdued romance.
 “However, this was not to be— perhaps not yet, more
probably never. Her love for him is for a friend, no less than a
very special one, all right, but no more than that, either. That,
and just that. She has been in love with another man, committed
to that one for many years, and feels a deep sense of triumph in
such longevity of focus and commitment. She sticks with the
‘self-appointed best friend’ and by him in teamwork and
friendship, but she has repeatedly clarified that it’s all there is to
it, that not even a tiny spark of romantic love has ever been felt,
or could ever possibly grow, in her heart for him. Actually, that’s
all very plain and simple to take, and he has accepted it, at least
intellectually, though not without tears.
“But over a long time he failed miserably to kill or divert
the romantic part of his deep love for her, and he has left her no
room to doubt either that depth or that failure. Still, it has been
generally all right between them, save for times when he lost his
brakes and expressed his romantic feelings distinct from their
mutual friendly fondness, getting carried away by unmistakable
expressions of that fondness from her. Those times, she’d get
turned off and rebuke him, and she would threaten and seriously
contemplate walking out of the friendship. Quite a number of
times she actually did, but eventually cooled down and forgave
him. And he promised to try harder in suppressing those express-
ions of feelings or even to try to find a new beloved for his
overflowing heart energies and his urgently-felt need for one.
She’d believe him and the friendship would deepen and blossom
even more and more… until his brakes failed again. Or until
some well-meaning but insensitive kibitzers teased and got her
pissed off… with him!
“She told him of her revulsion for his romantic love, that
it upsets her, but assured that she enjoys the friendly fondness,
the very deep bonds of friendship between their minds, and
hearts (for non-romantic love), and even between them as souls.
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He expresses puzzlement at this, aside from disappointment. He
just could not, and still cannot, understand why his love of that
undoubted depth and sincerity can cause a negative feeling in
anyone, let alone in her, and elicit a negative response at all, let
alone a strong one. Unless he could suppress all overt ex-
pressions of it, his romantic love for her has been an offense?
Another woman could reject such love but without the revulsion,
or with even a feeling of flattery or affirmation, instead. He just
can’t understand it. But he knows he doesn’t even have to, and
neither does she. What is strongly and honestly felt in her heart
deserves everyone’s real respect.
“She reacts adversely to direct or implied comments and
questions being posed by friends who can’t get it, either, or
cannot conceal their wish for the two of them to be a loving pair.
Her special-fondness behavior toward him has caused the
wonderment. But if told that, she would likely decide to alter
that behavior, instead of looking inward to try and understand it
herself more deeply and really profoundly. Because even if she
doesn’t understand it, she doesn’t really have to. But why does
she have to reject the possibility of romance with such certainty
and finality? they ask themselves aloud for him to hear. He says
he’d rather take her word for it: He’s simply not her type. Period.
“But he did ask her about the puzzling revulsion, and she
said that’s how she feels and she owes no one any explanations.
True enough, for one never imposes mental logic on the feelings
of the heart. Moreover, her right to privacy and her
independence of mind and heart prohibits any demand for
explanations. Her uniqueness here is part of her total uniqueness
as an empowered woman, and he has been totally devoted to her
empowerment, as he has been to her safety, health and
happiness. (He was much earlier advised to woo some ‘dumb
country lass’ if he wanted to really be loved and valued; and he
instantly ruled that out as exploitative and unfulfilling.) Despite
the pain of hearing again the articulation of her rejection of his
love, he took it all into his heart, even with gladness that the
beautiful friendship has endured and blossomed even more. She
was glad about that, too.
“These two are both unique, he and she. Both beautiful
persons, by their own reckoning of each other, and surrounded
by beautiful common friends who have deep respect and the best
wishes for each of them and for their friendship. And so is their
friendship unique and very beautiful as it has been up to now. It
has proven how deep and sincere and even passionate a
friendship can be between a man and a woman who are not into
romance (where romance would tend to overshadow everything
else and stunt the growth of many vital aspects of friendship).
How it could even survive the way it has despite the tension
coming from the emphatically-declared non-mutuality in the
romantic element has been unbelievable in the eyes of many
people around them.
“One friend kidded him: you’re plain ‘crazy.’ But they
go on having that very productive and empowering synergies in
many of their efforts, including those in the very personal affairs
of each (health, family, money, careers, etc.). That is their joint
uniqueness. And it’s very beautiful in its own way, so much so
that it may have become irrelevant whether they would ever both
want anything beyond it. That can remain hanging.
“So, he has asked his friends to stop asking now and then
whether any ‘progress’ has been made. He tells them the
friendship is blissful and he’s very happy to have it. Are you
giving up?, they gasp out disappointed. He answers with a sigh,
‘I’m trying to.’ And why not?
“Why not, indeed! They’re both deeply happy jointly
being a living tribute to Friendship itself! It is a reality that they
both can now cherish, nurture, enjoy. Think they’re crazy or at
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least he is? Who cares? It’s their joint choice and reality, their
joint uniqueness.”
End of that article. Now let me ask you, how many
friendships do we see around that are as beautiful even if at
times tension-filled as that one? What nuances of interpersonal
dynamics can we learn to appreciate in this friendship for
possible application to our own friendships and family ties?

Chapter 7:
Gender Harmony
WHEN SanibLakas Foundation decided to address the gender
question in the context of the Foundation’s serious study and
application of the principle of synergism between the sexes, we
knew that we could not be contented with mere gender
sensitivity, although for reforming the consciousness of many
people that would be a very good starting point. Neither could
we advocate only for gender equality.
1. Gender Harmony as a Paradigm for Empowerment
While for the sake of fairness this should be sought and
institutionalized in all civilized societies, we cannot stop at this
level that could border on overmeasuring and nitpicking on
relative valuations of various aspects of the intergender
relationships. Because the valuations of the aspects can only be
subjective, and because a woman cannot fully behave like a man
and vice versa, the process would only trap both genders in
endless, even rancorous, debates.
 For this reason, the paradigm title recommended for
consideration and officially adopted by the founding council
members of the SanibLakas-convened Lambat-Liwanag
Network of Centers for Empowering Paradigms became focused
on Gender Harmony as an ultimate goal. Although many of
those who attended the paradigm-specific conference on this
were apparently hooked on highlighting the gender conflict and
the quest for gender equality, and they were carrying the
empowerment advocacy as one of women’s liberation or even of
feminism, we can say that the mainstreaming of the gender
harmony paradigm has started.
This is very significant, because without this overarching
paradigm, efforts for gender sensitivity and gender equality
would likely lead to its diametrical opposite— gender hostility,
the overzealous and mutually-suspicious overguarding against
inequalities, an antagonism that impairs productive and
mutually-enriching complementarity, a relationship so far
removed from any trace of love beyond the basic level of
fairness.
More and more people are beginning to see the truth in
these lines Joydee Robledo and I had put in the SanibLakas
Foundation statement issued for International Women’s Day in
1998: “Can humanity be uplifted as the female of the species
merely carry and birth children and then raise them?” xxx “The
liberation of women from patriarchal ideas and practices is in the
best interest of entire human communities. Both the womenfolk
and the menfolk should synergize for this liberation, and
synergize further on the basis of this liberation. No positive
social change is possible without it. No social change can be
complete without it.”
We have also started to help spread the poem, For Every
Woman by Nancy Smith, which shows that the patriarchal
culture harms and hurts both the women and the men.
80
For every woman who is tired of acting weak when she
knows she is strong,
There is a man who is tired of appearing strong when
he feels vulnerable.
For every woman who is tired of acting dumb, there is a
man who is burdened
with the constant expectation of “knowing everything.”
For every woman who is tired of being called an
“emotional female,”
There is a man who is denied the right to weep and be
gentle.
For every woman who feels “tied down” by her children,
There is a man who is denied the full pleasure of
shared parenthood.
For every woman who is denied meaningful employment
and equal pay,
There is a man who must bear full responsibility for
another human being.
For every woman who wasn’t taught the intricacies of the
automobile,
There is a man who was not taught the satisfaction of
cooking.
For every woman who takes a step toward her own
liberation,
There is a man who finds that the way to freedom has
been made a little easier.
Ken Wilber tackles this matter head-on. At the beginning
chapter of A Brief History of Everything (Revised Edition,
2000, pp. 2-3), he says:
“…(W)hile it is true that, on the average, the male body
is more muscular and physically stronger than the female, it does
not follow that masculine must mean strong and assertive and
feminine must mean weak and demure. And we are in a
transition period where masculine and feminine roles are being
redefined and re-created, which has thrown both men and
women into a type of rancorous sniping at each other in various
types of gender wars.
“Part of the problem is that, whereas masculine and
feminine roles can indeed be redefined and refashioned – a long-
overdue and much-needed refurbishing – nonetheless male and
female characteristics cannot be changed much, and in our
attempt to level the differences between masculine and feminine,
we are dangerously close to trying to erase the differences
between the male and the female. And while the former is a fine
idea, the latter is impossible. And the trick is to know the
difference, I suppose.”
A bit further down below these explanations, Wilber
adds:
“The tricky part now is, as I started to suggest, is how to
do two very difficult things: one, to resonably decide just what
are the major differences between the male and the female value
spheres…, and then, two, to learn ways to value them more or
less equally. Not to make them the same, but to value them
equally.
“Nature did not split the human race into two sexes for
no reason; simply trying to make them the same seems silly. But
even the most conservative theorists would acknowledge that
our culture has been predominantly weighted to the male value
sphere for quite some time now. And so we are in a delicate,
dicey, very difficult, and often rancorous process of trying to
balance the scales a little bit more. Not erase the differences, but
balance them.”
Still, men do have to concede, with nary an effort for
justifying excuses, that they have long been abetting, condoning,
even energetically performing the perpetration of injustice by
81
one half the human population upon the other. The prizewinning
essay, A Historical Analysis of The Philippine Revolution, by
Manuel F. Martinez (2002, p. 84) carries this passage:
“Every person must pass the circle of the womb;
otherwise he cannot break through the seal of existence. From
the Universal Womb emanates all mankind. On the other hand,
man is only man. This is not meant to be derogation but simply a
description of a process: man is, in one sense, only an adjunct in
the phenomenon of human creating. If he wishes to claim his
glory, he must resort to finding it in other ways, and therein lies
the problem. He tries to find it in wrong, unwise, cruel and self-
defeating ways.”
2. Parental Teamwork: A Challenge
The quest for gender harmony starts with respectful
acknowledgment of the discrepancy between the males and the
females especially in terms of their respective roles in the
bringing forth of offspring. In this process of begetting and
conception, pregnancy and childbirth and even in the
breastfeeding and suckling stage, the mother, the female parent,
has a big edge over the father, or male parent, in terms of
intimacy with the child.
Under the gender equality paradigm, the woman may just
feel that this pre-natal discrepancy is all right, considering that it
only serves to balance, at least partially, the many aspects of life
in society where the men are favored. Such an attitude would be
discouraged under the gender harmony paradigm, for under the
latter paradigm the greater concern of both parents lies in
developing a parental teamwork, as close a teamwork as
possible, and therefore both parenting partners would be
conscious of seeking to bridge the discrepancy. In a Father’s
Day article I wrote in June 2000 about this effort, I say this:
 “Between the two parents, the mother has the momentum
and natural instinct for closer physical intimacy with the child,
especially with months or possibly even years of breastfeeding
as the next stage in the sequence. She had been with the baby
for all those prenatal months, aware of the baby's growth and
motions all that time; on the other hand, he could only relate to
her ‘growing tummy’ and perhaps with memories of his earlier
orgasms inside her body when they, about nine months before,
enjoyed the highest physical expression of their intimate
resonance in love- and life-partnership.
“The discrepancy is real. But it doesn't have to be
absolute and permanent. The baby is now out of the womb.
While the father can never breastfeed any baby, he can
immediately start the physical bonding by giving his tender
loving touches and gentle rubs often, as tender as his often crude
physical ways can be tempered and trained by affection and
determined self-control. A father can consciously take time to
make faces and ‘beautiful eyes’ at his baby whenever he can, and
get this baby to identify his face, his touch, and the sound of his
voice fully with his love.
Of course, he can choose to read the newspaper or talk
on the cellphone while his wife breastfeeds, and channel all his
love for the baby through earning more and more money for the
family, but that obviously won't help diminish the discrepancy in
physical bonding. He would have then chosen to allow his own
role to be boxed in as that of ‘financier’ and, probably, also as
‘disciplinarian’ — to be thanked and feared by his children while
they feel much closer to Mom. No father deserves to do that to
himself or be allowed by his wife to do that to himself.
“As soon as the baby is born and throughout the ensuing
childhood, adolescence and even adulthood, the father can play
about as many roles as the mother can in relating directly with
his child (their child forever) physically, emotionally,
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intellectually, and spiritually. After all, between the two parents,
it should neither be a contest nor a defeatist overreaction to the
prenatal physical discrepancy, but a parental teamwork to anchor
and lead a wholesome family synergy and security. Fatherhood
can only be fully enjoyed or appreciated within this warm-home
framework.”
3. The Feminine Principle
The quest for gender harmony is given boost by the
reemergence and mainstreaming of the “Feminine Principle.”
As editor of a newsletter for the “Earthlite community” in
Cubao, Quezon City, I asked Dr. Serafin Talisayon, head of the
Center for Conscious Living and a professor in both the
University of the Philippines and the Asian Social Institute, to
write an article on the feminine principle, which I had earlier
heard him discuss with a group. Dr. Talisayon obliged, and here
are some major excerpts from his article (“The Return of the
Feminine Principle,” Earthlite Sparks and Reflections, March
2000 issue, p. 3):
“Underneath many seemingly-unrelated global trends
and paradigm shifts, something seems to be happening today, a
single subtle but powerful planetary movement: something
which can best be described as a ‘paradigm suprashift’ from
yang to yin, or a return of the feminine principle which had been
predominant in much earlier civilizations. It is taking place
across national boundaries, across diverse spheres of life from
education to international relations, from economics to science,
from entrepreneurship to religion. It is indeed a ‘paradigm
suprashift’ because it is trans-societal in nature.
“To discern and recognize it, let us examine the essential
nature of several global trends or paradigm shifts and discover
their common denominator:
“In politics and culture: feminist movements.
 “In development: the environmental movement, which
moves development attitudes and orientations towards one-
ness/harmony/interrelatedness rather than exploitation/domin-
ance over ‘Mother Nature’; from working on to working with
nature; from burning of fossil fuels and risky nuclear power to
‘soft energy paths’; from cancerous or parasitic growth modes
that is eventually mutually suicidal to more sustainable lifestyles
and development modes.
“In organizational dynamics in business, government and
NGOs: a paradigm shift from vertical (pyramidal, hierarchical,
authoritarian) to horizontal (network, cooperative, democratic)
structures and processes.
“In international conflict: a paradigm shift from
superpower, Cold War logic (zero-sum games or conflicts) to
free market and trade logic (positive-sum games or win-win
relationships).
“In education: a paradigm shift from IQ to EQ
(emotional intelligence), from cognitive to wholistic learning
(right brain, values education, experiential learning), from
intellectual to affective.
“In entrepreneurship, economics and accounting of
assets: paradigm shift in wealth creation from technology and
markets (manipulation and dominance) to human and intellectual
capital (education, training and HRD); from ‘smokestack
industries’ to ‘knowledge-based industries’.
“In economics and development planning: from purely
GNP (measure of “doing” or “having”) to inclusion of social
indicators, sustainable development criteria and HDI or Human
Development Index (measures of “being”).
“Rise of feminine aspects of deity and worship: Wicca
and other feminist/naturalist cults; women in priesthood; Roman
Catholic debate: Mary as co-redeemer or co-redemptrix;
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rediscovery of eco-spirituality and creation spirituality among
Christians (‘God is everything, everything is in God’);
appearance of ‘God the Mother’ themes in religious discourse;
surge of interest in North America and Europe of East Asian
spiritual and healing practices like Buddhism, Vaipassana
meditation, tai chi and Reiki which are less paternalistic or
authoritarian than the Abrahamic or West Asian religions
(Judaism, Christianity and Islam).
“In science: shift in interest from the outer, empirical
world towards the inner, experiential world as seen in the growth
and emergence of transpersonal psychology, paranormal
research, phenomenological approaches in social sciences, and
research in new areas such as NDE (near-death experience),
lucid dreaming and remote viewing.
“Grasped as a totality, the above diverse paradigm shifts
seem to point to a ‘suprashift’: from ‘hard’, materialist,
masculine and yang perspectives to ‘softer’, more inward,
feminine and yin perspectives. These paradigm shifts are not
occurring as complete shifts but appear as gradual movements
towards a discernible direction, serving to — at minimum —
leaven and moderate the masculine character of Western-
dominated planetary civilizations or — at maximum — perhaps
eventually dramatically altering the mix or character altogether.
“Who knows? Here we are grappling with rather subtle
themes or undercurrents in planetary mass consciousness, seen
across various spheres of life (trans-societal) and “feminine” or
“yin” is the closest descriptor to this most intriguing
undercurrent or ‘suprashift’.”
When Dr. Talisayon’s article came out in that newsletter,
it was accompanied by an editorial I wrote, which says in part:
“Science has long freed humans from many myths and
fallacies but has largely left undisturbed the superstitions that
perpetuate the gross imbalance between the genders when it
comes to opportunities for leadership, creativity, compensated
productivity, comfort and security and appropriate overall care.
It is a sad reality to note that even among men who are advocates
of justice in general terms or in occupational-sector contexts, the
issues raised by women are viewed to be in the interest only of
women.
“By way of responding to this, we can only seek to
emphasize what SanibLakas Foundation said two years ago, in a
short statement we now carry in this issue: ‘The liberation of
women from patriarchal ideas and practices is in the best interest
of entire human communities. Both the womenfolk and the
menfolk should synergize for this liberation, and synergize
further on the basis of this liberation. No positive social change
is possible without it. No social change can be complete without
it.’ (underscoring ours).
“Such acknowledgment of joint interests of the male and
of the female of the human species, along with enough
awareness to see dynamic synergies, unities and commonalities
among diverse entities instead of seeing only conflict and
antagonism among them, reaches a realm beyond the mere
recognition and redress of the gender imbalance. This reflects an
advance in consciousness by shifting to the ‘Right Brain,’ which
is more closely identified with women and girls. The Right
Brain, which controls the left side of our body, is our feminine
component, though it’s truly neither male nor female. (This has
no connection at all to physical attributes or behavior, like some
men being limp-wristed or some men being homosexual.
Confusion crops up on this matter because of semantics or
language sense, where the word ‘feminine’ has been
simplistically equated to ‘female.’ or ‘female-like.’).
“The ‘Right Brain,’ or the ‘feminine aspect,’ is the seat of
our psychic, intuitive, aesthetic, nurturing and emotional aspect .
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Even without explanation or even articulation, it knows that
oneness is all there is. Both the menfolk and the womenfolk
need this aspect to be completely human. However, because
women are perceived to be stronger in this, society built up a
defense mechanism for men where they have been molded to
deny, to shun and to dominate this aspect and to focus on
developing the aspect where they, on the average, have had the
slight advantage — physical strength, cold logic, and the
propensity for dichotomies and competition. Ever prepared for
strife, even if almost always unnecessarily, the Left Brain looks
at Reality and only sees division, separateness, conflict and the
quest for domination.”
Both genders have the Right Brain and the Left Brain,
but the female of the species, on the average, have a slight
Right-Brain advantage even as the male of the species, on the
average, have a slight Left-brain advantage. The difference
between them is slight, but when men started to dominate human
cultures the world over, the men’s Left-brain tendency focused
more on discrepancy than on commonality, the difference was
exaggerated. The men denied their feminine side and forced the
women to deny their masculine side. Then they labeled the
feminine qualities as weaknesses of character and intellect. And
most of the women were so convinced that as mothers, they
molded their sons and daughters so differently from each other.
Some women began to quietly appreciate their feminine
selves and began to assert this as equal in value to the masculine
characteristics of men. This development led to the
mainstreaming in worldwide discourse of the Feminine Principle
as carried by such men as Talisayon, whom we read in
paragraphs above, and Wilber who writes in Brief History of
Everything (p. 58): “The worldview is the mind, the base is the
body, of Spirit. These Bodyminds evolve, and bring forth new
worlds in the process, as Spirit unfolds its own potential, a
radiant flower in Kosmic spring, not so much Big Bang as Big
Bloom.”
Total human development and actualization needs the
Left Brain and the Right Brain. And these aspects of human
capability to understand (Left Brain) and appreciate (Right
Brain) reality needs the two aspects in productive and mutually-
enlightening dialogue, not in an acrimonious and mutually-
destructive struggle. Einstein’s “Big Bang” image is a very
valuable label for understanding the history of the universe,
including its dynamics in terms of physics. But equally valuable,
I think, is the Wilber’s “Big Bloom” metaphor to appreciate the
beautiful unfolding process.
Meantime, towards the end of the Modern era ushered in
and led by the Industrial Revolution of more than a century ago,
groups of women sought to liberate women from patterns of the
Patriarchy. But, perhaps, because it was a necessary stage in the
unfoldment process, they did so under the dominant Left-Brain
masculine paradigm, and adopted militant and belligerent ways
to say their piece. This produced the necessary shock effect and
forced the men to pay heed and for more and more women to
join up in women’s liberation struggles.
The momentum was gained but it was still squarely
within the masculine paradigm of struggle and dualism. The
women’s movement was not yet conscious to embrace the
behavioral patterns that hew much closer to the Feminine
Principle, because they had long equated the word “feminine” to
weakness, and instead championed “feminism” which advo-
cated, to varying degrees of disclosure, women’s domination of
the world’s societies, the reversal of the patriarchal game. This
has led to counterproductive excesses, which we discuss in the
next section.
85
But before we end this one about the Feminine Principle,
allow me to share another passage from Martinez (2002, p. 88)
by way of appropriately applying this Principle to the flow of
history as that of profound human development:
“ ‘Retrieving women from historical oblivion.’ Writes
(Digna Balanque) Apilado, means a reconsideration of the
process of historical research and writing. First is to see the
history of the (Philippine) Revolution as social history that the
role of women can better and truly be appreciated, for politics –
and war, the grossest, most brutal, most debasing form of human
existence – has from the beginning been the turf of men.
Parenthetically, it is not impertinent to warn that in the future,
politics will become too noble a business to be left to men.”
Mr. Martinez may be referring here to those men who are
unenlightened, and therefore unreformed, men, who are
obviously not yet ready to enlist in joint efforts for gender
harmony. Within this half-century or fewer decades, with the
comprehensive mainstreaming of the Feminine Principle, the
number of such men, and the number of women who shall hate
them aloud, shall both dwindle to mutually-counterreacting
minorities.
4. Counterproductive Excesses
The trouble with many women’s liberation advocates is
that their justified anger over centuries of patriarchal oppression
has pushed them to seek a simple reversal of roles in the
inequality and antagonistic duality between the sexes, shunning
the “Feminine Principle,” asserting the prerogative to adopt the
ways of the Left Brain, and in effect descending to the level of
consciousness and behavior more identified with the men. The
tendency to seek retribution within the Mosaic paradigm of “an
eye for an eye,” while understandable, hinders the development
of gender harmony and therefore hinders human development
and harmony as a whole. Is it all right to hinder such develop-
ment, just as long as the male of the species is the one mostly to
get the blame?
Of this propensity for male-bashing, Wilber (1996, 2000)
warns the advocates of women’s liberation and domination that
such blame-hurling insults the women themselves along with the
men:
“(I)f we take the standard response – that the patriarchy
was imposed on women by a bunch of sadistic and power-
hungry men – then we are locked into two inescapable
definitions of men and women. Namely, men are pigs and
women are sheep. That men would intentionally want to oppress
half of the human race paints a dismal picture of men altogether.
Testosterone or not, men are simply not that malicious in the
totality of their being.
“But actually, what is so altogether unbelievable about
this explanation of the patriarchy is that it paints an incredibly
flattering picture of men. It says that men managed to col-
lectively get together and agree to oppress half of the human
race, and more amazingly, they succeeded totally in every
known culture. Mind you, men have never been able to create a
domineering government that lasted more than a few hundred
years, but according to the feminists, men have managed this
other and massive domination for five thousand – some say one
hundred thousand – years. …
“But the real problem with the ‘imposition theory – men
oppressed women from day one – is that it paints a horrifyingly
dismal picture of women. You simply cannot be as strong and as
intelligent and oppressed. This picture necessarily paints women
basically as sheep, as weaker and/or stupider than men. Instead
of seeing that, at every stage of human evolution, men and
women co-created the social forms of their interaction, this
86
picture defines women as molded by an Other. These feminists,
in other words, are assuming and enforcing precisely the picture
of women that they say they want to erase. But men are simply
not that piggy, and women are not that sheepy.
“So one of the things I have tried to do, based on more
recent feminist scholarship, is to trace out the hidden power that
women have had and that influenced, co-created, the various
cultural structures throughout our history, including the so-called
patriarchy. Among other things, this releases men from being
defined as schmucks, and releases women from being defined as
duped, brainwashed and herded.”
Another example we can use when referring to excesses
of some feminists is the term “herstory” seriously being advo-
cated by some women’s groups to replace the word “history.” To
be sure, the writing of history in most countries up to the present
has been biased for the men’s point of view. “Herstory” as
history written from the long-missing viewpoint of the women
should really be fully integrated in historiography for the latter
to be a valid discipline, and the introduction of the term
“herstory” is a creative and very valid tongue-in-cheek reminder
of that imperative. Herstory should indeed be fully developed
and integrated in order to put more sense, to complete and there-
fore to make essentially true, all accounts and summaries of
history. There should be enough women to become historians
themselves. And to quote feminist scholar Albina Pecson
Fernandez (“Why Women Are Invisible in Philippine History,”
Women’s Role in Philippine History: Selected Essays, Uni-
versity Center for Women Studies, UP Quezon City, 1966, p. 4,
as cited by Martinez (2002), “history should also be herstory.”
(underscoring mine)
Martinez (2002, p. 89) partly observes the absence of
women stories in written histories of entire nations like ours:
 “It is said that women have no collective memory of meticulous overcalibrating for equality and preoccupation with
themselves. Is there no iniquity when more than half of mankind full restitution and even role reversal.
is without history? The plaint, however, is understated, for this In essence, thefore, the Feminine Principle is gaining
number does not include the teeming underclasses who have no ground as both genders, feminine and masculine, are growing in
memory of themselves, either – men and women peasants, maturity to reject wars between the sexes, and wars of any kind.
workers, etc. – because they have been swamped by the
summary orthodox history of the very few, great names, great 5. The Vision
events, great dates.” Let us all share the vision of a worldwide human family
Still, as an imperative for clarity, it must be stressed that that is gender-healthy, from the level of our socio-political
while contents of historical studies are lopsided in favor of male policies to the level of our homes. And let us work hard in the
actors, the word “history” itself has no gender sense. Contrary to coming years, and well beyond, to make our dreams come true.
the view of serious advocates of the term “herstory” to replace Let our countries be symbolized by the pairs of faces of women
“history,” the latter does not include the masculine possessive and men, both happily and mutually empowered, both lovingly
pronoun “his” in its etymology; the word comes from the Latin and mutually exalted. Let us all work to fully realize gender
“historia” in which language the possessing pronoun “his” does harmony, the synergy of the two halves of humanity.
not even exist. To allege that is like male chauvinists boycotting
Hershey’s chocolate products for unjustifiably carrying a “dou- 
bly-gender-biased” brand!
If such a word substitution is done with “herstory”
supplanting “history,” beyond aesthetics for the cause of poetic
justice, that is, if “herstory” were to dominate historiography,
sex-based partisanship shall have been intentionally and openly
institutionalized in this very important field of human
consciousness. It would simply be a reversal of roles within the
unjust framework, a victory in battle for the long-term underdog
in the gender war.
In contrast, the gender harmony paradigm is choicefully
grounded on the ideal of love, which goes beyond the basic Chapter 8:
minimum ideal of fairness. It can therefore push further the
evolution of the human species through an unprecedented Deep Ecology and Harmony
synergy between the sexes and between the genders. The good
news is that more and more women and men in the world are with Nature
focusing their minds on love and harmony, away from

87
HUMAN BEINGS are in grander synergies as they build all
sorts, scopes and sizes of human groups and communities. We
are all in still much grander synergies as members of the
ecosystem where we live, as part of our collective planetary
home, of continents, of landmasses and islands, etc. etc. in a
closely-knit crucially interdependent family of plants and
animals and rocks and earth and air and water and all dynamic
combinations of these.
1. Dependence and Destruction
The humans depend on all these for its emergence and
survival on this planet. It is however a disappointment that the
species styling itself with the word “sapiens” or even the double-
qualification “Sapiens-sapiens” is apparently not yet substan-
tially, much less fully, contributing its unique “sapiens” capabi-
lities for exalting or even just preserving the common planetary
home.
The ongoing ecological destruction has been aptly des-
cribed as a mindless but egocentric (anthropocentric or homo-
centric, which is an extension of being egocentric) aggrandize-
ment and over-acquisition, which is tantamount to a slow-motion
suicide.
The underlying ignorance here is the misreading of the
supposed “human stewardship over nature” as to own and the
latter’s “corollary right” to control and abuse. And, against all
logic, to destroy. This has been observed in the last quarter-
century and is being addressed by a growing number of persons,
organizations and movements who have seen the light of inter-
connectivity and foresight to work out the concept of “sus-
tainable development” and, beyond this utilitarian paradigm,
gradually developed and promoted the paradigm of deep ecology
and harmony with nature, of loving life in all its incarnations.
88
During all this time that the overly-intellectualized hu-
man had forgotten love and respect for Nature, the indigenous
peoples, specifically the dwindling survivors of destructive total
aggression from their fellow-humans, have been keeping to org-
anic philosophies and lifestyles reflecting such inner wisdom in
honestly and humbly acknowledging the human as just a part of
the greater holon that is Nature. Sad to say, majority in so-called
‘sapiens’ communities allow or even abet the death of the indi-
genous communities and their respective cultures that are the last
repositories of such inner wisdom. Their obliteration by the for-
ces of greed glamorizing modernity, is a most unfortunate dev-
elopment that should make us pity not the indigenous peoples
alone who are dying, but more so the entire human species
whose very survival, on the longer term, depends on the re-
emergence and mainstreaming of the indigenous knowledge
systems.
While saying “You are a child of the Universe; no less
than the trees and the stars you have a right to be here,” Deside-
rata is also in effect saying the trees and the stars have that right
in the first place.
Aside from respect for respective rights as humans, trees
and stars, we have reason to appreciate the reality that we all are
actually in this together. Especially the humans, along with all
our animal cousins, and the trees, along with all their plant cou-
sins. Full comprehension of the crucial tieup between our pulse
and our breathing ought to include, as well, a full comprehension
of the carbon-hydrogen-oxygen cycles in the teaming up of
respective respiratory, circulatory and digestive systems of plants
and animals that make these two large groupings of organisms
literally life partners.
How can we not acknowledge the plants as our life-
partners? All the food that we get to eat (the fruits and veggies
as well as all the second-hand vegetables called “meat”) comes
from those plants, specifically the leaves where all that solar-
powered food production for the world takes place. And
practically all the oxygen comes from the underside stomata of
these leaves. And yet we allow the massacre of trees in logging
and clear-cutting for various purposes. And we even trim leaves,
and even the branches from which they grow, just to shape
bushes along the cubism style of human aesthetics!
The book Biped on the Blue Ball: The Supposed-
Sapiens Who Laughed at the Dodo, which I wrote in 1990 and
reedited and republished in 2000, calls humans “Bipeds,” calls
Earth the “Blue Ball,” and describes the human folly:
“The profit-greedy Bipeds can never be expected to stop
the mad destruction of the Earth or even just to stop and think
about it in earnest.
“And the rest of the Bipeds? Well, they're trying to
survive from day to day, so busy they cannot afford to stop and
think about their survival with the Blue Ball. Quite understand-
ably they ignore the ominous Wails of the Banshee, and the
clarion calls raised for all to help rescue the environment.
“Many of these Bipeds have harbored a predisposition to
defeatism. And who can blame them? Do not the powerful pro-
fit so much from the continuing, if not accelerating destruction
of the Browned-Blue Ball? And are they not powerful enough to
meet and crush any Quixotic endeavor to save the Blue Ball at
the expense of their profiteering? Rhetorical questions these
have become, indeed!
“The majority of the Bipeds have barely coped with the
crisis, magnifying, and being paralyzed by, a sense of power-
lessness. This sense of defeatism has flowed into apathy, even
fatalistic resignation.
“This sense of fatalism has somehow combined with
their propensity for small-group mentality, for parochialism.
89
They are now trying to ignore the fact that we are all together in
this perilous predicament, the fact that the scourges to be
unleashed by environmental destruction will not, and indeed
does not, see differences in race and color, citizenship and
nationality, creed and ideology, sex and age, and income bracket.
“They are indulging instead in the faint and utterly
unrealistic hope that the planet's destruction would not affect
specifically their own country, their own state or locality, their
own grouping or clan or family, their own bodies. Surely the
Thinking Biped, the Two-Legged Genius of the Blue Ball Earth,
could be capable of more rationality than this!
2. Rays of Hope
“Meanwhile, the honorable bunch of environment-
defending Bipeds have been a growing but still very tiny
minority. Shouting their throats hoarse, their have been a lonely
voice in the wilderness of passivity and inaction. And
destruction.
“Their small Greenpeace rafts and boats have succeeded
in blocking the paths of poison-carrying or whaling ships of the
powerful.
“Their declarations of concern and letters of protest have
started to spread especially during "Earth Day" and "World
Environment Day" commemorations. In some instances, these
have drawn support from some powerful Bipeds, including those
who are themselves guilty of environmental destruction. In
some other instances, these get echoed in the august halls of
legislation. But again, a chasm almost always yawns wide
between enactment and enforcement of whatever environment
laws result from their efforts. The fate of environmentalist laws
and agreements have had to hang in the balance of struggles
between the powerful and the majority in each country, and
between the powerful countries and the rest of the world.
 “These environmentalist groups have needed more and
more volunteer human-hours just to be able to keep track of
environmental battlefronts. Apparently, most of the other Bipeds
have been too busy even just to listen in earnest. Much less do
they have the time to assume the pose suggested by Rodin and
decide to join in concrete action.
“And so, the Biped continues with his lucrative enter-
prises and hectic labors, slowly but surely destroying the Blue
Ball, barely noticing, or, worse, noticing without recognizing,
the present-day creeping effects of such destruction — a warmer,
"Greenhoused" global atmosphere that slowly melts some polar
caps and raises inch by inch the sea level, much longer and
hotter summers, droughts that cause duels over irrigation ducts
and daily cursings before dry and silent faucets, and electric
power shortages. Not to mention the fast-paced extinction of
countless plants and animals, the erratic schedules of the
seasons, the storms and floods that would remind us of Noah's
Ark, plus all sorts of new illnesses.
“The Biped continues to look at the tree as a profitable
commodity. And, finding glamour in feigning concern, the
officialdom agrees to impose selective logging bans, where tree-
cutting would henceforth be allowed only in areas where there
are some trees still left, and logging would be totally banned in
areas where there are no more trees. The Dodo may be laughing
aloud somewhere out there about this!
“And so, the Blue Ball turns brownish as tropical areas
are shaved by electric saws to become patched-up deserts, as
coastal cities are gradually reclaimed by the sea, and erosion
slides down to cover ocean floors with what used to be mount-
ains most majestic.
“We are not called upon to worry about the Balance of
Nature. There is absolutely no necessity for worrying about this,
90
for balanced she will always be. It's just that the balance of
Nature at some near-future date might no longer include the
Thinking Biped at all or as we know him now.
“Changes in the environment may just spare the species,
but in a somewhat altered form. The Biped, for example, may
very well fulfill the ‘Riddle of the Sphinx’ in a bizarre way well
beyond the wisdom of Oedipus Rex — the smoothskinned
Biped, well into the dusk of his existence and evolution, may
just possibly mutate into, and survive as, a thick scaled Triped.
“Of course, even in such a shape, his innate Narcissism
can definitely maintain sel-esteem.41Well…!
“Nature has always been, and will always be balanced in
each of the other planets in the Solar System, where the Biped of
any of his distant cousins can never hope to exist. Nature will
always be balanced on Blue Ball Earth, with or without me and
you or any of our cousins.
“The super-resilient cockroach may yet have the last
laugh on the Biped who shall have completely poisoned himself
with the insecticides he had invented, which destroyed his life-
support systems, all for monetary gain.
“After the Thinking Biped shall have perished, who shall
put to use all the money he shall have adoringly accumulated?
The pesky pest, of course! Legal tender bills and financial certi-
ficates may all taste delicious to the ever-gnawing cockroach,
until he himself has to perish.
“Behold! The Blue Ball spins and travels around Fireball
Sol, against the vast expanse of black emptiness. The fate of the
Thinking Biped, and all of those close and distant cousins he has
likewise so mindlessly imperiled, still hangs in the balance, as a
growing global movement strains to overcome formidable
difficulties and rescue the Earth for all of them.
 “Will the Thinking Biped and all his cousins on the
Browned-Blue Ball be able to ‘live happily ever after’ for many
more years?
“Baby Bipeds now "cooing and gooing" in their cribs
may indeed live and grow up, but perhaps not exactly very
happily.
“For the mind now staggers at how much worse our
environmental problems could have gone by the time they grow
up and try to live on, and make a living from, this very same
Blue Ball Earth.
“These cute and helpless infants are now silently but
forcefully demanding from their parents a more confident
assurance on their future even as we chase after the clock all day
everyday for short-term survival.
“It won't be long before they learn of the word ‘Why?’
and start using it in endless strings on us, their Biped parents.
“ ‘Why don't we see around anymore any of the trees
shown here in these beautiful pictures? Why did they all die?
Why did those people kill the poor trees? Why were they
allowed to do it? Why…?’
" ‘Why do we always have 'seas' in the streets? Why
does all that water rush down from the mountains? Why…?’
" ‘Why can't we drink water from the faucet? Why do
we all have to keep wearing these breathing masks all the time?
Why…?
" ‘Why? Why? Why?’ the Biped babies of today will
be asking us quite soon.
“And, no thanks to us, chances are they won’t be able
to "live happily ever after."
91
“A nightmare… this is nothing short of a nightmare just
waiting to unfold before our eyes that are widely awake
because we have not been able to escape the haunting ghost of
Malthus…”
Upon the suggestion of a beloved friend, Prof. Anna
Ma. S. Torres of Miriam College, I decided to add for the
second edition of Biped on the Blue Ball a positive option to
balance off the grim picture:
“Of course it doesn't really have to happen just this
way. No, not at all…! The nightmare can be turned into a
dream of paradise regained. That is, if enough Thinking Bipeds
the world over validated the word sapiens on the name of the
species…
“For starters, nations of the world must come together
as one to stand before the rest of the bio-diverse citizens and
elements of our living planet Gaia, and take full responsibility
for past and present environmental destruction. The critical
mass is building up for this, especially with such efforts as the
Earth Charter process and a successful series of worldwide
Earth Day and World Environment Day commemorations
(around the world).
“Yes, the Thinking Biped should be saying sorry not
only to his yet unborn babies, but to all his close and distant
cousins and their babies. He should fully grasp in theory, po-
licy and actual behavior the drive for Sustainable Development
— which means ‘meeting the needs of today without com-
promising the ability of future generations to meet theirs.’ —
and rise even beyond such framework. As a fully thinking, and
actually spiritual being, the Biped is fully capable of Deep
Ecology. It is only the matter of having too many blinders now
that prevents him from pursuing even just the framework of
Sustainable Development.
 “Deep Ecology goes beyond Sustainable Development.
It is about respecting and preserving all life forms, loving all
incarnations of all life forms, wherever they are and whatever
they look like, not only because we need them but more so
because we are awed and overjoyed to be part of this great
Symphony of Life itself.
“A person steeped in the philosophy of Deep Ecology
would be concerned with the sufferings of the sea birds now
awash in oil slicks from spills, or with the elephants being
slaughtered for tusks they would leave behind, anyway, when
they die, or with whales being beached in big numbers, as
much as they would be appreciative of the plants and animals
right around them, as much as they'd smile at butterflies and at
future butterflies, and lovingly fondle each baby leaf within
reach of their fingertips.
“Not many people have reached this level of conscious-
ness, although the number is growing. The Biped is gradually
discovering an internal synergy of mind and heart
“On this basis, enough Thinking Bipeds can lovingly
commit a conscious synergy of efforts to rescue and heal, con
serve and exalt, our Mother Earth. Now, that would be a giant
leap for Humankind right back to the bosom of our home
planet, undoubtedly a euphoric historic event that would herald
a new way of life for all Earthians. It will be no less than a
paradise regained where all on Blue Ball Earth can benefit
from holistic progress in philosophy and science.”
3. Synergize the Local Movements!
“Think Global, Act Local!” This slogan was widely-
welcomed when it gained currency among environmental move-
ments in various countries in the last two decades. But the
“think global” part can stand clarification. The “thinking
global” must be done by local communities and by synergies of
92
local communities. If nation-states and inter-governmental me-
chanisms genuinely represent the views and policy positions of
such synergies of communities, then national-level policies and
programs, and the resolutions of inter-governmental mecha-
nisms such as world summits can legitimately answer for the
“think global” part. The problem is that they rarely ever do.
Even non-government organizations usually seek to get
their act together on the “national” level, with all their feet
firmly planted on the clouds, and send out or, worse, “send
down” their analyses, resolutions, guidelines and directives for
the local communities to comment on, validate, and obey.
Especially those NGOs that design their prioritizations and
programs according to the likelihood of getting funds from
international and national funding entities, and implement
approved programs according to the timetables set by such
funders, the local communities are rarely taken into full
account, if at all, as the ultimate source of mandates and
originators of initiatives that the national government and the
“national-level” clusters of NGOs should heed and act upon.
The top-down approach to environmental advocacy and
activism runs parallel to the top-down approach of Globalized
Greed being rammed through by international business elite
circles that acknowledge accountability only to their stock-
holders and ignore or even crush whatever accountability
nation-state governments acknowledge having to their res-
pective citizenries. These two top-down approaches were hor-
ribly demonstrated in the World Trade Organization’s obvious-
ly-strong suasion over the proceedings of the recent World
Summit on Sustainable Development, which, by and large,
backtracked on the pro-environmentalist resolutions of the Rio
Summit a whole decade before.
What can happen now is that both the government and
the non-government entities in the various countries would be
pressured to take their respective signals from the same WSSD
documents, with the governments tending to invoke these in
washing their hands over continuing destruction, and the non-
government entities would seek to maximize on whatever
victories were gained. Directives from the two sets of entities
would soon be expected to rain on the heads of the same set of
local communities and the latter will be placed in a reactive
position and be flooded with an avalanche of guidelines and
educational materials “from above.”
The communities, therefore, should acquire the full ca-
pability for proactive thinking and acting local and synergizing
with all other communities to globalize both the thinking and
the acting. National-level NGOs and clusters of these would do
well to facilitate this synergy in information-sharing, resources-
sharing, capability-building in decision-making, and other
forms of support for the community-based movements.
I have had the occasion to write an editorial for the
journal (of May 2002, p. 3) of a monthly environmental forum
called “Kamayan para sa Kalikasan,” and the article says this
in part:
“ ‘Think global, act local!’ is a good 1990s call for re-
membering and pondering today. Think and talk global is what
the heads of state will surely do a lot of during the (WSSD in
August that year). They have many questions to address: what
has been accomplished in the full decade after the United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UN-
CED, also known as “Rio Summit”)? After the UNCED
hammered out Agenda 21, has this been translated into coun-
try-specific programs and policies? What has been the impact
of this on the environment, if any?
“In our case, a joint government-NGO council
immediately came out with Philippine Agenda 21, had this
93
blessed with the power of policy from the national government,
and made to undergo a process of particularization in the
regional and provincial contexts, before it apparently lost what-
ever momentum it had at the start. What about impact on the
environment here? Did it have any?
“Of course, it must have had some impact. But as we
would always like to remind reporters on the “environment
beat,” the Philippine environment is not in the office of the
Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources or in any
building of his entire department, and neither is it in the na-
tional and regional offices of all environmentalist non-
government organizations (NGOs) combined. Much less is it in
filing cabinets where copies of PA21 and minutes of discussion
meetings on it are being kept. The environment is in the very
lives of the people in neighborhoods and villages and in
clusters of these. Apparently, all talk of PA21 stopped short of
reaching these “low” levels of living reality.
“Still, there was concrete action in the communities
where the local people themselves decided to protect their lives
against environmentally-destructive ‘development’ projects,
and then managed to draw in support from city-based advocacy
groups. There are actually organic environmentalists in the
communities, and many of them can be interlinked in
coordinative bodies that they can fully claim to be their own.”
There are, indeed, many organic environmentalists, org-
anic leaders, organic intellectuals in the local communities, and
these are much closer to the natural environment than desk-
bound city-based government and non-government functiona-
ries can ever hope or pretend to be.
These people, being “organic,” are in the best position
to take direct lessons and inspiration from living ecosystems all
around them, the synergy of symbiosis, where the trees have
the broad point of view while their roots are deeply and firmly
planted on the ground, and no one has to take the word of the
pigeons, hawks or vultures as the complete Gospel truth on
anything.
The challenge to all environmental advocates and
activists is to break free from the human-needs-centered
utilitarian sustainable development paradigm for environment-
alism and the politics-based hierarchies or funds-driven prog-
rams in thinking and acting.
Instead, adopt and live from day to day the supreme love
for, and the faithful emulation of, the magical dynamics of Life
itself. We cannot fully serve the natural environment, the great
Nature Holon that humans belong to, while ignoring the full
glory of its Innate Wisdom.

Chapter 9:
Stable Tripod for Sustainable
Development: C-N-E Resources
in Associative Economics
WHILE the human-centered sustainable development frame-
work can never suffice to fulfill the highest human quality and
aspiration in dealing with Nature, it is an obvious minimum
when it comes to economic management. It should be a real
concern for all players in an economic ecosystem of whatever
scale that the economy in that scale is managed prudently and
effectively for sustainable development. There is a need for an
94
overhaul of economic theories that have taken care of the peo-
ple’s needs only in theory, using macro-figures and hi-fallutin’
terms designed to be well beyond the victims’ ken.
1. A Bold Indictment from a Non-Economist
Considering the dismal conditions of the majority of the
people in the world, where 80 percent of the world’s resources
for consumption go to only 20 percent of the world’s population
and 20 percent of the resources have to be shared by 80 percent
of the population, I dare accuse here and now the mainstream
economic theorists and policy-makers behind these realities of
being an irresponsible and incompetent lot. Some are more
irresponsible than incompetent and others are more incompetent
than irresponsible. This will likely be viewed as a rather heavy
charge for a non-economist to make. So, I clarify what I mean
exactly: I dare accuse here and now the mainstream economic
theorists and policy-makers behind these realities of being an
irresponsible and incompetent lot. If you think that my
clarification is a mere repetition of my original charge, you must
have failed to notice that the entire repetition is italicized. Need I
clarify some more? I dare accuse…
About my being a non-economist, I admit it so proudly
and thankfully, because if I were one, I would have become
more vulnerable to the temptation to apply economic theories
that take care of the people’s needs only in theory, and drop a lot
of incomprehensible terms, so that everybody will be assured
that I know of those theories and those hi-fallutin’ terms. If I
were an economist I would be tempted to use various macro-
figures to tell the hungry and the destitute that contrary to what
they actually experience there is enough statistical evidence to
prove that they are not at all hungry and not at all destitute. If I
were an economist, I would be tempted to behave like all those
adults heaping lavish praise on the invisible robe of the naked
emperor, instead of being more like the innocently-honest child
in that story. Fortunately for the interest of truth, the child had
not yet reached the “age of reason” and could therefore speak
out with much sense before being promptly silenced.
I am confident of the validity of my accusation.
Acknowledged experts in various areas of human concern,
including those who deal with major factors that are well beyond
human control, exude more determination and optimism that
obstacles can be hurdled to improve the state of affairs in their
respective fields of real expertise. In contrast, mainstream
economists have upheld fatalism, akin to saying “economic
imbalance in the world has been fated upon man by all the gods
of Olympus and we can’t do anything about it but analyze and
cope, and pray for economic miracles” Either all the more intel-
ligent humans have flocked to all the other fields except econo-
mics or the reason why these economists are the mainstream
economists is because they please and keep in power the
powerful economic elite of the world with their pronouncements
that confuse and paralyze the people.
(Of course there are economists who are of more earnest
and more competent minds, but they are obviously kept
marginalized by the powerful elite, lest they redress the gross
imbalances and disturb the elite’s lucrative business systems. In
the Philippines, the esteemed Dr. Sixto K. Roxas, Alejandro
Lichauco and Emmanuel Q. Yap are just some of these
economists of the people.)
When one claims, categorically or indirectly, to be an
economist for a national or local community, one claims to be
competently serving such community. If actual performance
shows that these people are actually advisers or apologists or
both, for a narrow exploiting elite, there is a lie being
perpetrated. It’s time for the people, the stakeholders, to express
the truth of their economic conditions, study basic economic
principles without the hi-fallutin’ trimmings, and claim ultimate
95
command over policy-making that affects their lives. In such
efforts the people can be helped to a very large extent by the
economists who are really on their side.
2. Separativeness is Ignorance
Ultimately it all boils down to ignorance, because those
who abet the grossly unfair and unsound economic policies,
whether by active hi-fallutin’ encouragement or by defeatist
sufferance, are not enlightened enough by truth and wisdom that
in harming their publics they harm and even devalue themselves.
For we are all one. Moreover, all human potentials for better
behavior and performance mandate their full actualization and
utilization for the benefit of the whole of humanity. So we just
have to ask “Father, forgive them for they know not what they
do, but please don’t expect us to respect them even just a bit for
their dismal performance.”
It is also the problem of ignorance behind the behavior of
many external investors in forcing or stealing their way into
national or local community economics. The problem with these
very powerful players is that many of them do not act earnestly
as stakeholders in these economies. After extracting all the
resources they can while playing their active roles, they abandon
these same economies after their intervention in them start
showing signs of destructive effects. After exacting cooperation
from local stakeholders on the basis of glorious promises of
progress, they eventually leave these stakeholders deep in debt
and with no natural resources left to live on.
The handling of the debt is such that the debtor nations or
communities are forced to agree to implement counterproductive
“recovery” programs that leave them in increasingly worse
conditions, in what former International Monetary Fund director
Robert MacNamara has called the “Debt Trap.”
 All these schemes may, at best, pay lip service to the
concept of sustainable development, while in truth ensuring that
there is only sustainable stagnation if not sustained
impoverishment. As a result, entire communities are being
forced to “sacrifice for development” that serve only the
business interests of these powerful elites. Moreover, they cause
the opposite of development to be called “sustainable
development” and for oppositors to such schemes as anti-
development.
Real sustainable development in a community requires
the effective management of the balanced interplay among three
types of that community’s real resources. Why do I qualify these
resources as real? Because many mainstream economies, molded
in the old-school belief that economics is an exact science that
takes consideration only of precisely measurable quantities, and
would largely ignore natural resources in the real sense, and
would totally disregard cultural factors. It is this pattern of
thinking that accounts to a large extent for all the real destruction
brought by “development aggression” to bear upon people’s
communities the world over.
To ignore the holistic interrelationships among all these
real resources is ignorance. Humans, especially mainstream
economists, still have a long way to go in learning well that all
things are interrelating parts of a whole and in learning well
about honest humility in the pursuit of the truth that will set us
free. (It may be argued that these “motherhood statements” are
useless in effective economic decision making, as it can also be
argued that all the glowing statistical figures and hi-fallutin’
terms being bandied about have not redressed – and have in fact
served – the immoral perpetration of gross economic imbalance
throughout the world.)
3. Three Types of Real Resources
96
To be real, development has to benefit the lives of the
people at all scopes of the human communities. One cannot
speak of real national development if the component
communities of the national communities are not benefited by it.
The glowing or “not-that-bad” figures cannot paint as rosy the
picture of the national economy unless the people at levels of the
community holarchy (neighborhood, village, municipality,
district, and provincial) are unable see and feel a rosy local
translation of the rosy national picture. The glaring disparities
between the charts and figures presented as the “national
economy” and the actual lives of the people are sure indicators
of simulations of progress based on artificial paper transactions
undertaken to uplift confidence and save face.
To be real, Sustainable Development requires prudent
management with proper foresight to provide adequately for the
needs of present generation without compromising the needs of
future ones
Sustainable Development has to take a full accounting of
a community’s real resources, and conserve them for posterity,
while using their full regenerative potentials. This depends on
effectively managing the balance of three types of resources, so
they all contribute to development and they are effectively
conserved according to the real pace of their regeneration.
The three types of community resources that have to be
maintained as a stable tripod are: (1) Economic Resources – all
properties and possessions that come from the exchange system
for goods and services; (2) Natural Resources – all resources
freely available to the community and to any member of the
community directly from Nature; and (3) Cultural Resources –
all assets and possessions making up the community’s social
capital, like common heritage, shared sense of weal and woe into
the future, mutual trust, traditions like “bayanihan,” and the like.
 For his doctoral dissertation, Dr. Ernesto R. Gonzales,
who heads the Social Research Center of the University of Sto.
Tomas, closely studied the dynamic interrelationship of these
three types of resources as they played out in the socio-economic
history of the town of Pateros, the smallest municipality in the
Metro Manila region and perhaps in the entire Philippines.
Before a certain historic inflection point in the early 1970s,
Pateros enjoyed a balanced interplay of the natural, cultural and
economic resources or capital of the townspeople. For centuries
before that point in time, the people of Pateros lived in relative
abundance and harmony, and with a bright outlook for the future.
The inflection point identified in the study conducted by
Gonzales (2002) was the fast-pace and massive influx of
industrialization into the once idyllic but reasonably progressive
town, which influx has since focused very narrowly only on the
economic resources and allowed the other two types – natural
and cultural resources – to be drastically destroyed.
Therefore, from being a comfortably dense population in
what was then a much larger territory, with a productive
economy, a river system teeming with life, and a throbbing sense
of community and ethical values, Pateros has become a shrunken
and overcrowded town with a commerce-dependent economy,
surrounded by dead rivers and radio transmission antennae.
If this continues, Pateros would not be able to afford
much longer even just a semblance of economic progress from
the overfocusing on economic resources and allowing natural
and cultural resources to be thrown out the window. All three
legs of this cultural-natural-economic tripod should be balanced,
stable and productively interplaying. In all the community
constituencies of local and national economics, these three types
of capital ought to be handled well in a synergy-oriented
strategy.
97
4. Reviewing the Meaning of ‘Development’
Dr. Sixto K. Roxas gives 68 numbered paragraphs in his
monograph on Sustainable Development and the National
Interest: Intra-Country Regions and a Four-Quadrant Eight-
Level View of Local Integration (May 18, 2002), the first ten
items of which seek to clarify the meaning of the word
“development”:
“ ‘Development’ is the most used and least understood
word in contemporary discourse. Economists use it to describe
what is really mere growth. Psychologists refer to the evolution
of the individual’s cognitive functions, his self and his
personality. Anthropologists apply it to the evolution of culture,
sociologists and political scientists to the formation of social
patterns and political and governance systems.
“ ‘Development’ in fact does involve all those processes.
Its meaning that becomes dominant in a country depends on the
power position of the practitioners from different specializations.
The dominance of the business and economics in the Philippine
political scene has meant that in this country the term will mean
primarily growth – in production, in sales, in incomes, in
domestic and foreign trade, in investments.
“But growth in particular rates, patterns, and quality is
merely the external result of a whole complex of other forces
external and internal, individual and collective, psychological,
ideological, organizational, of worldviews held and values
maintained that determine behavior in the homes, farms,
factories, offices, marketplaces of the country.
“Communities, political units, organizations are made up
of individuals that constitute their leaders, managers and
constituents. Each of these individuals has gone through a
process of personal development and is at a particular stage in
that process, physical, biological, psychological, mental, spiritual
– acquiring beliefs, ideologies, worldviews, values, behavior
patterns and habits as a result of nature and particularities of his
nurture. Combined into families, clans, tribes, communities,
organizations of various forms and purposes, they endow the
collectivities they form with particular cultures that exhibit
specific patterns of organization, operation and performance. As
the individuals change and develop over time and in specific
geographical environments, so the collective groups manifest
behavior and performance patterns – of which economic
variables are an important but not the sole aspect.
“Scientific economics has developed its rigorous models
by drastic and heroic abstractions from these complex processes
to ‘explain’ the behavior of key economic variables and
succeeded in crafting elegant theoretical structures that presume
to depict reality adequately for purposes of management of
entire systems and individual units constituting them.
“Such models over time became not merely analytical
models to understand systematically the way real economies
work and predict their performance but blueprints for
reorganizing real communities and organizations and forcing
them into the theoretical molds. Where this transformation
succeeded, the analytical models seemed to work satisfactorily
for purposes of practical management.
“But in countries that were of earlier stages of
development, all manner of pathological dislocations have
become evident. The Philippines – for reasons peculiar to its
geography and its historical development – seems to be
experiencing greater difficulties than its neighbors. The
theoretical equipment and the practical wisdom of academics
and practitioners have not seemed to provide answers for the
country’s predicament. And over the last 56 years of the
Republic’s existence, the country has gone through sixteen
cycles of false starts, peaking and then crashing of expectations.”
98
Does Dr. Roxas, the first Filipino president of the Asian
Institute of Management (AIM), simply dismiss the mainstream
economists of the Philippines as a big bunch of incompetents?
Not at all. His analysis is paradigmatic. “SKR” continues:
“The country has not lacked professionally-trained eco-
nomists and other social scientists, organization and manage-
ment experts rigorously trained in world-class business schools.
But the repeated failures of diagnosis and prescriptions seem to
demonstrate the inadequacy of the economic, social science and
managerial paradigms either to explain our condition or
prescribe an effective strategy and protocol of action.
“The difficulty in the analysis seems to lie in the mater-
iality and importance of the factors that the abstractions of eco-
nomic science leave out of the equations: specifically, the
ideological, sociological, political and spiritual elements that are
cavalierly lumped together and labeled ‘non-economic’ vari-
ables. The ‘devil’ is in those details.
“We need a more rigorous framework, however, for sub-
suming all the psychological, ideological, sociological, political
and spiritual elements that go into behavior and performance.
One such framework combines the ‘organizing generalization’
(i.e., viewing all realities as holons) devised by Ken Wilber for
understanding the whole process of human evolution and
development, and the work of Don Edward Beck using a bio-
psycho-socio-logical schema originally put forward by the late
Professor Clare Graves, the ‘spiral dynamics.’ ”
SKR’s explanation of Wilber’s holon-centered system
appears near the end of Part One of this book. Beck’s “spiral
dynamics” is something I still have to comprehend.
5. Building-Block Synergies in Associative Economics
 Associative Economics—the framework where global pervision of the policies and operations of these entities. At the
and national economies are cultivated in synergies of local same time, because the “Small” is “Within Big,” this prolife-
economies in a ground-up (not “trickle-down”) sort of building ration of team-ups and linkages is synergized by the mutually-
and operating systems. The “trickle-down” way of Globalized beneficial networking involved. The operations of primary coops
Greed control national economic policies and programs “from within federations, and of independent business owners (IBOs)
above,” and bring the policies and programs “down” to the level within Jim Dornan’s Network Twenty-One, are examples of this.
of the local constituencies and instrumentalities. Engr. Faustino G. Mendoza, Jr., who heads the National
This pattern renders all pretenses for democratic Economic Protectionism Association (NEPA) and is presiding
governance as pure hypocrisy. “Economies of scale” which is over the revitalization and expansion program of this 69-year-old
almost always invoked by apologists for the arrangement, carry organization, expresses his faith in associative economics. In an
the presumption that the magnified volume is a synergy of the article prepared for the Lambat-Liwanag Conference on Asso-
smaller component parts, in which case the governing entity ciative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Develop-
involved would be accountable to this synergy of constituencies. ment, held at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines in
Invoking the principle of economies of scale where there exists August 2002, Mendoza says, in part:
no synergy of small economies is at best intellectual dishonesty,
if not outright stealing.
Accountability across all the existing levels of the
holarchy of community should be real in any democracy; faking
it, especially in the service of external intervenors, is an exploit-
ative maneuver that should not be countenanced in the con-
science of every stakeholder, servant or leader. Associative eco-
nomics best illustrates the paradigm spelled out by Alvin Toffler
(The Third Wave), which asserts that Small-Within-Big is
Beautiful.” Toffler is countering the logic of “economies of
scale” where the full merger of entities results in monolithic ar-
rangements where the avowed leaders are able to conveniently
forget about their accountability to entire communities. At the
same time, Toffler also criticizes Schumacker’s “Small-is-Beau-
tiful” framework.
The “Small-Within-Big Is Beautiful” framework abets
the proliferation of many enterprises and entities that are small
enough to afford a working intimacy between the leaders and the
led; thus maintaining the members’ and stakeholders’ close su-

99
 “As the Philippine economy continues to worsen, there is
no other course for NEPA and all other honorable and pragmatic
Filipinos but to engage in organization- and institution-building
towards a strong national collective stakeholdership and advo-
cacy in economic nationalism. Contrary to the pronouncements
of apologists of globalization, nationalism is not only relevant up
to now, it is our only hope for national survival. Far from being
against development and progress, economic nationalism is the
Filipino people’s only hope for real development.
“We have so much in resources that we can synergize.
We still have rich natural resources that we can finally start
utilizing for our own country’s economic benefit by not selling
them down the river hurriedly and therefore very cheaply. We
have so much human resources in our people’s skills and more
importantly in deep-seated sense of honor and industry that can
be reawakened and fully harnessed if only we can make them
work in a system of collective self-help in an atmosphere of
social justice.
“Through millions of mutually-beneficial ‘Tangkilikan’
(mutual-patronage) transactions among empowered local com-
munities, cooperatives, small and medium enterprises and
groups like NEPA, we can save our nation from sinking ever
deeper into the mire of mass poverty, massive unemployment,
and Filipino enterprises closing shop. Such transactions and
interlinking enterprises are building blocks that can be syn-
ergized as the inner strength and basis for a strong, independent
and progressive Philippine economy.”
Associative economics is not a new concept. It is as old
as socio-economic democracy. It antedates the cooperatives, the
type of organization that breathes synergism. What is new is the
degree of urgency for unconnected enterprises and community
economies to interphase and link up, in the face of the fast-
growing scourge of Globalized Greed. The most effective way
100
to thwart the designs of a monolithic tyrant is to build a synergy
among component parts and respect fully its synergized will.
A non-industrialized country like the Philippines cannot
hope to be really industrialized by what has been called an “ind-
ustrializing elite.” The elite of the country has had two parts: the
pro-foreign-domination elite that can have some capability for
industrialization but does not have any motivation to do it; and
the patriotic elite which has all the motivation but lacks in
resources.
Since the entire population is a stakeholder in such pro-
cess as a real industrialization of the country and not just located
within the country’s territorial boundaries, any such “patriotic
elite” should stop being elitist and work to draw in the sub-
stantial participation of a large section of the population, of the
people themselves, whose small amounts can be synergized in
closely interlinked capital build-up and closely interlinked
transactions that gradually mechanize production processes and
start producing small but numerous kinds of machines and
machine parts.
The masses should not be relegated to the unproductive
role of rooting in rallies for a national industrialization led by
and dependent on any such “industrializing-elite”; the people
have to pool their resources and build up their own
industrialization-oriented enterprises, especially agri-based ones,
starting realistically at the grassroots and attaining economies of
scale by an orchestrated widescale enterprise-interphasing. The
strong cooperatives across the archipelago have shown signs of
readiness to play a vital role in what would likely be a long
ground-up process.
For this to commence as reality and march on to triumph,
there should be real rural reconstruction and industrialization. In
his book, Towards a New Economic Order and The Conquest
of Mass Poverty (third printing, 1986, p. 101), nationalist
economist and writer Alejandro Lichauco gives us three
conditions for rural development. Writes he (emphasis his):
“The reconstruction of our rural areas should be based on
three elements. These are (1) land justice, under which land shall
be owned by the tiller; (2) industrialization, under which the
rural economy shall cease to be based simply in land but shall, in
addition, incorporate the machine process, so that productivity
becomes a function of both land and manufacturing industries,
small, medium and large-scale; and (3) economic democra-
tization, under which opportunities for livelihood are opened to
the powerless and not restricted to a limited few who are
endowed with capital and have monopolistic access to economic
resources.
“The key to the implementation of the third element lies
in the development of cooperatives as a democratoppic mode of
ownership. A real program of agrarian reform must include
reserving to cooperatives specific categories of economic acti-
vities. Only by such monopolies can the powerless in the rural
areas be effectively induced to mobilize collectively and be
ensured that their livelihood ventures are effectively protected by
a monopoly status.
“There is nothing wrong in giving the poor economic
monopolies that would ensure them of livelihood.
“This is an instance where monopolies are indispensable
to economic democratization. The poor must be given mono-
polies provided they organize themselves into democratic coope-
ratives.”
Lichauco, who spoke at the same Lambat-Liwanag
conference with Mendoza, highlights this vital link between
agriculture and rural economies, on the one hand, and national
industrialization on the other, and of the latter growing from the
101
enhanced productivity of the former. He also refers to the
imperative of “economic democratization.’ Apparently, he is not
about to pin all his hopes on a so-called “industrializing elite.”
But with preference for quick solutions, people who wait
for such an earnestly “industrializing elite” to have enough
resources to push for the industrialization of the country may
have to be ready to wait forever. Led by Mendoza, NEPA is not
engaged in such narrow and futile waiting game.
Already, a spokesperson for cooperatives-driven progress
for the Philippines has emerged with almost four decades of
track record in savings mobilization and financial independence
and stability. Toward the end of his book, Hungry No More,
published in 2002 by the National Credit Cooperative, Atty.
Conrado L. Baltazar writes that on the basis of the no-bad-loans
system trailblazed by the Tubao Credit Cooperative in La Union,
cooperatives can indeed provide resources for countryside
development and industrialization. Baltazar says:
“(T)he National Credit Cooperative can go into partner-
ship arrangements with deserving ventures of primaries needing
bigger investments. In this way will the poor get a chance to lift
themselves out of poverty.
“If enough grassroots cooperatives all over the country
can be imbued with the genuine essence of cooperativism, of
self-reliant joint enterprise of members who are highly
motivated and rewarded for disciplined productive effort, and
are assisted by their own mechanisms for interlinkaging, namely
the secondary cooperatives, and financial institutions that they
themselves own and govern, there is no reason for their members
to go hungry, there is no reason for their communities to go
hungry, and there is no reason for this nation to go hungry.
“Can Philippine cooperatives make that quantum leap for
self-overhaul and empowerment? Can Philippine cooperatives
start a good system and maintain it beyond the usual life ex-
pectancy of ningas cogon? Of course! The people of Tubao, La
Union, have made it their way of life for more than a quarter of
a century!
“The most important thing is the resolute decision to do
it. To save the poor from poverty, to save the hungry from
further hunger, to save the children from a future of dark un-
certainty, worsened poverty and destitution. To save our national
economy from its worsening addiction to the illusory gains from
dependence on foreign investments, there must be a resolute
decision to find solutions everywhere else, like in grassroots de-
velopments that can be mainstreamed nationwide, like our suc-
cess in Tubao.
“Can the Philippine cooperatives make that quantum
leap? I’m proud to inform all of you that a fast-growing number
of cooperatives in this country have already started out on that
process. Can the Philippine economy be made to quantum-leap
away from the Manila-centered and foreign-currency-dependent
programs and policies that have only proven to be counter-
productive over the past decades, having been a major part of the
cause of the problems these are supposed to be solving in the
first place?
“Many people, especially the economists in the national
government and the policy-makers in higher echelons of our
society, may continue debating its desirability and its very
possibility. They may continue debating, while Tubao Credit
Cooperative works and self-replicates to eventually answer that
question convincingly, not in words but in terms of success
stories.
“Some of you may also think of ways to support us in
this effort. One easy way is to spread the word about us: that
there is a growing ray of hope for the Philippine economy, and it
102
is in the growing number of healthy cooperatives validating their
claim to the name.”
A clear vision for a “Pambansang Tangkilikan” (National
Mutual Patronage) economy is articulated by SanibLakas
Foundation’s Tony Cruzada in the pamphlet, ‘Pambansang
Talastasan’ and ‘Pambansang Tangkilikan’: Twin Imperatives
for National Synergy-Building, Empowerment and Upliftment,
issued early in 2003 by the SanibLakas-convened Katipunang
DakiLahi (underscoring in the original):
“Rather than an economy dominated by a narrow elite,
foreign investors and favored importers, a nationalist economy
that is in the hands of millions of the common tao. An economy
that protects Filipino enterprise, utilizes Filipino ingenuity,
develops Filipino industries, operating nationwide and across the
globe. Not dependent on foreign investment or borrowing but on
the talent, labor and savings of millions consolidated for
strategic investments. All the elements of this Economy of the
Taongbayan are already present in the hundreds of pilot
programs that have been designed, developed and tried out by
numerous people’s organizations (POs) and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), small and medium industries, coopera-
tives, and socially responsible media organizations, the churches
and the Academe. All that is needed is to integrate the best and
most equity-building of strategies and programs into a coherent
system to be adopted by communities. The integration of
process will be guided by the new principles of Associative
Economics and the much hidden potential in the cooperative sys-
tem. National economy built on thriving local economies.
“The national invigoration of the economy will be
accomplished through the thousand units of synergistic action at
community level, orchestrated through a complex of institutional
linkages. Integration, consolidation and synergy building will be
nationwide through convergences creating concentric circles of
energy at all levels from the Barangay, Municipality, Province,
and Region. All of these will be grounded on local empow-
erment, giving primacy to Primaries, i.e. community-based eco-
nomic units formed by households in a neighborhood.”
Cruzada, who is Katipunang DakiLahi’s overall coor-
dinator for Pambansang Tangkilikan, talks about a local drive:
“To consolidate the initiative and energy provided by
indigenous, organic leaders, entrepreneurs and economists who
instill faith in self and in the community, faith in the Filipino’s
capacity to reform and triumph. Leaders who will generate hope
that we can break the cycle of failure brought upon us by un-
inspired leadership and policies, and finally build the nation we
can be and want to be. Lakas ng loob and bayanihan spirit will
propel the needed action. Intensive mobilization will be easier if
centered on ensuring stable employment and adequate income
since these will enable families to meet their basic needs,
provide a wider range of options and satisfy other aspirations.”
This local drive, he writes, brings forth local solutions:
To raise the level of productivity of every household and
participation in community planning and decision making and
the overall empowerment process. Installing local mechanisms
for savings and investment that enable jobs to be multiplied and
local resources optimally utilized, based on best practices from
numerous pilot projects. Business groups will be alerted to their
productivity potential and possible net worth. On the basis of
potential productivity, savings will be invested in groups, and
ventures that show dedication and promise, and products that are
of high quality and marketability. Capacity building, especially
management will be given priority to ensure that the planned
ventures succeed.”
“Local Synergies, he says,” will be created “to coordi-
nate the diverse elements that must come into interplay at the
103
community level. Attention will have to be paid to the synch-
ronization of the cultural, natural and economic capital, to ever-
widening circles of collaboration, involvement and participation
in diverse forms. Programs on jobs and savings will be linked
with social security, family planning, health care, housing,
utilities and environmental concerns. Finally, preparing the next
generation will be an essential part of the integration process.”
To summarize, the C-N-E Tripod in Associative Eco-
nomics for Sustainable Development is good management of the
interactive synergetic dynamics of cultural, natural and
economic resources in the holarchy of cooperatives and other
business enterprises within the attainment of nationalist
industrialization, and in the holarchy of community economics,
from village-wide to nation-wide. It takes full consideration of
all human needs, and of synergizing well all human capabilities
and natural resources for addressing those needs, from the scope
of the local community to the scope of much bigger holonic
realities.
On the other hand, associative economics is the
synergism principle’s answer to the forced centralization of labor
forces, markets, nay entire economies worldwide, for the narrow
interests of Globalized Greed. Associative Economics
operationalizes Toffler’s assertion that Small-Within-Big is
Beautiful, empowers all active stakeholders, and puts more sense
to the human-needs-and-resources management systems, called
“economics.”
With the abundance still all around us in terms of natural
and human resources, there’s no reason for the natural resources
to be destroyed and for the majority of the Homo sapiens to go
hungry for long stretches of time. We have had enough of
technocratic gobbledygook! It’s time to demand some honesty
and common sense in the way we handle our economics!


Chapter 10:
TransGenerational Bonding
HUMANS of any generation are very important players in a
synergetic relay, in a process of wisdom accumulation, in a
process of collective growth from generation to generation. This
is the intergenerational bond that embraces us all along the full
timeline from the time the first humans emerged until the last
humans perish.
1. Mandates and Accountabilities in the Flow
Our latter-day discernments on human dignity, as
enshrined as recently as only half a century ago in a Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (1948), have to impact on our
rightful valuation of human dignity from the time of the
proverbial Adam and Eve, Noah, etc.. Transgenerational bond-
ing mandates that we value the “primitive” memories and ideas
of our elders and ancestors, and it mandates likewise that we
hold ourselves completely accountable to all the generations still
to come after us in upholding such dignity of all members of the
human race regardless of time, place and other circumstances.
The Lambat-Liwanag empowering paradigm pertinent to
sense of history puts it in synergetic tandem with the discern-
ment of a sense of mission.
An empowered sense of history creates a holistic
appreciation of process of history through stages of suffering and
triumph, through stages of disunity and of consolidation as a
community, through stages of progression and of stagnation or
even regression, and seeks the mandates of the past
104
achievements and lessons for present-day generations to pursue
and fulfill for the sake of generations yet unborn.
This is the full appreciation of the continuity flow of
history, a holistic framework that militates against the eclectic
and trivial handling of historical matters. Such a collective sense
of history – a sense of shared heritage and shared fate — and
such sense of mission contribute in no small measure to the
cultural resources of a community, big or small, and therefore to
its synergy.
This continuity flow is the second in a set of three
dimensions in what I have come to popularize as the “three-D”
view of history. The first D stands for detalye, the Filipino word
for details of information about specific historical events; the
second D stands for daloy, the Filipino word for flow, which
seeks for each event answers to questions of causality (why did
that happen?) and consequence (so what if it happened?); and the
third D stands for diwa or spirit, which covers matters of
intellectual honesty, point of view, and philosophical underpin-
nings (whether basically dissective or integrative).
Modesty aside, this “3-D” view of history has made more
alive, deeper and more interesting the study of history on the
part of a growing number of students. This framework shuns
rote memorization and encourages independent critical thinking
and analytical valuation.
2. Synergies from Shared Evolution
Strictly speaking, whenever we talk of our ancestors, we
should also be looking back in tribute to our ancestors as life
forms, like all those ancient mammals, reptiles, and fish and
mono-celled beings clustered in cell colonies. All the
evolutionary lessons in those species are lodged as data in each
of our cells’ DNA. And our bodies evolve in a very similar path
right inside our mother’s womb and shortly after we get born.
 The most important elements of growth of human
consciousness is a series of discoveries and realizations of pre-
existing realities that the human sciences like anthropology and
archeology can only hope and seek to chase after. The sooner
human science removes its human-imposed limitations in terms
of its tools (like limiting these to measurements of what the “five
only” human senses can perceive, the sooner can the humans be
ready to avail themselves of the full enjoyment of the grand
realities that have always been there. Then we shall all outgrow
all tendencies towards divisiveness and its resultant self- and
mutual-constriction.
Needless to stress, all the other organisms in the great
ecosystem, are also celebrations of synergies among earlier
forms evolving, more or less among the paths studied by Darwin
into our present-day fellow living beings in the plant, animal,
and in-between kingdoms. Transgenerational bonding should
also be felt with our close and distant relatives across the long
evolutionary process of life forms on earth. After all, humans
are supposedly the latest creation to evolve, so the human
species would, by inference, be the most complete synergy of all
the evolutionary stages from protein cells and monocelled
prokaryotes to primates and humanoids, that had to accumulate
to finally lead to the emergence of the homo sapiens sapiens.
Brian Swimme writes in The Universe is a Green Dra-
gon (Sta. Fe, New Mexico: Bear and Company, 1984, p. 100):
“Consider a mountain goat. These animals have the abili-
ty to stand on a tiny ledge of rock with the wind blowing and the
rains crashing down on them. Their hooves, in particular the
outer shell of the hoof surrounding the inner pad, allow them to
get a hold on a small rock as if they were grabbing it with pliers.
“What we have to appreciate is that this adaptation
required millions of years. The ancestors of the present-day
105
mountain goats lived on mountains, adapting to the mountain’s
shapes, the difficulties of gravitational pull, and everything else.
Those shapes that were most successful in fitting into the
mountain’s reality were selected for survival, so that what we see
now contains all that previous experimentation. The hoof is the
memory of the ancestral tree. It didn’t show up accidentally; it
was shaped by the accumulated experience of millions of goats.
“The point is, matter remembers the elegant hoof. The
genetic sequence enabling such a hoof to be fashioned becomes
dominant in the gene pool, passing the hoof around to all
members of the species. So, you see what I mean when I say the
hoof is permeated with memories from the past. From this
standpoint, the hoof is those memories.
“Just as hoof is memory, the human body is memory.
Think of how many creatures are involved in the ancestral tree
for the creation of our fingers! When you lift your hand, you are
lifting all the vast experimentation that led to that hand. There
before you is the history of the great events in the universe: the
biological exploration, the supernova explosion, all the signi-
ficant moments of the last twenty billion years are remembered.
“Matter (does the remembering). Matter in the form of
molecules. The sequence of molecules that make up your DNA
is a sequence of memories. … We can only look with
astonishment at the genetic sequence of molecules captured –
remembered – by the DNA in all cells. … Think of how many
billions of creatures were involved in the accomplishment of
(creating) the animal eye.”
For each species, more significant remembering is done
by a “consciousness grid,” which we discuss in Chapter 14.


Chapter 11:
Governance and Social
Development
IN Maps of the Mind (Collier Books, NY), Ruth Benedict, the
anthropologist and poet, is credited with introducing the idea of
synergy into social science, wrote: "From all comparative ma-
terial the conclusion emerges that societies where non-
aggression is conspicuous have social orders in which the
individual by the same act and at the same time serves his own
advantage and that of the group." (Maps of the Mind, Charles
Hampden-Turner, Collier Books, NY, page 148.)
It is therefore ironic that when groups of people created
states and governments, the latter creations have been using
conspicuous aggression in imposing “peace and order” among
the citizens, lending credence to the Marxist-Leninist definition
that “state is the coercive instrument of class oppression.”
1. The Basics of Governance and Politics
The word “politics” has long acquired a negative mean-
ing in the Philippines and in many other so-called “democratic”
countries, where professional politicians, many of whom are
charlatans and opportunists are, the ones who run governments
instead of the statesmen. However, before we completely shun
politics altogether, let’s review some basics:
Governance is the management of community needs and
resources in all areas of social concern, and it covers ensuring
the assertion and protection of the constituents’ individual and
collective rights (economic, social, cultural, civil and political
rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human
106
Rights of 1948 and in the international covenants flowing from
it). The claim to exercise governance and to collect taxes for
such exercise is validated only by the people’s mandate on the
basis of the degree of actual performance of the service functions
flowing from the people’s inalienable rights.
For example, government builds roadways and operates
(through regulatory contracts called franchises) public transport-
ation systems, in order to serve well the citizens’ right to free-
dom of movement. It operates state and public schools and ex-
ercises supervision over private schools to ensure that the citi-
zens’ right to education will not be served only on paper.
Politics pertains to all acts to determine or at least
influence how to prioritize all the needs, how to sustainably
utilize the resources for the benefit of all the constituents, how
the synergies are to be played out, if at all, and who among the
people are to be mandated to perform the role of orchestrating
and who among the people are to be mandated to perform what
other roles in the orchestration. The role of orchestrating is
played through a machinery for governance (called government).
The word politics does not have to be as dirty as most
people have come to know it; after all, we are all engaged in
politics whenever we assert the citizens’ right to influence
government policies and performance. The question of who
acquires, and who retains decisively influential positions in the
machinery called government, the question of winning electoral
mandates and useful appointments are important in politics. But
so are acts of influencing the substantial and executory shape of
formalized social policy (called laws and ordinances) and
influencing the quality and degree of implementation by all
quarters.
2. The Holarchies of Governance.
 Aggression of one group of humans against other groups
usually involve the perceived need of the former to make the rest
of society bow to inequitable distribution of goods and services
and the inequitable enjoyment of human dignity and the basic
economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights that innately
flow from such dignity.
Filipinos have had a long history of government func-
tionaries lording it over the citizenry and using aggressive
intervention in private citizen affairs as if they had the “divine
right of kings” to invoke. Such government functionaries are
often invoking and appropriating for their own use the “eminent
domain” prerogatives of the nation state, supposedly on behalf
of the people and for their benefit. However, they generally do
this in performing direct or indirect service of foreign-elite
domination of our people, for which domination they are well-
compensated accomplices.
National government is not higher than local govern-
ment. It is only the synergized, i.e. effectively facilitated, na-
tional constituency that is higher than each of the local cons-
tituencies. When a group of households living near one another
builds a synergy among themselves, they may set up this or that
simple mechanism to facilitate that synergy—mass meetings at
the plaza, bulletin boards, and a council of elders or chosen
leaders to resolve conflicts and coordinate bayanihan-type ef-
forts. With those mechanisms in place, the synergy may work
very well to serve the needs and will of the people making up the
clustered households. Two or more such neighborhood clusters
can join together in a bigger and stronger synergy, called a barrio
or baranggay, and have a bit more complex facilitation and
coordination mechanism, and two or more such baranggays can
build a synergy among themselves to form what they might call
a municipality, and set up a bit more complex mechanism to
107
facilitate the synergy and serve well the needs and the will of all
the people in these clusters of clusters of clusters.
As we go to wider and wider scopes, the mechanisms
become more and more complex but the essence should remain
the same. And that is, the mechanism of whatever scope should
be serving the needs and will of the people in all those clusters
of clusters of clusters, not ruling them. These government
officials and functionaries on various scopes of constituency are
not in any hierarchy, only their respective constituent
communities are. The facilitating mechanisms are tools of the
people, funded by their money, with authority emanating from
them as citizenry. Tools (government instrumentalities such as
councils, agencies, Houses of Congress, executive departments,
Cabinet, Palace), and the functionaries posted in them at any
given time, cannot be higher than the people.
They are not monarchs or military dictators or bene-
volent despots although they may convincingly feel and play-act
the part and be rewarded with undeserved respect (with the title
“Honorable” and its attendant protocols) and bloated oppor-
tunities for largesse and perks. Only by having performance
records of competence and dedication as servants of the people
can these persons ever deserve the respectability they so
conspicuously seek. But even the competent functionaries of
competent administrations have no real right to swagger among
the people or allow their underlings to do the swaggering for
them. Only the ignorant and the hypocrytical opportunists can be
“impressed” by their airs of self-importance.
The complexity of the mechanism for nationwide gov-
ernance, the overbloated bureaucracy, has had the effect of
confusing all of us enough to forget the essence. A congressman
should consult with his constituents not to ask them what their
problems are but to ask them what their proposed solutions are
to the problems of the nation, so the congressman can faithfully
represent their voice in policy discussions within the national
legislature. Basketball courts, waiting sheds, bridges, etc. are
matters that should be the left for governors and mayors and
baranggay chairmen to address as executives.
A larger cluster is not more important than a smaller one.
Plans and policies of local constituencies should be synergized
to be the plans and policies of wider constituencies. The national
government should therefore be a mechanism for synergizing the
Filipino people’s own physical, mental and spiritual capabilities
to serve their own needs and their own collective will. Contrary
to what we have started getting used to, it is not supposed to be a
mechanism to facilitate the control of our country, of our regions
and provinces and towns and communities, neighborhoods and
homes, by the powerful elite of Global Greed.
3. People’s Self-Empowerment
The hierarchy paradigm is promoted and maintained by
those who seek to call attention to their so-called authority over
smaller clusters while at the same time justifying why they have
to obey like meek lambs the Trojan-Horse “recommendations”
of foreign overlords represented by the World Bank-IMF, World
Trade Organization and similar entities.
This paradigm is challenged by the people’s empower-
ment paradigm, where the ideal of social justice is combined
with the lesson from this quote: “Give a man fish and you feed
him for a day’ teach him how to fish and you feed him forever.”
And there are three distinct frameworks within which groups and
individuals can relate to the people and the matter of attaining
and enjoying empowerment in governmental power, in other
words, political power. These are:
1) “Proxy empowerment” framework wherein an
organized entity that is out of the corridors of power seeks to
acquire and exercise political power in the name of the people
108
and for the “objective” and “fundamental” benefit of the people,
earnestness assumed;
2) “Dole-out and Token Empowerment” framework
where wherein an entity and persons already in possession of
power claim to empower the people out of their magnanimity,
but sets limits to such empowerment so as not to put in jeopardy
their own decisive hold on power and their very own agenda;
and
3) “Direct self-empowerment of, for, and by the People,”
both as individual human persons attaining full development of
their respective individual human faculties and potentialities,
and as groups of such individually-uplifted people synergizing
their capabilities for collective self-determination and effective
self-governance. In this framework, various entities and
individuals can serve, or partake in embodying, the people’s self-
empowerment process (institutions, agencies and NGOs can
serve this process one way or another; and each PO can partake
in embodying this self-empowerment).
It is up to each individual and to each group to choose
the framework to pursue their own efforts. Indicators of success
or significance of the efforts would include the approval and
validation of these efforts by a growing percentage of the
citizenry, and of course the actual impact of these efforts on the
people.
The first framework is premised on building the strength
and “ideological purity” of the entity that seeks to acquire power
for and in the name of the people. Thus it naturally tends to
require or encourage monolithic structures and practices which
have the inherent tendency to stifle the initiative and creativity
of many of the people involved and, in some cases, have even
resulted in the disempowerment of these people. It also abets a
simplistic aversion to working with agencies and officials of the
government. It even tends to simplistically polarize or dicho-
tomize between cause-oriented organizations and the govern-
ment or make them oppose whatever the latter does or supports,
which is not really very principled.
I choose to be predisposed to give this framework an
assumption of earnestness of intent to act, speak for, and serve
the “objective” and “fundamental” benefit of the people. History
has apparently proven me to be “too generous” for deciding to
have such a predisposition. For this reason, traditional
politicians in the Philippines or elsewhere, can only appear to
belong to be working under this framework, but are more akin to
the second one” token empowerment doled out to the people.
The second framework is hazardous, just like the first,
because it creates illusions among the people and feeds on such
illusions until such time that the people, who initially pin their
hopes on it, pendulum-swing to the extreme cynicism. The
“people empowerment” component of the reform program of a
past Philippine administration spoke glowingly of guaranteeing
the marginalized sectors of society inside-track access to deci-
sion-making bodies of government, but failed short of guaran-
teeing that such representation would not merely be window-
dressing. The scheme tended to backfire on government in most
cases where representatives of such marginalized sectors were
patronizingly humored and officially heard but not really heeded
in those decision-making bodies.
The third framework builds a well-founded confidence in
the people’s capability not to lose sight of the need for funda-
mental changes and actually builds the people’s direct capability
through synergism to effect such changes.
By raising the people’s standards as to which changes
may be considered essential and beyond the cosmetic or pal-
liative, this framework does not harbor or foment a fear of petty
reforms, for many reforms and immediate gains can really be
109
used as stepping stones in the people’s march to achieving
fundamental changes in society.
Among the three alternative frameworks enumerated
above, I subscribe to the third one, and I would even go to the
extent of asserting that it is the only framework that can result in
the people actually being empowered. I say this because the
framework of people’s self-empowerment is direct, well-
rounded, and rooted in the empowerment of individuals making
up the majority of our people.
At the same time, the third framework can actually
support, encompass, and check for earnestness and effectiveness,
those working within the first and/or the second framework.
The program thrust of the SanibLakas Foundation for
National Synergy-Building is fully within the framework of peo-
ple’s self-empowerment through building synergies all around.
On varying scopes, like primary cooperatives, local communities
and the synergy of these in the national community, diverse but
orchestrated efforts are pursued in all the components of the
Stable Tripod for Sustainable Development, that is, in the
natural, cultural and economic resources of the people, cultivated
and tapped for Associative Economics.
Along the lines of building actual synergies under this
program thrust, this work has entailed organizing people into
organizations and organizing various organizations into net-
works. SanibLakas-created organizations have also been called
“program organizations” but these organizations have had their
own leadership bodies composed of a combination of Foun-
dation members and non-members, the latter being considered as
co-equal individual partners of the Foundation.
In each of the organizations we create and networks we
convene, the role played by SanibLakas Foundation at the start is
that of convenor. But the direction is toward spinning off all
these organizations into autonomous entities, where the role of
the Foundation would shift to that of concept guardian, organ-
ization development consultant, and provider of supportive re-
sources.

Chapter 12:
Healthy Organizations and True
Leadership
A GREAT number of people are involved in organizations. But
many of these people are apparently missing the point on the
essence of organizations to the extent that their confusion and
rampant malpractice are giving the very concept of organizations
a bad name. Same goes for archaic concepts of leadership, the
personality-centered idea of leadership that often splits up
organizations instead of solidifying them.
1. Essence of Organizations
The essence of organization is in synergizing the unity of
purpose, of determination, of views, and, therefore, of action of
individual elements (member persons or member-organizations)
synergizing on the basis, and for the enhancement, of such uni-
ties.
The magnitude of synergy in any organization depends
on the magnitude of commitment and energy of most if not all of
the individual members. This is the “Basic Elements” aspect,
which pertains to the quality and also to the quantity of the indi-
viduals making up the organization. Specific interrelationships
are worked out for optimized synergy determined by the organ-
110
izational design and by the quality of its leadership. This is the
“Leadership and Management” aspect.
Three Synergies are underpinnings of healthy organi-
zations:
Synergy of the Minds for policies and decisions, which
covers an understanding by the members of the needs and
problems being addressed by the organization and also the
intellectual consideration by them of the options available for
approaches and methods;
Synergy of the Hearts/Spirit, which covers the mutual
reinforcement among members of their levels of conviction and
determination, as well as morale; and
Synergy of the Muscles/Actions, which covers unified and
coordinated actions that fulfill and enhance the full potentialities
of the sum total of the capabilities of all the active members.
It should be noted that synergies in all three aspects
correspond to what are generally described to be the triune
facets of the full human: body, mind, spirit. This implies that
organizations of humans are best synergies of the full humanity
of the members, and not synergizing only the muscles of most of
the members, the minds of only a handful of formal or de facto
leaders who decide how to deploy the muscles of all the
members, and ‘never mind the spirit.’ Such organizations
survive all right but they are not as effective and powerful as
they can be, and they do not really function as empowering
entities for members who join in.
All of these three synergies form the essential under-
pinnings of organizational processes, like consensus-building
and policy-making, coordination, etc.
The setting of general and specific principles, approach-
es, activities, policies, programs, and plans should proceed from
the scientific, philosophical and organizational principle of
synergism, where the total capability and actual output of a set of
people working closely together is much more than the total
capability or total output of the very same people if they are
working separately.
Finally, the structures (bodies, job descriptions, criteria,
methods of recruitment/hiring, selection/election; methods of
recall, etc.) should only follow and not be determined ahead of
these. And this is where true leadership is very important.
2. Synergetic Leadership: From ‘Bagani’ to ‘Balani’
True leadership, in the context of contemporary human
synergies, does not refer to the function of making the most
important decisions on behalf of the members, or doing all the
work for the members while transforming them into a fans club.
True leadership is serving the members by facilitating and or-
chestrating well their synergy, by drawing all of them to over-
come any tendency to act separately and instead to maximize the
value of deciding to associate by acting as a big team—in
decision-making, in purpose-setting, in working, and in enjoying
together the fruits of their work.
True leadership does not call attention to itself, but builds
the capacity and confidence of the members, their faith in them-
selves and in the great power of their togetherness. And in doing
this, leadership expands itself among more and more members to
have this same conscious predisposition and capacity to unite
the parts of the whole more and more closely behind what is the
collective will at any given time. This has to be done without
those representing the whole having any feeling of being above
those parts. Any leader who starts behaving condescendingly,
even if unknowingly, automatically stops being a leader.
111
Leadership consciousness should be centered on the
function of leading, of being an active part of the centripetal
force, and not on the identities of specific persons making up the
formal leadership bodies. Imbued with the synergetic spirit of
such consciousness, even the losing candidates for executive
officers’ positions in ticket-mode elections can still be counted
on as earnest teammates of the winners in the broader leadership
force within the organization. After all, we should be in a posi-
tion to assume that officer-caliber members of an organization,
which they all claim to be, at least tacitly, by running for office,
are real leaders and not just popular personalities.
The Philippine concept of leadership has evolved over
the centuries with the development of social structures, affected
by the archipelago’s colonization by Spanish and American
regimes.
Thousands of years of freedom and natural evolution saw
the brand of leadership akin to that of champions like David and
Goliath were for their respective sides. ‘Bagani’ is one of the
old native words for warrior and ‘bagani’ leadership is the kind
where the leader is one who would do the brunt of the fighting or
do the commanding for other warriors to obey. That worked for
a period of time characterized by frequent inter-group wars.
Then there emerged the ‘bayani’ leadership. The word
‘bayani’ in the major Philippine language started out as a verb
that meant serving the community through collective work that
expects no equivalent material compensation. The nearest noun-
form to this was ‘bayanihan’ or community action on one
another’s tasks, like planting and harvesting rice or moving
houses from one area to another. (About a century ago, the word
‘bayani’ acquired a new sense, referring to heroes and heroism.)
“Bayani” leadership can therefore describe the leadership factor
that draws the participation of community members to such
specific collective efforts in the spirit of the synergetic “baya-
nihan” philosophy, which is part of our nation’s proud heritage.
A new brand of leadership is now emerging in the world
since the advent of the new millennium, in the stream of what
has been called the “Age of Aquarius.” This is the leadership
factor to bring people to awareness and appreciation of our
essential oneness as Spirit incarnated in separate bodies with
distinct histories.
Although gathering, reflecting and sharing the light,
through writings and oral discussions have been part of the
means employed by these leaders, the latter do their work mainly
by “living and being the light,” that is, by bringing the essential
reality of our oneness in their consistent behavior in the most
challenging of milieus.
As Walsch writes of ‘God telling him’ (Conversations,
Book 3, 1998, p.182): “Bring your awareness to others. Not by
proselytizing but by example. Be the source of the love which I
am in the lives of all others. For that which you give to others,
you give to yourself. Because there is only One of Us.”
The very being of these new type of leaders, and the
consequent behavior flowing from that being, produces fields of
awareness and appreciation akin to magnetic fields produced by
each magnet and affecting objects all around each magnet. Thus
I refer to this leadership as “balani leadership,” ‘balani’ being
the Filipino word for magnet.
“Bayani” leadership builds strong synergies behind spe-
cific tasks at hand. But as the pattern for such collective
behavior is established and strengthened, it gets imbibed by the
greater mass of the participants and it goes well beyond the con-
cerns of specific tasks and gets established as these people’s
mode of living and existence, individually and collectively.
112
“Balani” leadership is thus attained by those who
habitually see commonalities and points of unity in the most
antagonistic of configurations, those who are ever-predisposed to
do the following as individuals and as teams, whatever area of
human interaction is involved: link up the unlinked, coordinate
the uncoordinated and act as a living bridges among
organizations or sections of the population that are not relating
enough or at all, or are even hostile to one another. They are the
conscious synergizers or synergy-builders. (Our synergism-
oriented SanibLakas Foundation is seeking to synergize in its
membership and activity-oriented life the consistently-active
conscious synergizers; those who are unable or unwilling to be
consistently-active are very much welcome to join the broader
but less-compact community called Pamayanang SanibLakas.)
“Balani” leadership can only grow from “bayani” leader-
ship. But they have a big difference: Bayani leadership discovers
and actualizes the value of parts coming together in synergy, and
Balani leadership rediscovers that we are all one in the first
place, before the seeming separation arising from the forgetting.
As of this writing, much refining has yet to be done on
my integrated description of “bagani,” “bayani” and “balani”
leadership, and I welcome all shared experiences and ideas for
further working it out.
3. Collective Will and the Matter of Discipline
Healthy and strong are those organizations that synergize
their individual members’ will and skill, their motivations and
capabilities, instead of having to cultivate these in them in the
first place. A strong organization is one where the members are
firm on their respective personal decision to band together, really
band together, and make this banding together really work for
the sake of their synergized aims. The healthy organization can-
not and would not accept members who had not applied for
membership or categorically manifested a choiceful personal
decision to pursue their personal purposes which the organi-
zation would only facilitate for synergetic pursuit.
But members, as do all humans and other holons, feel
both the tendency to be good and firm team-players and uphold
the team-play, and the tendency to go their own way as
individuals with very individual motivations and capabilities.
Discipline is therefore the mechanism for an organization to be
stable by drawing its members to consistently behave as team
players. Rules are made collectively for collective gain, and rule-
breaking, the acts of spoiling the team-play, is an offense not just
against the rule enforcers but against the organization itself.
Reeducation is therefore the best remedy for breaches of
discipline, and even practically-consequential sanctions, like
fines and penalties and even expulsion, should primarily aim for
education of the general membership.
In the book, Hungry No More (National Credit Coope-
rative, Philippines, 2002, p. 83), Conrado L. Baltazar gives this
valuable input on discipline:
“Let me go back briefly to the matter of discipline. Some
people might take this term in the sense of its usual use
especially to justify martial-law, authoritarian and regimented
practice where righteous behavior is motivated mainly by fear of
punishment to be meted out on offenders by authority figures
and bodies. Is the effort to instill discipline, of this sort,
compatible with The Cooperative Way, the way of synergism,
the way of service-orientation and volunteerism, the way of
associative economics…?
“Apologists for authoritarianism and command systems
have unfortunately been allowed to monopolize, to own, the
term, and the others who use it in healthier sense do not clarify
their own sense for the education of their leaderships and
audiences.
113
“Effective penal sanction systems – with heavy penalties,
effective monitoring to flush out offenders and effective
prosecution/judicial systems can indeed make for very effective
discipline among a group of people. But under the principles of
cooperativism, discipline in the cooperatives should emanate
from within each person.
“Each member should be developed in enough personal
maturity to comprehend the just logic of the rules, and to con-
nect their own individual interests inextricably with that of the
cooperative, they would each exert best efforts not to commit
acts that would weaken the cooperative. Only the matured can
see the imprudence of breaking the rules of a system that are
placed for their own collective interests. Only the matured can
grasp intellectually and practice in a living way the principle of
synergy that has to operate if the cooperative is to fully serve
them and to continue serving them.
“Joining the cooperative is voluntary. All voluntary acts
of matured persons are expected to be conscious voluntary acts.
They join a coop because they know that it is prudent to do so
for their individual and collective interests. And common sense
would tell them that cooperatives can only work to serve those
individual and collective interests if and only if all or even most
of them make it work, by going along fully with the systems
they have agreed, out of collective common sense, to adopt. It
has been observed among many cooperatives that members are
not conscious of this logic. We don’t want to assume that they
joined the coop to ‘put one over the coop.’
“Inner and conscious sense of discipline is therefore not
only compatible to The Coop Way, it is The Coop Way. It’s
something like no one committing any crime even if the
policemen are nowhere in sight. It’s like people who’d refrain
from defecating in the middle of the community plaza not be-
cause somebody might see their private parts, someone might
see their act and discredit them or some policeman might see and
arrest them. They simply won’t do it because they don’t want to
foul up the air being breathed by the entire community including
themselves and their loved ones. A matured cooperative member,
who knows the essence of cooperativism and not merely the
intricacies of some coop activity or other, would refrain from
participating in the slow slaughter of the goose that lays the
golden egg.”
Baltazar’s explanations of discipline are rooted in de-
cades of successful practice of their credit cooperative in Tubao,
La Union, in Northern Philippines. We focus on the synergetic
dynamics of cooperatives in the succeeding chapter. But the
matter of inner discipline is also founded on a person’s integrity,
the synergy of one’s thoughts, words and deeds, as well as in the
will to be consistent in the synergy of our actions and experi-
ences in co-creating and actualizing Who We Really Are. And
each human being both an individual and a part of a whole, that
Whole is created together by individuals who consciously and
firmly seek to make fully effective the synergetic dynamics of
such a Whole, where every individual member acts more upon
the basis of prudent collectivity than upon the folly of counter-
productive separation.

Chapter 13:
Cooperative—Social Synergy of
Personal Enterprises
MANY COOPERATIVE leaders and members are familiar with
the definitions of both the terms "synergism" and "coopera-
114
tives." However, there is need for focused education on both of
them because familiarity is never enough to meet the challenge
of dynamically applying the principle of synergism. Such
application should be done consciously in appreciating the very
essence of cooperativism and in the lifepulse of the Philippine
coop movement as a whole and of every single cooperative.
There is need to focus some attention on the very essence
of a cooperative: individual entrepreneurs decided to pursue
their enterprises together, really and fully together. The
cooperative is the social synergy of these personal enterprises.
Real and full togetherness translates into the narrowing of dis-
crepancies in equity investment and into insuring equal vote in
decision-making. And the full togetherness goes beyond mere
joint ownership but in all joint efforts possible to make the
cooperative enterprise. Each member has a stake and keen
interest in the entire working of this business enterprise. It is this
real and full togetherness that distinguishes a coop from a
bilateral partnership or from a corporation.
Upon this essence of cooperative stand the Seven Basic
Principles of Cooperative Identity as formulated and promul-
gated by the century-old International Cooperative Alliance
(ICA). These principles serve to operationalize the essence.
1. Comprehension Needs Deepening
On both concepts, textual and theoretical understand-
ing has to be deepened and validated by experiential knowledge,
something that cannot be acquired within the four walls of a
seminar room and within the time span of a few days.
On matters regarding the building, formalization, regis-
tration, consolidation and operation of cooperatives, the standard
education courses and modules would seem to suffice or even
exceed the basic needs for these aspects of cooperative life to
flow. But we submit that there has been almost nothing, if not
indeed nothing, when it comes to focused education on the syn-
ergism principle itself.
Because of this, cooperative life goes on, as it obviously
does go on, but leaves much to be desired in terms of quality
operations and growth, precisely because the very soul of the
needed dynamic unity is not really there. It is therefore not at all
surprising that for many cooperative leaders and members it is
quite all right that their cooperatives have been built and is
continually running, mainly on the basis of resources accepted or
even begged for from external sources.
They do not realize that this kind of dependence, no
matter how lucrative it may be for the cooperatives concerned,
negates their very identity as cooperatives and that it has even
stripped them of the right to keep calling themselves coopera-
tives.
Lack of education and lack of application of the syner-
getic essence of cooperatives is also at the root of common
situations where only the officers are active while the members
would not even attend regular meetings.
Certain privileges are accorded cooperatives under the
Cooperative Code of the Philippines, because of their supposed
nature and service to society, but unfortunately many coope-
ratives have not kept their part of the covenant. I do not impute
malice on the part of anyone for this situation. I am just pointing
out that something very important has been missing in our co-
operative education work, and that is the imperative of learning
and consciously applying the principle of synergism for the sake
of the cooperatives themselves and ultimately for the sake of our
local communities and the nation.
Contrary to what many cooperative leaders and members
have become convinced by decades of experience, the basic and
115
therefore most important unit of the cooperative sector is the
primary, the synergy of individual persons, the cooperators, who
have each decided to pursue one’s own respective entrepre-
neurial endeavors together “and really together” with the others
(that is, in the “cooperative way”).
On the basis of this synergy essence of the cooperative,
the SanibLakas Foundation’s Cooperative Education on Syner-
gism (CES) Program launched in the middle of February 2003 a
mini-poster and handout campaign (with the same two-page
material) for discussion, distribution and posting on or before
March 10, 2003, the 13th anniversary of the Philippine Coope-
rative Code (Republic Act 6938). This material starts with the
following in bold and enlarged letters: “In commemoration of
Philippine Cooperative Day on March 10, 2003, let us all salute
the basic source of strength of coops …members who fully live
by their own individual decision to synergize their personal en-
terprises by really banding together in strong cooperatives.”
2. Your Will Be Done… What Will?
Two paragraphs deliver and explain the whole point of
the campaign, points that we requested cooperatives to discuss
among their members:
“Voluntary membership” means the application and ac-
ceptance of members lies in their personal will (voluntas) to
bring together their savings and enterprises and band together
fully, for magnification of their capabilities through synergism.
Members who live by their own decision to band fully together
really feel, assert and perform joint stakeholdership and demo-
cratic control in the affairs of the coop. They are aware that they
did not come in as beneficiaries of a social welfare agency, nor
as clients of a borrowers’ club. They are really entrepreneurs,
making full use of all the opportunities and prerogatives asserted
and upheld by the Seven Principles of Cooperative Identity
(promulgated by the International Cooperative Alliance) to make
the joint enterprise grow and serve the community. Filipino
cooperators are also honoring our common heroic heritage by
living the Bayanihan spirit, where our concept of, and even our
word for, heroism are ultimately rooted. The members and the
officers decide together how to make the cooperative enterprise
work and sustainably grow.
“The power of cooperativism in the Philippines is de-
pendent on the solid character of individual members of primary
coops, their personal and collective resources, and the quality of
synergy among all of them. By working together in the spirit of
teamwork and Bayanihan, all the various apex organizations,
federations and unions, the academe, the non-government org-
anizations, and the Cooperative Development Authority can help
to fully enhance the heroism and capabilities of all cooperative
members and unleash the full potential of our coop primaries.
“The cooperative sector can be enabled to perform much
better, and at last be popularly and officially recognized, as one
of the major pillars of the Philippine economy that we all want
to move towards recovery and sustainable development.
“That, after all, is the noble intent and challenge of our
‘cooperative revolution’. ”
3. Some References
The mini-poster cum handout also provides the following
references for the foregoing assertions:
“The classic definition of cooperative was articulated by
renowned historian Julius Otto Muller: ‘(cooperative is) a term
used where a number of people join together for a common pro-
ject, because joint effort makes possible an amount of strength
greater than the sum of the individual amounts of energy.’ In
this context, cooperation is synonymous with synergy. [Source:
116
Roberto “Obet” Pagdanganan, An Urgent Call for Cooperative
Revolution, 2002, p. 3. (Emphasis ours)
“The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) Statement
of Identity defines a cooperative as ‘an autonomous association
of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic,
social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned
and democratically-controlled enterprise.’ While intentionally
crafted as a minimal statement, which could embrace the vast
array of cooperative organizations throughout the world, the
statement emphasizes some important characteristics of coope-
rative enterprise. These include the following essential features:
enterprise, autonomy, voluntary nature, needs being met, joint
ownership and democratic control. [Source: Ann Hoyt, “And
Then There Were Seven (Cooperative Principles Updated),”
Cooperative Grocer, January/February 1996 issue published by
Dave Gutknecht, P.O. Box 597, Athens, OH 45701 University
of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives (From Internet; Emphasis
ours.)]
“Article III of the Cooperative Code of the Philippines
(Republic Act 6938) defines ‘cooperative’ as a “duly registered
association of persons with a common bond of interest who have
voluntarily joined together to achieve a lawful common social or
economic end, making equitable contributions to the capital
required and accepting a fair share of the risks and benefits of
the undertaking in accordance with universally accepted coope-
rative principles. Article IV states that, ‘Every cooperative shall
conduct its affairs in accordance with Filipino culture and
experience, and the universally accepted principles…’ [Source:
Roberto Pagdanganan, An Urgent Call for Cooperative Revolu-
tion, 2002, p. 3.]
“Two elements have to be stressed in applying the
synergism principle on the very definition of cooperatives: one,
there are members each with resources to contribute to a com-
mon enterprise and readiness to face risks in substantial stake-
holdership; and, two, these voluntarily band together, and really
do band together in earnest, bringing in substantial amounts of
human and material resources, to make the enterprise work and
grow. [Source: Ed Aurelio C. Reyes & Joydee C. Robledo, “Co-
operatives and the Challenge of Synergism” in pamphlet of the
same title, 2nd Edition, published by the SanibLakas Foundation
– Cooperative Education on Synergism (CES) Program, Coope-
rative Month 2001, p. 5. (Underscoring mine.)]”
4. ‘Silent Soul’ of Cooperativism
Without clarifying the deepest rationale, or the deepest
premises of the rationale, the textual, even if very accurate,
comprehension of this definition cannot suffice to give us the
essence. And if it involves mobilizing many people and uniting
them firmly around the operationalization of the definition, such
efforts may be lackluster. Or we may fail because there are no
useful indicators on desired impact that the formulators of the
definition had decided only to imply. If a cooperative is
unhealthy, one has only symptomatic indicators pertaining to the
consequent points, including any of the Seven Principles, to look
into. Symptomatic cure is not real cure, so “coop doctors” have
to have more clarity on essence to guide them.
The ICA came out with an official background paper
written under the leadership of the eminent Ian McPherson to
expound on the consequent points of the definition, which paper
also clarifies that: “This definition is intended as a minimal
statement; it is not intended as a description of the ‘perfect’
cooperative. It is intentionally broad in scope, recognizing that
members of the various kinds of cooperatives will be involved
differently and that the members must have some freedom in
how they organize their affairs.”
117
This paragraph just quoted explains the brevity and
simplicity of the definition. It is up to the readers, the dedicated
students of cooperative essence, to spot the unspoken but vital
premises of the definition, with best efforts to be careful and
responsible in doing so.
What would be unspoken premises in the ICA definition
of a cooperative? First premise is that persons have their own
common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations to
meet. But those needs may be met individually/separately by the
people; while some of these needs may be met individually and
some others may be met collectively; they may be met more
individually than jointly, or more jointly than individually.
The word “voluntary” is a very heavily-loaded word.
This comes from the Latin word “voluntas” meaning “will,” and
“will,” in turn, carries the matter of free and informed choice, a
serious decision, and the matter of strength of character of each
person involved to firmly stick by his or her own decision as any
strong-willed adult should.
Among all the premises here, the deepest one is that
persons would really find it prudent to decide to band together,
to really band together, and to stay banded together, to meet their
common needs and aspirations together because there is a value-
added to be had, a magnification of capacities to be attained, in
a well-managed joint effort. On the clarity and fulfillment of this
promise lies the very basis of this definition, although it is left
unsaid.
Many people are somewhat familiar with this magnified-
capacities principle, because it works in nature, in sports, in
medicine, engineering, and other human enterprises, but few
know that it is called ‘synergism.’ This is the ‘silent soul of
cooperativism.’ It makes it prudent for large numbers of people
to decide to join really together and remain as active majority
members of strong coops.
Muller defined a cooperative as “a term used where a
number of people join together for a common project, because
joint effort makes possible an amount of strength greater than the
sum of the individual amounts of energy.” This is the cited
context of Roberto Pagdanganan for writing in his An Urgent
Call for Cooperative Revolution (2002) that “cooperation is
synonymous with synergy.”
Without understanding and appropriately applying this
synergy, cooperatives would be poor shadows of what they are
supposed to be, and unable to deliver sustainably on its basic
promises, and their recruits would all be a frustrated and
disillusioned lot. In that case, all there would be, and only for
short stretches of time, are inactive majority members of weak
cooperatives on the path to dormancy or extinction.
Before they were asked to decide whether or not they
want to join a cooperative, were these members fully informed
about all the options available for all who want to meet their
respective individual needs (that happen to be common with the
need)? Were they informed fully what advantages are there in
meeting these needs together with other people, and how come
these advantages are actually there in the cooperative option? In
the first place, is it fully understood how this system can actually
work sustainably?
If we were so much in a hurry to get more and more
signatures on our membership application forms without ensur-
ing the backing of some honor and firmness for those signatures,
and if membership applicants were also in much hurry to secure
loans without bothering to understand fully where the coope-
rative’s resources should sustainably be coming from, our coop
is doomed to be a very weak one, a disgrace to the real definition
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of “cooperative.” We cannot afford to “educate them later,”
because they need to know fully the essence of the commitment
of both sides before they can make an informed, free and firm
decision whether or not to join our coops. That is the serious
standard if we want to use the word “voluntary” and actually
mean it.
5. Primacy of Primaries
There should be a felt primacy of primaries. Clusters of
primaries, namely the secondaries, and clusters of clusters of
primaries, the tertiaries, exist to serve the primaries, and to do
the bidding of the primaries’ memberships. Under the basic co-
operative principle of members’ democratic control, the mem-
bers of any primary coop should not allow themselves to be
controlled by even their very own facilitation mechanism called
the Board of Directors, and no primary can be legitimately
dominated by a secondary coop with which it is affiliated.
The individual cooperators who have banded together in
primary cooperatives should very obviously be in control of
these primaries and of all the clusters of primaries and of all the
clusters of clusters of their primaries, their very own enterprise-
synergizing tool. It is, after all, a synergizing tool created by the
synergy of their individual personal will, choosing this commu-
nity-oriented mode over other modes of pursuing successful
enterprise.
6. Coops as Teachers of Synergism
With the cooperatives successfully applying the syner-
gism principle, resulting in the members’ individual and shared
prosperity, the cooperatives can perform the task of educating
the broader population of the local and even the national
community on this principle, as contemplated in this call raised
by Joydee Robledo as executive director of SanibLakas Found-
ation, in a talk before the 1998 General Assembly of the Visayas All contributions to the attainment of this, both big and
Cooperative Center (VICTO) in Tagbilaran City, Bohol: small – yours, mine, ours, everyone’s – are precious components
“The Cooperative is the ‘cutting edge,’ achieving ‘break- of this grand unfolding of reality!
through experiences’ in effecting ways and means in actualizing
synergism in the broader Philippine society. As each cooperative

becomes more and more efficient and effective in responding to
the needs of the times, growing successfully in numbers and
strength, and reaping rewards from their achievements, the
celebration can only move no other way but forward. …
“As these cooperatives go on realizing their goals and
increasing their capabilities, more and more things are accom-
plished along the way. The cooperatives become successful one
after another. Society becomes more conscious of the roles of the
cooperatives in a larger picture. This is also where economic
power becomes visible and thus gives the people the opportunity
to be heard, to have political power, to be properly represented,
Chapter 14:
and have cultural power as well. The list of positive results may Consciousness Grids: Synergism
go on and on as one can imagine the ripple effect of it all.”
The coops do not just have to talk about synergism in the
in Continuing Human Evolution
broader community, the cooperatives have to live synergism, CHARLES Darwin came out with his milestone study on the
they have to be living synergies, within the community, for their emergence and development of the various species, including the
own empowerment and shared prosperity and society’s own. human species, through a long series of natural selection pro-
cesses where certain species that mutated in forms favorable to
7. Coops as Players in the Grandest of Human Synergies
survival pushed to extinction those that mutated in disadvan-
As synergetic local socio-economic ecosystems, with tageous forms.
healthy cooperatives at the core, stand up as strong building
blocks of empowered socio-economic ecosystems in larger Darwin’s study proved useful to the development espe-
scopes of human community, human development and harmony cially of the biological sciences, putting a logical flow to the
shall advance and converge everywhere for the profound en- remarkable organism classification work of his predecessor by a
joyment and upliftment of Humankind. Because humans are the century, Carolus Linnaeus.
conscious bearers of divine awareness for the entire holarchic 1. Earlier studies, developments
universe, this is the grandest of all the grand human synergies!
Subsequent studies have, however, proved Darwin’s
Theory of Evolution grossly inadequate, especially as it comes

119
to the subject of Human Evolution. After all, Darwin’s study is
limited to the biophysical bodies, and does not even touch the
electrochemical and energy-fields aspects. It has fallen far short
of touching what is now increasingly acknowledged as our
essence as human beings—embodied Spirit, a spiritual “fingers
of the Divine Hand” synergizing with a bio-energetic body to
experience reality and with a bio-energetic body to experience
the appreciation of the experience, the Human beings mandated
to re-member Who We Really Are after we, for the experience of
the re-membering, were deliberately made to forget.
It is too much to expect Darwin of the 19th century to
have come up with that. Consciousness, especially in Europe,
was then very primitive when it came to spirituality, especially
after powerful religious, deliberately or otherwise, misrepre-
sented divisive and disempowering religious dogma and prac-
tices for living spirituality.
Early Christians apparently “got it” by focusing their
own lives on the essence of the Christ’s teaching, “Love one
another as I have loved you,” and the Church of the Catacombs
apparently lost that essence when it acquired and embraced
worldly power. Still, we can say that church was merely de-
toured and spun off protesting churches before it started to cor-
rect many of its stances and policies, started to embrace ecu-
menism, and also started to be open to inter-faith unity.
There will come a time relatively soon, when the world’s
religions will be increasingly unified by basic spirituality, for the
differences lie in articulations and structures made by the
intellectual minds of the persons of authority in the religious
organizations. To be sure, these leaders claim having been given
divine inspiration in crafting these dogmas, policies and practi-
ces, but just how divine the inspiration can be gleaned from the
divisive effects, including self-righteous mass-killlings and cruel
persecutions. Real spirituality has only one unmistakable effect –
120
it unites people, it reminds us that in the first place, even as we
are incarnated in many physical bodies, we are all one as spirit.
2. ‘Consciousness Grids’ and those experiments
Drunvalo Melchizedeck, who wrote The Ancient Secret
of the Flower of Life (Vol. 1 published in 1998 by Light
Technology Publishing), referred to a “planetary grid” as an eth-
eric crystalline structure, with an electromagnetic component,
that envelops the planet and holds the consciousness of any of
the species of life forms. “Scientists will eventually discover,” he
predicts, “that there is a grid for every single species in the
world. If there are just two bugs on the planet, and they are just
sitting somewhere in Iowa, they have a grid that stretches around
the entire planet, or they could not exist. It is just the nature of
the game.”
He says each of these grids has its own geometry and is
unique; there's not another one like it. Just like the species' body
is unique, its point of view of interpreting Reality is also unique.
It was Ken Keyes Jr. and Lyall Warson who wrote their
respective books, The Hundredth Monkey and Lifetide: The
Biology of the Unconscious, but it was from Melchizedec that I
learned about a 30-year scientific research project on the
Japanese monkey, Macaca fuscata. He describes the island of
Koshima, Japan, as having a wild colony of moneys with
scientists giving them sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The
monkeys liked the sweet potatoes, but not the sand and dirt.
Melchizedec narrates:
“An eighteen-month-old female they named Imo found
she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes. She taught
this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new
way, and they taught their mothers, too. Soon, all the young
monkeys washed their sweet potatoes, but only the adults who
imitated their children learned of this behavior. The scientists
recorded these events between 1952 and 1958.
“Then suddenly, in the autumn of 1958, the few monkeys
doing this on the island of Koshima reached a critical mass,
which Dr. Watson arbitrarily placed at 100, and bingo! — almost
every monkey on the island started washing its potatoes without
any further influence. If it had happened only on that one island,
they probably would have figured there was some form of com-
munication and looked for it. But simultaneously the monkeys
on the surrounding islands also started washing their potatoes.
Even on the mainland of Japan in Takasakiyama, the monkeys
were washing their potatoes. There was no possible way these
monkeys could have communicated by any way we know. It was
the first time that scientists had ever observed anything like this.
They postulated that there must have been some kind of
morphogenic structure or field that stretched across these islands
through which the monkeys were able to communicate.”
From the “Hundredth Monkey” experiment, Melchizedec
proceeds to report on another experiment, this time with human
subjects. He says a few years after the sweet potatoes-washing
fad among monkeys in Japan, a scientific team from Australia
and Britain wondered if humans possessed a grid similar to the
monkeys. He continues:
“They did an experiment. They made a photograph that
had hundreds of human faces in it, little ones, big ones, and faces
in the eyes. Everything was made up of these faces, but when
you looked at it, you could see only six or seven. It took training
to see the other ones. Usually, someone had to point out where
they were.
“These people took their picture to Australia and con-
ducted a study there. They selected a certain number of people
from a spectrum of the population, and showed each of them the
121
picture, giving them a certain length of time to look at it. They
held the photograph up to someone and said, ‘How many faces
do you see in this photo?’ During the time the subjects were giv-
en, they would generally come up with six, seven, eight, nine or
ten faces. Few people gave more. When they had gotten a few
hundred people as their basic sampling and recorded accurately
what had been observed, some of the researchers went to
England on the other side of the planet and showed the picture
on a closed-cable BBC television station that broadcasts only to
England. They carefully showed where all the faces were, every
single face. Then a few minutes later other researchers repeated
the original experiment with new subjects in Australia. Suddenly,
people could easily see most of the faces.”
From that moment, he says, scientists were certain there
was something about humans that had not been known. “The ab-
origines in Australia had known about this ‘unknown’ part of us
for a long time. They knew that there was an energy field con-
necting people. Even in our society, we've observed that some-
body on one side of the planet would invent something very
complex at the same moment that someone on the other side of
the Earth invented the same thing, with the same principles and
ideas. Each inventor would say, ‘You stole it from me. It was
mine. I did it first.’ This has happened many, many times,
stretching back for a long time. So after this Australian expe-
riment, they began to realize that something very definitely con-
nects us all.”
By living his life the way He did, Jesus the Christ built a
Christ-consciousness grid operating not in the realm of official
dogmas, policies and practices but in deep spiritual conscious-
ness. “Love God above all and your neighbor as yourself,” he
said, and we paid some heed, and now, some two thousand years
later, the “Christ Consciousness” is gradually sinking into our
stubbornly intellectual heads. And from such a growing
consciousness of everyone being part of one seamless reality, “The conscious synergy of Humankind and of all Creation
and loving increasingly consciously that Divine and Almighty will emerge, a real and embracive unity, no longer an artificial or
Reality of Pure and Unconditional Love, and loving also exclusive one. That will be the real age of the full Pentecost, where
increasingly consciously one another as mutual extensions of a fast-increasing number of people, not just a dozen apostles, will
each one within that seamless reality. now feel the tongues of fire lighting up their souls from within,
souls that would reach out to embrace one another and draw in
3. We Have Come A Long Way more and more people into their informal families.
It was with a deeply-felt sense of optimistic certainty “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I
when I told the First Lambat-Liwanag Conference on Empow- hope someday you will join us. And the world will live as one! But
ering Paradigms held at the University of Sto. Tomas about two you cannot say that to me in all earnestness. That was meant for the
years ago: Lennon of those days, not (us) today. We have reason to declare
“The development of consciousness of the human race has having joined Lennon in his dream, and that more people are join-
come a long way from the command regimentation that stressed ing us, more and more people like us are joining up with the rest.”
faith and righteous behavior (Old Testament) while downplaying
comprehension and free will. We have had more than two thousand 
years of enhanced free will and the admonition to love one another
(message of Christ), where the beginnings of comprehension (phy-
sics and other natural sciences) completely sidelined spiritual faith
as by then misrepresented by dogmas of divisive religions. Through
this period, the use of free will was often leading to disastrous
consequences of intolerance and bigotry, oppression and exploit-
ation, greed and tyranny.
“And we are now gradually moving into a new period
where human consciousness would really blossom in unconditional
love and unconditional peace. We will fully be enjoying free will
but matured enough, after centuries of experiential education, to
freely choose love and synergy over alienation, separation and an-
tagonism. Faith will still be there but no longer blind. Individual
human dignity will be there but no longer as separative ego. Com-
prehension will be there, well beyond present-day conventional
physics, but intellectualization will be underpinned by love, honest
humility and spiritual discernment. Righteousness will be there in
each of us but based on maturity and no longer externally com-
manded.

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PART FOUR: WALKING NUGGETS
AND MAGNETS
1. Human Gold
Humans are walking nuggets of gold. Each human per-
son is a very valuable complex and really awesome synergy in
itself, and as itself — body, mind and spirit — where each one
of the three is itself a complex synergy.
The energy comes not only from the oxygen-burning of
food stored in our flesh. The energy comes also, if not more,
from the very essence of our being, the real us that we call “our
souls,” orchestrating in teamwork and harmony our psychic bo-
dies and their chakras and energy sources and energy channels,
our synergized totality of memories, our individual and collect-
ive will. The Human Holon is a very deeply profound whole.
The entire Part Two of this book – Synergies in Person
Dimensions – exalts the greatness of the human being. You
might want to go back to its chapters, enjoy all the reminders
and realizations, the appreciative appreciations old and new, add
to them, discover new ones, feel them all as realities within each
of us, within you.
You are gloriously great because God is gloriously great,
and the both of you is one.
2. Human Magnets
A human is a walking magnet, whose very being vibrates
energy in such a manner that influences other humans, and
whose thoughts, words, and deeds, especially if these three are
consistent, influences tremendously. Mutual influence creates
123
alignments in the consciousness and builds stronger and stronger
bonds among us all.
“Human magnetism” is like the Earth’s own magnetic
field that turns an entire mountainside into another strong
magnet if the magma could only stay molten long enough before
hardening. Humans therefore affect one another’s thinking not
purely, not even mainly, through intellectual discourse, but very
much by patterns of thinking and behavior that continuously
ripple out strong waves of influence.
Our synergism-oriented SanibLakas Foundation is gath-
ering the “magnetically-aligned” advocates of consciously
applying the principle of synergism in human interactions and
existence. If you agree with us that conscious application
synergism deserves to be such an advocacy to counter increasing
divisiveness and disempowerment in the world, you have
become a consciously resonating part of this growing magnet.
The alignment is all toward human unity with dynamism in
diversity, ready to share all prosperity, and unmistakably
embracing together an expanding (nay, exploding) we in the
powerful magnetic field of magnificent l o v e , as we ponder,
appreciate and perform, with open spiritual eyes, our role in the
beautiful synergy that is the entire cosmos.
Although human consciousness is generally clouded by
free will used in the service of the separative ego, the Human
Holon is a great part, no less than a beloved child, of the Great
Whole.
We are all strong magnets. And our Grander Synergies
that are discussed in Part Three of this book – in nature, in
society, in history, in our various communities – are all magnet
systems. They can be consciously developed into much stronger
magnets than they are today.
 And all these magnet systems together make up the Great
Cosmic Synergy, where both the Creator and the Created
lovingly fuse as One from the very beginning, now and ever
shall be.
3. Synergism: Path Back to Conscious Oneness
Once liberated from all illusion of separation, humans
have the innate capability for consciousness to exalt most fully
this Great, Loving and Creating Synergy of All Synergies, and
shine out as a part of that Glorious Whole.
But the process doesn’t resemble a picnic trek. Having
been made to forget Who We Really Are, we have to actually
suffer weakness, helplessness, even desperation, in the face of
the many woes and difficulties in earth life, feelings of
vulnerability and weakness that comes from our having forgotten
how strong we really are in our oneness. Synergism is the Path
back to Conscious Oneness.
Our experience of appreciation is a taste of resonation, of
oneness. Our experiences in actual synergies – in teamwork for
effective effort and in harmony for ecstatic beauty – offer us
glaring clues about our innate mode of existence, smilingly
shouting right before our ever-distracted eyes and ears:
“Go ahead! Enjoy every experience of synergy fully!
Prolong it! Linger in it! Do it often! Do it all the time! Get used
to it! That is what we all really is— a seamless oneness and
gloriously powerful reality of love, peace and joy!
Congratulations! You have experienced the re-membering!”
We may not get it this clearly very soon. But there can be
no harm in starting to enjoy it more and more deeply, and more
and more often.

124
Smile for the synergy of all our smiles,
Happy and proud
To be part of it all!
INDEX OF AUTHORS CITED:
Adams, Patch: faith and health, 122-123
Apilado, Digna Balanque: role of women in social history, 149
Baltazar, Conrado L.: “no-bad-loans” system for credit cooperatives,
180-181; inner discipline, 202-204
Bishop, Philip: simultaneously ongoing body process beyond our usual
aweareness, 51-53
Borg, Bjorn: turning defeats into victories, 74
Bouvrie, Jan Des: true intimacy at tables, 96
Buscaglia, Leo F.: we make our own lives, 12; resonance among religious
traditions, 101; human self-determination and connectiveness, 124-125
Butler, W.E.: auras described and explained, 59-61
Chang, Stephen: similarity of body to electrolytic battery, 52-53
Chebat, Maraya: attitude on diversity, 25
Cousens, Ken: observer’s effect on subject, 109
Covey, Sean: mechanical advantage of formation-flying, 29
Covey, Stephen R.: definition of synergy, 23; synergy of wood pieces, 30
Cruzada, Tony: vision for ‘tangkilikan’ (mutual patronage) economy,
181-183
De Melo, Anthony: self-observation, 91
De Saint-Exupéry, Antoine: heart, not eyes, seeing clearly, 79
Dornan, Jim: defeatism from conditioning, 75
Einstein, Albert: “Big Bang”, 148
Fernandez, Albina Pecson, history and ‘herstory’, 152
Fuller, F. Buckminster: description of synergy, 24; synergy in alloys,
effect on society, 31; children’s synergetic memory-banking, children
as rigorous scientists, 64, 79
Garcia, Mila R.: everyday synergies, many flowing into one, 25
Gonzales, Ernesto R.: description of synergism process, 24; three types of
resources, 171
Gonzalez, Ibarra: description of holography, 41
Gorgonio, Luis B: synergism as journey from self to others, 25
Hampden-Turner, Charles: source of synergy, 16
Hawkings, Stephen: no repulsive force from gravity, 33
Hornedo, Florentino: present-day (“now”) and desired (“not yet”) mind
sets (of Filipinos), 77-78
Jenson, Ron: life viz. living, interrelated responsibilities, 9-10
Keyes, Ken: “hundredth monkey”experiment, 218
Kiyosaki, Robert: opportunities in every problem, 73-74
Koestler, Arthur: coined “holon”, 34
Lichauco, Alejandro: basis for real rural reconstruction and
industrialization, 178-179
Martinez, Manuel F.: universal value of the womb, 142; exclusions from
history, 152
Maslow, Abraham: indivisibility of synergy, 24
McGill, Victor: Aristotleian, Hegelian dialectics, 66
Medina, Noemi Alindogan: feeling God talking with her, 88
Melchizedeck, Drunvalo: fusion-type nuclear reactors as power sources
of the universe, 33; consciousness/planetary grids, 216; “hundredth
monkey”and “hundredth human” experiments, 217-218
Mendoza, Faustino Jr.,: associative economics and ‘tangkilikan’ mutual
support among enterprises, 176-177
Muller, Julius Otto: synergy-oriented definition of cooperatives, 208
Nzamujo, Godfrey: synergism in quantum context, 39-41
Pagdanganan, Roberto: description of synergy, 24, 208; culture as factor
in cooperative identity, 209
125
Ramirez, Mina M.: definition of synergism, 24; Philippine higher
education ineffective, 77; immersion in experiences, “kulandong”
education, 78-79
Rand, Ayn: conceptual integrations as involuntary output of human mind
from childhood, 63, 120
Redfield, James: earth life as a great school, 107-108; remembering and
holding vision of collective birth intentions, 116
Reyes, Surf: on overdependence on thinking, 62-63; perception viz.
reality, 85-86, 102; ‘egology’ and removal of the blindfold, 95;
Robledo, Joydee C.: role of cooperatives in social education, 213;
(with E.A.C. Reyes): motherhood statement on Mother’s Day, 102-
103; women’s liberation benefits all, 139; two elements for applying
synergism to cooperativism, 209;
Roxas, Sixto K.: Wilber’s application of holons to human dynamics, 43-
45; real meaning of development, 172-175
Sheperd, Roy: physical synergism experiment, 28
Smith, Nancy: poem for gender harmony, 139-140
Solomon (King, from the Old Testament): synergy value of mutual
support, 11
Swimme, Brian: evolution and material memory, 114-115; humans as
self-relflection of universe, 117-118; latter generations/species as
accumulations of experiences and transformations of earlier ones,
187-188
Talisayon, Serafin: disconnections and mental models, self-observation,
90, 91; feminine principle, 144-146
Tan, Joaquin: reductionist view of human body, 56-57
Toffler, Alvin: “Second Wave” effect on families, 127; “Small-Within-
Big” is beauthiful, 176
Torres, Enrique D.: synergism as unifier of efforts, 24
Virkler, Henry: synergism viz. ‘non-summativity’, 39
Walsch, Neale Donald: no attachment to result of efforts, 2; awareness of
awareness, 92; purpose of earth life, 108; creation of individual
reality, thought-control, prayer, 123; love and freedom, 126
Walton, Bill: teamwork crucial in basketball, 26
Wilber, Ken: everything a holon, holarchies, 34; creation as emergence of
new holonsm 35; refinement of holarchies, 36; preconventional and
conventional moral schemes, 65; balance, instead of erasing, gender
differences, 140-141; bodyminds, Big Bloom, 148; how blame-
hurling insults women, 150-151
Zedra, Dan: mechanical advantage of formation-flying, 29

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