Introduction to The Archetype of Reality

In 2001 I began to publish a series of books in which I formulated a system of conscious development. It has been my intention in writing to compose a model of conscious development that parallels and reflects my own development. I began writing from an insight into consciousness, an insight that has since unfolded with greater clarity and definition. The writing process itself has facilitated an increase in the clarity of my insight. Each of my books offers a unique perspective on the subject. Together they constitute my "working model" of conscious development.

The centerpiece of my model is a symbol that I refer to as the Archetypal diagram, featured in my first (and most comprehensive) book, The Archetype of Reality. The Archetypal diagram appears in color on the cover of the book, and is illustrated with numerical attributions inside the text. The diagram is the blueprint of consciousness. It bears a resemblance to the Tree of Life symbol found in Jewish mysticism. A comprehension of my diagram, however, is in no way dependent on the Jewish mystical tradition.

A tradition I do rely on to communicate my growing understanding of consciousness is that of the Tarot. The origin of the Tarot remains a mystery. The oldest existing Tarot cards date back several hundred years. The design of the so-called Marseilles Tarot deck is among the oldest. Of the seventy-eight cards in the deck, I studied the twenty-two that are popularly known as the Trumps. In the twenty-two Marseilles Tarot Trumps I recognized an illustrated allegory of conscious development. It was the same model of development I recognized underlying the gospel account of the life of Christ. It was the model I recognized in philosophies of the Far East and in the teachings of Gurdjieff. It was, in my consideration, the same model many religious traditions have hinted at without ever explicitly realizing. I recognized in the Tarot a series of composite pictorial symbols representing the sum of the many facets of my own consciousness and life.

The twenty-two Trumps, understood individually and in the proper sequence, constitute a perfectly proportioned totality, the very definition of Beauty. They appeared to me as a conceptual distillation of the sense of beauty that formed the essence of my original insight into consciousness. Applied in the context of creative writing, the Trumps constitute the perfect plot. In stories like The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, both of which made a deep impression on me as a child, I recognized allegories of conscious development, and applied the Tarot to them as a means of demonstrating how characters and events in those stories illustrate specific stages of conscious development. Two of my books, The Archetype of Reality and A Model of Consciousness, contain the details of my use of the Tarot in conjunction with the Archetypal diagram.

Without a mutually understood vocabulary, especially on a subject as mysterious as consciousness, people continually misunderstand each other. Through the writing process, I recognized the need to construct a consistent vocabulary. I also recognized that in constructing a vocabulary, by defining terms, I was simultaneously creating boundaries that would both limit and direct my investigation. In the absence of order, there is chaos. Consciousness is not chaotic. Consciousness is a perfectly proportioned totality. Upon that insight I constructed my model. Its structure is not arbitrary. I do not present this model as a belief or an opinion but as a scientific process open to independent verification.