The Built-In Solution" is a project which now spans nearly six decades. It has produced my recommendation for how we can achieve the higher level of consciousness and cooperation essential for solving the many serious problems we have generated for ourselves, problems which now threaten our continuation as a viable species. This is a brief summary.
I first became aware that we were heading towards this crisis in the mid-1950s when I was in high school. At the same time I became convinced that overall we were going to try to deny the upcoming problems as long as possible. Hopefully, when reality started breaking down that denial there would be a window of opportunity for change. I decided that I would try to have something useful to say or helpful to offer when and if that time came. My initial internal decision that started this project was no more specific than that.
In late 1974 I was recovering from some construction injuries. I spent my available time just thinking seriously and extensively about what I had learned about our growing problems, and about what might be helpful towards speeding their resolution.
After five months, I had concluded the best possible solution would be a major increase in self-knowledge and self-understanding. We needed a gathering across humanity of all this kind of information. We needed somehow to distill it down to the essentials and make it easily available in a new school.
By my thinking, this school would need to meet five requirements: 1) It would need to be complete if that were possible. 2) It would need to be as fast as possible in its teachings as our problems were growing rapidly. 3) It would need to be an Open School, as any kind of cult would be unworkable in a free society. 4) It would need to be practical in the sense that it could be added into anyone's ongoing situation. 5) It could not be any kind of religion; its knowledge would need to be presented across reason and demonstrable experience; in that way it would be open to anyone of any religion or of no religion.
A school embracing a full understanding of the totality of the human psyche! A school meeting those five requirements: Complete, Fast, Open, Practical, and Not a Religion! That seemed then, and seems to me today the optimal solution. If such a school could not enable the enormous increase we must have in our ability to work quickly and effectively together in the common interest, I couldn't see how anything else could.
But was such a school possible? In early 1975, I returned to NYC and started seriously investigating what knowledge, tools, and organizations were already available. I was tough in my questioning, and found nothing that could meet more than one or two of the requirements I was proposing.
But was such a school possible? In early 1975, I returned to NYC and started seriously investigating what knowledge, tools, and organizations were already available. I was tough in my questioning, and found nothing that could meet more than one or two of the requirements I was proposing.
But in the summer of 1977, I encountered some materials from what I must for now call just "The School." For the first time, I saw a possibility that our historic need could actually be met. After three years of taking courses, all of which produced in me the results that were described in advance; and after much careful checking, testing, and re-testing, I reached a conclusion. I had actually found a school I was satisfied met the requirements I had defined as essential.
I thought I was now ready to present my findings. But I wasn't. Privately testing and validating were one thing. Public presentation, especially under the internal pressures I experienced every time I would try, was something else entirely. I realized I would need to do a lot of work on myself. Without ever entirely dropping my careful scrutiny, my focus with the school's trainings shifted to my own clarification and strengthening.
And now, I am feeling strongly that it is time for me to present my findings to as wide an audience as possible..
