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Preface: Human development is model-dependent. Of near-unlimited possibility, only those capacities that are modeled in the environment will open and develop. No model, no capacity; summarizing Joseph Chilton Pearce on the ‘Model Imperative.’ Joe often shared that a lack of modeling can cause a complete capacity to disappear in one generation, with the new generation not missing or even being aware of what has been lost. This sets the stage for what we describe below as ‘The Missing Mind’ and the way symbolic-metaphoric language, science, and technology empower and blind.

The overwhelming power of the neocortex to create mental images shapes human consciousness. Language is a defining force. The form, structure, and pervasive use of language pre-defines and organizes what we perceive, including how we perceive ourselves, and this, of course, implies how we relate to everything.

Physicist David Bohm described how matter dissolves seamlessly into energy. There are no sharp edges that define a ‘thing’ from something else. Edges that define are more a statement of the observer’s point of view than the ultimate nature of what is being observed. The structure of the human eye, for example, persistence of vision and other qualities, ‘represent’ the swirling movement of energies, two-parts hydrogen plus one part oxygen, as a stream. There is no stream as an independent ‘thing.’ What we experience as an independent thing, a stream, is a representation, an appearance. The movement of various energies ‘appears’ to be independent and solid. That ‘thingness’ disappears at finer resolutions.