The Curriculum of Consciousness: The Disciplines from the Greeks to Post-Modernity

Abstract

"The Curriculum of Consciousness" can be seen as one way of demonstrating how the progression of consciousness creates history, how humankind 'comes to' or awakes to its own nature. It is the story of how consciousness determines history and, coordinately, how history determines consciousness. The focus of this historical-philosophical study is how the 'disciplines'- the arts, sciences and cultural pursuits in the widest sense (ranging from religion to commerce, technology, medicine and politics) -have been configured according to distinct priorities in the different eras of Western Civilization under the aegis of certain particular enterprises, i.e. philosophy among the Greeks, theology in the Middle Ages, science and technology in the Modern World and the philosophies and yogas of consciousness and awareness in the late Twentieth Century. The dominant perception of an era creates that era and its 'world', including its dominant discipline or chief conduit to success and worthwhiledness. The disciplines of knowledge are traced through three major historical modes of inquiry, or 'organons', that have directed research and have provided rationales and frameworks for methodology and practice in the West. These three Canons of Inquiry are shown in the matrix of their worldviews. Special attention is given to the roots, pioneers and significance of the Third Organon, the 'perennial philosophy'.