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The creation of Pleneurethics was in response to the desire by Richard Collier to have a
special field of interest and of personal choosing which would be
substantial and worthwhile but also invoking a problem that would assist
humanity when solved. Truth was important, but even more important, it
needed to be applied. Illness, especially chronic illness, and ethics were
the keys.
Collier became sensitized to the
problems relating to chronic illness and subsequently to ethics. He felt a
need to find answers where others had searched in vain. He had to find
answers. It was as simple as that.
Time is an unknown in the search for
answers to living problems. At the outset Collier did not know whether his
search would take a year, ten years, or forever. The search was driven by
an expressed wish to create solutions that were better, more rational, and
more understandable for people.
His first discovery was that there
were no solutions to his search. None existed. He would have to create
one. What he created he called Pleneurethics. Pleneurethics, even at its
beginning, represented decades of intense investigation before he could
declare that existing philosophies were inadequate. He had to discover a
more meaningful philosophy where none existed. In many ways the creation
of Pleneurethics was similar to other creations—musical composition,
bridge construction, soil enrichment. The process is familiar.
Pleneurethics evolved in part from
the acquisition and development of an immense foundation of impartial
scientific knowledge. This knowledge was developed partly by others in
publications like Gray’s Anatomy and partly by Collier’s personal
observations.
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Pleneurethics
also evolved in part from a wish to locate the realm of pure science, to
live therein, and to expand its frontiers. This region of pure science is
not easily identified.
To find the true realm, one must
sample enough of the other to know its character. But once having sampled,
one must move on because delay retards progress and leads to ensnarement
and to capture by the fraudulent. Infinite patience and close attention to
identifying truth in both broad principle and narrow detail are required
if one quests for the land of pure science. Perhaps the key ingredient to
the creation of Pleneurethics was the refusal to coalesce the mind about
any particular theory, idea, philosophy, or movement. For decades an open,
flexible mind was preserved while adding to its content and structure. It
must be observed that in the keeping of an open mind, one suffers the
torment of having nothing really solid to build one’s inner life upon
other than the search itself. Not many people are able to withstand the
strain of living a life with no set philosophical policy except to
continue to seek out one’s own philosophical destiny.
It is difficult to present a clear
and cogent step-by-step outline of the method by which Pleneurethics was
originated. Actually, Pleneurethics as it now stands was an evolution of
thought with several breakthroughs in thinking along the way. It picked up
momentum with each breakthrough. In the beginning Collier depended on the
writings and thoughts of others for stimulation. He relied less and less
on the thoughts of others until his exclusiveness guided his own thoughts.
However, even in the beginning, he
did not agree with everything he read. Much of what he read and heard did
not agree with his own observations of things. Error is an excellent
teacher.
The writing of Pleneurethics was
laborious because Collier knew that the system, when finished, would be
expansive. Rather than starting at the top of it, he chose the more
tedious route of outlining the bottom of basic knowledge and presumptive
postulates unique to Pleneurethics. Thus, the early Pleneurethical writing
was a lackluster swing through the common knowledges, such as anatomy and
physiology. He took a Pleneurethical vantagepoint to all his reading.
Next, he divided the psyche in a way that seemed rational to him, and that
also provided the foundation essential to his primary objective—to shape a
new, universal philosophy.
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Collier began
by creating an entity of his own which was faithful to his own mind. As a
consequence, Pleneurethics then emerged from a desire to fill a
philosophical void by creating an axial belief well-centered at the hub of
total knowledge with radial spokes, easily available or developable,
leading directly to an ever-expanding rim of knowledge with universal
application. He was determined from the beginning to avoid the creation of
just another partial philosophy.
He found in his vast reading that
each existing philosophy contained an ingredient of truth, but the major
remainder put it in an eccentric location. Hence, each philosophy
contained much which was alien and unacceptable. Early in his life Collier
came to recognize that there were such things as living stages or periods
of development. If a person failed to make full use of his faculties in
any one stage, the succeeding stages will be retarded, curtailed, or lost
to the person. Therefore, Pleneurethics is based upon events, experiences,
and studies of all phases of life.
Pleneurethics emerged from a strong
desire to shape a practical philosophy which would be faithful to pure
science and would, at the same time, be sensitive to the need for
recognition of the highest ethical consciousness; but without the
unsettling excesses characteristic of vague mysticism. Thus, in a way,
Pleneurethics is more than a new science; it is a new philosophy of life.
On a higher level, Pleneurethics
sprang from the same basic source of creative consciousness that inspires
masterful works of music, which reach over centuries to appeal to
sensitive listeners. On a poetic level, Pleneurethics seeks to become a
melody of consciousness captured through words.
Ultimately, the creation of
Pleneurethics was intellectual. The question was: How to express his new
thoughts clearly, simply? Worth was in the application, not the statement.
Worth in Pleneurethics is to be appraised on the scale of practical
application and ethics and morality.
One of the keynotes of Pleneurethical
writing was to possess the courage to state ideas clearly through
unmistakable simplicity. Collier, as he worked his way through his
philosophy, left no devious loopholes to provide escape at a later date.
Pleneurethics finally emerged when a
breakthrough in thought suddenly occurred. Collier realized that the
neural system, with the brain capability, was the prime axial system for
interrelating the many and
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varied aspects of human life. No one before Pleneurethics
had satisfactorily accounted for the multitude of seemingly paradoxical or
inexplicable occurrences in human life.
The full scope of Pleneurethics did
not come to Collier’s mind in a smooth, steady flow of neatly integrated
ideas and concepts. It came one fragment at a time, one breakthrough at a
time. All the solitary pieces needed to be organized through extensive
rearrangement. It was an outgrowth of a new philosophical principle from
the development of inner buoyancy through extensive and intensive mental
preparation.
Collier saw the needs of
people—especially those suffering chronic illness—and he felt that there
should be something better for them. The pathetic reality was that
chronically ill people had been written off by modern medicine.
Pleneurethics evolved to become a new
system of thought compatible in all its various extents, solving problems
of life in order to yield a better life. The axial notion of Pleneurethics
is the belief that total brain capability is a legitimate standard of
evaluation overlooked for centuries by philosophers and scientific
researchers. Collier concluded that people are not made chronically ill by
germs, by pinched peripheral nerves, by repressed wishes, or by a
malevolent deity. Rather, they were made chronically ill by processes that
chronically reduce, distort, or destroy the brain’s capability, fidelity,
and structure.
In the final analysis,
Pleneurethics evolved because Richard Collier believed there was a need
for a new philosophy and science—a new discipline based on a new
principle—because all the others were limited, unworkable, ineffective,
and incapable of explaining things as they really exist. He knew that
things as they were, were not adequate. He wanted to know the truth. He
wanted to put the truth to work for the betterment of humanity.
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