Second Edition
Published by
The Pleneurethics Society
5900 South 12th
Tacoma, WA 98465
Copyright © 1972 by The Pleneurethics Society

 Reprinting sections of this book is forbidden
without prior written permission from
The Pleneurethics Society

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 65-81608
ISBN 1-882152-20-4 (Hardcover)
ISBN 1-882152-21-2 (Paperback)

First Edition Printed by South China Morning Post, Ltd.
HONG KONG

Second Edition Printed by
The Pleneurethics Society Press
5900 South 12th
Tacoma, WA 98465 USA

DEDICATED TO THOSE WHO SEEK TO DISCOVER THEIR INNER ETHICAL BEING
 

The purpose in issuing a second edition of the eight original volumes of Pleneurethics: A New Concept of Healing is to provide a complete record of the origin and evolution of Pleneurethics. As first published, the original volumes were basically notebooks. They were hurriedly written to capture the relentless flood of ideas which were in my head. Time did not permit me to give the attention needed to organization, structure, and grammar. I asked John Terrey to edit the series with an eye to organization, structure, and grammar. His efforts have improved the quality of the books without doing any violence to the original writing or ideas. I thank him sincerely for his tireless efforts.

“The most commendable of all competencies is that life which reflects ethical wisdom. In the life devoted to achieving ethical wisdom, all things of universal virtue are unselfishly fostered."
   ~Richard Bangs Collier

Learning more truth about ourselves and others eases our program of life and improves its quality.

Pleneurethics avoids those rigid grooves of popular thought that have developed haphazardly and superstitiously over the centuries.

Essential to all in Pleneurethics is the location of a more realistic center for thought and the creation of a better approach to problems of civilization by relocating them concentric with this new ideological center.

The improvement of civilization, by rational appraisal of basis for life, is the prime aim of Pleneurethics. The development of this vantage required reevaluation of basic philosophy as professed by philosophers and theologians as well as many sorts of healers of the past. It also required the development of a new philosophy, a new science, and a new technique of practice.  ~1972

The eighth book of Pleneurethics was written in 1971, for the most part, and printed in early 1972. It was a successful book for two reasons:(1) I was able to diagram two of the major principles of Pleneurethics and (2) I was able to create some succinct statements about Pleneurethics. It was a very short volume, hardly seventy pages, but exceedingly important in distilling some of the Pleneurethical concepts into terse language. I wrote the volume with full fire and enthusiasm.

I was pleased with the section titled “Rule of Ethics.”As any student of Pleneurethics already knows, Pleneurethics heals the spirit of people as well as their chronically broken bodies.

Pure ethics resides automatically in the righteous person. The moral character and ethical conduct of the good person manifests itself effortlessly as an innate quality. Such a righteous person does not have to decide to be ethical, he is already ethical and has been so since the beginning. Even if a person is not habitually ethical because of a superlative character; he can decide that life is easier and that he will get farther in his career even if he only fakes being ethical. The decision to be a faker and calculatingly ethical comes from cleverness, not from deep personal conviction.

In Volume VIII of Pleneurethics, under the sub-rubric “Strict Construction” one finds this sentence: “Greatest cleverness is the decision to abide by truth in ethics.” At the time I wrote this sentence, I realized it needed clarification, but I just did not have the time or energy to do it. It has been high in my mind all these years as something that needed to be revisited when allowed by my list of priorities for the creation of Pleneurethics.
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The deep inner ethical resolve to be derived from innate levels of ethical awareness does not rupture easily. It is kept fully functional with a minimum of neurological energy expenditure. However, the surface level of ethics spawned by facile craft and cleverness wears exceedingly thin on occasion, and often requires a substantial outlay of brain system energy to maintain it in its precarious place in the total matrix of character.

There are many similarities as well as many divergences between the ethical posture of the Oriental religions and the Christian religion. But, after close analysis and serious attempts at application during my early life, I found each philosophy left something to be desired. I grew up in the Bible Belt of America. For a time I was very devout; however, this all began to change when I discovered a book on comparative religions of the world in my mid-teens. I continued to study the religions and philosophies of the world, but the richest experiences came when I was living in the Orient.

While attached to the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, I spent a considerable amount of my spare time in bookstores throughout the city. My main interest was in buying books on human anatomy and Oriental philosophy and religion. I felt very fortunate to have been located in Bangkok for truly that city is at the crossroads of Oriental civilization. English is the official second language in Thailand; and that great well-head of mysticism—India—also spawned many books written or translated into English. When I say English, I mean British English, not American English. I have read so many books printed in various styles and forms of English in my many years of living abroad that it is difficult for me to know what the truest form of English really is. And now, as I approach 80, I do not worry very much. Indeed, I never did worry very much.

As a child, I read books from my grandfather’s library written in early and mid-nineteenth century. The English syntax and punctuation was much different during that period than it is now. The result of all of this is that I am nearly oblivious to transgression in punctuation or style and spelling.
 page xiii
Modern grammarians are very sensitive to such things and are apt to lay awake at night worrying about them. In contrast, I am worried very little, if at all, and am completely insensitive to them. I can say pretty much the same thing for spelling. There are wide variations to be found in the accepted way English words are spelled as a person travels around the world living in first one country, then another. There is such a thing as true and pure thought; but there is no such thing as true and pure language although linguists, wherever they may be and in whatever time period, would like us to believe there is. The technicalities of literature and spelling are often more pseudo than real.

During the hectic early period devoted to creating Plen­eur­e­thics, I was keenly aware of many things which were apparently of little concern to the stylists. I, too, would often lay awake at night, sometimes in a cold sweat with terror, analyzing anew my newly developed facts to ascertain if they remained valid and if they continued to support the new line of thought that I was postulating for the cure of chronic illness in all of its multitude of variations and manifestations. Yet, when morning finally arrived, I would be able to muster the courage necessary to continue writing and publishing in this new and completely uncharted intellectual region that I continued to discover and amplify with each passing day.

The genius of Pleneurethics is the willingness to direct tremendous amounts of time and energy in piercing the veil shrouding complex notions. In developing a way to express this essence clearly, simply, and directly with the courage and authority that is derived from deep personal conviction. In my estimation, writing that is ponderous, convoluted, and agonizingly complex or long-winded is not good writing or good thinking.

The three Exposition Press volumes that followed the eighth book represented an effort to reorganize the hastily written eight Hong Kong volumes and to get Pleneurethics into a more manageable set of books.There was quite a lot of new writing that went into the Exposition Press books in addition to the great abundance of material extracted from the Hong Kong volumes. Had the eighth book of Pleneurethics not been written, my thinking reflected in the
 page xiv
eighth book would probably have found its way into the Exposition Press editions at a later date.

The eighth and final book printed by the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong would not have been published had it not been for Iris Myers of Walla Walla, Washington. Iris, retired editor of the Woman’s page in the Walla Walla Union Bulletin, had agreed to condense the seven Hong Kong volumes of Pleneurethics into a more manageable, single volume. She was having some difficulty with her task. In order to facilitate her comprehension of the total field of Pleneurethics, I prepared two diagrams for her. These diagrams, shortly thereafter, were given titles by me and published in the eighth book. The eighth book, numbered Volume VII in the first edition and Volume VIII in the second edition, was brief. Its primary purpose was to provide copyright protection and hard covers for the two diagrams: “Gantry of the Absolute” and “System of Cerebellar Co-Axialities.”

The book was copyrighted, as was the case with all of my books, not because I thought it was a great work or that I was a fine writer, but because I wished to create a legally documented paper trail of the genesis of Pleneurethics. I knew from past experiences that whenever I applied my full weight to a project, solid progress was invariably derived.

I know how to push a program and force it to move forward. If too much time is spent on the details, the entire program may be lost. The object is to complete the program and breathe the force of life into it. There is always time to go back, to polish the details, and to add touches here and there. In my case, with the creation of the Pleneurethics program, it took eight years and eight books to lay out the introductory effort.

At the time that I contacted Iris Myers and arranged for a condensation of Pleneurethics, the eighth book had not been published. She looked at the seven volumes and gave me a price to cover the cost of her work. Knowing that I would be departing for Bangkok soon, and believing that she would start on Pleneurethics without delay, I immediately paid her the entire amount that she had requested. However, instead of commencing work on her abridgement of
 page xv
Pleneurethics, she and her husband started planning a trip around the world. The planning, the trip itself, and the long period of her husband’s illness immediately following the trip took time. Her husband died as a result of his illness. Then there was the funeral and the long period of bereavement. By the time Iris got around to performing her condensation of Pleneurethics, she was not really in the mood and all the money had been spent long ago. She had also assumed other obligations in the meantime, which were pressing her. The result was a very short synopsis. It was inadequate.

My purpose in creating the Pleneurethics was to do unselfishly the best I could for the world in which I found myself. Most people cannot understand or accept this because such motivation is foreign to them. They function only when they see or try to acquire “something in it for themselves.” The notion that here was a person who had expended a gigantic effort projected over many years without any thought of personal reward or gain was simply incomprehensible. Throughout my life and worldwide travels, no matter where I happened to find myself, one constant has prevailed. I always made abundant time available for extensive investigations and creative thought on fundamental affairs. In my thinking and writing, I have tried to introduce the cloistered halls of academia to the real world and to the heady breath of fresh air such exposure furnishes. This attempt has only been partially successful for a variety of reasons. However, to date, it has been far more successful in the public colleges and universities than in the private schools.

It is palpably evident that Pleneurethics is a new disciplinary entity and, as such, must actively pursue its own destiny as a separate and distinct agency. The enormous size and scope of Pleneurethics forestalls it from joining hands with any other teaching or profession, because they would be eclipsed in the process. These other agencies with their limited assets knows this to be true. The best that they can hope to do is to expropriate various parts of Pleneurethics and to employ every device at their command hoping to impede or curtail the forward progress of the Pleneurethics movement onto the national and international scene.

The basic thrust of this new teaching—Pleneurethics—is to provide each person with the knowledge and the will to accept responsibility
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for his own affairs. The eight Hong Kong volumes of Pleneurethics in their original first edition form propelled Pleneurethics toward true biblical proportions. Pleneurethics is a new beginning for humanity.

The statement that Pleneurethics is a new beginning for humanity inaugurates a new phase in the evolution of Pleneurethics, and clearly defines the focus of this universal teaching. The ramifications of Pleneurethics are virtually endless. A lifetime would be insufficient to explore them all. But it is far better to have commenced the journey than never to have attempted it at all. All those who wish to become Pleneurethicists are automatically so simply by claiming such status. However, to become licensed will require very extensive training.

Richard Bangs Collier
Founder and Director, Retired
The Pleneurethics Society, and
The Institute of Ethics and Science
November 1994