Hopefully your children will live in a future with even more freedom – a freedom that begins within each of us.

If I were to describe the most striking feature of the New Mind, it would be openness. Some call it unity. I would say it is the same thing, a lack of walls that usually divide us both from others and internally in our own mind.

The current mindset, which has dominated since the depth of the last Ice Age, is based on the “technology” of language. We believe this did not exist in its current form during the previous version of the human mind, back when all problems could be solved with a hand axe. Language is an amazing tool, but it also subtly encourages a particular way of thinking, which we may call analysis. It divides the world into things, and each thing has its name. We act and think as if this division is real, whereas it is only a tool for the mind. The head cannot live without the body, even though it has a word that describes it. Likewise a human cannot prevail in the long run without others, and without the entire ecosystem that supports us. But this is easily forgotten when we live in a mental world defined by analytical thinking, a world where each thing has its name and its labels.

In contrast to being locked up in one’s own name, the New Mind sets you free in an open field. At first it is just a crack in the egg where you are the chicken. You begin to realize that other people may be as real as you are. But this does not usually last. They do something stupid and you slam the door shut to protect yourself. This makes perfect sense. But the truth is that they really are real too. The world extends beyond us. I think most of us have had moments where we glimpse that.

There is so much more. Time and eternity. But first things first. Inside ourselves, we also set up barriers and walls. We divide life into different rooms, and may even act and feel and think differently depending on which “room” we are in. We can be a completely different person at work, in church, at home, even in the living room and the bedroom.

It seems reasonable, if we want to become one with the universe and beyond, that we first become one as a person. This does not necessarily mean that we should act the same in all situations. It is possible to do this on a primitive level, like when people plead with their boss like they would with a parent, or with a public servant. This just causes pain for all involved. Likewise when a customer of the opposite sex (or worse) tries to flirt with an employee. These kinds of “unity of self” are not what I talk about, for they come simply from lack of self-awareness.

We must go in the opposite direction, observing the mind relentlessly and objectively until we see the many different parts or aspects for what they are. There is a lot to say about that, but “what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!” Constant awareness of the mind and of the Watcher that watches the mind will definitely begin to pull things together, if we can endure. That’s a big if, admittedly. There are so many times we want to shout: “That’s not me! I am not like that!” Which is true, in a sense, because there is a part of us that is pure and innocent of these things that go through our brain and sometimes our body as well. But we have to take responsibility or we will remain hopelessly fragmented till the end.

If we fail to learn from our mistakes, there will over and over be new opportunities to repeat the same lessons. Until in the end we whisper: “It was me all along. I really am like that.” And the truth will set us free, given half a chance.

The walls within us, then, are usually meant to be the first to fall. But it does not end there. The walls between us and others also begin to break down. You know the saying about loving your neighbor as yourself? That’s because your neighbor is yourself.

Even in the current version of the Human Operating System, no man is an island. We are distributed, parts of us being stored in the brains of other bodies with other names: Parents, siblings, friends, lovers, spouses, children, grandchildren. As we pass through this life, larger and smaller fragments of us reside in the minds of others. The representation of us that resides in any one other individual is usually not balanced. The other person may see only a few of our sides, and these may even include some that we don’t see. (And some that don’t really exist, although this is probably less common than we think.) Taken together, there is quite a bit of processing taking place in other brains on our behalf, and in our brain there is a lot of processing taking place on behalf of others.

In the current Human Operating System, this distributed processing is haphazard. That is not so in the next version, which comes network-ready with a rich range of features. It is a common feature of the Great Teachers that they know what others are thinking, when this is needed. It is not like they go around peeping at people’s thoughts at will, but when the need arises, they are able to glean the content of other people’s minds far more easily than others. Often they show more insight into your mind than you have yourself.

Conversely, the “image” in your psyche of a Great Teacher may be conscious to some degree even in the absence of the physical person, and may even be more conscious than you are. You may find yourself sharing your mental space with a being that physically is no longer in the world (or, at least possibly, one that is not yet in the world) but is still more real to you than people you walk among day by day. This also is an example of the phrase: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” The teacher will appear “in your head”, first perhaps as a mere resonance, but as you download more of him, your invisible friend will be able to help you out in countless ways.

When a person has upgraded to Human Operating System version 3, the attachment to a particular body becomes rather weak. Sure, you are still responsible for that particular body, but you also have many other responsibilities, which may be spread across thousands of bodies and across thousands of years. With the appearance of Version 2, man became a soul or psyche. With the appearance of Version 3, the new man becomes something more, able to give mental abundance to many, outside of his “own” body and his “own” time.

Or that’s what the voices in my head tell me. Do I look like that kind of super-person to you?