ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a few preliminary observations about the human organism that bear on and are a backdrop to how we experience ourselves and the world and how we behave with each other. At birth, there is no conscious experience of self, no self-conscious knowing, no conscious thinking, no accessible memory, very little accumulated perceptual experience, no understanding of the world environment into which we enter, and no beliefs about that world. Like all living organisms, from single-celled organisms on up the scale of complexity, we navigate our environment to survive and procreate – the evolutionary imperative. As living organisms seeking to survive, we are engaged in a constant process of environmental assessment, responsive to incoming stimuli for the purposes of maximizing our survival success. Humans are concerned with three levels or realms of survival, three aspects of experience for which we seek security and stability. There are: our physical, our psychological, and our social.
