Consciousness and eight-term systems
Since we are on the subject of Bennett Systematics, it is worth noting that Bennett graduated from the enneagram (I suspect he thought it, unconsciously to be a crock) to the dodecad.
Actually, in Bennett’s formulation, the dodecad has an intriguing structure: three tetrads of structure, the material, vital, and cosmic, with the consideration that human ‘consciousness’ , not the sensitivity which was in the life realm, the vital, while his consciousness (what yogis call self-consciousness) was in the cosmic realm, the lowest of the cosmic energies.
If you follow Bennett’s system that nexus of explanation becomes quite gripping, and it is a question therefore of the rigor of his overall argument. Ay, there’s the rub.
Still, the idea that man’s consciousness (self-remembering consciousness, not waking consciousness) is the lowest rung of a cascade of cosmic energies would be a real breakthrough idea. But is it true? You can’t get anywhere in the end with his Systematics, and such questions have no answers.
Bennett’s take on evolution is important for this set of distinctions, because he claims that Darwinian evolution could not produce ‘consciousness’, the basic component of ‘mind’.
