You copied this passage assuming it meant a group of people getting together. But I believe Prof Needleman was referring to the head, heart, and sense organs within ourselves. Our own wholenessBut to really know how life does thing, it is necessary to know why life does things. And this cannot be known without the joining together in ourselves of feeling, instinct, and thought. ..
…Here is the truly revolutionary aspect of this ancient vision: it is tell us that it is impossible for a human individual, for mankind, to have real knowledge without at the same time having virtue. When it is said—and it is said and seen by everyone now who has any eyes at all—that our knowledge has gone far beyond our morality, this is the same thing as to say that we need to rediscover how to join the attention of the heart to the powers of the mind and the perceptions of the senses.
He asserts that knowledge had gone beyond morality. Can we become capable of understanding if knowledge has surpassed objective conscience? Is humanity capable of understanding based on the union of the “attention of the heart to the powers of the mind and the perceptions of the senses” so we function as a conscious whole or As ONE?
As I understand it, we recognize life as the ability of a quality of being to grow, move, reproduce, and die. Than we call it a living being. It has the function of transforming substances through its life processes. Putting aside all the self importance that we define ourselves as but the bottom line is that our life consists of transforming substances through our life processes as when we eat, drink, breath, defecate, think and have sex. It is what we do.The question "why does life do things?" requires been broken down. "What do we mean by 'life'?" is the first question to have answered. Then we can focus upon the "why?".
Organic life on earth is a living machine that eats itself. It is nature’s way.
Life permeates the universe and we live in a conscious universe. Consciousness is relative. The quality of consciousness of a higher level of reality supports the lower in the process of evolution. As above, so below. The consciousness of the macrocosmos is greater than the microcosmos. This raises the question of the source of consciousness within the machine of creation or sometimes called “the body of God”What I mean by "life" is not that which is experienced, but that which is experiencing. In that, we look at the 'tree falls in a forest does it make any sound' idea. Would this magnificent universe exist if there was no consciousness whatsoever to observe it?
God called himself “I Am that I Am.” I accept the ineffable God beyond the confines of time and space. God as I is the ultimate conscious wholeness within which everything exists within it as potentials within levels of reality. AM refers to the ultimate diversity manifesting as creation. We can admit that as creatures of creation we cannot experience I or the vastness of AM. Perhaps the beginning of knowledge is to become able through conscious contemplation to look and wonder and admit like Socrates that “I know nothing.” Then we can become aware of conscious evolution and human conscious potential.So one could ask (1)"why then does it exist?" or one could ask (2)"So why then do I exist within it?" Which of the two questions is more relevant?
As far as things go, the universe has no reason for existing other than whatever reason one places upon it. It may be vast and beautiful taken from the perspective of the star-gazer, but we all know how dangerous and hostile it is when one is close up and personal.
Most of it is out of our reach as a species. All we can do is look and wonder.
Close to home of course, we can and do manipulate it for our own means,
What else can be expected since the fallen human condition has resulted in the loss of the ability to unite the attention of the heart, the powers of the mind, and the perceptions of the senses. The ultimate creation is a dead machine imitating the potential for conscious evolution of living beings. If humanity doesn’t feel the value of life in terms of human potential then the dead machine is superior.specifically our forms appear to be made in order for us to do so.
Then we create in our own image - and what do we create? Other machines which are not biological but are based upon biological forms.
Since the balanced foundation of the heart, mind, and sensory perceptions has been corrupted, the tower of babel must crumbleAnd why do we create these other forms? We want to one day touch and manipulate that which we only presently can marvel at distantly. We want to carry on existing within it for that purpose...so we develop ways in which this may become a reality 'one day'.
What is the end game of such a vision, should it become a reality?
Can man become a balanced whole again? I do believe it is possible for individuals but society as a whole is the Great Beast and must remain so to perform the function of serving the earth.Genesis 11
11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward,[a] they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel[c]—because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.