Physicists and astronomers hubristically seek a “theory of everything.” But here’s a truth few scientists will admit: Our knowledge of the universe can never be complete and will never make humanity whole.
The very fact that there’s no limit to the discoveries that scientists can make proves that knowledge is inherently incomplete. So if no amount of knowledge will make humanity whole, what will? What will change the disastrous course of humankind?
Clearly, a revolution in consciousness is required. For over 30 years I’ve worked to ignite it. There have certainly been far more illumined human beings than I, but I happen to be alive at the right time. Perhaps.
After all, when conditions are right and human consciousness is ready, it will only take one match to ignite the psychological revolution that changes the course of humankind. Therefore I don’t ask can I do it? I ask: At long last, can it happen now?
It’s clear that the psychological revolution that changes the disastrous course of humankind couldn’t have happened 20 or even 10 years ago, for the same basic reason it couldn’t have happened 300 or 3000 years ago. Enough human beings, and human consciousness generally, simply weren’t ready.
Then why do I feel that this is the time? Is it simply because “I’ve been searching for a heart of gold…and I’m getting old?” I don’t think that’s the main reason, but awareness of one’s mortality does give greater focus and urgency to one’s lifework.
In the mediocre remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” the Keanu Reeves character, Klaatu, starts out as a misanthrope and ends up as a philanthrope. It’s not a great film, but the movie has its moments, and perhaps it’s central truth: “At the precipice, we change.” Do we?
Clearly, potentially intelligent species like the misnomer Homo sapiens have a finite number of chances to change course. I feel there is a cosmic law in the development of consciousness, and propose conscious transmutation applies to creatures like man wherever they evolve in the universe.
But given that consciousness as we know it is tens of thousands of years old, why, at the height of the Scientific Revolution, does humankind need to change course?
Simply put, because symbol-based consciousness, which, except for so-called mystical experiencing, is all we know, separates and divides, recombines and controls. Separation and recombination are functional; division and control lead to darkness and evil.
The ability to consciously separate and recombine ‘things’ from the seamless whole of nature is a tremendous evolutionary adaptation. It’s the fundamental principle that’s built every culture that’s ever existed.
However because separation was carried over the psychological realm and put first (the original and ongoing sin), it’s also the source of division, conflict, selfishness, gross disparity in wealth, and the fragmentation of the earth to the breaking point.
So the evolution of conscious, symbolic thought confers the ability to amass knowledge and manipulate ‘things’ in the environment. And the basic fragmenting nature of thought-based consciousness was held in check as long as human numbers were small and we were still embedded in nature.
Our long indigenous pre-history, which stretches back for tens of thousands of years, is over. With the Agricultural, Industrial, Scientific and Digital Revolutions, ‘higher thought,’ unmoored and unchecked by self-knowing and insight, has been generating increasing fragmentation and disorder.
To make the transition from symbol-based consciousness, which separates and fragments, to insight-based consciousness, which sees and acts in terms of the whole, requires a conscious transmutation. That can only occur when the individual is doing his and her own spadework of self-knowing, and awakening insight within.
Obviously, transmutation cannot be brought about through any technological means. Nor will there be,
Stephen Hawking notwithstanding, an escape from decimating the home planet by colonizing and repeating the basic pattern on others.
A revolution in consciousness is essential, which can only happen when enough individuals ignite insight within. Human consciousness is not separate from us, but is enfolded within each of us in microcosm. Therefore when we leave the stream of thought-based consciousness, even temporarily, we affect the entirety of human consciousness.
The number of awakening human beings required to ignite a revolution in consciousness is unknowable. There is much to be said for faith beyond belief systems.
Intelligence in a scientific and technological species is redefined as living in harmony with the planet on which we evolved, and with the universe as a whole.
It’s now both urgently necessary and imminently possible for human beings to make the leap from symbol and memory-based consciousness to attention and insight-based consciousness.
Martin LeFevre
Lefevremartin77 at gmail.com
