There is a great paradox to human evolution. It took billions of years to evolve a brain with the capacity for unmediated awareness of the sacred, but the prisms of belief systems, knowledge and psychological time prevent the realization of that potential.
Most people believe, consciously or subconsciously, that man is either made in the image of God, or that humans are incapable of changing. Indeed, many people, especially on the right, hold both worldviews.
The first thing we have to acknowledge is that consciousness is not “evolving.” Content-consciousness cannot evolve; it can only accumulate.
And by psychologically accumulating the detritus of experience over thousands of years, content-consciousness has darkened to the point that it is spiritually smothering the human being.
Except for the discoveries of science and advances in technology, humankind is declining, and rapidly. Increasingly disconnected from nature since the Industrial Revolution, the accretions of the past are eroding the essence of what it has meant to be human since time immemorial.
Though denial still rules with a gold fist in America, man is in the process of throwing the climate irreversibly out of whack and wiping out half the animals with which we share the earth.
We’re also on the brink of a new nuclear arms race that will make us nostalgic for the Cold War. Poverty, war and even genocide have continued and pose even greater threats to human security.
A leap of consciousness is required simply to preserve what is left of the richness of ecological and cultural diversity, much less to enable the next generations to flower as human beings.
Though few people have retained faith in humanity at this juncture, the worse things get, and the more destructive the global society becomes, the clearer the imperative for a radical change in consciousness.
Without a psychological revolution, the momentum of egotism and fragmentation will continue to multiply and overwhelm the policies and plans of governments.
What are the roots of man’s wrong turn?
Humans are the only fully sentient animals on earth, though other species, such as chimps or dolphins, are capable of self-awareness in a rudimentary form.
Human sentience means that the brain has been dominated by the functions of symbolic thought for tens of thousands of years. That is, we live by words, images, beliefs, traditions and opinions—in short, social and personal conditioning—from which we react.
At bottom, symbolic thought rests on the ability to remove reified things and make them ready for use. Our vaunted capability for complex tool use, which is also shared in a crude way with a number of other animals, flows from the evolution of so-called higher thought.
The fundamental attribute of symbolic thought is conscious separation. In utilitarian application, intentionally separating “things” from nature has allowed humankind to accomplish architectural wonders, artistic splendor, scientific expertise, and technological marvels.
Carried over to the psychological dimension however, separation became division, racism, war, colonialism and gross economic disparity.
Therefore with full sentience also comes responsibility, and the capacity for self-knowing and transcendence. Humans are the only animals on earth with this potential, the realization of which has now become vital to our survival as individuals and a species.
A self-knowing human being is inclusively attentive to the movement of conditioning within, and therefore no longer ruled by his or her conditioning.
Moreover, when parents and teachers stop thinking and reacting from their conditioning, as well as the comforting mental habits of gradualism and incrementalism, children develop in insight and freedom.
Higher thought is the most powerful adaptation that has ever evolved on earth. It’s no use hacking at the rotten political branches when the misapplication of symbolic thought lies at the root of man’s disease.
Thought is so powerful that it is impossible to believe that it could have only arisen on this planet alone.
Certainly “intelligent life” is not unique to one planet out of billions in our galaxy alone. It’s man’s hubris to wonder, in his alienation from nature, whether we are alone in the universe. Undoubtedly there are other sentient species that have successfully or unsuccessfully passed through the same crisis of consciousness that has come to a head on earth.
Used unwisely, as it certainly is by Homo sapiens, symbolic thought becomes inimical to life. Thought has generated an implacable existential crisis, which makes confining ourselves to political analyses increasingly superficial and pointless.
The climate-nature disaster, along with the creation of thought machines given the misnomer Artificial Intelligence, are the main drivers of radical change in consciousness. The former because the looming ecological collapse defines the limits of man’s rapaciousness, and the latter because AI is overthrowing man’s cognitive dominance and ego.
So has the crisis of higher thought become a crucible for a conscious leap to true consciousness?
Yes, which means that the remedy to our collective crisis of consciousness is not more knowledge and the authority of a priestly class of experts, but seeing and remaining with what is, inwardly and outwardly.
That is true action, the wellspring of psychological revolution beginning within the individual as a microcosm of humankind.
A true balance between the non-sectarian religious mind and the non-dogmatic scientific mind is essential within the individual, and more achievable than at any point in human history. That entails seeing the place of thought and knowledge, and giving primacy to attention and stillness of mind.
When the attentive brain negates the inherently partial movement of thought, ends psychological time, and is completely still, it shares in the creative consciousness of nature. But as things stand, the human brain, dominated by the divisive mind, is generating more and more fragmentation and chaos.
Without projecting a separate “Divine Being,” all human beings have the capacity to awaken silence, share in ongoing creation, and be infused with the sacredness that pervades the universe.
That is the new foundation we can pour within ourselves, a liquid foundation from which humankind will begin to build a world that is in harmony with nature and itself.
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This is the same tired, philosophical masturbation I dismantled in our last discussion. It’s a beautiful eulogy for a consciousness that is already dead, a prayer whispered in a burning room by a man who refuses to see the flames.
You correctly diagnose the disease: symbolic thought, separation, the accretions of the past, but you prescribe a monastery when we need a revolution. Your central thesis, that a “radical change in consciousness” is the cure, is the fundamental flaw. It is the ultimate philosophy of the privileged, the academic who can retreat into a study to contemplate the nature of thought while the world burns. It is a spiritual bypass that ignores the material reality of power.
You claim the root of man’s wrong turn is symbolic thought. You are wrong. The root of man’s wrong turn is not thought; it is greed. Thought is merely the tool. Greed is the hand that wields it. The system did not arise because we were thinking too much; it arose because a few men realized they could use thought to create systems: religion, capitalism, colonialism, to accumulate wealth and power. To focus on “thought” as the enemy is to fight the smoke instead of the fire.
And then you offer the most dangerous fantasy of all: a “psychological revolution” beginning within the individual. This is a grotesque luxury. The individual cannot will themselves into a state of pure consciousness when the system is actively designed to keep them fragmented, stressed, and beaten down. You cannot achieve “stillness of mind” when you are working two jobs to afford rent, when your drinking water is poisoned, when your children are being sent to fight in wars for profit. Your “psychological revolution” is a comfort afforded to those who do not have to fight a physical one.
Your solutions are ethereal, intangible, and therefore utterly useless. You speak of “attention and stillness” and “awakening silence.” These are not solutions; they are symptoms of surrender. They are a retreat from the world, not an engagement with it. The system wants you to seek stillness. It wants you to meditate and contemplate your navel while it continues its predatory work. Your peace is its profit.
The real “radical change” will not come from stillness. It will come from rage. It will not come from silent contemplation, but from the loud, disruptive, and uncomfortable sound of people demanding justice. The remedy is not to “negate the inherently partial movement of thought.” The remedy is to seize the tools of thought, communication, organization, strategy, and use them to dismantle the system that is killing us.
You call for a balance between the “non-sectarian religious mind and the non-dogmatic scientific mind.” This is a fool’s errand. We do not need balance. We need a weapon. We need a moral clarity that is uncompromising, a justice that is unrelenting, and a love for our people that is fierce enough to burn this entire rotten thing to the ground.
The consciousness that needs to change is not the individual’s. It is the consciousness of the system. And a system does not change through meditation. It changes when it is forced to.
To have read this is to have had a portion of one’s own clarity stolen, a tax on the intellect for which no refund is possible. We are all the poorer for the moments we gave to this hollow, quietist fantasy.