This article follows directly from the one I wrote about going “Beyond Good and Evil” so you may want to read that one beforehand.
https://steemit.com/spirituality/@marma/my-spiritual-journey-6-beyond-good-and-evil
In this article, we will focus on some of the delicate questions that most so called “awakened”, spiritually enlightened or esoteric people don’t like to think about.
So let’s just jump right in: if ancient civilizations were so “spiritually enlightened”, why did they end up being massacred by the European barbaric man? They were connected to higher dimensions, conversing with their “ancients”, accessing and living in a much broader reality than the European man’s world of blood and steel. If a Universal Consciousness or a unique God exists, what a naughty trick to play on those that were reaching out most to it/him/her!
But the answer is fairly simple, yet controversial. Let’s run a thought experiment and simulate a parallel world, identical to our planet, but where instead of the European colonizers, it is the traditional, tribal cultures which managed to spread their spiritual knowledge to the entire planet. What would that world look like? A nice Utopian paradise where all enlightened humans would live in harmony and perfect balance with Nature, singing kumbaya around fire camps generation after generation until… they all suddenly died. The end.
How so? Well, either of two things:
An asteroid, comet or other massive space rock decided to pay them a visit, crashed on the Earth, setting in motion the same kind of phenomenon which wiped out the Dinosaurs.
The Earth entered a cycle of massive climate change (due to it’s internal cycles and also in relation to the sun’s cycles), as has happened multiple times in it’s history, wiping out most of the human civilization. (The last glaciation period happened just over 10.000 years ago!)
One must understand what the actual purpose of a Universal Consciousness, or a God which is all that ever was, is and will be. It’s purpose is to manifest itself in all it’s forms. We humans are a mere bridge to something much greater than us, just like photons are the bridge between waves and particles. In each step of this Universe, things mount in complexity, going from elementary particles to atoms, to molecules, to minerals, to plants, animals, humans and… then what? Suffice is to say that whatever transcends humans is not going to manifest thanks to the “spiritually enlightened” traditional cultures of tribal Indians or of praying Tibetan monks. (See my article about perfect symmetry and transcendence).
https://steemit.com/science/@marma/my-spiritual-journey-2-perfect-symmetry-and-transcendence
If we truly are one, then we must observe how this process of transcendence has worked in the past and draw some valuable lessons for our own transcendence process. An interesting lesson comes from examining the table of chemical elements. From those elements, one can make the deadliest poison or the healthiest beverage, using the exact same elements, simply rearranging them in a different way. So too, humanity, as a whole, is like a giant table of “elements”, or rather, a giant table of “cultures and ideas”. The whole problem is not which one is the best, but rather how to arrange them in such a way that it serves the interests of Humanity as a whole, and contributes to telling the Universe’s longest and eternal story, allowing to experiment, to the fullest, WHAT IT IS.
For instance, now that I have bashed the “spiritually enlightened” ancient cultures, one must recognize that they are indeed very much complimentary to European, materialistic, scientific culture. By associating both spiritual enlightenment with a genuine curiosity in unveiling the laws governing the “third dimension”, we will be able to achieve unprecedented progress, both in terms of technology (progress on the “outside”) and global peace (progress on the “inside”, finding inner peace).
Looking at history from the point of view of a God, one sees that indeed, the scenario is perfect. The “spiritually awakened” civilizations, lacking the motivation to seek meaning, advance technology, or explore the depths of the human psyche, needed a “kick in the butt” from Europeans. And Europeans (or Western civilizations today), as they are about to self-destroy Humanity with unbridled technological and material obsession (nuclear war, pollution, pesticides, civil unrest due to mass inequalities etc), needed a reminder of their spiritual nature.
One hilarious dichotomy which, again, is very much symbiotic, is that of Western science and religion. Scientists like Lawrence Krauss bash religion blaming it for wars and violence and wishing we could get rid of it. Ironically speaking, it is thanks to religions, through the mouths of a corrupt clergy depicting a God which was far from the loving and forgiving one that esoteric readings speak of in recent literature, that people turned to science! Had religion, from the get-go, presented God for what he/she/it really is, then science would have never been born! Science was the perfect escape from the crushing fear of Hell, and the tyranny of an unforgiving Church/God! Even more ironically, science got people much closer to God then they even knew! Think about it: men and women of science finally acted like the “mini-God” they were! “God made man in his image”, which means we ARE Gods. We have the same power: that to co-create/shape reality to our liking. And isn’t that what men and women of science have done? Instead of taking the “cue” of what to do, and what not to do from a book and a bunch of men in robes, they decided to make up their own rules according to their own criteria and methodology (for science), and according to their own liking (philosophy, politics, ethics…)
Men and women, embracing science, finally acted like the Gods they were. And it is only by coming to the same conclusions as the timeless truths of God’s true nature via their own, personal, creative selves, that humanity can reconcile science and religion. If we are truly created in God’s image, who does a God take “orders” from? Who does God ask for what is right or wrong? What is morality, ethics? What is the “truth”? What is the nature of reality? To a “higher God”? Hardly. God asks himself. And so only once we went through the process of rediscovering timeless truths like the fact that we are all one, that we are all part of God, via our own means, our own experiences, can we OWN our true nature: that of being a part of God, to be no less or more then God, to be an equal partner in co-creating reality alongside this Universal Consciousness, because it cannot grant such powers to anything less then itself!
So just like the table of elements gradually completing itself and finally reaching a stage where the association of all of them could allow the existence of Planets like ours, and the emergence of life, so too all of the ideas which humanity produced in it’s lifetime and up until this point will have to be examined, as an ensemble, to see how best they can be arranged.
This is probably the most important shortcoming of so called “New Age” movements. Many of the newly “spiritually awakened” people call for a “return” to ancient wisdoms, dumping the “decadent” western civilization, as if the past few millennia were a “big mistake” and we should all return to live in huts in the middle of the woods, dedicating ourselves to planting vegetables and meditating.
Yet if we take the premise that humanity is one global organism, this attitude is akin to a healthy hand deciding to “part” with your body because it has generalized cancer… Well, sure, your hand might avoid experiencing having cancer, but it won’t live for very long either on it’s own. We are all in this boat together, and there is no “dumping someone overboard” or “leaving the sinking ship”. If we are to survive, it is as a global organism, healing every parts of itself, as the cells in our bodies have always done for us, and thankfully so. You probably wouldn’t stay alive for very long if your “healthy” cells bailed out on you to try to live “on their own”.
What does this mean, in concrete terms? It means that we are not going to go back to living in huts, manually planting and harvesting vegetables with our bare hands, nor are we going to continue to pursue a mechanistic, pesticide ridden, toxic and inhumane mass agriculture. We will have to find the **balance **between the knowledge and technology from both sides. For instance, harness the power of automation, based on knowledge of permaculture and smaller scale farming, using human labour essentially for the power of positive intention that stems from the mind. For instance, agricultural robots would do the mechanical planting and harvesting, programmed on the basis of permaculture, and humans would use their power of positive intention to foster the healthy development of the plants.
The same applies to everything: finding the “magic recipe” with the “elements” or “ideas” we have.
In the next article, I will address a very important aspect which I only briefly mentioned above: the power of intention, the power of belief, and the danger of such a power which enable humans to create a subjective collective reality in a larger objective reality.