Essay: Growth in Consciousness

WHAT’S GOING ON? WHAT ARE WE INVOLVED IN?

What is Consciousness? Conscire in Latin means to know with at the highest level. It is a gift, an ability, a potentiality that we are born with. It is not an activity that we can do alone. We need an other.

So who is this other? Over the centuries many names have been suggested: e.g. Atman, Allah, Bodhisattva, Deity, God, Higher Power, Natural Selection, Omega Point, The Self, Superior Being, Tao, Tungashila, Yahweh...

How, then, does this Other communicate? Through an inner voice, call, prompting, challenge. By means of inner and outer experiences that touch, move or seize an individual. In dreams, visions, synchronicities, mandalas, the wisdom of the stars, the arts and sciences, accidents and injuries.

When did consciousness begin? 13.7 billion years ago. Everything that exists was enfolded in the creation event or what is now called The Big Bang. The Transcendent or The-Beyond-Understanding became Immanent or present by taking on matter. The Transcendent-also-now-Immanent is still, however, beyond our understanding.
 
Who has this gift of consciousness? All of creation. Paul of Tarsus expressed this as well as anyone has. “From the beginning until now the entire creation has been groaning to be set free” i.e. conscious. Early forms of life expressed this gift instinctively and spontaneously. When homo sapiens evolved into self awareness about 200,000 years ago choice of life-style became an option. Archeological evidence indicates that in many places on the planet groups developed creative traditions and rituals to show their respect, reverence and worship of creation. One of the richest and most meaningful expressions of this creation spirituality evolved here in North America centuries before the invention of religions.6,000 years ago.

About 10,000 years ago as the human population began to expand, new values and ways of living began to emerge in Eurasia – agriculture, animal husbandry and patriarchy. The prevalence of creation spirituality gave way to the values and life styles that flowed from cultural evolution that emphasized human power, possessions and prestige. This led to the establishment of social institutions such as governance, economics, religion, education and family. These structures of norms, values beliefs and symbols were rigidly organized and controlled by males and they have prevailed to the present day.

Are there limits or controls to consciousness? There are agencies and organizations within social institutions that weakly and self-servingly attempt to maintain a law or rule of limitations, e.g. for atomic weapons, abortion, stem cell research. At times the Universe itself intervenes in the evolutionary process with catastrophes, cataclysms and extinctions. Geologists offer evidence that one of these major events has occurred about every 100 million years which means that approximately 470 cataclysmic events have taken place during the Earth’s existence. Most people have heard of the Ice Ages that have transformed the face of the Earth. Other less known events were the Permian/Triassic Extinction that took place 250 million years ago that killed off 50 million marine species and 70% of vertebrate land species. Closer to home, 67 million years ago a 100 mile wide meteorite crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula off the Gulf of Mexico, eliminated all of the dinosaurs and just about every other species on the planet. Only a few tiny and round species survived.

The point to be taken here is that the mind and the ways of the Creator – Higher Power, Natural Selection – are far different from ours. We might think and act like we are in charge of and central to the Universe, but the evolution of the Universe clearly demonstrates through catastrophes/extinctions that we are not that important nor central to the Universe. We – humans – can be and have been dispensed with. What is to be feared today is not terrorism, nor war, nor another dominating religion but the retaliatory power of the abused Earth. As a matter of fact we are now right in the middle of one of those 100 million year events. And guess what? We ourselves through our despoliation of the Earth are the cause of what is happening.

What then is the purpose of consciousness? Two of the brightest scholars of the past century have responded to that question in a positive way.
 
“There is a higher consciousness named the Omega Point, which is the Deity alluring all things – including rocks, plants and animals – to a oneness or universal synthesis with Itself. Matter is the crimson glow of the divine radiating from the depths. Matter is calling me, to me in my turn, as to all the sons and daughters of humankind. Matter is speaking and every generation hears it speak. It is begging us to surrender ourselves unreservedly to it and to worship it.’ - Pierre Teilhard

“In Africa the cosmic meaning of consciousness became overwhelmingly clear to me. I, as a human being, in an invisible act of creation put the stamp of perfection on the world by giving it objective existence. We are indispensable for the completion of the world, and our totally necessary place in the great process of being is to be the second creators of the world. The history of the world seems to be the progressive incarnation of the Deity” Carl G. Jung

So what do we do now? Osho tells us that first we have to wake up and become aware of who we are. Secondly we have to understand why we are here and respond by being playful and celebratory witnesses of that understanding. Thomas Berry offers a broad and serious program for the Now.
 
“Neither humans as a species nor any of our activities can be understood in any significant manner except in our role in the functioning of the earth and of the universe itself. We come into existence, have our present meaning, and attain our destiny within this numinous context, because the universe in its every phase is numinous in its depth, is revelatory in its functioning, and in its human expression finds its fulfillment in celebratory self awareness.

We need to establish a mutually enhancing human-earth presence to each other. The great value of this approach is that we have in the earth an extra-human referent for all human affairs, a controlling referent that is a universal concern for every human activity. Whether in Asia or America or the South Sea Islands, the earth is the larger context of survival.
 
All human professions, institutions, and activities must be integral with the earth as the primary self-nourishing, self-governing and self-fulfilling community. To integrate our human activities within this context is our way into the NOW.”