The New Consciousness, Megha’s Vision

In the back of my mind I remembered that in his book “The Origin and Goal of History,” Karl Jaspers had written something relevant to our times. I thought he had spoken of civilization being at a second crossroads in history, but in fact he only hints at that possibility. After all, it is more than 40 years ago that I first read the book.

There are gems in this book. In Jaspers’ mind, human history begins when man becomes conscious of himself in a historical context, and the critical time of the Axial Age is the “spiritual process that occurred between 800 and 200 BC” when “man, as we know him today, came into being.”

He speaks of a possible goal of history as:

(1) “the civilisation and humanisation of man” a “legal world order”

(2) “liberty and the consciousness of liberty which is revealed only in process”

(3) “the noble man and the creation of the spirit, the production of culture in communal conditions, it is taken to be genius”

(4) “the manifestation of Being in man, the perception of being in its depths, that is, the manifestation of the Godhead”

Of course, when Jaspers uses the word “Being” he has a philosophical implication, but that is another story, and when he uses the word “Godhead” that would not mean in his mind what it means to Christians in general, but what it might mean to all spiritually inclined people. Indeed, his use of the words “spirit” and “spiritual” reflects his philosophical orientation and not how “religious” people might use the terms.
Further, he warns that “we find no historically localised revelation of absolute truth” and one might want to know that in defining Truth Jaspers has written a massive text on the subject.

Here is a beautiful passage:

“If in the future, however, faith is going to exist, communicate itself, and link men together, one thing is certain: We can do nothing to plan the future realities of faith. We can only be ready to receive it, and live in such a manner that this readiness increases. We cannot make our own transformation the goal of our wills; it must, rather, be bestowed upon us, if we live in such a fashion that we can experience the gift. With this, it seems proper to keep silent about the faith of the future.”

Karl Jaspers and his Jewish wife lived in Germany during the 2nd World War and commanded such respect that he could live (in isolation) and avoid extermination; however, when the American soldiers arrived in the area where they were living, they were just ahead of Hitler’s order for a last roundup of those Jews who had so far escaped the death camps. He had spent those years writing volumes, including “Die Shuldfrage” translated as “The Question of German Guilt” which perhaps Americans today might find value in.

A basic question for Jaspers is whether in the future there will be a totalitarian world government or a democratically oriented form of world government. I find his brilliant thoughts relevant to the 21st century.

Megha

In the Great Turning, the spiritual leadership will be all those who have experiential, existential understanding of the great truths that ancient mystics and the most modern of physicists have revealed, the truths of the nondifferentiated one consciousness, the Self, the consciousness and Love that are our ground of existence, the pervasive nonlocality of this consciousness, an elevated spirituality that is beyond the meaninglessness of modern materialism and the rigid beliefs of partially awakened religious peoples.

Our future is in the hands of those who understand the perfection of existence as it manifests eternally and in the present, the perfection beyond meaning and meaninglessness, beyond hope and despair, beyond happiness and discontent.

No one leader will emerge. Those who understand the deeper secrets of “The Secret” will be there along with some of those among the fundamentalists who believe in the Rapture. There will be some among the “New Age” people as well as traditional religious peoples. Some scientists who probably don’t “believe in God” will be there.
This is a deep collective leadership. The Great Turning does not require that everyone, all the billions of humans, achieve this level of vision and understanding, but many ordinary people without words and outward actions will be part of this collective leadership.

Doesn’t that title say it all?

A sustainable economy would not be like a Ponzi scheme, but the holy dogma of growth at all costs is.  When growth stops we have a recession or depression; we are unable to stop expanding and take care of everyone’s needs.

The way a Ponzi scheme works is that early investors are paid off by money coming in from new investors.  When new investors stop coming in in large enough numbers, the whole arrangement collapses.

So the way our growth economy works is by convincing people of all the new and latest products they suddenly need to buy - and work hard for. Companies that don’t expand are shunned by investors. Of course only a few can become rich in the process while the majority of people become more and more like slaves or indentured servants needing to work ever harder to enjoy all the things they have become convinced they need.

Now our growth economy is showing signs of collapsing.  More and more jobs are going overseas.  Huge amounts of energy are squandered shipping products back into the United States.  We are having difficulty competing with economies with better “growth” opportunites.

Like any Ponzi scheme we are reaching this point of collapse.  Will it be fast or long drawn out?  Will ordinary citizens even wonder if there are other ways we could be living?

Can a sustainable economy evolve out of the chaos and can economic power be shifted out of the hands of the super rich and multinational corporation structures that rule our lives?

In 1969 I was sudying with Fritz Perls, the great gestalt therapist, at Lake Cowichan on Vancouver Island.

I had not had any great “consciousness” experiences at that time in my life, and I was duly impressed with Fritz’s conviction that science was missing something in its analysis of matter.  He felt that “awareness” was a part of everything, not just the human mind or the brain of a worm, but in everything, in every bit of matter.

How can it be that something which might be described as “awareness” or “consciousness” is a part of everything, down to the tiniest particle quantum mechanics can identify.

Is it simply a new paradigm, a basis for new stories about the meaning of everything?

If we understood or began to perceive everything as if it had consciousness, would we not perhaps treat the planet differently?

Megha

It is going to happen.  More about this later.

But first:

After the 2004 tsunami struck Amritapuri, we evacuated across the backwaters to a partially completed building for a week. The very first night, a full crew began chopping vegetables, huge kettles were put to work and dinner was available for all the refugees, include myself and my wife.  The next day, trucks began moving food out to other locations up and down the coast.  The ashram was able to feed many thousands of refugees.  As the days progressed, as I did not feel very healthy at that time, there was so little I could do; I felt helpless to assist in all the work that began immediately to ease the burdens of the refugees. Sleeping on a cement floor gave me almost no sleep. Trying to help with the cleanup, my hands refused to cooperate and my fingers cramped so that I couldn’t hold an implement. I spoke with a Buddhist monk about this later and he reassured me that my role in India was to be just a witness. He said that whether I did anything or not it was my presence there to bear witness to the effects of the tsunami on the lives of the people that was the really important thing.

Now it is three years later and I find there is something new to bear witness to, my vision that the Great Turning that David Korten and so many others are talking and writing about will come to pass.

I am puzzled by the practical details. I don’t see how it can take place. I wonder what great events will have to take place before people all over the world have a major change of heart. Will it be, as I think, the beginning of the great shift in consciousness that the German philosopher Karl Jaspers spoke about in the 1930s in his book translated as “The Axial Age of History?” Will cataclysmic events shock people into remembering that community and spiritual values are more important than money values? Will it be a direct effort of all the people working so hard right now to bring about great change? Or will it “just happen?” Will all the people waiting for the Rapture suddenly understand that there is great work to be done on the planet to bring compassion, justice and equality to all living beings on the planet? Will our current monetary system be radically transformed so that wealth does not always redistribute itself into the hands of the already wealthy? Will usury be finally made illegal? Will ordinary people just remember that we are all members of the Great Chain of Being? Will the purpose of corporations change to serving for the betterment of all humans and the ecology of the planet? So many questions.

Beneath all this, I remember the week before last Thanksgiving day that it came to my mind that the New Consciousness is beginning to spread. And by that I mean the old consciousness of the mystics that nothing is separate from me and that there is a great spirituality that infuses the entire cosmos. I mean the consciousness of those who have returned from a Near Death experience having learned that there is nothing more important than love and compassion. I mean consciousness of the non-locality which scientists talk about.

My vision is simple: it will come to pass.

Megha

Two days after Christmas in 2004, my wife and I were at an ashram temple at Amritapuri, Kerala State, India.  We were on the balcony level when a large group of villagers came wailing and screaming into the temple.  I had no idea what was going on outside, but when I looked out a window I saw that there was water everywhere.  Although no one at the temple died, I later found out that 144 people, mostly old people and children, had died in the village.  We all moved to a refugee camp and shared the next few days with the local refugees.  Ashram residents immediately began cooking food round the clock, usually rice and two kinds of curry, in large vats and began to distribute the food up and down the coast.  I could not help but be swept away by the misery of the people.  I helped a bit in a clinic that was quickly set up.  One man just lay down on his bed and wouldn’t talk at all; he had lost his wife and all his children. Then his extended family showed up and within a few days he came out of his trance enough to go home with some of them.  A husky village hero was there with aches and bruises he had received rescuing people; I was able at least to massage his sore body.  Otherwise I felt so useless.  The people needed emotional support and grief counselling, but I didn’t speak the local language.  There is no way to forget an experience like this.  I can only look for ways to help at a distance.