Monday, October 5, 2020

Imagining a Renovated Humanity

Every now and then I experience something most people (including myself) think is impossible.  When the impossible lays a hand on you, it can force open your mind,    your belief-system, your imagination. It happens to me sporadically and unpredictably. A few examples.

 

I once met a lady who told me she had a knack for slipping out of her body and traveling about.  I invited her to prove it by leaving her body and coming to visit me some time. She laughed. She’d never been to my house, I should add. One morning about a week later, I woke up and found my music-stand moved from its usual place to the middle of the living room.  There was no one in my apartment but me, so I assumed I unconsciously moved it myself.

 

But later in the day I got a phone call from the out-of-body lady.  “How do you like the new furniture arrangement?” she asked.  “What are you talking about?” She then explained that last night she slid out of her body, thought of me with the intention of a visit.  She then found herself looking at me sitting at my kitchen table, reading. (Correct; I was there, nose in a book.) She tried to catch my attention but the invisible, intangible lady made no impression on me. This miffed her and she looked around my apartment, noticed my music-stand and somehow managed to move it into the living room—where I found it in the morning. Mystery solved; bigger mystery of how she did it—unsolved.  

 

I could go on with my experiences, including the day I conducted an experiment in which four female students by an effortless light-touch levitated a two-hundred pound ex-marine as far as they could reach up with their hands. A class full of students and another teacher witnessed this. One more slap in my philosophical face. These and more weirdness drove me to scope out the world of magic, miracle, and the supernormal.   

 

At first I focused on levitation, and wrote two books about the most famous frequent flyer (Joseph of Copertino).  A wider terrain of research into extraordinary human experiences opened up for me.  The more I looked the more I was astonished by the range of human potential.  In a sketch of the big picture, I wrote Smile of the Universe: Miracles in an Age of Disbelief.

 

Based on my experience and research an intuition gradually formed in my mind. There are laws of physics and chemistry that constrain us; but there are other laws about our expansion and transcendence. Piecing together an image of the possible human, an extraordinary being emerges.

 

Let’s call our new human, Newperson (NP).  Physically, Newperson won’t move around space the way we do.  Transportation will not depend on fossil fuels, a step toward the restoration of the nature that we have despoiled.  NP will levitate, bilocate, apport (pass through solid matter), and teleport.  Materialization and dematerialization of matter will be possible. NP’s body may be elongated, emanate strange fragrances, be impervious to pain, invulnerable to fire.

 

The evolved human being we are constructing from data will differ from us biologically.  Food lovers may recoil, but our future human may be inediac: able to live quite well without eating, drinking, or eliminating (the latter will save forests).  Inedia would imply a new attitude toward the natural world, less intrusive and exploitative,  more intimate and cooperative.   So, another step toward “rewilding” the nature we have plundered and poisoned. We will be free to relate to all forms of life in ways more subtle, profound, and useful to the planet.  Many established customs and institutions will wither away when our new species begins to emerge.

 

More drastic changes await us, as our slumbering super-potentials edge their way into actuality.   In the welter of healing miracles we have evidence that points to extraordinary health; so we are free to imagine that NP will enjoy the kind of health that makes a truly flourishing life possible.

 

One more point concerning our biological evolution.  If we follow the trend of research on what happens to consciousness after bodily death, we are released into a wider environment of experience.  Once the new consciousness of immortality is  established as universal fact, it’s hard to predict how it will affect our behavior and worldview. Since most of us cower before life in fear of death, I believe the new consciousness will launch a new era of fearless audacity.  

 

This leads to the third tier of transformative data. We mentioned extrasensory expansion, our enhanced empathic connections with other sentient beings, and freedom from the limits imposed by space and time. But the key to our psychological expansion is the mystical experience. It will occur when our sense of the unity of being begins to unfold. A new love consciousness will lead to dismantling many of the institutions we are ready to die for today—e.g., like the right to unbounded gun ownership.

 

The data I have collected point to a model of renovated humanity.  But when, how, or if ever the New Person emerges on our bedeviled planet is another question. Forming a picture of what is possible may at least keep hope alive.  How to use that hope to induce the necessary transformation is another question.

2 comments:

Miguel said...

Mike, you wrote that "Once the new consciousness of immortality is established as universal fact, it’s hard to predict how it will affect our behavior and worldview. Since most of us cower before life in fear of death, I believe the new consciousness will launch a new era of fearless audacity". I agree that operating with a consciousness of immortality would likely make us be less fearful of the unknown and more daring in terms of being able to cross the boundaries that now hold us prisoners of our materialist-driven worldview. But, given how reckless some us can be with our normal consciousness of mortality, I sure hope that acquiring a consciousness of immortality entails a corresponding degree of spiritual development that will enable us to handle our newly found freedom in a responsible manner.

Michael Grosso said...

Miguel,thanks for this observation. It did occur to me that confidence in immortality,combined with certain beliefs about the nature and supposed governance of the next world, might prompt some fanatics to commit crimes they might not otherwise commit. For example, kill some unbelievers and be rewarded by some virgins waiting to please you in the next world. No matter what, the crazies always seem to be waiting in the wings.

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