A Glance at Our Evolutionary Future

In 1974, A.E. Orage published a short book, Consciousness: Animal, Human and Superman.    The author begins by saying that from “the constant contemplation of the blue sky of our minds we may, I believe, one day behold new suns and moons and stars. For though at first there is nothing, yet the nothing is of the nature of that formless and void universe with which creation began.”

His book is about the evolution of consciousness. Our concern, too. He speaks to the great transition and our possible superhumanity.  The new epoch of our evolution will differ in kind. It won’t be more of the same.  Instead of more control of the external world, it will be more control of our internal world, in other words, ourselves. We’ll be more attuned to the hidden dimensions of our being.

 Imagine something analogous to awakening from sleep.  The big task is to let go of the ego; we need to wake up from the sleep of the ego. To repeat, we can anticipate something altogether new, like a talent for experiencing ecstasy, being able to slip out of our routine mind-body perspective. And there are various ways of doing this: for example, meditation, music, the arts, prayer, fasting, love, solitude, psychedelics, and so on. A bloodless revolution, we surrender to ecstasy. To be precise, we escape from ourselves. We become detached from the tyranny of our mechanized lives.

                  Imagine how the new ecstatic potential of our consciousness would alter our lifestyle.  I can think of two marked effects. Life without the fear of death would be one. This might have a calming effect on all the edgy folk among us.  As more consciously evolved, we’ll have a greater ability to project ourselves into the wonderfully wild extraphysical universe. An intriguing picture of a new degree of human freedom. Why this speculation on our greater freedom? Why all the metaphysical angst?

Part of me, to be frank, recoils from science and religion; they’ve had their chance to save the world. Right now they’re yanking it to the edge of destruction. Science creates all sorts of fiendish weapons so we can annihilate each other and toxify the natural world. And  too often religion provides the righteous rants and reasons to carry out the gruesome specifics.

So another part of me is attracted to the arts.  Our souls and our sensory lives are the raw material we need to work on and with. Every conscious moment is an invitation to the poet inside us.  And we’re not humble about what we’re aiming for. We plan to become the free-spirited sculptors of our lives, and yes, also the playwrights.  Imagine that!