Introduction
Human
vis-à-vis machine intelligence
Ever since our dim-and-distant ancestors
first learned to make pebble cutters from the flint stones lying around them, we
human beings have been inventing tools and machines to extend our physical
abilities. The steam engine, motor car, typewriter, and telephone are just a few
examples from recent times.
Then, just half a century ago, a
number of mathematicians, scientists, and engineers, on both sides of the Atlantic,
learned to build a stored-program computer, a machine that is quite different from
these earlier tools and machines because it extends our mental capabilities
and in many cases can replace them. It is even different from the few other tools
that have been invented as mental aids, such as the abacus, the slide rule, the ubiquitous
calculator, and the calculating machines of Liebnitz, Pascal, and Babbage.
For the key feature of the computer
is that it is programmable. By feeding it instructions, the computer can be programmed
to perform a wide variety of different tasks. The stored-program computer is, in
essence, a tool of thought.
Ever since this invention, there
have been suggestions that one day these machines would become smarter, more intelligent,
than human beings. Today, partially encouraged by Big Blue's 'victory' over Gary
Kasparov, these predictions are becoming stronger than ever.
But are they likely to be fulfilled
in the near future, as a number of influential scientists and philosophers are asserting?
In attempting to answer this question, we immediately face a significant difficulty:
do we human beings have the intelligence to determine whether these forecasts are
true or not?
If they are true, presumably we do
not have the intelligence to answer this question; one day, our machines will answer
it for us. On the other hand, if we human beings have a potential intelligence far
greater than machines will ever have, why is this, and what do we need to do to awaken
our intelligence so that we become masters of our machines rather than their slaves,
as we are in danger of doing today?
At present, as far as I know, there
is no machine anywhere in the world that claims that it is more intelligent than
human beings. So we cannot ask our machines to tell us whether they will one day
be more intelligent than us. If we want to understand the relative potential of human
beings vis-à-vis machines, we must use human intelligence, limited as it may
be.
But what exactly is intelligence?
The Oxford Companion to the Mind says that "no one is quite certain
what intelligence is". We thus face something of a dilemma. In the programmable
computer, we have invented a machine that is fundamentally different from any other
tool that we have created in human history. Yet fifty years after its invention,
we still have very little understanding of what we have invented, about its relationship
to us human beings, or about the effect that it is having on our society.
Despite the unprecedented rate of
change we are experiencing in the world today, nothing really fundamental has changed
since the invention of this machine that can perform many mental tasks faster and
cheaper than us human beings:
- Mainstream science is still based
on the triple pillars of materialism, mechanism, and mathematics, even though these
philosophies, paradigms, and methods can tell us little about the fundamental questions
in life, such as "Who are we?", "Where have we come from and where
are we heading?" and "Why is the pace of scientific discovery and technological
invention accelerating exponentially?".
- In mathematics and logic, the formal
mode of reasoning is still linear, despite growing evidence that the human mind functions
in a nonlinear, holographic manner.
- In traditional Western religion,
God is still in heaven, as separate, remote, and as inaccessible as ever, even though
an increasing number of people today are experiencing the mystical and divine within
themselves.
- In the global economy, the business
world is still aggressively pursuing monetary growth and technological development
at the expense of human growth, despite the damaging effect that these policies are
having on employment, the quality of life at work, and on our environment.
- The conventional education system
and media are still rigidly reinforcing this cultural conditioning, thus inhibiting
us from learning how to understand and deal with the rapid changes that are happening
today.
The dangers
of our ignorance
This is a pretty perilous situation.
We have rather arrogantly called our species Homo Sapiens, 'wise Man'. But
are we really acting wisely in the world today? Do we really have the experience
and knowledge that can enable us to live in peace, happiness, and harmony with each
other, our machines, and our environment? Are we really adapting intelligently to
the hyperexponential rate of change that we are generating through our technology?
Do we know where we are heading or what is causing us to drive society forward at
such an extraordinary pace?
While I have used the first person
plural pronoun in asking these questions, there is no 'we' that can answer them.
This is something that only each and every one of us as individuals can answer by
looking inwards. There may well be some who would answer 'yes' to these questions.
Following the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, there is an air of hubris
about. Reading some of the articles in journals and newspapers today, you would not
know that humanity is in the midst of the greatest crisis in its short history.
The highly popular film Titanic
provides us with a timely metaphor for the dangerous situation that we face today.
I am not referring here to the principal themes of the film, namely the liberation
of the heroine and the great divide between the rich and the poor. Rather, I am referring
to the belief at the time that the Titanic was unsinkable. Even when
the ship was beginning to sink few believed it, so the first lifeboats to leave the
ship were only half full.
There is a similar belief today that
the global economy and the Western civilization on which it is based are unsinkable
despite the obvious crises both pass through from time to time. While on the surface
all might appear to be well, below the surface the situation is quite different as
the increasing pollution, drugs taking, violence, stress at work, stress out of work,
exploitation, alienation, vengeance, litigation, dumbing down, and many other factors
indicate.
The accelerating pace of scientific
and technological development in the world today is well illustrated by another simple
metaphor. This is rather like driving a car along a crowded motorway faster and faster.
But we are not driving with our eyes wide open; most of us are driving our cars,
running our business and personal lives, blindfold, or at most partially sighted.
But this situation cannot continue for very much longer. For if it does, we are all
likely to end up in one great pileup, to put it bluntly.
 There
is no one to criticize or blame for the predicament facing humanity today. It is
our past that is the major cause of our ignorance of what is happening in the world,
for evolution is blind, as the biologist, Richard Dawkins, tells us in The Blind Watchmaker. Once a particular
evolutionary process or behaviour pattern becomes established, it progresses through
habit, as another biologist, Rupert Sheldrake, explains in The Presence of
the Past. This is as true of the evolution of the mind as it is of biological
evolution. So when we allow ourselves to blindly follow the teachings of the past,
we become programmed to behave in a robotic way, rather like our machines. We thus
become less than human, falling far short of our unique potential as creative, intelligent,
spiritual beings.
Today there
are a growing number of individuals and organizations who are well aware of the dangers
of our ignorance and that Western civilization is dying, as the attached cartoon published in the ecological magazine Resurgence and the political journal The Spectator well
illustrates.
I have listed some of these on my
related sites page. One of these organizations, the Union of International
Associations (UIA), has published
an Encyclopedia
of World Problems and Human Potential,
which attempts to gather together all the major problems that the world faces today,
listing some 12,500 world problems and over 29,000 strategies, actions, and solutions
to address them.
This is rather overwhelming. No one
individual or group of individuals can possibly hope to grasp such a set of difficulties.
As individuals, most of us have enough on our plates just coping with our jobs and
with our families and friends. So dealing with this number of problems would appear
to be something quite out of our reach.
But can we identify some common patterns
within these problems that would enable us, as individuals within the global community,
to deal with them more effectively? In other words, can we develop an integrated
body of knowledge that would enable us to see the human situation as a coherent whole?
Not without difficulty, as the UIA points out in its notes to the Encyclopedia.
For we live today in a modern Tower
of Babel. As a result of the specialization and division of labour that so characterizes
our fragmented and fiercely competitive society, there is, as yet, no common context
or framework that would enable us to heal this fragmentation and so lead to a harmonious
and peaceful society. Each of us can see only the narrow perspective that our conditioning
and daily activities in our occupations have led us to see. We are generally too
busy to do anything else.
Freedom from
the past
So how are we to free ourselves from
our past, from our habitual, robotic, fragmented ways of thinking and living, to
see the totality of existence as one coherent whole? Indeed, is this even possible,
or are we condemned by the very nature of evolutionary development to continue seeing
only a partial reality indefinitely?
No, of course not. For not only does
evolution lead to the great variety and diversity that we see in the world around
us, it also leads to wholeness and unity, as the South Africa politician and soldier,
Jan Christiaan Smuts, highlighted in his remarkable book, Holism and Evolution,
published three-quarters of a century ago.
Just over a decade later, the French
palaeontologist and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, wrote another remarkable
book called The Phenomenon of Man. In this book, Teilhard looked at
the broad sweep of all evolutionary processes and saw that they follow the common
pattern of differentiation and integration, of divergence and convergence.
Extrapolating these processes into
the future, he saw that one day all the diverse streams of evolution, which we see
in the beautiful variety of animals, plants, and cultures, would converge into one
great synthesis, which he called a megasynthesis. As he saw, there is a deep underlying
unity in diversity. And as a concomitant of this unification of society, a great
wave of consciousness would arise, taking humanity into a quite new phase of development.
Despite the great conflict and violence
of today's society, there is growing evidence that Teilhard's vision is beginning
to be realized. We are witnessing a convergence of spirit, where old borders and
boundaries are starting to dissolve. This is coming about as more and more people
see that traditional scientific, philosophical, religious, and economic assumptions
and beliefs are no longer appropriate for our rapidly changing times.
And as the dozens of 'End of'
books being published today indicates, the awakening of love, consciousness, and
intelligence that thereby arises is leading us to the end of an era. A new culture
is emerging that will be quite different from those that have existed for the past
few thousand years.
However, what is not yet well understood
is that this new global culture will be free from the past, living in the present,
in the eternal now. For the end of the era that we are experiencing today is bringing
evolution as a whole to an end, as paradoxical as that may sound.
To be free from the past means to
be free from projections of the past on to the future, to be free from both cyclical
and linear time, from the false idea of everlasting progress. This freedom is absolutely
essential if we are ever to rise above the level of our machines into a state of
fully awakened love, consciousness, and intelligence.
In such a state, there is no future,
nothing to hope for or to despair about, no reason to be either optimistic or pessimistic.
This is obvious, because we cannot live in the present tomorrow, for tomorrow never
comes. There is no time like the present for living in the present.
Of course, this is not a new idea.
It is central to the teachings of many spiritual teachers over the ages. Most particularly,
the well-known sage, J.
Krishnamurti, taught for
over sixty years the necessity of being free from tradition if we are to base our
lives on the Truth, as the titles of his books Freedom from the Known,
The Future is Now, and The Awakening of Intelligence indicate.
Andrew
Cohen's book Freedom
Has No History is another in a similar vein.
And as Krishnamurti said in 1929,
when dissolving the organization that wanted to make him a world teacher, "Truth
is a pathless land", this pathless land being, quite simply, the eternal now.
So if we are ever to face the immense challenge that the invention of the programmable
computer has brought us, and thereby create a unified global society based on the
Truth, then we shall need to set ourselves free from the prisons in which our conditioning
incarcerates us.
Uncovering
the innocence of consciousness
The overall effect of noogenesis--the
evolution of the mind--during the past few thousand years is that our innate innocence,
which we are generally able to express as children, has become covered up and hidden.
This means that the intellect, which is a property of the mind, often prevents our
natural intelligence, which transcends the mind, from seeing situations just as they
are, free from delusions, preconceptions, prejudices, judgements, emotions, and other
distractions.
Now if Intelligence is to function
with full clarity it needs a source of light to be able to see what it is looking
at. This light is provided by Consciousness, the
coherent light of Consciousness,
symbolically displayed on the opening page of this web site. In other words, we can
say that Intelligence is the eyesight of Consciousness.
The key point here is that the mind,
the intellect, cannot understand this statement. It is only Intelligence that can
see the true nature of Intelligence. This means that if we are ever to rise above
the level of our machines, to master our minds, it is vitally important that we learn
to uncover the innocence of Consciousness. For without such innocence, there is not
sufficient light to see where we are going. We are just floundering about in darkness
and ignorance.
This does not mean that we are about
to return to the innocence of childhood, for this would be to confuse prepersonal
development with transpersonal, as Ken Wilber points out in his many books. Rather, by transcending the
mind, we uncover the Truth, which is quite impossible to see while the mind dominates
the psyche. Only Intelligence can know the Truth.
This is no better illustrated than
by Hans Christian Anderson's tale of The Emperor's New Clothes. The
child in the story saw the situation just as it was, and naturally exclaimed, "He's
got nothing on!". This is a clear mark of natural intelligence.
We all like to think that
we have the clear sightedness of that child. But for the most part,
we act more like the courtiers and the adults in the crowd watching
the procession. For it is so much easier to go along with the crowd,
even though we see the falseness in the situation, than to express what
we see clearly, just as it is. We have had our natural innocence, consciousness,
and intelligence suffocated and stifled by the culture we live in. For
the most part, we live in a fantasy world of pretence and make-believe,
accelerating further and further away from Reality as the years go by.
In practical terms, the most important
consequence of our delusionary way of living is that we have based our sense of security
and identity in life on an economic system that is inherently unstable and on imminent
point of collapse. We are deluding ourselves if we believe that the free-market economy
means that we live in a free society, for we are slaves to the System, which I capitalize
because the global economy has taken on absolutist characteristics.
This is a pretty pickle. We cannot
change the System, because our sense of security depends on it continuing to exist
indefinitely, and we cannot not make radical changes to the System, because if we
don't we shall drive the human race into extinction within the next few decades.
So what are we to do? Is there any way out of this dilemma? Is there any chance of
giving our children and children's children the opportunity to create a peaceful
and harmonious world for themselves?
The tidal wave
of consciousness
Yes, there is a way through, impossible
as it may seem. To see this, we need to look at evolution as a whole, in particular
how it is progressing right now in human society. When we do this, we can see that
there is a rising tide of consciousness beginning to sweep its way through society,
a movement of consciousness that is leading an increasing number of people to question
many of the assumptions and beliefs that have underlain Western civilization for
many centuries.
A couple of illustrations of this
phenomenon suffice. The brochure for The International Conference on Science and Consciousness, held in Albuquerque in April 1999, says
that "more and more people have experiences that cannot be explained by the
old scientific paradigm". The hunt is on, therefore, for a comprehensive world-view
that can represent all our experiences, both the inner and the outer.
At the other end of the innovative
spectrum, so to speak, a pope noted for his conservatism said on 14th January 1999
that God "is not to be imagined as an old man with a flowing white beard".
I don't know how many people still see God in this way, but the fact that the Pope
was able to make this statement is a symptom that society is undergoing great change.
At present, this rising tide of consciousness
is still moving comparatively slowly. However, in the years to come, as an increasing
number of people realize that traditional ways of looking at reality do not match
their experiences, we can expect this rising tide of consciousness to become a tidal
wave. This tidal wave of consciousness is an evolutionary inevitability. There is
nothing any of us can do to stop it.
To try to do so would be like King
Canute trying to stop the tide coming in, what we can call the Canute syndrome. Neither
can we just ignore it, the Ostrich syndrome. The tidal wave of consciousness is going
to affect every single human being on this planet during the first half century of
the next millennium. As a result, the changes that will happen during these 50 years
will be of a similar magnitude to all the changes that have happened during the last
5000.
This reason I say this is because
Western civilization and the global economy are based on a number of delusions or
false beliefs about the nature of Reality. Foremost among these are:
- The physical universe of our external
senses is the primary reality.
- God is 'other'; there is an unbridgeable
gulf between the Creator and the created.
- Money is a commodity with value.
Borrowing a term from Arthur Koestler,
I call these fundamental beliefs of Western culture the three pillars of unwisdom.
They are pillars because they provide the foundations for the Tower of Babel that
symbolizes the world of learning today.
Now when we dive into
the depths of the psyche, the division between true and false, between
knowledge and experience, indeed between all opposites disappears. We
uncover a nondual sense, which is the Ground of Being, the absolute
foundation for everything that exists in the world of form.
However, Western civilization is
not based on the Ground of Being, on the Truth. And that is why it is dying today.
What is causing it to die is the rising tide of consciousness, which will become
a tidal wave at the beginning of the third millennium.
This inevitably will bring about
major changes in society because the infrastructure of Western civilization is based
on the three pillars of unwisdom. The first provides the scientific community with
what Peter Russell
calls a superparadigm, the second underlies all three monotheistic religions, Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam, and the third provides the global economy with its primary
motive force.
So when these pillars of unwisdom
are swept away by the tidal wave of consciousness, the infrastructure of Western
civilization will collapse. The religious, scientific, educational, financial, business,
political, medical, and judicial institutions, which constitute the infrastructure
of society, will either disappear or be transmuted into something unrecognizable
today.
Healing
our sick society
So how is our culture to free itself
of its delusions about the Universe, God, money, and what it means to be a human
being? When individuals suffers from delusions, such as they are the Emperor Napoleon
or simply that they believe that they are not good enough, psychologists and therapists
have a host of remedies for helping individuals heal their psyches.
But how do we deal with a situation
when a whole civilization is suffering from delusion? My dictionary of psychology
tells me that psychologists do not normally use the word delusion to refer
to the false beliefs held by a culture or a subculture. So investigating the delusions
held by a society as a whole is something outside the scope of normal psychological
practice.
The one outstanding exception to
this principle was Erich Fromm, who in a series of brilliant books published from
the 1940s to the 70s, dared to ask the question "Can a society be sick?",
a question he asked explicitly in The Sane Society.
But how can we begin to answer such
a question? If the normal behaviour of individuals in a society is deemed to be healthy,
the behaviour of that society, as a whole, cannot be pathological. We clearly need
another approach to determine the health or sanity of society as a whole.
One way of doing this is to look
at the root meanings of words. For instance, sanity comes from a Latin word
sanus, meaning 'healthy'. In turn, healthy derives from an Old German
word meaning 'whole'. So to be sane, to be healthy, is to be whole. But society is
very far from being whole. We live in a fragmented, divisive, and fiercely competitive
society. And throughout recorded history human beings have been fighting each other
in a series of holy wars, wars about the Whole, wars that are continuing even today.
All this conflict is a clear sign of a sick society.
Again, I emphasize that there is
no one to blame for our pathology. As Erich Fromm pointed out, we human beings are
the least instinctive of all the animals. Virtually all our behaviour is learned.
Using the metaphor of the computer, we are programmed to behave in certain ways by
what we learn from the culture we live in.
Now when our ancestors began to learn
what it means to be a human being many thousands of years ago, they did not yet have
the knowledge and experience to fully understand the human situation. In terms of
learning, they were like innocent children in adult bodies. So while ancient cultures
often demonstrated great wisdom, they also passed on to their descendants a multitude
of beliefs, myths, and superstitions, many of which still exist in society today.
Not surprisingly, many of these primitive
beliefs have emerged to deal with our fear of death. When our early ancestors began
to learn about themselves and the world they lived in, one of their first discoveries
is that everybody dies. This was pretty bad news, for what is the point of being
born in a body if within a few short years we are all destined to die?
It is our unwillingness in the West
to face this fundamental truth of existence that is causing the business world to
drive the human race perilously close to extinction. If we are to avoid driving ourselves
into a premature death, we can do no better than to turn to the teachings of Shakyamuni
Buddha.
What Shakyamuni Buddha realized some
2,500 years ago is that there is nothing permanent or immortal in the world of form.
He thus made the principle of impermanence (anitya in Sanskrit) the first
principle of his teaching, his Dharma. His second principle was that if we do not
recognize the first principle, we are deluding ourselves and we will suffer (duhkha
in Sanskrit).
And how human beings have suffered
during the past few thousand years for failing to face up to the reality of death!
Furthermore, how much more we shall suffer when we have to face the death of Western
civilization and the global economy! It is our inability to face death in all its
forms that is the single biggest problem facing humanity today, as Ernest Becker
describes in The Denial of Death. If we could stop denying death, all
the other 12,500 problems would disappear.
At the individual level, Shakyamuni
Buddha showed that if we are to face death and so free ourselves from suffering,
then we need to realize at the deepest level of our being, and not just intellectually,
that there is no separate self. This is the third principle of the Buddha's teaching,
called anatman in Sanskrit. The complete and permanent death of the sense
of a separate self is most commonly called enlightenment.
And when we realize that there is
no separate self, an extraordinary thing happens. We realize that there are no beginnings
or ends in Reality. In the Absloute these opposites are unified in nonduality, as
the Advaitins teach. This means that in Reality there is neither birth nor death.
All beginnings and ends in time are no more than a transformation of one form of
energy into another. And this naturally includes our own births and deaths as individuals,
the birth and death of Western civilization, and the birth and death of the human
race as a whole. None of these events is real in an Absolute sense; they are all
relativistic abstractions from Consciousness.
There is thus no difference between
the forms that we call human beings and any other forms in the Universe. Human beings
are subject to the same basic laws as every other entity. Problems only arise when
we become identified with one particular form, such as our own bodies, an ideology,
or something precious that we might possess. For it is in this identification that
all suffering lies.
Now as Erich Fromm pointed out in
his greatest masterpiece, To Have or to Be?, the Buddha's teachings apply
principally to individual human beings. Even though Mahayana Buddhism broadened the
Buddha's teachings to include the whole of humanity through the concept of the bodhisattva,
as these teachings stand, they are not directly applicable to a sick society, to
a whole civilization that is suffering from delusion, that is afraid of death.
Erich Fromm recognized that as human
behaviour is determined by our knowledge and beliefs, if society, as a whole, is
to free itself from suffering, a quite new science of humanity would be needed, free
from the constraints that the physical sciences, traditional religions, and materialistic
economies place on our learning. In 1973, even before To Have or to Be? was
published, Ken
Wilber, then a graduate student,
was writing the first of his many books that essentially address Erich Fromm's programme.
So that there is no misunderstanding,
I should mention here that we need to drop our modelling and conceptualizing
activities, which are inherent in a synthesis of science and spirituality,
if we are to completely realize Wholeness and the Truth, to fully heal
ourselves as individuals. To this end, I have been greatly helped by
many teachers, including Ramana Maharshi, J. Krishnamurti, Osho, Barry
Long, Chögyam Trungpa, Ramesh S. Balsekar, Vijay S. Shankar, Vasant
Swaha, Wayne Liquorman, Andrew Cohen, and many others.
Indeed, the rapidly growing
number of enlightened, self-realized beings appearing on the world stage
right now is a clear indication that the rising tide of consciousness
is about to take off. For instance, during 1999, we had a steady stream
of such teachers holding satsangs and retreats in Stockholm and its
surroundings, culminating in four of them during one weekend in July.
But back to a new science of humanity.
This is not something that can be fully developed by a single individual working
on his or her own. It can only be based on the experiences of a number of people
from different backgrounds who are similarly experiencing the rising tide of consciousness
flowing within themselves.
So what we need to do
now is to bring the great synthesizing work of such people as Ken Wilber and Peter Russell back to home base, to the very beginning.
We can do this by synthesizing the integrative studies of the philosopher/scientists
with those of the enlightened beings helping us to discover who we truly
are. In this way, not only will we have the understanding necessary
to face the death of Western civilization and the global economy, we
shall have the understanding that we shall need to build a new society
free from the delusions that our culture imposes on our learning today.
Now while a new science of humanity
is a necessary prerequisite for cultural transformation, it is, in itself, not sufficient.
As Erich Fromm well knew, this can only come about through discontent, through a
widespread awareness that humanity, as a whole, is suffering.
Today, opinion surveys
report that some 85 to 95% of people are happy with their materialistic
lives, including what Chögyam Trungpa calls spiritual materialism.
So the conditions do not yet exist for us to heal the madness of today's
society.
Speaking
from experience
So who am I? Well, I'm nothing in
particular. I am an ordinary guy who nearly twenty years ago just happened to be
swept off his feet by the tidal wave of consciousness. In a Cosmic instant, my old
way of life was destroyed; it was the end of the world as I knew it. During a few
short years, I left my family and friends, my marketing job with IBM (UK), my business
career, and my home. I sold or gave away all my possessions, save a few clothes and
books, and set out all alone in search of Wholeness and the Truth.
Effectively, I became a renunciate,
rather like the sannyasins in the East, in the original meaning of this word, not
the revised meaning given it by Osho.
However, I did not move to an ashram or monastery in India or elsewhere. I remained
living in London, close to the libraries and bookshops that I needed to begin to
develop a synthesis of all knowledge.
At first, I had little understanding
what was happening to me. I certainly could not have explained my experiences at
that time in the way that I can today. My friends, colleagues, and relatives thought
I had gone a little crazy. In a sense I had; I was like a puppy just let off the
leash in the park.
To use another metaphor, it felt
as if a dam had burst in my psyche, releasing a great mass of pent-up energy that
had accumulated since my childhood. For many years afterwards, I struggled with the
white-water rapids, as the river of Life powered its inexorable way through narrow,
steep ravines. Today, as my spiritual understanding has deepened, this cosmic, divine
river has broadened as it has neared the ocean. The river of Life is still flowing
very fast through me, but it is now quite manageable.
To make these metaphors more tangible,
all I knew when I began this project was that I was developing a comprehensive world-view
de novo. The purpose of this cosmology was to integrate the physical and nonphysical
energies I could see in the Universe, just as 300 years earlier Isaac Newton had
developed a synthesis of the terrestrial and nonterrestrial forces known at his time.
I was quite sure that such a megasynthesis
would explain all the mysteries that had puzzled me since I was a boy, including
"What is the relationship between God and the Universe", "What does
it mean to be a human being?", "Where have we come from and where are we
heading?", and more recently, "What is causing the pace of change in society
to accelerate hyperexponentially?". By answering these questions, I knew that
I would discover the foundations for the laws of motion of society, just as Newton
discovered the fundamentals of the laws of motion of physical bodies, published in
his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in 1687.
Today, I liken this pioneering journey
of exploration and discovery to that undertaken by many an innocent boy from an impoverished
family seeking the princess in the castle in many fairy tales around the world. For
instance, like Halvor in the Norwegian folk tale, Soria Moria Castle, I have
had to fight and kill many multi-headed trolls on my way. And like Halvor, I could
not have done this without the love and support of a number of beautiful, intelligent
princesses who have joined me on my journey to the pathless land. Not that I have
yet reached my final destination. There is still some way to go.
When I say 'I' here, I do not mean
that there exists a separate entity that is the agent of my actions. The being who
is writing these words is no more than a passing ripple in the vast ocean of Consciousness,
which is the way that I look at the Cosmos as an undivided and seamless Whole.
There seems to be no way of avoiding
anthropocentric language here, even though the use of such language does not reflect
reality as it is. A similar situation arose as the result of the discoveries of science
in the Middle Ages. I do not say "Oh Look! The Earth is revolving away from
the sun causing the sky to turn into beautiful patterns of red, orange, and yellow".
Rather I say, "Look at that beautiful sunset", even though I know full
well that the sun is not setting.
Similarly, I know that there is no
'I' that is the agent of my thoughts and actions. However, if I were to say, "Life
is guiding this being to write these words", or in the terms used by Ramesh
Balsekar, "This body-mind
organism/mechanism is writing these words", the language would become ponderous
in the extreme. So for brevity's sake, I say "I am writing these words",
even though no such 'I' exists as a separate entity.
Krishnamurti resolved this problem
with language by referring to himself as 'K' in his journals. However, I don't want
to take this third-person approach. While I have no separate self, I do have physical
form and an ego, which enables me to function in the world of form. I therefore feel
that it is quite appropriate to continue to refer to myself as 'I', even though those
who have not yet uncovered the answer to the question "Who am I?" might
misunderstand what I mean by this word.
A synthesis
of everything
So where has the tidal wave of consciousness
led me today? Well, I no longer view the Universe in terms of space, time, matter,
and energy, as the physicists teach us. Rather, I view the Universe, the totality
of existence, in terms of form, structure, relationships, and meaning, where these
forms and structures can be physical or nonphysical in nature.
Viewing the Universe in this way
enables me to create a coherent body of knowledge that corresponds to all my experiences,
including my experience of Consciousness, Wholeness, God, Love, Life, Truth, and
Reality, capitalized words that all mean essentially the same thing; they all refer
to the Absolute. This comprehensive, self-inclusive world-view does not belong to
science, philosophy, or religion, in the way that these words are understood today,
or to the East or the West. Rather it is transdisciplinary and transcultural, thus
healing all the divisions that exist in the world of learning today.
As this synthesis of everything does
not belong to the cultural landscape that exists in the world today, I need to find
a word to describe the discipline that I am studying. The word that I use here is
omniology, from the Greek word omnis, meaning, 'all', and the Greek
suffix logia, meaning 'science or study of'. So omniology is the science or
study of everything. Omniology is all inclusive; it embraces the learning of all
cultures and disciplines from all times, past, present, and future.
I have been led to study the discipline
of omniology because I have had great faith in the evolution of science and mathematics.
Scientific method is not something set in concrete for all time. Scientific method
can evolve so that it adapts to the changing circumstances facing us in the world.
There is no greater stimulus for
transforming the methods of science than the invention of the programmable computer,
a machine that extends our mental abilities, in contrast to our physical tools. For
a materialistic science cannot explain the differences and similarities between human
and machine intelligence at the very least.
So to answer my many questions about
the relationships between human beings and machines, I started a thought experiment
in May 1980. I began an experiment in learning in which I imagined that I was a computer
that switched itself off and on again so that it had no programs within it, not even
a bootstrap program to load programs from its external environment.
It was in this way that I started
afresh from the very beginning, without any external authorities to tell me how I
should learn or what I should learn. It was the most liberating experience of my
life. Quite fantastic!
The overall effect of being freed
from the cultural constraints imposed on our learning is that my learning has been
accelerating at a superhyperexponential rate during the past nineteen years. Virtually
everything I have learned about myself and the Universe I live in I have learned
since I was 38. I learned virtually nothing at school, university, and during my
early adulthood. This helped me greatly to begin my experiment in learning from the
very beginning. I had very little to unlearn; I had comparatively little deprogramming
to do.
After I, as a computer, had switched
myself off and on again, I then imagined that this computer had the job of organizing
all the world's knowledge into a coherent whole, rather like some visualize the Internet
becoming.
Now when information systems designers
start developing systems, they don't just charge in writing code, as they did at
the beginning of the computer age. They begin by developing models of the domain
under consideration. There are three major types of modelling methods, enterprise
modelling, data modelling, and software modelling, which are beginning to converge
into a single method. Without these modelling methods the global economy and the
Internet could not exist. They are essential to bring the complexity of the world
into manageable proportions.
When I began my experiment in learning,
I chose one of these modelling methods from which to evolve. This was the relational
model of data, published in 1970 by Ted Codd when he was working for IBM at one of
its research laboratories. The relational model of data marked a major turning point
in the data processing industry, because, for the first time, it provided a mathematical
representation of the basic resource of the industry, data itself.
I call the systematic modelling method
I have developed from the relational model of data relational logic. Relational logic
is so-called because it describes the underlying, unifying structure of the Cosmos,
how all the parts of the Universe relate to each other to form a coherent whole,
and because it has arisen through the action of what the presocratic, mystical philosopher,
Heraclitus, called the Logos, the divine first principle of the Universe.
Relational logic provides the skeleton
or framework for the Cosmic body of knowledge that arises through the study of omniology.
Without relational logic, this body of knowledge would be just wobbly flesh, with
no structure, quite unable to stand upright.
Today, the closest modelling method
to relational logic in the world of computer science is the Unified Modeling Language (UML) developed by Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson, and James Rumbaugh of Rational Software Corporation. However, relational logic is not really a language, as such,
for it lies much deeper in the psyche than language. Relational logic is more a universal
modelling method, which can be expressed in a variety of different languages and
notations.
To the extent that relational logic
is a language, it is a language with a syntax but no semantics. In this respect,
it is like the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), which provides the syntactic
framework for the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) used by World Wide Web writers
and designers to create pages, including this one you are reading.
Relational logic is thus quite meaningless,
free from all interpretations, judgements, and preconceptions. The only concepts
relational logic itself uses are a tiny set necessary, as Ockham's razor, to express
this universal organizing principle in language. It is this meaningless property
of relational logic that enables it to be transcultural and transdisciplinary.
Paradoxically, the meaninglessness
of the Logos and the Absolute, which is its Source, is not without sense. Indeed,
when we realize, in our deepest being, the ineffability of the Absolute, all confusion
disappears; it is then that all the happenings in the Universe make sense as a coherent
Whole.
To express this deep understanding
in words, I use the terminology of computer science. The two key words here are data
and information, which are often used synonymously. But this is a fundamental
mistake. Data, often used as a singular noun, has a Latin root meaning 'that
which is given'. The word data thus refers to entities and patterns prior
to interpretation. Data becomes information when it is interpreted in a particular
context to give meaning. Information is data with meaning.
These concepts from the data processing
or information technology industry apply equally to the Cosmos. Everything that exists
can be looked at as data prior to interpretation. This includes the Absolute, which
I call the Datum of the Universe, That which is given. I am using Vedanta terminology
here, as in the phrase, Tat tvam asi, meaning 'Thou art That'. The meaningless
Datum provides the overall context in which to give meaning to everything that happens
in the world of form, as lila, the play of the Divine. Paradoxically, this
meaningless view of the Universe provides much needed meaning to life in a world
in which we are all destined to die before too long.
I also need a word to describe the
overall process of organizing all knowledge into a coherent whole. The word I use
for this purpose is collumination, which derives from the Latin words cum,
meaning 'with' or 'together' and lumen, meaning 'light'. Collumination, which
is modelled on illumination, is so-called because it reveals the coherent
light of Consciousness, enabling the practitioner to develop and view a holographic
view of the totality of existence, free from all delusions.
Of the formal meditation methods
that I am familiar with, the one that is closest to collumination is vipassana or
insight meditation, first taught by Shakyamuni Buddha. Vipassana is a Pali
word meaning 'clear sightedness'. In vipassana, practitioners focus attention on
an object, such as the breath, a sound, or a sensation, with the purpose of seeing
things just as they are, without any emotional overtones.
So it is with collumination. In collumination,
the object practitioners focus their attention on is learning itself as the Logos,
Dharma, or Tao emerges directly from the Source, from the Ground of Being. There
is no room for preconceptions or prejudices here, for this is Intelligence watching
itself with utter clear-sightedness. There is no gap between the observer and the
observed, between the Creator and the created, an experience that shows quite clearly
the falsity of the first two pillars of unwisdom, which provide the underpinning
of Western science and religion.
One other neologism. I need a word
to denote the new epoch that the tidal wave of consciousness is carrying humanity
towards. The word I use here is paragonian, from the Greek words para,
meaning 'beyond', and agon, meaning 'conflict' or 'contest', a word we also
see in the English words agony and antagonistic. So a paragonian society
will be one living beyond conflict, in harmony both within itself and with its environment,
free from the agony that a dualistic approach to life brings.
The closest word to paragonian
today is the Sanskrit word advaita, meaning 'not-two'. However, there is a
difference. Advaita has an opposite dvaita, while paragonian,
like omniology and collumination, has no opposite. All these new words
are all-inclusive; they embrace all opposites, including both duality and nonduality.
This web site
I am setting up this web
site because Life is guiding me to do so. It contains as nontechnical
an introduction to my work as I can manage at the moment. The more technical
details about relational logic, in particular, are contained in a book
that I should complete in the coming years, depending on circumstances.
I appreciate that those who have
not yet been lifted up by the tidal wave of consciousness might have some difficulty
in fully understanding what I am saying. However, this is just a short-term difficulty.
The ability to develop a synthesis of everything is a potential within every human
being on this planet no matter what particular skills and qualities they might have.
So it is just a matter of time before this skill becomes widespread.
In practical terms, the most urgent
task facing humanity today is to design and build a Carpathia to rescue as
many passengers from the Titanic as it sinks as possible. For if we do not
do this, it is likely that the panic that will arise when the infrastructure of Western
civilization and the global economy collapses will lead to much loss of life.
All the skills we need to design
and build this rescue ship are available in the world today. However, they are still
highly fragmented; they are far from working harmoniously together with a common
purpose.
What I would like to do, therefore,
is to set up a team whose principal purpose is to design and implement a life-enhancing
economy that will give all individuals the opportunity to realize their fullest potential
as human beings. I call such an ecologically sustainable economy the sharing economy,
because it is based on the principle, not of acquisitiveness, but of what each and
every one of us can give to the community in which we live, without any expectation
of any return. After all, this is how the plants, other animals, aborigines, and
Buddhists live their lives. So why shouldn't we?
To make this major transformation
of how we manage our business affairs, we shall need systems architects or generalists
able to see the big picture, responsible for the overall design. We shall also need
specialists in their various fields, including spirituality, psychology, education,
technology, and business. With such an integrated team of different skills if should
be well within our capability to build this ship, and to assist passengers making
the transfer from the Titanic to the Carpathia.
As the people who have the skills
necessary to design and build the sharing economy are scattered throughout the world,
I am using the Internet to make contact with them. So if you are interested in joining
me in this challenging endeavour, you are most welcome to contact me through my guest book, or privately via e-mail at paul@algonet.se.
To give you a little more information
about my proposals, this web site consists of these eleven sections:
- Welcome
- An 'executive' overview, that you
have no doubt read.
- Introduction
- This introductory page that you
have been reading.
- Vision
- A broad description of how I see
the situation facing humanity today, where we have come from, and where we are heading.
To see this picture, we need to stand outside ourselves to take a Cosmic perspective
of our individual lives in particular and of our species in general. This section
describes the picture that I can see from this 'God's eye view of the Universe'.
- Foundations
- Western civilization is dying because
it is not based on the Truth. Rather it is based on a set of scientific, religious,
and economic beliefs and assumptions that are false or only partially true. So if
we are ever to create a society that is firmly based on the Truth, on the Ground
of Being, then we need to uproot the three pillars of unwisdom and lay down quite
new foundations. This section, which is in five subsections, provides a brief description
of these transcultural and transdisciplinary foundations.
- Economy
- With the death of both
communism and capitalism around the turn of the millennium, we urgently
need to create a new economic system that is in harmony with the fundamental
laws of Nature. As I have said, I call such an economic system the
sharing economy.
This section outlines
why the invention of the programmable computer and the emergence
of the Internet not only give us the opportunity to create the sharing
economy, they positively require us to do so. Whether such a sharing
economy will ever be a practical proposition is still highly uncertain.
For if it is ever to come into being, a substantial proportion of
the population will need to be uplifted by the tidal wave of consciousness
simultaneously. Nevertheless, this uncertainty should not prevent
us attempting to create such a system. If we do not succeed, at
least we shall know that we have done our best.
- Book
- This section describes
the synopsis of the book I have been writing for the past nineteen
years, currently called Returning Home to Wholeness by Starting
Afresh at the Very Beginning. This book describes how to create
a synthesis of all knowledge in all cultures and disciplines at all
times. It thus describes how to create a grand unified theory of everything,
which the physicists have been searching for ever since Einstein posited
a unified field theory.
This book is an expression of the
convergence of some twelve to fifteen billion years of evolution. Its purpose is
to lay down the gnostic, epistemological, ontological, and scientific foundations
for the global culture that will emerge following the death of Western civilization.
You will be able to download draft chapters of this book when they are ready so that
you can read them at your leisure.
- Institute
- The most urgent problem facing the
human race today is the imminent collapse of the global economy. There is, as yet,
no sign of a Carpathia coming to rescue the passengers from the sinking
Titanic because such a ship has not even reached the drawing board, never
mind the shipyard. This is not to disparage the strenuous work being put in by many
individuals and organizations attempting to make running repairs to the Titanic.
But these can have no lasting effect if the design of the ship is fundamentally flawed.
To build such a rescue ship, we need
a minimum of three prerequisites. First, we need participants with first-hand knowledge
of the Divine. Secondly, we need a generally accepted science of humanity that can
provide the necessary understanding for what is happening to the human race today.
For without a common vision, we cannot possibly work harmoniously together. Thirdly,
we need to design and build a sharing economy that is in harmony with the basic design
principles of the Universe.
I intend to set up an institute that
gathers together individuals who can assist with establishing one or more of these
basic prerequisites for the paragonian society. Whether such an institute is a practical
proposition or not is most uncertain at present. It all depends on how many people
with the necessary resources are willing to jump off the Titanic while it
is still afloat. There are already many millions of people struggling to live in
the icy cold waters. But they generally don't have the wherewithal to make really
radical changes to the System. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.
- Related sites
- I include here a list of the Web
sites of some of the other individuals and institutions who are working on the emerging
culture and the uncovering of the innocence of consciousness to some degree or other. Do please let me know if there are other sites that you think
should be included.
- Bibliography
- This section contains a list of
some of the books that have played an important part in my own awakening of consciousness
and intelligence, as far as it has reached today. I include it here because it might
give you a little more information on where I have come from, and perhaps help you
with your own development.
- Guest book
- If you would like to make any comment
on anything at this web site, you are most welcome to do so here. Alternatively,
you might prefer to write to me privately at paulh@algonet.se.
- About me
- This is short description of my
background so that you know a little about where I, as an individual, am coming from.
Home | Vision | Foundations
| Economy | Book | Institute
Related sites | Bibliography
| Guest
book | About me
 Top
|
