Jewish
Falling to Reality
by:
David S. Devor
The "Fall of Man" is a widespread religious and spiritual
doctrine of key importance for understanding the human condition.
I'll not elaborate on this doctrine other than to say that our
capacity for direct knowledge (awareness) of reality has been
degrading for millennia. What has increased, in parallel with
this fall, is our technical mastery of matter which presently
involves a highly restricted, ersatz and superficial kind of knowledge
that rarely amounts to more than knowledge "about."
Still, while the great thrust and potential for revealing knowledge
that we presently call "science and technology" must
definitely be examined in a new light, the promise of science
must not be underestimated.
We have fallen through a multitude of spiritual, psychological
and social forms of pollution on the way to reaching the ultimate
one now facing us - inescapable, stinking, choking and poisoning,
physical, environmental pollution. The cosmos is no longer content
to guide our development by means of hints, suggestions and commandments.
Instead, it now rubs our noses in the very stuff that, all along,
through default and ignorance, we've been avoiding spiritual confrontation
with - matter. Our current way of conducting science is symptomatic
of this evasion.
A new sense of urgency is clearly called for but it is not the
conventional, garden variety of activism represented by contemporary
notions of "stewardship," "environmentalism"
and "conservation" that we need. In the face of the
irresistible expansion of knowledge, technology, population and
consumption, these sometimes noble and often inept efforts can
and must never amount to more than a drop in the ocean. In all
modalities, from the physical through the spiritual, the cessation
of growth, even under the seductive pretext of "sustainability,"
spells stagnation and death. Human expansion, on all levels, must
be transformed not repressed.
Our redemption from the fast-approaching, multi-fronted and multi-faceted
threats of oblivion will materialize only when our cerebral knowledge
"about" our world is transformed into direct knowledge
"of" our world. This, with luck, will be realized by
a few who will pioneer what T.Kun, in his book, PROJECT MIND,
calls "Accelerated Thought." This term refers to a form
of creative vision whereby mere "sparks" of inspiration,
popularly known as moments of "Eureka," will give way
to a more sustained illumination, a connection with what some
call the "transcendent" and others call "imminent"
reality or simply "the unknown." The upshot of this
transition will be a far more holistic science, one that will
improve the blessing/curse ratio that comes from the fragmented
vision inherent in current standards of creativity within science,
engineering and industry.
Lastly, this transformation, embracing all of humanity, can materialize
in the coming decades rather than in the centuries, millennia
and eons as some predict or as seems to be required by classical,
Darwinian evolution. What we are looking at here is not evolution
but metamorphosis. Our potential is fully formed. In our essence,
we are already evolved but just don't know it. This already existing
but heavily encrusted essence-potential must be given the unique
conditions needed for its fecundation and unfolding - the conditions
envisioned in PROJECT MIND. |
