Falling to Reality

by: David S. Devor
Project Mind Foundation

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.