A Brief Story of Humanity

The story of human life has expanded dramatically after its long and gradual journey of approximately 150 000 years. From the acquisition of syntax in language some 70,000 years ago and the formation of cave drawings 30,000 years ago, to suggest some form of symbolic drawings of various meanings, the story suggests that humanity was steadily advancing in mind. Finally, homo sapiens reached the formation of a somewhat civilized society around the great Egyptian water basins approximately 6000 years ago. This was soon followed by civilizations around the Euphrates and Tigris and the far eastern region of the Ganges. The great story of the emergence of Humanity had arrived.

For several thousand years societies grew in various corners of the world, firstly as nomadic wanders, eventually to settle as tillers of the land, and then as urban city dwellers. The mind accompanied the gradual transition in lifestyle from conveyors of myth until Jaspers describes the transformation to the predominance of the mental rational era. From 800 to 300 BC. the Buddha, Confucius, Old Testament prophets, and Greek philosophers all emerged to speak of human life in new ways. The notion of love was introduced into each society and recorded in the great statement of the golden rule, ‘to love your neighbour as yourself.’ Jaspers spoke of this as the First Axial Period of History in which life was now beginning to be spoken of in rational terms. For over two thousand years ever so gradually the rational dominated life and developed to eventually reach the heights of the Enlightenment period. The wonderful world as we know it had been built on the extraordinary capacity of the mental rational era.

Ever since the 19th century, a change has been taking place. The advance in quantum mechanics has changed the way life is understood, not just in the field of science but spreading over into the domain of psychology, the social sciences, and business, to name just a few areas of learning. This new transition is spoken of as the Second Axial Period of History. Time is believed to be transitioning into the Integral era whereby everything is perceived as interrelated. As the mental–rational era passes so the new integral emerges. Jean Gebser and Ken Wilber are leading proponents of this view.

The integral era is unique in that it does not successively move from one era to the next; the magic, the mythic, and the mental rational. Instead, it is a blend of each of the past eras. It incorporates magic, the mythic, and the mental rational as one. It displays a capacity to see life from any one of these perspectives but without losing sight of the totality of all functioning as one. In other words, the whole is seen as an accumulation of the totality of the combined display as an interrelated unity. This is why Jaspers refers to the change as the Second Axial Period of History. It is a completely new way of reading life. The many perspectives all functioning cooperatively as one, add a new dimension to reality. It is an integral world.

The chief characteristic of this new world is that life has moved into one of a non-dual perspective. Everything is perceived as working co-operatively as one. The mental-rational world was characterised by the ability to divide and analyse all reality. This was the dualistic world that had brought humanity to the wonderful state of the extraordinarily complex world we live within. But the time had come when the mental rational perspective could no longer advance history beyond which it had achieved its great successes. A new world, when it was time to explore the need to work as one, appeared. Climate change is a global issue but so are many other concerns. Geo-political relations are paramount, and food distribution and the world economy are vital to be seen as working together as one. These are examples of the non-dual world, a world in which all cooperate as one.

A NEW NARRATIVE

The mental rational perception gradually developed to dominate the narrative of life for the past two millennia reaching its peak in the 19th century. This was supported by the advance in brain science that identified brain activity with the neurons sending signals across tiny gaps between them, in turn spreading electrical messages across vast networks to make the brain work. Consequently, the conclusion reached was that all prior functions of the brain, ie. the mythological function, were false determinants of truth. The sole arbiter of truth was determined by reason and came solely from the function of the brain. The big questions of life were determined by mathematical equations.

This reductionist philosophy has latterly been brought under question by the latest advances in integral capacities. For example, Wilber argues that knowledge can be determined as reliable by surveying opinion. Surveys can be regarded as scientific, just differently collated. This means that experiential knowledge or intuitive knowledge must be taken seriously. The field of developmental psychology is an important example. Wilber has charted over one hundred maps of the progressive steps various scholars have described outlining the progressive steps that humans are presumed to traverse through the journey of life. While there are variations depending on the field being described, there is common uniformity across the board. Of note is the exploration of the domains of knowledge, particularly coming from the Asian cultures, articulating the domains of highest consciousness. These are particularly spoken of as intuitive domains verified by the number of witnesses. The model that affirms such a theory coming from the western world is that of Carl Gustav Jung. His model of personality speaks of the persona and ego and the shadow. The shadow consists of the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The domain of greatest unity is the self archetype, that which comes closest to speaking of the divine. What is the vital point to note is that the collective unconscious and self archetype are arguably not functionaries of the brain as we know it. That is, they are not attached to the individual brain cells of an individual person. They are the operation of the collective mind, often referred to as the oversoul or Gaia. This remains a mystery of the mind but is the foundation of integral perception.

The argument that the whole of creation began with the big bang, that the story of evolution is one of limited capacity restricted to brain cell functioning needs to be questioned. The mind is proving to be far more extensive than previously thought. The arguments presented by Vincent Bedogne that the real story is one of the evolution of consciousness, and that mind is primary over matter is arguably worthy of serious consideration.