Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Homo Novus, Born Again Humans

Posted by Phoenix Aquua . - at 9:06 PM

Written by Andr Gaudreaul

Time To Grow From Capitalism to Humanism

After the work of Copernicus and others had demonstrated that the earth was not the center of the universe
but only a part of a much larger system, the world began to change its vision of reality. The process took
hundreds of years. Today, because humanity has become a dominant influence on earth, we are faced with
another such change: from nature being a convenience for people, to people being a part of nature. The
scope is similar. The practical significance is of far greater consequence than the Copernican revolution but
we have only a generation to complete the change. Mike Nickerson, Change the World I Want to Stay On
Our attempts to understand nature have always been directed towards four main areas of knowledge:
energy, matter, life, and consciousness. Evolution itself has followed the same avenues. Our own evolution
is repeatedly going through a similar process: first we recognize, at different degrees of definition, that
there is energy present in matter, then this matter is organized into objects for our benefit, and finally this
process has the effect of expanding our consciousness. Presently, we are going through one of these phases
that will eventually raise our consciousness to a level never attained before. Our present understanding of
life processes and the uses, excessive in many instances, that we make of matter are setting the stage for
such a necessary step toward a higher level of consciousness.
Since evolution is a dynamic process, it is absolutely necessary to know where we come from if we want to
understand where we are at present and where we are going in the future. It is a matter of momentum.
Today, in all areas of science, a great deal of energy is being expended in the service of discovering where
we stand in natures quartet (i.e., energy, matter, life, and consciousness). Unfortunately, since these
efforts are made by specialists practicing their "art" in solo, they are mainly being employed to maximize the
efficiency of our species' partitions, instead of being applied in concert with Nature in a symphony of life.

Ultimately, play in tunes with nature we will, or suffer dire consequences. The odds are not on our side.
Ninety nine percent of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. It is serious. Our next move will be
decisive. We have reached the point of no return. All our energies will have to be used in conjoint efforts
towards the common goal of survival. Many other species have been confronted with the same predicament,
but none, as far as we know, has ever known beforehand that they could do something about it.
We do.

In this essay, I will attempt to clarify some fundamental fallacies buried in our collective unconscious that
we have committed in the course of our evolution, and which are affecting the perception that we have of
our stance in the symphony of life.
To set the tone, let us look, as an example, at how Francis CrickNoble laureate for his work in the
discovery of the mechanisms of life (genes)is looking at the soul and consciousness from the point of view
of science, in his book, The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994). We must agree with Cricks learned description
of neurophysiology's state of research on these subjects, even if we should not agree with his philosophical
standpoint and with his conclusions. Our disagreement should not be with his beliefs in the urgent need to
step up research on consciousness, but with his beliefs in the way this research should be conducted. From
the start, indeed, he wholeheartedly dismisses philosophy and strongly calls for an escalation of scientific
experiments, because, according to him, the record of science in the search for truth is a lot more
convincing than that of philosophy.
I must say that the record of one is not better than that of the other. All the assertions about truth are
matters of timing and points of view. Indeed, as is the case with our past beliefs, many of
today's "scientific" beliefs eventually will be looked at with contempt by future generations of people, who
will then be in the process of uncovering today's hidden philosophical jewels and posthumously paying
respect to the philosophers among us who are presently treasuring these jewels.
This is the price that true philosophers have to pay to perceive Realitys leading edge.
The sciences are the flowers of our civilization. The sole evolutionary function of flowers beside
the "pleasure"they provide us is to yield fruits, only to fade away and make room for new generations.
Flowers have absolutely nothing to do with the successes or the failures of the fruits that they bear. When
successes happen among seeds, the flowers that were there forerunners have long since disappeared. These
successes and failures have to do with grounds of reality that are alien to flowers.
That today's scientists can be so sure of their philosophical stance and so convinced of their own endurance,
follows from the fact that the last relevant philosophical breakthroughs supporting their beliefs were
opportunistically made, at the beginning of this century, by giants, Einstein, Mach, Plank, De
Broglie, Heisenberg,Bohr, etc, a long time ago in scientific terms. It is also true that other important
breakthroughs outside of science have also been made by professional philosophers during the same period,
but these breakthroughs were always made in accordance with the scientific points of view that were in style
at the time.
That these scientific standpoints could not, and still cannot be drastically criticized, as they should have been
and still should be, is due to the fact that those outside of the specialized sciences lack the knowledge to
differentiate between the "profundity" and the "obscurity" of these standpoints.
Consequently, all the latest breakthroughs in science have been made from academic disciplinary stances
that have the effect of restricting scientists, and all of us with them, to setting a course on the particular
path of realism that we are now condemned to follow for economic reasons, given the many existing social
activities that are following the presently well established trends that modern scientists have convincingly
set for us.
We are, indeed, condemned by science to keep to the beaten track of a limited representation of nature. But
there still remain a possibility for us to realign our minds on other aspects of reality. I believe, along
with Mike Nickerson, who wants to "change the world," that our efforts in cognition have to be drastically
redirected, in much the same manner as they were when Copernicus reorganized the heavens at the dawn
of the scientific era. This overdue revolution in our interpretation of the observations and suppositions that
we are making in and about our microcosm (e.g., quantum mechanics, and string theory), and the discovery
of the new meanings that these observations should have for our every day lives, will be as important and
distressful for science as wereCopernicus' De Revolutionibus and Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius for religion at
the time.
Some are calling for a new Einstein in social science who will create a theory to solve our present existential
problems. I am calling for a change of our point-of-view in the mental realm that will be accepted by
everybody, whether they be lay persons, natural or social scientists, or philosophers and that will have
the potential to transform our concept of reality before it is too late.

The

Alarm

Has

Already

Gone

Off

We must awaken to this new reality that is emerging in our mist and unite our minds in a spirit of
cooperation across all realms of social activities: politics, business, judiciary, academia, religion, art, and
domestic affairs.
It should not matter that from within each of these realms the present situation of the world seems overly
complex. The solutions to our present predicament, if there are solutions to be found, will not come from
within any single realm of activity, but from a point of view encompassing all of them. The infrastructures
needed to achieve together this integration are already being set up in a World Wide Web of information.
This essay is an attempt to lay down stepping-stones amidst the stream of "uncertainties" that Western
civilization encountered at the beginning of the twentieth century, and alongside which humanity has been
drag on aimless pathways of information by normal-science. I intend to show that it is this stream of
uncertainties that the"information superhighway" has to bridge, in order for all of humanity to peacefully
enjoy the openness of the other bank, where we will all be more at ease, in our respective fields, to work at
finding viable solutions to the problems created by our chaotic entry in the Third Millennium
"Our time is a time for crossing barriers, for erasing old categoriesfor probing around. When two
seemingly disparate elements are imaginatively poised, put in opposition in new and unique ways, startling
discoveries often result." Marshall McLuhan, The Medium Is the Message
". . . who will have the responsibility for lifting us out of the social and ecological morass into which we are
inexorably driving ourselves[?]" Noam Chomsky
The reason we are driving ourselves into an evolutionary morass is that we have indeed let the ultimate
medium, ourselves, become the message. We have thus created an environment of knowledge, in which we
have evolved as contented prisoners of a four-dimensional reality that we perceive from our limited point of
view.
It has become our common responsibility to liberate ourselves from this intellectual and emotional
confinement. Once we set ourselves free, we will have the opportunity to explore new dimensions of reality,
while still using, at the outset, the mental tools that we have perfected with the meager resources that we
had at our disposal during the relatively short period of our sapiens incarceration (In a philosophical cave).
But, before we make any significant move as a species, a new sense of direction will have to be given to
humanity as a whole.
Who will accomplish this task? Scientists? I doubt it. They are too respectful of the established rules.
Philosophers? Please! They are still prisoners of Platos cave. Politicians? Good grief! These days, the term
elected leaders has become oxymoron. Financiers? My Lord! I implore you, dont let it ever happen.
Businessmen? Well, maybe! If there is money to be made out there, that is where theyll be.
To attempt such a move, though, is not the business of any of these people. If we are entering "the outer
edges of reality," we need concepts that are at the outer edges of science, philosophy, politics and religion.
We need ideas that havent been tried yet. So, by definition, none of the members of the previously
mentioned establishments can go there before these concepts have been established.
It is not that our institutions will have to be relinquished. Not at all. In these outer edges of reality, all of our
social institutions [e.g., military institutions] will become objective entities that we will have to use for the
betterment of humanity as a whole as our ancestors learned to use sticks and stones for their own survival,
when they first grew out of their instinctive state of mind and evolved into the self-centered gender Homo
that we have become.
Since the time has come for us to consciously go forward in evolution, the onus is on us to understand the
supramental reality that is opening itself up at the outer edges of our mental confinement, and which will
become our next theater of operations. (The term "supramental" was coined by Sri Aurobindo, I believe, and
Satprem used it in La genese du surhomme / Essais dvolution experimental. Buchet/Chastel, 1974. )
For this, we will need a new paradigm again, made of trials and errors. This time, though, it will be
somewhat easier, since we will have a collective memory of the mistakes that we made as sapiens. But,
even then, this new paradigm will still be "incommensurable" (it will have nothing to do) with the one we are
presently using to make sense of our sapiens perspectives.

We have become used to thinking we know what we are talking about. The truth is, we simply dont know.
At the "End of History," we are like newborns: we have all the potential, but we still have to raise ourselves
in a new environment, as Homo novus.
We should not worry. From now on, everything will be okay. I believe that the worst of this rebirth process
is behind us. As a pregnant species, indeed, we have suffered all the pain that we can endure, and spilt all
the blood that we can afford. We need to set ourselves free from our own womb and take our first breath in
this dimension that is opening up in front of us. Our first moment of rebirth will not exhibit itself as a burst
of tears, as it does when we transit alone, as individuals, from unconsciousness to consciousness, but
conversely, as a collective burst of laughter, once we have finally entered the supramental stage of our
development, as a new species.
The process has already begun. We are presently going through a human paradigm shift, which will have
the same significance for everybody in all realms of societies: for academics and common law prisoners, for
drug dealers and politicians, for Palestinians and Jews, for Christians and Muslims, for atheists and believers,
and for lay people in general to scientists in particular. The process of cultural differentiation through which
we had to go during our common gestatory past as sapiens foetus will no longer matter. Nobody will be
excluded. This collective achievement will be a rebirth for all of us. The era into which we are entering must
be an era of global understanding and forgiveness, or there will be no new era. We will have become a
stillborn species. . . .
Many of us know intuitively that such a momentous change is happening. The media is thriving on it.
Presently there is an ad on TV for a well-known insurance company, telling us that "nothing remains
constant, but change itself." Welcome aboard! This is a nice way to remind us that we are alive. This slogan
is indeed a decent interpretation of homeostasis, the most fundamental principle of life, defined as the
tendency of biological systems to maintain an internal state of equilibrium in response to the changes in the
environment.
This tendency to homeostasis is indeed present in all living systems, from individual cells to organisms to
the biosphere as a whole. The process is dynamic and universal. In the domain of life, changes happen
constantly. Each level of organization has both a direct and an indirect influence on the state of equilibrium
of all the other levels, from within cells to the biosphere as a whole.
What is important, here, is not solely that each level of organization has a tendency to maintain internal
equilibrium, but the fact that, in order for this dynamic equilibrium to be maintained, there must be
communication between all adjacent levels of organization. When there is a lack of communication between
levels, diseases occur. As an example, some researchers have found that the reason cancerous cells multiply
themselves anarchically may be due to the fact that signals for their divisions are not coming from outside
the cells, as they usually do in normal cells, but from inside the cancerous cells. This has the consequence of
producing an uncontrolled growth of cells (cancer), having no relation to the functions normally carried out
by these cells in the organ that constitutes their environment.
If the biosphere is effectively a living organism, as I believe it is, then it is obvious that human individuals
are behaving like cancerous cells. This is the problem. The biosphere is suffering from a collective brain
tumor, a cancer only interested in its own growth. If this is the case, then the only rational thing to do at the
moment is to find ways for us to go into remission. The present essay is an attempt to show the world that
such a remission is possible; and that, if it happens, it will be exquisite in ways that cannot be foreseen.
"... populations and organisms are quite different kinds of systems with different kinds of structure. To
speak of them as sharing a common attribute [cancer, in our case] is to obscure what should be kept
clear." ~ T. A. Goudge
Goudge is basing this assertion on the differentiation that he previously made between the concepts of
organism and population, in the section Populations as the units of evolution in his book, The Ascent of
Life:
"[Many] considerations are relevant to the contention that both individual organisms and populations have a
structure. If this term is understood in a general sense to refer to the fact that in both cases we can
distinguish a set of parts having a certain spatial arrangement and certain modes of functional correlation
with each other, then the contention is no doubt defensible. But such a general approach fails to take
account of the important respects in which the two cases differ. Thus, for example, the parts (cells, tissues,
organs, etc.) which enter into the structure of a multicellular plant or animal are so intimately co-ordinated
that as a rule they are in direct organic continuity with one another. But the structure of a population is not
usually characterized by the organic continuity of its parts (the individuals that compose it). Furthermore,
the functioning of the parts of a plant or animal structure is directed toward maintaining a state of relative
equilibrium
within
the
organism
as
a
whole
or
between
the
organism
and
its

environment [homeostasis]. The behaviour of individuals in a population, however, is not ordinarily directed
towards preserving its equilibrium."
But, during the next decade, at the same university, the University of Toronto, Marshall McLuhan was
visualizing the effects of the oncoming World Wide Web on the world population in these terms:
"Electric circuitry involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and
continuously. As soon as information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information. Our
electrically-configured world has forced us to move from habit of data classification to the mode of pattern
recognition. We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step, because instant communication
insures that all factors of the environment and of experience coexist in a state of active interplay."
We can see that these two thinkers, Goudge and McLuhan, did not agree. The first was telling us that there
is no direct "organic continuity" in populations of individuals, and the second that human
populations "coexist in a state of active interplay." Both support my hypothesis, though, that Homo sapiens
is giving birth to or is evolving into a new species, Homo novus. Goudge was talking about human
populations prior to the advent of the Internet, McLuhan, about the effects that these nascent channels of
communications would have on the behavior of human populations. They both were talking about the
possibility of the human population being a supraorganism. The first did not believe that we could, simply
because, at the time he wrote this, we were not yet one. And the second, without mentioning that we are
effectively one, was describing the emerging web of communications between humans, using the same
terms that he would have used to describe a living organism in which "all factors of [their]environment and
of [their] experience coexist in a state of active interplay." (M. McLuhan, op.cit.)
If we belong to a species that is a living organism, we must prepare our youth to act as individuals
belonging to a living organism, by directing their behaviour "toward maintaining a state of relative
equilibrium within [society] as a whole [and] between [society] and its environment" (T. A. Goudge, op.cit).
We must stop preparing our youth to become part of a viral economy, obsessed by its own growth, at the
expense of everything it can invade, just as our financial and political leaders are presently doing with their
lustful, selfish, and environmentally pointless investment schemes and their lingering and transparent war
peddling.
"The aim of science is to understand and explain the evolution of natural phenomena by studying the
relations which exist between them." ~ Pierre Lecomte du Noy
At this point I do not expect anybody to understand, from my perspective, the relationship that exists
between the stock market and military activities. Many people understand these relationships, but they do it
from inside the system, from the point of view of "progress." I do not. My intention is to later explain these
relationships as I see them from outside the system, from the point of view of evolution. It will not be easy.
No terms are readily available to explain what I mean. All the terms that I can use have obsolescent
progressive connotations. I am not interested in progress especially when I realize where it is leading us.
Evolution is the antithesis of progress. I have to forge my sentences in the teeth of progressive conformists,
our leaders, from the left as much as from the right, who are making a living leading humanity towards the
edge of the deadly cliff.
While the other animals are aware of and adapt to the immediate environment in which they live, they are
not aware of the global environment in which they evolve. Everything they perceive (prey, offspring, refuge,
etc.) exists as an extension of themselves; the global environment in which they evolve is "invisible" to
them : e.g., fish are not aware of the sea in which they swim nor lions of the savannah in which they hunt.
The same is true for us: the four dimensions in which we exist is also an extension of ourselves. During our
own evolution as a species, we have always been aware of the local environment in which we were
progressing, but we never had any clues about the global environment in which we were and still are
evolving. We progress within existing paradigms, but evolve into new ones allowing us to eventually expose
other levels of reality.
To show this, let us look at some paradigm shifts that happened during our mental progression as Homo.
During our journey into the mental world we have been in contact with many different environments. Of
course, we have always been part of the same universe, but we have understood it at different levels, using
different paradigms.
It all started when we understood that we could use sticks and stones to manage our way through life as a
group. The great apes were also using tools probably the same that they are using now. The difference
between them and us resided in the fact that we abstracted the meaning that these "tools" had for us as a
group, while apes never did. Tools thus became entities that we could use mentally to collectively plan
ahead. It is at this point that we started our journey into the mental dimension of reality, into the "abstract

domain." (Monod) From then on, we gained the capacity to "objectify" reality and use it for our own
purposes. At first, it was in caves around fires, then around chiefs and elders. By then, we knew a lot about
nature, but certainly we were not yet aware of it as an objective entity. We were still like fish in the water,
not yet able to objectify such an encompassing entity. There was still a lot of mysticism surrounding the
global environment in which we were living. It was only much later, from 5,000 to 10,000 years ago, around
the time of the agricultural revolution that we would have become aware of the earth, per se. Paradoxically,
it was probably only after we needed to observe the heavens to make out the times of planting and
harvesting that we gained the mental capacity to objectify the earth. Even then, it was not the earth as we
know it now. It was perceived to be flat and supported by turtles swimming in the sea surrounding us. Even
then, we were probably not consciously differentiating between the heavens and the earth. It was only later
that we came to understand that there was a heaven above, and that it was of "another nature" than the
earth on which we live. By then, the earth became round, for some of us at least, but still fixed at the center
of the universe. It was only 500 years ago that we finally understood that the earth was spinning on its axis
once a day and revolving around the sun once a year. But we still did not have the same notion of the
universe that we now have. Only later, did we finally begin to understand that our galaxy itself was just an
atom in the immensity of the universe.
It probably did not happen this way. Our mental development must have been intermittent, with much
starting and stopping. The fact is, though, that our understanding of nature was not given to us from the
start, but by every step forward that we made in knowledge, via paradigm shifts, which transformed us as a
species and gave us new opportunities as individuals. It is such a momentous step forward that I believe we
as a species are presently making.
To understand what is happening now, let us look at the last observable step in our understanding of nature
that we made as a species: the Copernican revolution, when we "shifted" from the "geocentric" paradigm
(the earth fixed at the center of the universe) to the "heliocentric" paradigm (the earth revolving around the
sun). Before Copernicus, we were all raised with the belief that the earth was fixed at the centre of the
universe. This belief was not formulated as such, it was simply obvious that the earth itself does not move
but that the sun travels daily from east to west. To explain these phenomena, and the others that we were
observing in the heavens from this point of view, we had to invent many concepts:
* The world was divided into two different realms of reality: the heavens above, ruled by a perfect order,
and the earth below, the sphere of imperfection;
* The notion of perfect circular motion was used to explain the diurnal motion of the sun and the annual
motion of the fixed stars;
* To explain the fact that the stars and the planets were not falling on earth, which was the natural thing for
all objects heavier than air and fire to do, we invented the notion of crystalline spheres organized in different
levels, on which the "fixed stars, the "wandering" planets, the sun and the moon were attached;
* Epicycles (small circles centred on the circumference of larger circles) were used to explain the apparent
retrograde motion of the "wanderers" (the planets);
* Other ad hoc concepts, which we do not need to understand anymore, such as deferent, equant and prime
mover, were also used.
By the time the Copernican system was perfected at the end of the 17th century, all these concepts had
become obsolete; we did not need them anymore to explain the phenomena that we were observing in
heaven. It did not come easy. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome, in 1600, for having
anticipated the modern conception of the universe, i.e., the sun is a star, seen closely, and Venus, Mars, and
Jupiter are planets like the earth, seen from afar, and to have "exposed the philosophical implications of the
Copernican theory." (Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopaedia, in Micro Softs INFOPEDIA) The church and the secular
establishments did not accept that, since their members were grounding their power on the belief that they
were at the centre of it-all. But, after they all died, the truth, as usual, triumphed.
The same is true today. The shift in our thinking that needs to be accomplished at the moment, though,
does not have anything to do with the revolution of the heavenly bodies nor with our understanding of the
elementary particles of matter, or with our knowledge of nature, but with the evolution of our worldly
behaviour through time with the knowledge of our own evolving nature.
We also look at our nature as if it is "fixed" in time. We hear it all the time:
" It is human nature"
"Human nature does not change"

"We cannot change our nature."

But is it true? If we define a species in relation to the environment in which it lives, are we the same now as
we were when we thought that the earth was flat? Ho! It is true that Genghis Khan probably thought that
the earth was flat, and that this did not stop him from being as violent as we can be today. It is also true,
though, that he did not have the same opportunities that we have today, because he lacked the present
environment of knowledge. He was living in the same objective environment as the one in which we live
today, but his mind was shaped by an environment of knowledge totally different from the one in which we
are raised as modern-day human beings. At any rate, I contend that our intra-species violence is not the
consequence of our nature, but of our ignorance, as we will later see.
What would happen if one day soon we discovered that there is a reality beyond space and time that we can
collectively apprehend and use to our benefit? Will it be as when we first entered the spatiotemporal
reality in which we live presently, and understood that we could use "sticks and stones," at first to "break
bones," and then to eventually go around the world in 90 minutes? Would it not be the beginning of a new
era, as it was when we first transcended our biological nature and unconsciously started our rational
progression into human nature? This new era has already been recognized by some of us. Satprem,
following Sri Aurobindo, has already mentioned inLa Genese du Surhomme that humanity is evolving into
a "super species," and that our descendants will be as different from us as we are from the great apes from
which we descended. We are presently entering the supramental realm of reality in which, I am sure, we will
regain consciousness of the aspects of the environment that were lost in the process of our becoming
conscious human beings, but which are still perceived by the other animals. (cf. Rupert Sheldrakes work).
It is at this point that I usually perceive empty eyes, and I hear the dismissive comment
from "scientists" that this is "mystical." This remark, at this point of my reflection, always sends me back
10,000 years, to when we still believed that the earth was supported by turtles. It is not mysticism any
more than it is normal science! Mysticism is the antithesis of science: mystics firmly believe in what they do
not see but can spiritually experience; while scientists systematically doubt everything they see, even if they
can experience it rationally. Both camps are in possession of a complementary aspect of the truth. As with
quantum mechanics complementary, each of these aspects of knowledge entails the other. Neither mystics
nor scientists, on their own, can come close to what truly is. The next level of truth will be found in a
synthesis of these two types of cognition: spiritual and rational. We will come back to this aspect later. For
now, let us look at the evidence that supports the hypothesis that we are on the verge of becoming a new
species.[source]
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Labels: Awakening, Awareness, Born Again Humans, Capitalism, Consciousness, Earth, Evolution, Homo
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