Humanity - Universal Spirituality

This section explores various aspects of the human existence, such as our origin and history, our place in the universe, how to make the most of our life here and now, is there life after death, is there a Higher Power and if so, how do we relate to It, and what is our ultimate potential.

Humanity is unique among the creatures on the earth and has a wonderful potential. Presently, however, we are facing a series of grave crises that are threatening the survival of all life on the planet. The article below explores the causes of our dangerous predicament and what can be done to prevent disaster.

Humanity in Dangerous Delusion

Human lifestyles, societies and cultures are influenced by prevailing concepts and ideas. Also, civilizations don’t last forever but, like everything, are impermanent and have a life cycle. They ascend to greatness in a stage of development, remain at a plateau in a period of rigidity, start facing challenges when accepted and established paradigms no longer work, and then decline and die to be replaced by others. Crisis ignites evolution as a new way of thinking becomes necessary. Everything in the universe is in a cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

Our present global civilization is in crisis – in fact multiple crises. Wherever we look, our systems no longer work – be it politics, economics, defence, education, or environment – all have been built on ultimately unsound thinking and wrong values.

Our cultural and personal beliefs are shaped by certain “truth providers” – the commonly accepted information coming to us mainly from parents, teachers, and media. In the West, early in the second millennium C.E., the Catholic Church determined and controlled to a large degree what was to be taught and believed – and there was little scope for creativity and little room for disagreement. This period is known in history as the Dark Ages. It was followed, about 500 years ago, by the so called age of Enlightenment, Renaissance, and the age of science. While humanity threw off the shackles of restrictive religious dogma and suppression of knowledge, it also began to neglect vital values of ethics, morality and the sense of an essential transcendent dimension. Having moved from monotheism to the present scientific materialism, the society gradually substituted the laws of God found in the Bible for “laws of the jungle” since science is not concerned with morality.

The scientific materialism philosophy left us with a number of dangerous misconceptions which have brought us to the brink of disaster. These include:

1. Newtonian Material/Mechanical Model

Only the visible and material is focused on, the belief is that everything arises out of matter. It ignores phenomena such as mind, intuition, life force, and essential archetypes like love, beauty, justice and spirituality. God, spirit and higher values are left to religion – the material is disconnected from spirit.

While this model is still somewhat prevalent – change of paradigms comes very slowly — it is being replaced by the more accurate Quantum model.

Quantum Model

In this model, reality exists on two planes – as waves in the field of potentiality and as manifested particles or objects in the field of actuality. In the field of potentiality, everything is interconnected and communication is instantaneous and without signal. It occurs through consciousness – the vehicle of knowing. Consciousness bridges potentiality and actuality. Matter and mind are both waves of possibility in the field of consciousness. Actuality can be physical as well as mental, emotional and intuitive.

At the foundation, everything is energy or field – spirit or unseen forces that influence and transform matter. We are part of a divine energy field or underlying matrix – a field of consciousness. This is the governing force or agency of matter.

The universe therefore is a great mind/thought rather than a machine. It is mental and spiritual – creating and transforming all that is. On a smaller scale, our mind can also be seen as a field, and thoughts are creating our reality.

Quantum physics parallels psychology and spirituality. The domain of potentiality can be seen as the subconscious and the transcendent respectively, and the domain of actuality or domain of manifestation would correspond to the conscious and the immanent. Three independent discoveries, but they are all talking about the same thing.

2. Evolution and Survival of the Fittest

A century and a half ago, Charles Darwin and science, in a counter-reaction to the biblical teaching of divine creation, bequeathed us with the theory of evolution. According to this model, evolution is a random process – without any purpose. This theory, while now questioned by a sizable number of scientists, is still widely accepted and universally taught even though scientific evidence for it is sorely lacking. Also, with numerous new discoveries since the time of Darwin, it no longer corresponds to reality.

The concept of the survival of the fittest, while somewhat true in nature, is detrimental to human societies. It communicates the notion that life is a struggle, which engenders fear, violence and ultimately war. A winner-loser, or striving against one another, mentality is perpetuated – a constant state of competition, division and animosity.

In truth, evolution is an adaptive process, and nature largely works on the principles of community, cooperation and harmony. Organisms, from the small to the largest, are communities of cells all working together. Love and altruism as well as respecting rather than exploiting nature will need to be the new holistic paradigms embraced by all if humanity is to survive. As our systems are crashing because of wrong beliefs and resultant unskillful practices, the winds of change are also beginning to blow, exhorting us to align with our Source, pursue higher values of love and kindness toward one another, and cooperate together rather than compete against each other.