=kit069.txt

KIT 69 - Global Thinking

            It would be a truism to say that Planet Earth, and we
as the decision-making members of the Planetary population, are
right in the midst of a revolution. For the evolutionary thrust of
which we are the beneficiaries to advance, the status-quo has
inevitably to break down; our concern is whether a radical break-
through will outweigh the break-down, or whether the break-down
will reach a point of no-return. Clearly we and we only have the
answer in our hands. But who are we? I hope I am not making too
judgmental a statement by saying that only a very small portion of
the population of the Planet are prepared to prioritize the
interest of the whole over their greed, failing to see that the
well-being of the whole does reflect upon the living standard of
the individual.

            The troubling increase in crime, violence, vulgarity,
lack of charity, sacrilege, abuse, and the ruthless exploitation
of the environment is an indication that a growing portion of
humanity is in trouble. Moreover we have the bigotry of
fundamentalists; perhaps a large majority of well-meaning people
are still into their thing, not having the foggiest sense of what
the global perspective could possibly mean! We have the
irresponsible population-explosion. On the other hand, we have the
few whose intuition gives them some clues as to what measures we
need to take to avert a catastrophe.

            Paradoxically the very technology we have in our grip
which is destroying the environment could be harnessed to save it.
But it is our way of thinking that is the determining factor, and
more so our values. We have not grown on a parr with the
potentialities that, as the apprentice sorcerer, we have
unleashed. It is really a matter of both consciousness and
conscience. Vested interests have sabotaged technological break-
throughs - there is also simply complacency, habit-forming, and
sectarianism. Sometimes one wonders how things could ever change
for the better. Yet indeed we never cease to be amazed by the
dramatic upheavals in our day and age. This being so, there is
hope.

            The evolutionary forward thrust has not reached its
apogee in homo sapiens such as we are in our day and age. Looking
back gives us some clues as to how we could improve. Clearly
species progress through an increase in the scope of their
consciousness. Whereas the tree is locked in the immediate
environment, the awareness, the thinking of our pioneers amongst
us encompasses the galaxies. Thinking big will get us out of the
rut. Global consciousness: to understand that we are all in this
together; that the well-being of the whole promotes our personal
interest.

            There seem to be two issues: promoting global
awareness and thwarting the abusers. Granted the media have
alerted people throughout the globe of the hazards we are running
into; yet the populations, industries simply go on abusing the
Planet and other people as though they had not been warned. This
cuts right into the political field where it is religious
parochialism that has caused the death of thousands of innocent
people and wreaked havoc on the environment. In many areas,
advocating tolerance in the interest of a global religious vision
would be interpreted as treason. How can we reach a global sense
of the unity of the human family if we cling to our divisions?

            To advance we must not like the wife of Lot look back,
with the risk of being sclerosed by thinking as we did in the
past. It is a positive vision of the way the future could be, the
way we could make the future that will propel us forward.

            "We shall sooner or later have to give up many of our
old habits of thought and adopt new ones: habits that are better
adapted to life in a world that is living in the presence of the
past - and is also living in the presence of the future, and open
to continuing creation."
RUPERT SHELDRAKE

            It takes courage to let go of all that one has built
up over the years without any guarantee that a new light will dawn
upon one's horizon. But we find ourselves sometimes confronted
with the choice between situations which progress gradually like a
bud unfurls, or where things remain at a stand-still or run the
chance of reversing into decay, or again where nature proceeds by
leaps and bounds. There are situations which one cannot change in
their outer circumstances, but will change by one's changing
oneself or by a new way of handling them. In exceptional cases -
perhaps the most meaningful -, there is no slow transition from
one perspective to the other, the transit is sudden. Here lies the
difference between the moment of time where there is an overlap
between past and future and the instant where there is a sudden
and irreversible break of continuity.

"Evolution is the outcome of fluctuations from a state of
equilibrium or near equilibrium."
ILYA PRIGOGINE

            The holistic paradigm has revolutionized science, but
in our commonplace thinking, most people still think as ever
before in categories. If you think holistically, you are not a
fraction of the totality, but a relatively permanent expression of
that totality in its wholeness which is potentially present in
you. Should we apply this way of thinking to our relationship with
the environment, we would not think of it as something one can
exploit without spoiling one's very underpinning from right under
one's feet.

            The revolution in the thinking at the prow of the
evolutionary advance has moreover changed our way of looking at
causality. Instead of the simplistic view, it is now understood
that each wave in the ocean is not simply the result of the
previous one, but the whole ocean rises as each wave and each wave
is introjected back into the ocean and the whole ocean arises as
each new wave. Generalizing, we realize the implications of our
interventions not only in the hardware, but also the software of
the universe. Also we see how intervening in one area of the
psycho-eco-system affects every other. Therefore our free-wheeling
into the future must integrate a greater compass and complexity
than ever before. We need to extrapolate between several vantage
points; by integrating the know-how of creative thinkers,
consciousness at the leading edge is becoming stereoscopic.

            To network with those who are not in the race, we even
need to integrate old ideas into the wider web of new ideas rather
than rejecting the old like a baby being thrown out with the bath-
water. We will even need to extrapolate between thinking in the
reductionist way and the holistic way. We will even need to
account for further dimensions of time in our understanding of
causal inference, for example include a transcendental vector of
time to the simplistic process of becoming, as illustrated in
Jung's 'synchronicity'. We will be learning how to see how the
"everywhere and always" manifests in the forward march of
becoming. If we hoist our vantage point from the commonplace
narrow range in the act of self-transcendence, we will grasp
things in a wider context. This is where some of the skills of
meditation are proving useful to people in our societies.

            "The whole universe has contributed to the way
humanity thinks today, if the Planet had no intelligence, it could
not have intelligent beings on it. The collective working of many
minds as one single idea, and the activity of the whole world in a
certain direction are governed by the intelligence of the Planet."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

            Our way of considering the cosmos, and the planet
Earth in particular, has taken a quantum leap. Instead of looking
at the stars as viewed from planet Earth, we are now able to
imagine how planet Earth looks as viewed from the stars. This has
surreptitiously revolutionized our way of considering our Planet,
which in turn revolutionizes our way of seeing ourselves. We
imagine outer space to be "out there", but has it ever occurred to
you that actually planet Earth is in outer space? It all depends
on how you look at it. Since we can now see our live cells in
powerful microscopes, our whole perception of the fabric of our
body has undergone a dramatic change. Instead of dismissing our
bodies as other than ourselves, we are beginning to honor the
involvement of our innate sense of meaningfulness with the very
fabric of our bodiness.

            In the realm of psychology, by the same token, we
realize that our sense of personal inadequacy or our pessimistic
judgement in our assessment of a situation were due to our mind's
having got entrapped in a way of thinking from which we failed to
see a way out. Yes, one can get trapped in one's thinking and
ascribe the prison to one's fate. The bind is in the mind.

            More than ever more and more people find themselves
willy-nilly enrolled in the inexorable machinery constructed
generation after generations conditioning them and robbing them of
their creativity. At what cost our modern efficiency! People
suffer from the total lack of opportunity to harness their
creative urge as was the case before arts and crafts were replaced
by machined standardization - now computerized.

            Our experiments with political institutions have
proven how crucial freedom is to promote progress - in fact
freedom from conformity generates creativity. On the other hand
there is nothing in the world more abused. We see its consequences
in the decadence, vulgarity, slovenliness and permissiveness of
our modern societies. There is no accounting for taste!

            One could define creativity as the act of exploring
unchartered regions of the mind while grasping a correspondence
between the mental constructs thus gleaned and a form or
configurations or scenarios in the fabric of matter. Creativity is
a congruent conjunction between the timeless and the transient,
the heavenly and the earthly. It is a sudden sense of
meaningfulness that sparks our innovative faculty. What we mean by
our sense of meaningfulness is our mind's ability to click when it
grasps a correspondence between two thoughts which had hitherto
appeared unrelated. To be creative rather than just fanciful,
one's vision needs to click with the possibility of its actual
realization at the existential level.

            "We could say that our action toward the whole
universe is a result of what it means to us . . . In the long run
only those meanings that allow changes that tend to bring about
accord between us and the rest of the universe will be possible."
DAVID BOHM

            The grasp of congruence sparks our being with delight
because it gives us a sense of thinking in sync with the thinking
of the universe and feeling in resonance with the emotion of the
cosmos, and hence makes us aware of our holistic connectiveness
with the totality which we call God, not just at the physical
level but at all levels.
    
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