The Question

What is the foundation for our action in the world? In recent years I’ve questioned whether any action can make a difference. But I still have enough of the political animal left in me to ask the question, and not withdraw from what appears to be a hopeless age.

By “political animal” I don’t necessarily mean one that engages in activism, much less being directly involved in politics. I mean something closer to what Aristotle meant -- that human beings naturally form communities and federations, and organize themselves around notions of what’s good and evil, just and unjust.

The fact that the former US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, writes “Finish Them” on an artillery shell provided to Israel by America, after munitions made in the USA have killed an estimated 15,000 Palestinian children, attests to how wrong Aristotle was in his claim that the formation of the state was the pinnacle of human development.

Israel and America are engaged in flat-out evil. And the goal of evil, which is man-made, is the destruction of the human spirit. Gaza is not only physically bombing and starving Palestinians to death; it is metaphysically bombing and starving us all to death.

Man is a tribalistic creature, not a “political animal that congregates for the common good.” Man makes war on the earth and humanity. Man is dead, but human beings have not emerged.

We live in a world where a state formed from the ashes of genocide is committing genocide with impunity. And President Biden’s “indispensable nation” is utterly complicit. The rule of international law is a total fiction.

Clearly, a psychological revolution in human consciousness as a whole is what’s truly indispensable. But can the revolution in consciousness essential to change the disastrous course of man ignite at this juncture?

If one believes no, then you close out the possibility. But if one believes yes, you also close out the possibility, because it’s unknown, and the question requires tremendous energy and focus. So to answer either way is false.

What does “psychological revolution” mean? It means a transformation deep enough that humans are no longer tribal creatures that identify with particular groups, but emotionally and politically human beings first and last.

Conflict would not be eliminated with a revolution in consciousness that ends tribalism in a sufficient number of human beings, but it would be greatly reduced. Rather than continuing to be hell bent on war and injustice, as man is, a psychological revolution would mean that “the arc of the moral universe” would be a reality rather than an ideal.

Psychological revolution begins within the individual, but it isn’t about individual consciousness. There is no such thing as “my consciousness;” there’s only the consciousness of humankind as it is enfolded within us.

The great paradox is that for the individual to bring about a psychological revolution in human consciousness, he and she have to regularly leave the dark stream of collective consciousness.

That’s why having an inner life of one’s own has become vital. No one can take the journey of liberation for us, or even guide us along its path, because it’s different for every person. We are alone, but not separate.

Self-knowing is our true guide, and all that is necessary. And self-knowing is not a matter of self-knowledge and experience, since it is not accumulative, but begins anew every day.

Methodless meditation, by whatever name, is the crucial inaction for leaving the dark stream of collective consciousness.

The human brain has the capacity to listen without being dominated by the conditioned reactions of the observer and self.

In passively attending to the movement of thought/emotion within oneself in the mirror of nature, the reactions of conditioning and self-centered activity cease, and there’s stillness. And with the stillness of thought there is communion with the holy silence that permeates the universe.

So three things are necessary for psychological revolution to ignite: enough self-knowing human beings doing inner spadework in human consciousness; a general readiness in human consciousness as a whole; and people questioning and igniting insight together, in person and online.

This is not an inquiry among experts or elites, but ordinary human beings, whatever their function in society, people who can hold and follow the thread of a shared question as it unspools into insight.

This is not an inquiry from knowledge, whether scientific, scholarly or indigenous. It begins with a question, arises from the sustained feeling of “I don’t know,” and culminates in shared insight beyond words.

We are talking about igniting a creative explosion that ushers in a new human being and true consciousness at this perilous pass that the living generations find ourselves stuck in.

Psychological revolution means igniting the ‘dark matter’ in human consciousness, which is synonymous with man’s consciousness. That, not a defunct or emerging superpower, is what’s indispensable for ending the rapaciousness of man, and for human beings, wherever they live, to flower in understanding and goodness.

With people in British Columbia, we are beginning an online inquiry into the question: Can the psychological revolution essential to change the disastrous course of man ignite at this juncture? Connect with us.

Martin LeFevre
lefevremartin77@gmail.com

© Scoop Media