Content-Consciousness Is The Impediment To Cosmic Consciousness

There is a tremendous paradox in evolution. It took billions of years to evolve a brain with the capacity for conscious awareness of the sacredness within nature and the universe, but employing time prevents the realization of that potential within us.

The first thing we have to admit is that consciousness is not “evolving.” Consciousness as we know it cannot evolve; it can only accumulate. And by subconsciously accumulating experience, content-consciousness has darkened the human mind to the point of threatening to spiritually suffocate the human heart.

Except for the triumphs of science and the toys of technology, man is declining as rapidly as the climate and biosphere. Increasingly disconnected from nature, the accretions of the past are eroding what it has meant to be human since time immemorial.

Though avoidance and denial still rule, man is in the process of throwing the climate completely out of whack and wiping out half the animals with which we share the earth. We are on the brink of a nuclear arms race that will make us nostalgic for the Cold War. And famine, disease, and terror, already at untenable levels, are poised to exponentially increase.

A leap of consciousness is required to preserve what is left of the richness of ecological diversity, and to enable the next generations to grow into harmonious human beings.

Though that appears unlikely at this point in human history, the worse things get, and the more self-destructive man’s self-made global society becomes, the clearer the imperative for radical change in consciousness. Otherwise, the man-made momentum of self-interest, division and fragmentation will continue to increase and overwhelm even the best policies and plans.

A sentient species is one that is conscious that it’s conscious. Humans are probably the only sentient animals on earth, though other species, such as chimps or dolphins, seem to be capable of self-awareness in a rudimentary form. With sentience also comes the capacity for self-knowing and transcendence. Humans are the only animals on earth with that potential, the realization of which has now become vital to our survival as a species.

The human brain is dominated by the functions of symbolic thought. That is, we live by words, images, beliefs, traditions and opinions—in short, our inherently fragmentary conditioning and socialization. A self-knowing human being, on the other hand, is no longer dominated by his or her conditioning, and is therefore moving in the direction of insight and liberation.

At bottom, symbolic thought rests on separation, which is its fundamental attribute. There are no ‘things’ in actuality, and without conscious thought, there can be no complex manipulations and recombinations of what we separatively call “resources.”

Conscious, symbolic thought is the most powerful adaptation that has ever emerged on earth. It is so powerful that it is impossible to believe that it could only have only arisen on this planet.

It’s man’s hubris to think that there aren’t other sentient species that have successfully or unsuccessfully passed through the same crisis of consciousness that we humans, using “higher thought,” have generated on the earth.

Used unwisely, as it most certainly is by humans, symbolic thought becomes inimical to life. Thought has generated an increasing existential crisis for the species in which it has evolved on earth. Artificial Intelligence, which is actually artificial thought, cannot bring us out of it; indeed it’s bringing the crisis of content-consciousness to a head.

Ultimately, the evolution of symbolic thought is a crucible for true consciousness. We have no choice but to awaken insight and free ourselves from content-consciousness.

Science is thought at its best, while technology has become thought at its worst. AI is already being used to enhance murder in war and replace human relationships. And purblind humans insist that our salvation lies in the complete merging of our brains with it!

A true balance of the religious and scientific minds is not in some fantasy of harmony between science and organized religion. It means recognizing the achievements and importance of science, but giving primacy to self-knowing and a silent mind, not through any method or system, but through passive awareness and attention.

The human brain is the “pinnacle of creation” creation on earth, but the evolutionary threshold that gave us the potential for cosmic consciousness is also the greatest impediment to complete awareness – symbolic thought. However by completely quieting thought and ending psychological time in choiceless attention in the mirror of nature, the brain’s capacity to commune with the cosmic mind is awakened.

Every human being has the capacity to feel the silence and sacredness that permeate the universe. That’s the true foundation we must continually pour within ourselves, so that we can build a world that begins to be in harmony with the earth and each other.

Martin LeFevre

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