A Diagnosis And Prescription For The Polycrisis

There’s a lot of talk these days about a “polycrisis,” the convergence of the crises of climate/extinction with migration, nationalism, right-wing extremism, militarism, etc. Does the chat indicate that the multifaceted planetary crisis is being met? No.

A revolution in consciousness is essential. It refers to a radically different way of perceiving and being in nature and the world. It does not refer to the knowledge neuroscientists are gaining into the material basis and mechanics of mental processes.

The darkening of man’s consciousness is increasing exponentially. That’s because the fundamental assumption at the core of what we think of as consciousness—symbolic thought and the center it constructs as the self—remains unchallenged and unexamined. Self-knowing continues to be rare.

As the crisis of consciousness intensifies, some commentators are reviving the old Freudian division of the conscious and unconscious minds. That truism certainly won’t provide a light at the end of the infinitely regressing tunnel we find ourselves in.

The unconscious level is no more important or intelligent than the conscious mind. It’s the storehouse of unexamined experiences and unfelt emotions, not the source of insight and understanding. In short, the unconscious is the repository of unexamined conditioning, and psychological conditioning is never intelligent.

Thus the unconscious level is the active dimension of the past in the individual or a group. Without self-knowing, we act out of it, and become conduits for the darkness of collective consciousness.

Dispensing with the needless distinction between the conscious and unconscious levels, and without creating another duality, we can make a clear distinction between two orders of consciousness. Then we can give a clear and coherent meaning to a revolution in consciousness.

There is the consciousness we generally experience, based on memory, words, images and associations. With the quieting of that consciousness, even momentarily (which involves the cessation of thought/time), there is another consciousness, which is whole and timeless, flowing from awareness and insight.

In other words, the human brain, dominated by thought, generates the consciousness we know, which has produced the intensifying “polycrisis.” But there is another kind of consciousness altogether, which awakens in the brain when thought yields to attention and falls silent, and is immeasurably greater than thought-consciousness.

So what we call consciousness is actually a partial consciousness based on thought, which blocks and precludes true consciousness and has created the polycrisis. That partial consciousness once contained the richness of myth and tradition, but they have disintegrated, leaving the chaos of thought without the coherence of meaning.

What ends the movement and momentum of darkness within us, and awakens the consciousness of the cosmos in the human being?

There is no method, just the negation of psychological memory and experience in the act of undivided, unwilled attention in the mirror of nature. Allowing the space and giving the priority in one’s life for passive awareness to gather non-directed, all-inclusive attention is the action that creates a profound shift in consciousness.

The action of spontaneous, undirected attention quiets and cleanses the brain of its useless, accumulated content, allowing the mind to fall silent and participate in the consciousness of the cosmos.

To my mind, that is the true meaning of meditation, which entails the ending of thought and psychological time (aka becoming). For millennia people have tried every trick and technique to achieve a deeply quiet mind, but methods and systems are just more devices of thought. The silence they produce is a specious one, a form of self-hypnosis.

Thought-based consciousness has accumulated enormous harmful content over the centuries, eventually producing the multifaceted crisis that everyone on Earth is swept up in today. The situation we find ourselves in is exactly the opposite of Teilhard de Chardin’s progressive evolution toward an “Omega Point.”

Can the dark matter of thought-consciousness ignite, allowing true consciousness to emerge? What would an actual revolution in consciousness (which has nothing to do with scientific knowledge or AI) look like?

There have been two great creative explosions since the beginning of civilization. They produced the former difference between the East and West.

The Greek explosion was primarily intellectual and materialistic, emphasizing the rational mind at the expense of the emotional and spiritual dimension in the human being.

The other creative explosion occurred in India at the time of the Buddha. Its last flickers have been snuffed out by globalized materialism and capitalism. It was deeply inward and spiritual in nature. Though regional, it’s the only precedent for the revolution in consciousness essential to the survival and flowering of humanity.

This is perhaps why Buddhism has such appeal in the collapsing West. But Buddhism has become an encrusted tradition as well, and so lost its insight and perfume. Besides, tradition itself is dead, and is now a tremendous impediment to a revolution in consciousness.

Humankind is in the thrall of thought-based consciousness. We will soon be intellectually surpassed by so-called Artificial Intelligence, which can be no more intelligent than we are.

Is the increasing pressure of man’s fragmentation of the Earth and Humanity through the unintelligent use of “higher thought” driving us toward revolution in consciousness?

Don’t hold your breath, but work for it, not in terms of your vaunted self, but by bringing about a radical change in consciousness within.

Martin LeFevre: lefevremartin77@gmail

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