Emerging Paradigms in Consciousness

Lunar module pilot and navy Captain Edgar Mitchell ScD (PhD in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT) ventured into space in January 1969 as a part of the crew of the Apollo 14 mission to the moon.  Seeing Earth from the perspective of deep space, Edgar saw a lush oasis of life surrounded by the hostility of a cold velvety black emptiness of space. He saw no country boundaries carved on the Earth’s surface.  He saw one earth, one atmosphere, one body of water, one pool of finite resources;  the entirety of it shared by all life on the Earth.  He also saw what looked like cancers spreading across the face of the globe and in its atmosphere. – population growth out of control, pollution, wars, famine, poverty, pestilence, environmental degradation, weather extremes, extinctions and resource depletion.  From space he recognized in a very visceral way that the Earth was our only home; that we are all part of the Earth, and that we evolved from one interconnected planetary ecosystem.

Once back on Earth, on reflecting on his trip in space, Mitchell realized that every living creature on Earth has always operated mostly by pure subjective awareness (raw experience) and is driven by evolution to live and to survive primarily by instinct (archetypical behaviors).  As a result, all life on Earth has always existed in harmony and maintained a natural balance with Nature; that is, all except for humanity.

 
Around 30,000 years ago humankind began to utilize the higher-level of conscious processes of symbolic thinking, of language, of memory and of self-reflection to re-represent experience) – We used the memories of our experiences to evaluate and analyze our past actions as well as planning for our future.  With these meta-conscious abilities, we formed myths about the Earth’s creation, speculated about how Nature worked, invented technologies and have been refining all these ever since.  We began to prosper and flourish around the globe.  However, when we began doing all these things, in our ignorance, we also began breaking the harmony and sustainability of the planet that had endured since its origins.

The way we perceive and interpret the world - through our sensory mechanisms and our endogenous mental processes (thoughts, emotions, intuitions, etc.) – all are integral parts of our conscious experience.  Everything we have ever experienced is stored as our memories (although we sometimes may have trouble recalling them without the proper cognitive associations). Intuitively, we know that our memories and knowledge of the world are incomplete and filled with errors and assumptions caused by our limited perceptual abilities, inadequate and imperfect knowledge, archaic beliefs, and cultural and societal conditioning. 

We do not understand nor have the perceptual nor cognitive abilities to perceive or experience reality (Nature) as it actually is but that we have become very proficient at modeling it to predict how it will behave.  That’s what science is all about.  Our models are not 100% accurate, they don’t have to be,  but many are accurate enough to put a man of the moon (with a few mid-course corrections along the way).  But models are not the territory, they are just maps of how Nature behaves.  These models have allowed us to predict and even control may aspects of Nature.  Unfortunately, modeling can also lead to false or only partially valid assumptions and beliefs by taking them too literally.  These misunderstandings and convenient fictions often turn into biases, and misinterpretations.  When that happens, we begin to favor information that confirms our preexisting notions and ignore those which don’t.

Mitchell often quoted Einstein "on solving problems with a different kind of thinking than that which created those problems to begin with" – as a part of our desired conscious behavior.  The key to knowledge, wisdom and true understanding is about more than just gathering evidence and using logic and  reasoning to make inferences about Nature.  It is also about questioning long held assumptions and beliefs, using insightful intuition, about being open-minded and about being willing to change perspectives.  It is also about experiencing and not just intellectualizing or assuming the veracity of old and so-called longstanding “truths”.  In other words, it is all about understanding our consciousness, our experiences, our memories, the content of our consciousness and our behaviors...It is about changing our perspectives and exploring new paradigms.

Meta-consciousness and self-reflection offer us the means to understand ourself both within our place on the Earth and within the Universe.  It also provides us with the ability to harmonize once again with Nature.   When we do these things, we find that we are part of Nature and we are its way of knowing itself.  It also implies that we are an integral part of a Universal Consciousness that is much grander than we ever could have imagined otherwise.

As Mitchell recognized many decades ago: We are all connected, with each other, with all living beings, with the Earth itself and with the entire Universe.  We are all one in a very real and literal sense bound together by our collective and interacting consciousness.  Each of us are an aspect of the Universal Mind that is the scaffolding for the entire Cosmos and everything contained and experienced within it.