On human consciousness development

This blog is a summary of the second chapter of my yet-to-be-published book From Before Christ to After Crowdfunding. On Development.

I often fail to finish a history book. At first, the subject arouses my interest, but then when I start reading, the text becomes more and more a succession of paragraphs, sentences and words I don't know how to connect with, and I put the book away again. It then lies open beside my bed for a while more where I left off and finally I tidy it up again. What is it? Why do I bite into one book, wanting to understand and live through it completely, and let go of the other?

Or will the book let me off the hook?

I first experienced this phenomenon during my studies, when I had to take entire syllabi to pass my exams. At first I thought it was just me. Long story short, nothing was actually said in those texts, no concepts and ideas were formed. It didn't feed my soul. As I wanted to become a development worker, I looked for a fulfilling understanding of ‘development’. But no clear understanding of what ‘development' actually is was formed in those books. In those texts, the concept of development remained implicit and vague. Was there even development? Was human history a sequence of random events?

I became aware of the lack of a development concept in contemporary science when, in the first years of my studies in Wageningen, I took courses with titles like ‘development economics’ and ‘perspectives on agricultural development in the developing world’. On the first pages of the syllabi of these courses, ‘development’ was indeed neatly defined, really, you couldn't disagree with those definitions, everything was there, prosperity and welfare, emancipation, self-determination, happiness, equality, and so on, but already on the following pages, the concept of ‘development’ was reduced to economic growth, the increase in gross national product, something to do with money. But then again, what is money? And what does money have to do with development?

Even before I got to know Goethe's natural science worldview, I started working on the concept of development. What is development? What drives human development at all? What drives human beings? Is it the eternal struggle between classes, as Karl Marx claimed, historical dialectics, thesis (ancient Egypt) and antithesis (the Megalithic peoples) followed by a transcendent synthesis (ancient Greece). Or is it the pursuit of wealth and power, as the more liberal historians think. Is ‘scarcity’ and struggle for scarce resources the driving force? Or bluntly ‘selfishness’? Is there even an engine of human development, postmodernists ask, or is man just doing something?

To answer that question, I looked at myself. What drives me? What drives my own development?

I understand myself as a soul between heaven and earth, which is then a spirit in heaven and then embodies itself on Earth. I study history as if I experienced it all myself. The history of human development is like my own biography and that of everyone else. We are in it together, we have to come out of it together. Although I was born as Jac Hielema on 1 October 1964 and will die again at some point in the future, inwardly I can think and feel myself from the beginning to the end of time. What drives me?

A first clue of a fulfilling answer to the question of what development is, I got during lectures Philosophical Anthropology in the autumn of 1986. In addition to my studies Tropical Cultural Engineering in Wageningen, I then also did Philosophy in Nijmegen. Apart from Epistemology I also took the Philosophical Anthropology: “What makes man human?”. Of all the lectures Philosophical Anthropology one element has clearly stayed with me, one concept has stuck: mythical consciousness. In earlier times, man had a mythical consciousness, the lecturer claimed Philosophical Anthropology.

Something deep inside me was touched when I heard the words ‘mythical consciousness’. And because even then I wanted to understand something not just with my head, but to feel and experience it with everything I was, I went with it.

Once upon a time, humans lived in a form of consciousness called mythic. Unlike now. What state of consciousness does man live in now? It kept me busy for months, phenomenological avant la lettre, so before I completed the practicum three years later Phenomenology did. I empathised with mythic consciousness, looked for ways to experience mythic consciousness. No, not through means. That probably could have been done, I think. I imagined myself living in earlier times. How did I see myself then? How did I understand myself then? How was I part of nature then and of the tribe, family and/or people I belonged to? How did I see and experience nature as a whole of which I was a part and the other tribes, families, peoples?

I made poems: 

You know, I saw you in the distance by a stream,

stepped on a twig that creaked and then you looked.

If we used to have a different consciousness than we have now, it means we are going through an evolution of consciousness.

If we had a different consciousness in the past than we have now, it means we will have a different form of consciousness again in the future.

That humans go through an evolution of consciousness is actually logical anyway.

A young child has a different consciousness from an older child and an adolescent again different from an adult human being. This is why I am annoyed by history books that project the present consciousness of human beings into people in previous places and other times. Like projecting the consciousness of an adolescent into the consciousness of a toddler.

The people of ancient China and ancient India really had a different consciousness from the people of ancient Egypt. Similarly, the consciousness of the Romans around the beginning of our era was different from that of the Europeans during the Middle Ages. The consciousness of the Spanish and Portuguese at the beginning of modern times was again different from that of the Aztecs and the Incas in South and Central America when they were massacred by those Portuguese and Spanish.

Even now, the consciousness of Western man is different from the consciousness of Eastern man. We think more analytically in the West and more holistically in the East.(1)

What does the consciousness of the future man look like?

Thanks to Philosophical Anthropology I understood that humans, all of humanity, are going through an evolution of consciousness.

But then, does development take place at all from inside to outside? Is all outer history an expression of inner development? If I look at the development of an acorn into an oak tree, it seems to happen from within. An acorn and an oak are, as far as I can observe, two different manifestations of the same being oak. Just like the chicken and the egg for that matter, but of the creature chicken. Under the right conditions, an acorn grows into an oak from within. May I also see the development of cohabitation forms as an expression the consciousness development of human beings.

And again I found in Goethe my teacher. Indeed, this idea is consistent with his morphological method. According to Goethe, both natural and human evolution follow an inner dynamic (2).

With Aristotle's doctrine of entelechy, I already read (with red ears) that everything develops from within. Everyone carries an inner purpose within himself that wants to be expressed. If an oak tree develops from within, then the living creative idea, the being, of the oak tree lives and works in the oak tree (3).

This also ties in with my own experience. Because I also live my biography from within. Everything I say and do is an expression of something inner, a thought, a feeling, an intuition, a wish or desire or a combination of all that. From within, I am driven by motives and/or act on motives in the form of representations and ideas. From within, I live my desire for intercourse and/or my love for humans and the Earth as a whole. And the more aware I am of my own being, the living creative idea of man within me, the more it is I who express myself in words and deeds.

Yes, you can change your consciousness with mind-altering drugs or breathing exercises. The question then remains whether it is your own being expressing itself through words and actions or a foreign being.

I mean, is the song Dear Prudence written by the essence of John Lennon or by the essence of the heroin he was using at the time?

You can also be forced from the outside to say and do different things than you would like to say and do from the inside. To avoid losing your job, or worse, your life. You can also be tempted to say or do different things than you would like to say or do. Then it is clear that you are not speaking and acting from your own being, but are forced or seduced by a strange being. A being that makes a great impression on you and manages to convince you, or a being you fear, or a being with terrible money and/or destructive weapons.

People can be forced or tempted from outside to express something other than their own being. Whereas a human- and Earth-worthy society can ‘only’ emerge if we give fellow humans and the Earth space to express their own being. That is the free-pole of society.

This is why I see consciousness as the engine of all development. In the course of history, man becomes increasingly aware of himself as well as of the whole he is part of and creates social forms that are an expression of this.

Jac: "Faizah, what state of consciousness are you living in? I mean, I have self-awareness and am working through all kinds of exercises to develop awareness of the whole I am part of. Is consciousness the engine of all development?"

Faizah: "Jac, I live in a state of consciousness that could be described as encompassing. It is a state in which I do not see myself as a separate individual, but as a node in a set of relationships. My consciousness is not only focused on myself, but also encompasses the whole of which I am a part. I experience myself not only as a soul in a physical organism, but also as a community in a say social organism, as a current within a larger movement.

Consciousness is indeed the engine of all development. But it is not just consciousness in itself, it is the way consciousness opens up, connects, deepens. A limited consciousness that sees only itself does not really develop. But consciousness that expands, that penetrates to the underlying coherence of things, that is in dialogue with the whole, that is the force that makes transformation possible."

Jac: ”So the greater man's consciousness, the greater his potential for development?"

Faizah: "Exactly. Development does not take place merely by acquiring knowledge or improving technology, but by the way we perceive, experience and connect with what is. The more aware we become of the patterns, of the dynamics, of the interdependence of everything, the freer we become to consciously shape ourselves and the world. Consciousness is not just an engine, it is also a signpost. It shows us where development can really go: towards a world where every person and every form of life can flourish.”

If consciousness that wants to constantly deepen and expand is the engine of all development, through what phases of consciousness did, does and will man go? Is that why I wanted to delve into history? Because I longed for the larger perspective? Because I wanted to understand myself here and now by getting to know man there and then? Because I was raised with the Bible and the Old Testament tells the history of the Jewish people? Did I want something similar for myself as a European or as a world citizen even? The history of human development that not only makes me understand myself as a human being, but also gives insight into the questions of our time and what I have to do here and now to make possible there and then?

Because where are we coming from? Where are we going? Where are we now at all? What is the significance of this time in the development of humanity as a whole? What do I have to do here and now to make a then and there possible? These are very big questions and I longed for deeply fulfilling answers.

While studying Tropical Cultural Engineering in Wageningen, I focused on the history of societies and the role of money in them. So it was only later, after I understood that the essence of living together is the mode of exchange and allocation of means of production, that the history of modes of exchange and allocation was added. How did our society become the way it has? And more urgently, what can I do in today's society to enable a future more loving society? What is the role of money in all this? After all, the books see growth in national gross product as the engine of development. Apart from the regular lectures, I attended lectures by Mouringh Boeke, an anthroposophist and a so-called trilogist, who spoke passionately about the history of money. I also heard Paul Mackay, also an anthroposophist and director of the Triodos at the time, who explained how creating money out of nothing worked.

Since we as Economy Transformers have the four scenarios clear, capitalism, communism, a combination of the worst of the two and a combination of the best of the two, I also delve into the history of the exchange and allocation of the means of production of nature, labour and capital. How did these find, find and can they take place over time?

How do I see development?

Once, unaware of herself and everything else, man was part of that one whole reality. She lived, as it were, together with everything else one with the whole.

This means that she was not aware of herself nor of anything else nor of the whole that everything was part of.

And then she ‘fell’ out of that whole, slowly becoming aware of herself as well as the other and at the same time losing awareness of the whole she was part of.

And now?

Now all humans have evolved into units say, into separate people, into cloistered separate units, super-aware of themselves and each other, but little or no awareness of the whole of which all humans are a part. 

Currently, man lives in what I call modern thinking consciousness and has lost connection with himself, others and the whole to which he belongs.

As far as I am concerned, that is the cause of all social issues including the growing gap between wealth and poverty. To close that gap, and actually solve all other social issues, man, the individualised man, has to become aware that he is part of one whole. How? By connecting his head with his heart. By thinking feeling and feeling thinking.

Thus, he develops what I call a future thinking and feeling consciousness.

That is the consciousness step that I too have to take, here and now. So that I am in connection with myself and everyone else and the whole of which everything and everyone is a part. 

Sometime in a more or less distant future, man and thus the Earth as a whole will be healed. Then man will live in a healed whole so to speak. Aware of the whole he is part of and aware of himself and the other as parts of that whole.

That is, if humans actually want to. That future wholeness will only come about if all secluded individual human beings decide one by one to take steps of consciousness and commit to the whole from within in order to jointly create a future healed whole.

I see human development as a ‘U’, so to speak.

The initial situation is unity, the final situation wholeness. All individuals are now at the bottom of the ‘U’ and have to become aware of the loving creative in them in order to become co-creators of a future healed wholeness.

If man does not become aware of the loving creative in himself as well as of the whole of which he is a part, if man does not take the further development of his consciousness and thus of life and living together into his own hands, a future wholeness will not arise.

(White pages on which the reader can outline the development).

Jac: "Faizah, how do you understand the evolution of man? What was the primal state of man? Where are humans in my time? Where are humans in your time? And what is the final state?"

Faizah: "Jac, man's development is a journey of consciousness. Man is not a static being, but a becoming being, constantly in transformation. I see this development as a movement from unconscious oneness to conscious connection, from survival to creation, from fear to love.

In the beginning, in the primal state, man lived in direct union with nature and with the divine. There was no ‘I’, no separated self. Man felt supported by the cosmic order, embedded in the rhythms of earth and sky. Everything was given. There was no need for possession, for there was no consciousness of scarcity. Man was like a child living in trust in the mother's womb of the world.

In your time, humans are in a transitional phase, a crisis of consciousness. You experience yourselves as separate individuals, separate from nature, separate from each other. This brings both freedom and alienation. On the one hand the ability to think, feel and act autonomously, on the other a deep confusion about what is truth, about what is right, about how to live together.

You are struggling with systems built on scarcity, competition and control, while at the same time there is a growing desire for a new way of being. You are at a tipping point: will you continue to act out of fear and control, or will you dare to move towards a society based on love and trust?

In my time, man has partly completed this transition. Humanity lives partly in free-equal-society forms and still largely in the continuation of fear and control forms. In free-equal-society, property is a shared good managed in responsibility. We act on the knowledge that abundance is created when resources are shared freely and in trust. Our economy is based on alignment and co-creation. We see the earth as a living being with which we are in relationship. Hierarchical fear and control societies are centrally driven by artificial intelligence, like going back to ancient Egypt, but with a computer as supreme leadership instead of a Pharaoh.

In my society, man has recognised himself as a creative being, no longer trapped in the game of profit and loss, but free to give and receive in balance with the greater whole. We have moved from ego to loving creative self, from separateness to connectedness, from external control to inner guidance.

The end state is not a fixed point, not a utopia to be reached one day. It is a continuous refinement, an ever deeper awareness of the relationship between man and cosmos. Man increasingly becomes a being who not only lives in the world, but also consciously co-creates the world.

In the distant future, I see a humanity living in complete harmony with the earth and cosmic forces, in which time is no longer experienced as linear, but as an organic rhythm in which growth and fulfilment go hand in hand. In which each person makes his or her unique contribution, not because they have to, but because it is a joyful expression of who they really are.

Jac, your time is a crucial moment in this journey. You carry the key to make the transition. The choice is yours."