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Alex wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">We cause wars. Us people.
Something in us, some desires, tendencies, needs, whatever, makes us do
the things that start and perpetuate wars. If we didn't have those sides
to our nature, there would be no wars. But here's the question: If we
didn't have those sides to our natures, what else would we be losing? As
Tom Waits sings it: "If I exorcise my devils, well my angels may
leave too". Our drive for destruction also drives much in arts,
science, music and life in general that would not otherwise be possible.
Is it worth the price? I don't know!</blockquote><br><br>
G'day folks - I've been scanning the list regularly for a while now
- flicking through bits of conversations while doing some reading
among other things - including a fascinating book by <b>Joseph Chilton
Pearce</b> (author of the Crack in the Cosmic Egg), called the <b>The
Biology of Transcendence</b><i>….A Blueprint of the Human Spirit
</i>(Park Street Press, 2002. For further details, see:
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/">Amazon reference </a>)<br><br>
I'm quoting at length (below) from the Pearce's introduction to his book
- it is very insightful in light of our 'quest for peace' - and the need
for new models of 'evolutionary intelligence' upon which to base our
human desires to imitate (Rene Girard explains the 'mimetic' dimension of
behaviour - the need to imitate others in our 'tribe' so as to 'feed the
need' to belong )<br><br>
My curiosity, hope and passion combine to posit that, just as the great
individual icons of nonviolence and peace have presented such models of
human evolutionary intelligence, so too does Open Space provide an
expression of evolutionary wisdom in a contemporary shape, a process that
has the potential to enable humans to 'rise and go beyond' ie to
transcend....<br><br>
I wonder what others think?<br>
<br><br>
“The ability to rise and go beyond” is the definition of transcendence
and the subject explored in the following pages. While this force
constitutes our nature and fires our spirit, an honest exploration of it
must contend with this counterquestion: Why, with a history so rich in
noble ideals and lofty philosophies that reach for the transcendent, do
we exhibit such abominable behaviours? Our violence towards ourselves and
the planet is an issue that overshadows and makes a mockery of all our
high aspirations.<br>
<br>
….from this background I make two proposals here that are necessarily
hypothetical: First, the crux of our ever-present crisis hinges on
failure to develop and employ both the fourth and newest brain in our
head (one added quite recently in evolutionary history) and its dynamic
interactions with our heart brain. Second, the great saints and spiritual
giants of history (even though overlaid with myth and fantasy by cultural
counterfeits) point towards, represent, or manifest for us our next
evolutionary step, a transcendent event that nature has been trying to
unfold for millennia. <br>
<br>
Creator and created as a co-inspiring dynamic make imperative a simple
natural law: intelligence, no matter how innate or genetically encoded,
can unfold within us only when an actual model for that intelligence is
given us. All dynamics must have their generative source, even if the
source can never be factually determined – if there are two mirrors
reflecting each other in an infinite regress, which one could we say
initiates the reflection? From the beginning of our life, the
characteristics of each new possibility must be demonstrated for us by
someone, some thing, or an event in our immediate environment – but the
same chicken-egg paradox will always emerge if we try to determine or
bring closure to the riddle of an origin.<br>
<br>
This need for a model is acutely the case with a new and unknown form of
intelligence such as that offered by our fourth brain and heart brain.
The striking contrast between our ordinary human behaviour and the
actions of the great beings of our history (Jesus, Krishna, Lao-tzu,
Buddha, Eckhart, George Fox, Peace Pilgrim and a long line of like
geniuses) is what makes these figures stand out in time even as shifting
or warping history itself. Our great beings arise through a natural
process that we will explore here, though the process unfolds in that
infinite regress that obscures its origin. They come into being as models
of nature’s newest possibility, our next evolutionary step manifested by
our newest neural structure, transcending violence to create a new,
viable reality. <br>
<br>
In every case, however, rather than developing the capacities these great
models of history have demonstrated, humankind has projected both the
capacities and the image of the models demonstrating them. That is, we
invariably build religions around our spiritual giants or use them to
support a religion in order to avoid the radical shift of mind and
disruption of culture these rare people bring about, shifts we interpret,
ironically, as threats to our survival and thus instinctively
reject. Bioculture effects, once initiated, tend to self-generate.
Projected by us, we perceive the behaviours demonstrated by our great
models as powers out there to which we are subject, rather than
potentials within ourselves to be lived. <br>
<br>
Our fourth brain is the way by which the intelligence of our heart can
guide the intellect in our head from its ancient survival strategies to a
new and greater form of intelligence. But nature’s dilemma – and thus
ours as we are, in effect, nature herself – has been how to stabilise a
new and largely undefined intelligence in a powerful neural environment
millions of years old. Though nature has provided appropriate
models as the opportunities have arisen, behaviours encoded in our
ancient primary brains are thoroughly entrenched, whereas the new ones
offered are tentative at best. And it is from just this tenuous
uncertainty of a higher intelligence locked into our firmly entrenched
survival systems that our wild contrasts of lofty ideals and deadly real
behaviours emerge. <br>
<br>
The following exploration revolves around the insights gleaned from the
research of this new cadre of biologists and neuroscientists and from the
ideals and behaviours modelled for us by the great beings of our history
– specifically by, in my opinion, the greatest model of all, Jesus.
An odd couple to find between the covers of the same book, you might
think – Jesus and the new biologist. But if we drop the mythical
and/or religious projections surrounding Jesus, we will discover a common
ground.<br>
<br>
…As a model of a new evolutionary intelligence, Jesus met, and
continually meets a grim fate at the hands of this cultural effect. But
the cross, the instrument of his execution, symbolises both death and
transcendence for us – our death to culture and our transcendence beyond
it. If we lift the symbol of the cross from its mythical shroud of
state-religion and biblical fairy tale – which is to say, if we can
rescue Jesus from the Christians – then the cross proves to be the
“crack” in our cultural cosmic egg.<br>
<br>
…May this [new one] throw more light and help us to open ourselves to
nature’s new mind, wherein lies our true survival."<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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