Enlightenment In Our Time©
by Lonny J. Brown
"Science will discover answers to its mysteries; nations will evolve new forms of governance; businesses will use new forms of harmonious commerce; arts and religions will enter a new golden era; and individuals can construe new paradigms for self transformation, interpersonal relationships, and spiritual unfoldment. We want to be a part of this discovery. We believe this mission to be profound."
- Unifying Fields Foundation
"Information," in the most complete sense means traces of intelligence, from cave drawings to computerized databases. Today's electronic information base includes all the scanned, recorded and transmitted messages, all satellite signals, all music and video recording, stored images, the knowledge contained in all on-line libraries... This mushrooming digitized, interactive meta-memory is intrinsically and inextricably linked to human consciousness in ways which we can now only begin to imagine. Hopefully, one of those is the enlightenment of humanity.
"Information" becomes "knowledge" whenever it enables us to see more clearly and understand our selves and the Universe. Ultimately, knowledge leads to wisdom, through which the living Spirit expresses itself in the world.
What is Enlightenment? In a personal sense it is the only alternative to the neurotic prison of the personality, the container of all our fear and greed and pain. In society, enlightened consensus and policy will bring about equal opportunity and stem the tide of violence in our homes and cities. And Enlightened action within a global/historic perspective is our best chance of preventing military warfare and averting environmental catastrophe.
One working metaphor for the Great Matrix of Cyberspace is the Universal sensorium known in esoteric circles as the Akashic Records. In this metaphysical realm, -- unlike in material, "atom-based" repositories -- once information is impressed into memory, it "lives" virtually, forever. Sort of like the Mind of God.
In a complex interactive feedback process between creator and creation, the knowledge-base of the digital realm is also continuously being downloaded into human consciousness. How will this affect our precarious collective destiny? The early, formative stages of the blossoming of the cybersphere are when we have our greatest leverage on the future. What shall we do with this information-age equivalent of atomic power? Accumulate so much trivia and babble that we go into psychic meltdown? Or create a Web of Wisdom that enlightens us and not coincidentally spares us from oblivion?
"Quantum theory has abolished the notion of fundamentally separated objects, has introduced the concept of the participator to replace that of the observer, and has come to see the universe as an interconnected web of relations whose parts are only defined through their connections to the whole." - Firtjof Capra
Picture the Internet as a pulsating earth-encompassing net of countless millions of energetically-linked, computerized "intelligence nodes," each directly and instantaneously accessible to all the others. This omni- distributed array allows the human minds positioned at those terminals to become "virtually omnipresent" and potentially cognizant of the collective knowledge and consensus of all concerned.
The conception of a multidimensional illuminated living web is as old as the Vedic mytho-poetic image of Indra's "Net of Jewels," and as new as holography, the remarkable laser-based imaging technology which utilizes the interpenetration of light rays to project three dimensional visions in empty space. The visionary French philosopher, PierreTeilhard de Chardin, posited a "Noosphere," an emerging global super-consciousness known by all. The esteemed techno-visionary, Buckminster Fuller defined God as the sum total of all awareness and experience. Even the advanced science of nuclear quantum physics has been obliged by its own observations to arrive at the astounding conclusion that all discrete energy particles in the Universe simultaneously affect all others.
For the first time in history we now have the option of deliberately manifesting and participating in this dynamic fabric of mutually-interactive intelligence for the benefit of all. The result of connecting up the network of awarenesses is synergistic: far more than merely the sum of its parts. When a critical mass of connections and complexity are achieved within the system, a flashover phase transformation occurs, like carbon under pressure becoming diamond. We participate in and become the larger awareness, the evolving self-consciousness of Gaia, the emerging super-intelligence of the Earth herself.
From ENLIGHTENMENT IN OUR TIME - The Perennial Wisdom in the New Millennium by Lonny J. Brown, HHC
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updated April 23, 2003