Francis Berger
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Consciousness Will Not Stagnate, But Regress

5/6/2021

10 Comments

 
In one of his more recent posts Bruce Charlton suggested that a major missed opportunity in the further development of consciousness likely occurred at the turn of the millennium:

The trick is that c2000 we were supposed-to recognize that the world was Not objective and external - and that instead we, each and personally, participated in the creating the reality of the world.

We were supposed to recognize that this participation in creating the 'objective, external world' needed to become active. 

And that this active participation needed consciously to be chosen. 

And for our creative contribution to be Good, entailed that we also chose to be aligned with God's creative destiny. 

The problem was and is that failure to choose this active embrace of God and creation led to an evil default - which we see all around us today. Instead of actively/consciously-choosing Good -- Mankind has passively and unconsciously (and in-denial) chosen evil. 


Dr. Charlton goes on to describe the failure to choose the active embrace of God and Creation as the failure to grow from spiritual adolescence to spiritual adulthood. Put another way, the free choice to align with God and participate in creation would have been to choose spiritual maturity. 

As Dr. Charlton notes later in his post, this failure to choose has consequences.

The most significant of these is the regression of consciousness. The unwillingness to choose spiritual adulthood does not entail that people are allowed to remain in perpetual spiritual adolescence.

On the contrary, the unwillingness to choose spiritual adulthood precipitates a massive regression away from spiritual adolescence to a state I have sometimes referred to as 'slavery consciousness.'

The failure to become active participants in transfiguring the objective, external world opens the door for the objective, external world to actively overwhelm us and degrade us.

Spiritual adolescence is a state of alienation from God and Creation, but it is also filled with the potential for freedom and right choice. Spiritual slavery is an extreme state of alienation with no real potential for freedom or right choice because slavery consciousness severs all meaningful ties to Divine Reality.

People in this mode of consciousness no longer recognize the reality of God or the reality of their own spiritual natures. As a result, they surrender all of their spiritual resources and are rendered powerless against the forces of determination and objectification.

Since slavery consciousness is entirely preoccupied with external forces, it can no longer gauge, let alone use internal, spiritual resources properly. Consequently, people in this mode of consciousness are largely ruled by the forces of 'the given world' because they cannot perceive anything else. 

As of now, the masses are either already firmly entrenched or are on their way to becoming firmly entrenched in this form of consciousness. 

But what afflicts the masses does not have to afflict the individual person. 

Choices can still be made. 
10 Comments
Michelle
5/7/2021 03:22:16

I read Dr. Charlton's post but I failed to get out of it what happened c2000 that was supposed to be a turning point.
Then I thought, well 2000 was when I put my first order though Amazon. It was also the first year I started really texting. I'm still not sure why he picked the year 2000, but I can say that right around that time I started to become disconnected from my community and my local businesses. Of course, now we are completely disconnected from other humans, both physically and spiritually, and almost completely connected to the world comprised of ones and zeroes. The real world started to become the fake world in 2000.
Strangely enough, though, 2000 was the year I started my journey back to God.
Why 2000?

Reply
Francis Berger
5/7/2021 09:55:21

@ Michelle - Dr. Charlton refers to Rudolf Steiner's thinking on the matter, but the idea can be extended to other thinkers who believe in the development of consciousness (Barfield, Berdyaev, Arkle, etc.).

The overarching idea is that human consciousness has passed through several key spiritual phases and has yet to pass through perhaps the most significant phase.

The exact timing is unknowable, but Steiner postulated that it would occur at the turn of the millennium. I'm not sure about the exactness of such predictions, but it is rather clear that human consciousness is diverging. The mass of humanity has rejected God and is regressing or degrading to some de-spritualized form of consciousness.

A few individuals here and there have not made this choice. It looks like you are among them.

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jorgen b
5/7/2021 18:58:55

Y2K. They said all the power plants would go off and planes would fall from the sky due to the clocks of old computers rolling from 1999 back to 1900 because they weren't programmed to reach 2000. But instead clown world began.

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bruce charlton
5/7/2021 08:03:02

Good stuff Frank - it is important but tricky to describe the consciousness we had defaulted-to. The term 'slavery consciousness' - for me - seems to miss the novelty, unprecedented nature, of mainstream modern consciousness. There really hasn't been anything like it before - or, at least, it was extremely rare rather than dominant.

I think we need to keep working on this. But I get a sense of clarification from the phrase "Since slavery consciousness is entirely preoccupied with external forces, it can no longer gauge, let alone use internal, spiritual resources properly. Consequently, people in this mode of consciousness are largely ruled by the forces of 'the given world' because they cannot perceive anything else. "

It is a kind of self-maiming that, once established, leads to more self-maiming - a positive-feedback degeneration, or something.

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Francis Berger
5/7/2021 09:00:07

@ Bruce - Yes, that is an excellent point. I am not satisfied with the term slavery consciousness either - as you say, it doesn't properly define the unprecedented nature of mainstream modern consciousness.

Perhaps it would be better to think of it in terms of spiritualized and de-spiritualized consciousness.

Spiritualized consciousness encompasses the original participation-like consciousness of early hunter-gatherers all the way to spiritual adolescence (before the failed choice).

The failed choice marks the beginning of a de-spiritualized consciousness. This does not imply the non-existence of spirit or the Divine, but rather the seeming inability to recognize or believe in spirit and the Divine (the spiritual nature of man and the reality of God and Creation).

When I think of our modern mainstream consciousness, I often envision it as having become incapable of communicating with the Holy Spirit. So maybe something like de-spiritualized consciousness would be more fitting than slavery consciousness?

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bruce charlton
5/8/2021 10:06:32

@Frank - I can't remember whether you have grappled with Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness - https://williamarkle.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-geography-of-consciousness-text.html - but in Chapter Seven he describes the Dead-Centre Position of consciousness; which I found very helpful in understanding why/ how it is so easy to get-stuck at the point where most people are; and so diifcult to get out of it.

Michelle
5/7/2021 11:17:38

It's the novel despiritualization virus

Reply
Francis Berger
5/7/2021 11:34:54

@ Michelle - Yes, it could be described as a sort of contagion.

On a side note, merely discussing consciousness in relation to the spiritual strikes most modern people as pointless and 'loopy', which in itself is rather revealing.

For me, consciousness is about how we think about and understand ourselves, others, and reality. For almost all of human history, people have thought about or understood themselves, others, and reality through the lens of some form of spirituality/religion. Modern mainstream consciousness (especially in the West) excludes the spiritual and religion entirely. This is unprecedented.

Of course, most modern people perceive this as the further development/evolution of consciousness. "Our consciousness has developed to the point that we no longer need God to think about or understand ourselves, others, and reality."

I believe this is an error and a major regression. I also believe the evidence of this error can be seen quite plainly everywhere we turn.

Reply
Michelle
5/7/2021 13:42:28

All of our current sufferings can be traced back to this error.

Francis Berger
5/8/2021 12:35:45

@ Bruce - Thanks! I read TGOC a couple of years ago, but I can't recall much detail about the Dead-centre position. I'll have to revisit that section.

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