spiritual evolution divine purpose mystical experience

Spiritual Evolution Is Required

ow do we know that an advanced state of spiritual evolution is required for interstellar travel? Because of Fermi's paradox. Enrico Fermi, the great Italian physicist, said "If extra-terrestrial civilization is common, why isn't it here?" This is a paradox only if we assume that ET would behave like humankind in our present state of spiritual evolution. If WE found a planet like Earth, as it has been for 1.5 billion years, with plenty of oxygen, and plenty of water, we would certainly colonize it. But obviously that has not happened. Indeed, except for the occasional asteroid or comet, Earth has evolved to its present state without any outside interference.

et, we know that ET is here, and probably has been here many times in the history of the planet. Only a spiritually advanced culture would behave like anthropologists and not like conquistadors, and allow the planet to evolve in its own way. That is why I am sure that our own higher Selves would not allow us to develop the power to levitate large space-ships, must less to apport them hundreds of light-years in an instant. Not now. Not until we have outgrown our childish greed, and learn to see things with a god's eye view of time and space.

hose who follow mystical paths sometimes do gain conscious control over psi powers. I suggest we do the same. We must lift our entire civilization, our entire species to a new level, if we wish to go to the stars.

hat do I say to those numerous skeptics who deny the existence of psychics or of mystics? I accuse them of extraordinary stupidity, to use a phrase first coined by Galileo in the same context. I also accuse them of having no knowledge of scientific method.

ow we enter the Royal Maze, with no fixed gates or pathways. We each must find our own way towards spiritual evolution. Forget the books, forget the ancient Oriental traditions. The books about them are dusty relics, mistranslated, misunderstood, just like the teachings of Jesus. Rely on your own experience. Or rely on my experience. I have experienced the Illumination of Fire, in which the divine purpose that runs through all things is made evident.

piritual evolution is not something I can easily define. But I know it when I see it. Lord Kenneth Clark made a similar remark about Civilisation. A society which takes care of its homeless and jobless is more evolved than one which does not. Knowledge is more evolved than ignorance, especially knowledge about things that matter, such as psionics, metaphysics and utopian analysis. A cultural peak with many geniuses is more evolved than a dark age, no matter how necessary an occasional dark age might be. Arts which uplift are more evolved than those which incite to murder and riot. All forms of prejudice and discrimination over trivial matters is primitive. Our persecution of people just because they enjoy different recreational drugs is primitive. On the other hand, the grand ideals of the Enlightenment are very evolved, if only we could learn to follow them, and recognize instances of tyranny. The life of the Seeker is more evolved than a life of greed and brutality. Not that everyone must cease productive work. One can still meditate, one can still seek to erase hatred and greed in oneself, even with a job and a family. Still, the highest state of spiritual evolution may develop in those Seekers who do withdraw from the world to devote full time to spiritual evolution.

estern Civilization is at a cultural peak in science and technology, but not in the arts or architecture, nor in the spiritual life. Nor can it ever produce a high civilization as long as the prevailing dogma is reduction, which says that nothing is real unless we can photograph it. Or, nothing is real unless we can explain it in terms of Atoms and the Void. Such a narrow view leaves out everything interesting and important. There is excellent evidence from Ian Stevenson's reincarnation studies that the mind is real, is the seat of Self and consciousness, and survives death, eventually to reincarnate with new memories and personality, with a continuity of Self and consciousness. Clearly, the mind has no interaction with the electro-magnetic force. So it cannot be photographed. We do not see it when we look inside the living brain. Nor can it be composed of Atoms. Scientists must either accept this result, and enlarge their definition of science, or science becomes just another religion, a particularly unpleasant one, since it denies us life after death, immortality, or a meaning to life. Therefore, as a religion, it must eventually disappear.

et us be optimistic, and assume that the scope of science will be enlarged to include everything which satisifes the essence of scientific method. Then, we shall have A New Science of Civilization. This is my invention, building on the "moral sciences" of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. My professors and colleagues said it couldn't be done, but I did it. The solution of major social problems such as war, poverty, ignorance and despair is a necessary step in our spiritual evolution. It doesn't help if only a few Seekers go off into the desert or mountains or forests, and become highly evolved. Only the spiritual evolution of the species will open up to us the possibility of interstellar travel. For one thing, it is impossible for even a few to evolve in the midst of war and revolution. War, both conventional and unconventional, are the products of poverty, denial of basic human rights, and ignorance. In this new millennium, the greatest threat comes from religious fanaticism, such as the feudal mindset of the terrorists who brought down the World Trade Center Towers on 11 September 2001.

eligion is no longer needed, if we expand our sciences to include Psychical Research and Empirical Metaphysics. It is not so hard to see why religious extremists of all stripes would reject the secular reductionism and naked materialism represented by the World Trade Towers. I reject it myself, and always thought the World Trade Towers to be a particularly hideous example of 20th Century Heroic Materialism. I also reject religion, whether extreme or mainstream. The alternatives are not restricted to religious faith or secular humanism. A new spirituality is springing up everywhere, one which is based on experience and rejects all dogma and rules.

have one more hypothesis about spiritual evolution. The more clearly a person understands and applies the divine purpose which reveals itself in the illumination of fire the more spiritually evolved they will be, and thus the more ready to undertake whatever spiritual exercises may be required to gain conscious control over levitation and apports. What those spiritual exercises are exactly, I do not know, but I believe the proper functioning of the chakras is shown to us in the Book of the Citadel in the New Tarot. For more information about mind, soul, and spiritual evolution see another of my online books, Metaphysics: Mind, Soul, God. This is the impersonal ONE, the divinity of the mystics, not the personal god of religions. I reject all gods, all religions and all gurus, while I encourage Seekers to find mystical and transpersonal experience for themselves.

Home