Friday 22 June 2012

Which way to Heaven?


Are we Evolving or Devolving?
Not a pleasant thought to contemplate.
Someone once said that: “All great labor-saving devises are invented by lazy men.” Of course. Why else would they invent them?
What we must also ask ourselves is whether were are better disposed toward survival in the 21st century then we were, say, some thousands or even millions of years ago. Or at least before the industrial and technological “revolution”.
I gave it some thought.
If there were a sudden climate change, how would we cope? Wouldn’t we, the preponderant majority of us, wait for the government(s) to tell us what to do? Where to go? How to get there?
Why?
Because 99.99% of us are reactive. Everyone who identifies with his or her physical body depends on reactions to/from their senses, other people’s senses, ideas. Only a tiny percentage of us act on our own cognition. About one person in a thousand. Probably fewer.
We have become so interdependent on each other, on other people—even on other people doing our thinking for us—that we would sit by our TV sets and wait for instructions. Then… we would complain that those came too late, and most probably were not very smart.

And now imagine living without your everyday toys. Electric heating/air-conditioning, stoves, TV sets, radios, i-pads, automobiles, airplanes, and a plethora of other technologically advanced gadgets.  Without our toys we would be lost. By now, we have regressed to a state of being babes in the woods.
Evolution has taken good care of other species. They can run faster, lift heavier loads, fly, swim under water, and, yes, and even survive another ice age. We wouldn’t.
Some years ago, I read about a Tibetan monk who wanted to advance to the next level of esoteric Buddhism ladder. He was told to take eight wet blankets, sit outside on the snow, and dry them by the morning. He had to do it by generating heat from his naked body. No… no gadgets. The monk succeeded. Who would you say was more advanced from the evolutionary standpoint? He or us?
If evolution is the art of physical survival, then we are already dead. Well, the vast majority of us. Unless, of course, unless real evolution has nothing to do with our bodies, with the physical universe, with our physical survival. Unless, in the event of another ice-age we, the real we, would simply wait for ‘things’ to improve, and then look for the best animal we could enter to continue in our need for becoming.

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