AWARENESS

by

P.C. Simon

        Is our awareness growing, are we aware of that  growth or are
we just growing older?

        Jacob Bronowski, in his book The Ascent of Man, said "Man
ascends by discovering the fullness of his own gifts." What are these
gifts and have we discovered them?

        John White, in his book Frontiers of Consciousness, calls
these gifts "Human Potentials."

        What kind of awareness and growth am I talking about? If it
is awareness of our physical growth, yes, we are aware. We all grow
from childhood to old age and we are aware of that growth.

        If it is environmental awareness, yes, we have grown in
environmental awareness. The eco-enthusiasts may have carried it a
little too far but if they had not done that, nobody would have
listened and we would have been in bad trouble. We have changed our
habitation from caves to castles   undersea and to outer space. Very
soon we may be vacationing in castles in space, in the sunshine above
the clouds.

        If we are talking about intellectual awareness, yes, we have
grown. Alvin Toffler in Future Shock stated that for 10,000 years
knowledge spiralled at a very slow rate. After the invention of
writing and Guttenberg's  printing press, the rate of growth became
quite rapid..

        According to Eric Butterworth, knowledge doubled itself
between 1750 and 1900. It doubled again between 1900 and 1950 and
again between 1950 and 1960. Now it doubles every five years and it
is predicted to do so even faster.

        Yes, Man is changing his way of living, his system of
communications, travel and his environment. He has added a cubit to
his stature in contravention to the Biblical maxim and has added
nearly twenty years to his three score and ten. He creates rain and
snow and sunshine when and where he needs them. He has raised his
potential to destroy all life on earth 2000 times in ten seconds.

        All this is growth of awareness, awareness of the objective
world. But what I want to speak of is psychic awareness, awareness of
the inner man, a topic which is anathema in the scientific community.
I want to stir up some controversy. Socrates called himself a human
gadfly. He stung people into thinking. I will be your gadfly.

        By psychic awareness I mean human soul and mind including
metaphysics. Since emotion is a state of mind, I will include emotion
in my discussion.

        I have to admit that I am prejudiced in favour f psychic
awareness as the thing of the future and the salvation of humanity.

        In a theatre in Paris on the left bank of the river Seine a
play called Waiting for Godot by Samuel Becket was staged several
years back. The play started with two people waiting for Godot to
arrive. They did not know who this Godot was, when he would arrive,
or from where. The strangest thing of all was that they did not know
who they themselves were, from where they had come, or what the
purpose of the meeting was. The play ended without the arrival of
Godot. The theatre patrons were outraged at the performance. It was
only later that they (the patrons) realized that the story was about
themselves, about humanity.

        Do we know from where we have come, how we happen to be here,
what we are supposed to be doing and where we will bo going from
here. We busy ourselves doing so many things without knowing why we
make ourselves so busy.

        I have a few questions to pose which deal with intuitive
knowledge and since intellectual and intuitive knowledge are
associated, I would like to discuss intellectual knowledge first.

        Since intellectual knowledge is related to our brain
function, I would like to discuss the brain very cursorily. Carl
Sagan has given an excellent review of this subject in his book The
Dragons of Eden.

        Our brain acts like a two way mirror. The peripheral nervous
system acts as the external mirror for the activities of the physical
world. These activities are passed on to the central nervous system
through the afferent nerve fibres for analysis, interpretation,
immediate adjustments, storage, or for reflex action.

        Stored in specified areas of the brain, the sum total of our
experience can be called upon and can be projected upon the "minds
eye as upon an internal mirror in which all past experiences,
reactions, attitudes, and impressions may be reviewed and used in the
multitudinous activities of the somatic and psychic systems or
intuitive knowledge.

        The intelligence of an individual is dependent upon the
development of all these areas and the richness of the associations
which have been built between these areas. Wisdom depends upon the
extent to which intelligence, emotional, and intuitive reactions can
be blended.

        The brain receives two types of impulses, the physical from
the five senses and the psychic (thoughts) or intuitive impulses.

        To build up the function of the inner mirror, we have to
switch off the outer mirror. We should be uninfluenced by external
stimuli. Then we can use our inner potential to the maximum.

        Which of the two mirrors is more important? Individuals
differ in their conclusion. Some consider that the physical world is
all there is and that is the reality. Others think that the
metaphysical world is all that is necessary. Since we live in a
physical world, I believe that we have to have and retain that
contact. But our constant aim must be to fulfill our psychic
potential. A rose plant serves as a plant in the pot but its
potential is as a rose flower. It should concentrate on the flower
rather than the stem and the leaves though they are necessary
appendages for the production of the flower.

        Dr. Barbara Brown, Chief of Experimental Physiology at
Veterans Administration Hospital, California, in her book New Mind,
New Body, says "In eastern cultures, achievement of self-awareness
has long been intimately related to the art of physiological self-
discipline. There are many precious jewels in the storehouse of the
subconscious which our consciousness rarely permits us to view and
then only fleetingly. There are strong research hints that we may
soon be able to recapture these moments of the other mind and become
well acquainted with the world within."

        Through modern instrumentation, we are now able to learn
about, measure and explore the world within.

        In 1870, the German scientists Eduard Hitzid and Gustav
Frisch found electrical stimulation of certain regions of the cortex
of the brain caused specific sensory and motor responses. In 1924,
Neminski placed electrodes directly on exposed brain tissue and found
electrical impulses being produced by the brain. In 1930, Hans
Berger, a German scientist, stuck two electrodes from a crude
galvanometer into the scalp of a 17 years old female mental patient
and found a wave pattern which he called alpha. During the next five
years of experiment, he found another brain wave pattern which he
named beta. The Berger rhythm is named after him. He showed that when
the eyes are closed, the brain wave frequency is lower and the
amplitude is greater.

        Now we know that the brain produces waves of several
different frequencies. We know that brain waves can be controlled. We
also know that the heart beat can be controlled.

        These were considered to be autonomic systems over which we
had no control. At least we thought that we had no control. That is
why it is called autonomic.

        According to Kamiya, Director of the Menninger Foundation,
Topeka, Kansas, Swami Rama was able to stop his heart beat for twenty
seconds. Others have been able to stop the pulse on one hand and
simultaneously increase the pulse on the other hand. Swami Rama was
able to raise the temperature on one side of one hand ten degrees
higher than on the other side.

        Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, states
in his book, Illusions, that within each of us lies the power of our
consent to health and sickness, to riches and poverty, to freedom and
slavery. Do we know how to tap this power? Some do and they achieve
certain effects which are paranormal.

        The Hopi indians of Arizona conduct the snake dance for rain.
The science supplement of 1968 has given a detailed account of this
dance. It is written that on the afternoon of the snake dance almost
every year rain falls, sometimes in torrents and cloudbursts,
although there wasn't any likelihood of rain till that afternoon. Now
the weather bureau predicts rain on the day of the snake dance, not
because of meteorological conditions but because of the snake dance.

        Mishlove, in The Roots of Consciousness, gives the following
account of Sir Arthur Grimble, the British Resident Commissioner for
the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in the South Pacific. Grimble
witnessed the scene in which a native shaman entered a dream state to
call porpoises. After a period, he awoke from his sleep and announced
to his tribe that the porpoises were coming. The village of about
1000 individuals rushed down to the beach. Grimble also went. He saw
an entire flotilla of porpoises swim to the beach, passively offering
themselves to the natives. They were moving forward as in an extended
order with 2 to 3 yards between them as far as the eye could see. So
slowly they came as if they were in a trance.

        There are many similar events taking place. We, as a
scientific community do not pay any attention to these. ESP, spoon
bending, psychic healing, psychokinesis, holistic medicine, TM, and
many other phenomena are capturing the attention of the common folks.

        Russia is way ahead of the western world in psychic research
but this did not happen because of a spiritual awakening. In 1959, a
French journalist astounded the world by a headline "U.S. navy uses
ESP on atomic sub (Nautilus). Has American military learned the
secret of mind power?"

        This shocked the Russians for they had heard that mind power
is more powerful than the atomic bomb. Therefore, Russia appointed
Dr. Leonid Vassiliev, holder of the Lenin Prize, to open a special
lab for parapsychology at the University of Leningrad.

        In 1967, Russia had more than twenty centres for the study of
the paranormal. Russians know more about Edgar Cayce, Jean Dixon,
Gerrard Croiset, Ted Serios, and J.B. Rhine than the Americans. The
Russian scientists now say "We are not trying to prove that ESP
exists, we are trying to find out how and why PSI works."

        In 1966, they conducted their famous Siberia-Moscow telepathy
test in which Kamensky sent messages from Moscow to Nikolaiev in
Siberia. They also studied submarine to shore messages through
rabbits. The newly born young rabbits were killed in the submarine
and the mother rabbit kept in the laboratory in Leningrad wired with
electrodes to its brain reacted each time its young one was killed.

        The Russians brought yogis from India and tested their
psychic powers.

        I believe that we, the scientists, have a responsibility to
guide the community. We have turned a deaf ear to lay people as well
as scientists when they told us about their spiritual experiences.

        Faraday told the Royal Society that they give credence to his
scientific discoveries whereas they disregard his spiritual awareness
which came through the same source. Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon,
Rene Descartes, Wilhelm Leibnitz, Bishop George Berkeley, Emmanuel
Swedenborg, Johann von Goethe, and others have told us of their
spiritual experiences. I can quote many instances of intuitive
information which other scientists had. They did not acknowledge the
source of such information. Eienstein said that "Ideas come from
God." Kenneth Clark in his book, Civilization, wrote, "The best lack
all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

        Alan Watts in his book, The Wisdom of Insecurity, wrote:

        "Ye suffer from yourselves, none else compels,
        None other holds that you live and die
        And whirl upon the wheel and hug and kiss
        Its spokes of agony
        Its tire of tears, Its nave of nothingness."

        I want to pose a few questions to the reader. You may say
that they are unanswerable and unknowable. In order to show that they
are not I shall quote from the Zen master, D.T. Suzuki. "Reason
always finds its own inherent limitations." If we are looking for the
unknowable, ununderstandable, unattainable are sure to be lead only
up to the entrance gate by our intellect. The intellect will stop us
at the gate and tell us not to go any further. But it is we,
ourselves who must abandon intellect and reasoning and dare forward
with faith in the infinite goodness of the Creator. Once we have
known the unknown, understood the ununderstandable, attained the
unattainable, we return to the domain of reason and intellect and
stay not in the realm of the spirit. Though what we have known is
unknowable, it is still undescribable but experienceable. This
mysticism roots on a conviction of the kinship of God and man and the
mutual relationship in which finite man, without self-deception, can
experience the infinite.

        In the last chapter of Jacob Bronowski's book, The Long
Childhood, he says "Yes, man is in his long childhood and will
eventually grow to adulthood and spiritual perfection. Then all
mysteries will be over. Intuition and intellect will merge. We will
not need T.V. sets, jet engines and telecommunication systems for we
will be able to communicate with one another by thought projection.

        This is where the question of our awareness of growth comes
to be raised. Are we aware that growth is taking place? Many are not.
Though the leaf is growing every moment, we are not able to
appreciate the growth between one minute and the next. Similar is the
truth about awareness of growth. Though our awareness is growing, we
are not aware of that growth but we are on the way. This is not the
beginning nor the end of the beginning but the beginning of the end.

        Don't Slacken Now " Press forward and catch up with the
unknown.



Resource Box

Dr.  Simon is  a retired Research scientist, author, and
philanthropist. Visit his websites at
http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/psimon/fund.htm and
http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/psimon/book2.htm