Planetary awareness: the worldwide demand of the XXI century

The phenomenon of consciousness, being the subject of study of many modern sciences, such as biology, sociology, informatics, cognitive science, cybernetics, linguistics, psychology, quantum physics, is not to be reduced to a common understanding in interdisciplinary dialogue. 

In philosophy, consciousness is one of the main categories which is basic for various ontological, epistemological, axiological, ethical and even social positions. There are three methodological points of view: either based on the predominance of consciousness over substance, or on the minority of consciousness towards substance, or on the dualism of consciousness and substance.

Theosophical understanding of consciousness stands apart because of the essence of theosophy as "Divine Wisdom", in contrast to philosophy’s desire to grasp it. On this basis, the European philosophy of the classical period relates the concept of consciousness to a man, giving consciousness the integrative nature of rationally irrational structures. However, consciousness is not reduced to any of its structures and is substantially greater than their sum. The philosophy of the non-classical period, referring to the ontological category of the unconscious (A. Schopenhauer), and then the anthropological concept of the subconscious (F. Nietzsche, K. Jung), points to the irrational-intuitive aspect, which opens the potential of human expansion of consciousness. Thus, the philosophy of classical and non-classical periods balances rational and irrational modes of consciousness. Post-Classical philosophy of consciousness is represented by E. Husserl's transcendental phenomenology, which explores the immanent acts of pure consciousness and the dialectics of M. Heidegger's everyday and ontological existence. It should be noted that the difference between the positions of Husserl and Heidegger lies in the recognition or denial of the metaphysical status of consciousness of an extrinsic space, which allowed one and did not allow others to consider the form of the essence of consciousness.

In modern philosophy of consciousness, there is an attempt to go beyond the classical definition of consciousness, which is directly related to human activity and to give consciousness an independent metaphysical and ontological status. Reviewing the scientific paradigm associated with the post-classical period demonstrates a tendency to form a picture of the world on the basis of a single field of consciousness.

Modern philosophical and scientific views (quantum picture of the world) on the consciousness are close to theosophical, as the affirmation of the single field of consciousness existence, which takes self-reflecting forms and performs the function of self-awareness of Spirituality in human form. The universe, the Universal Being, possesses self-awareness in which the reflecting capacity of man contributes to the process of self-reflection of Spirituality as the core of living space. The evolutionary task of man is to expand consciousness and to enter into new forms of its objectification – that is, new forms of being.

Peter Russell, a modern British scientist and thinker, believes that the next stage of the evolutionary development of consciousness, will not lead to a change in physical form, as it happened in the previous evolution, but to a qualitative change of the whole planetary culture[1]. According to him, just as the unification of the simplest at the cellular level led to the creation of more complex evolutionary forms, the unification of individuals into clusters (groups of people) will become the basis for the formation of a single planetary consciousness.

The modern world is already demonstrating this tendency for unification:

1. Social integration. Globalization, the common nature of environmental and economic crises, global pandemics, etc., lead to the unification of all humanity in the way of solving problems. In this regard, international, global public organizations of antipandemic, antiterroristic, antienvironmental destruction and other global problems are becoming more active.

2. Managerial unification. Modern management tends to a teamwork, a policy of cooperation, not competition. Not everyone, but the best, is important today in the professional world. The concept of a new leader, who is not an administrator or an authoritarian manager, is formed, but a self-sufficient authority, wisely accompanying teamwork.

3. Unification at the information level. In the age of digitization, the internet and social networks unite people not by national, religious, racial or age characteristics, but by interests, values, knowledge, views.

4. Consolidation at the level of consciousness. The union of a Soul with a Soul, a Man with a Man on the level of relations, understanding, awareness of oneness. In the day of the metamodern, sincerity, openness and sensuality are becoming more and more important.

Thus, in today's world there is a tendency to unite at the social (physical, organizational), mental (information), spiritual (at the level of consciousness) levels. Humanity seeks to function as a single organism, as a single field of consciousness. This is how the tendency for the formation of planetary consciousness, the evolutionary task of which is the self-exploration of the Spiritual, is realized.

This is the unity to which Theosophy calls and seeks to realize the Theosophical Society – to create a single organism (the World Brotherhood), the only field of consciousness around which an evolutionary (quantum) leap towards unification will take place. However, the association does not absorb its structural components, but exists due to the uniqueness of each of them. According to Peter Russell, a qualitative transition to a new planetary level of consciousness will require 10 billion human consciousnesses on the planet[2]. Today, the planet's population is approaching 8 billion. The quantity has nearly been reached, given the upward trend in Earth's population.

However, the unfavorable egoism of consumer society can be the cause of the negative course of history. If in the initial stages of self-awareness humanity had to go the way of individualization in the form of personal separation, today higher self is the true essence of man, the bearer of consciousness, increasingly closed into the shell of self, complicating the process of evolution.

Alan Wilson Watts The Anglo-American philosopher, a well-known translator and popularizer of Eastern philosophy in the West, introduces the concept of "skin-encapsulated ego" encapsulated into the skin (self-encapsulated ego) as a state of self-identification with one's body, mental stereotypes, social roles, beliefs, behaviors etc[3]. This is the process of replacing oneself with true (essential, spiritual) external forms of activity - career, financial well-being, social or ideological dependence. Anything outside the "skin" is automatically defined as "Not Self", separated from any other "encapsulated ego skin" as well as from anything we perceive as our physical environment. "Encapsulation" of the ego was a natural stage of human consciousness of previous periods of evolution for the formation of individuality, without which the uniqueness was lost, and there would hardly be any clear texture for life's reality. Without a wide range of individualization, there would be no source of renewal as a form of eternal life support.

Having accumulated a wealth of experience of individualisations and fragmentary concretizations, the history of planetary humanity ends the era of self-centered "encapsulation" and moves on to a new evolutionary stage – the collection of this experience at a new qualitative level of a single consciousness. It is time to refine, "soften the ego membrane" to carry out the processes of integration into a single field of consciousness. Today is the time to strike a healthy balance between caring for one's personality and constant openness to one life. Scattering the boundary of the "skin" allows consciousness to merge into a single field.

It is today that the phase of the development of billions of consciousnesses on the planet is being fixed, whereby evolution shifts into the inner world of man. Technogenic civilization fulfilled its task - created comfortable conditions for human existence. Robotization and digitization help to turn one's inner self. It is already clear that the multiplication of forms of consumer culture is meaningless. We have gone through the stages of external change, science has done everything to enable man to direct his efforts inside himself. This picture coincides with the Theosophical scheme of cosmos evolution cycles, according to which, the subtle spirit-matter, having passed the stage of involution (descent into matter), begins to move along the path of evolutionary matter collapse by expanding consciousness to a single field. In this way, the COVID-19 pandemic has created the conditions for internal concentration and concentration, an expansion of consciousness at the individual level for the reproduction of a single field of planetary consciousness. Lee Edelcourt, a well-known global trendsetter, founder of Trend Union Trends and Mindset Campaign, calls the pandemic "Quarantine of Consumption". We must learn to live in a world free of unnecessary things, external stereotypes and a consumption cult. But today, there is clearly a stratification in society of those who have remained in the skin and continue to divide the world and those who are conscious of the integrity of consciousness and are following the path of internal evolution.

Turning to the historical periodization of culture, which underlies the level of consciousness development, we note that today we have entered the phase of metamodern, the conditional beginning of which is determined in 2010 and is associated with the release of "Notes on Metamodern" by the Dutch cultural philosophers Timothyurin Vermeublin Akker[4]. The authors define the metamodern as a discourse of oscillation (fluctuation) between the optimism of modernity and the irony of the postmodern, as the oscillation between the internal and the external in search of true meaning and the acquisition of a new quality of consciousness, a depth of essential understanding of the world in the first decades of the XXI century. The metamodern looks for the place where our true self feels "at home", that is, itself, not the form from which it is usually identified. This search is done through the oscillatory combination of inner focus and external involvement. An attempt is made to hold the outside life and its inner depth. This depth is not something new. It is age-old wisdom that permeates and holds the whole of human culture. Wisdom that is embedded in all spiritual teachings, practices, philosophical views. Wisdom, which is the transcendental source and foundation of Theosophy.

Whereas in earlier periods of consciousness individualization this wisdom was revealed through spiritual teachers and absorbed by the mass consciousness of time, now, given the above social trends, eternal wisdom is revealed through the internal transformations of everyone, which should lead to a highly organized society. This transformation of consciousness - that is, the awareness of the need to remove the "skin", must occur at the level of individual self-awareness of their responsibility for the fate of planetary evolution.

According to Peter Russell, the main task of humanity at this stage is "not only to think in the new, but also to be in the new." That is to make this path from "ego" that is immersed in "skin" to "ego" with blurred borders. And if we don't, then we just keep talking about unity.

Thus, based on the theoretical achievements of the philosophy of consciousness and theosophical understanding of consciousness as a single field, as well as the processes of civilizational development and its crisis phenomena, one can argue the modern period of human development, as a time of dramatic evolutionary changes on the way to the achievement of essential unity. However, the only field of consciousness exists beyond time and space, presenting eternity. That is why every moment of our lives is the most precious point of consciousness. And it is necessary to live in such a way that to give every moment fullness of meanings, that is to the maximum, to fill the living space with the inner activity of individualized consciousness, and not to dream of future improvement or probable changes. As Alan Watts said, "You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meanings of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales."[5]

Practical Theosophy is a way of life according to the attainment of unity at the level of consciousness. On this basis, we must follow the steps that contribute to the expansion of consciousness of modern mankind, not at the level of abstract theories that are not perceived by the masses, but at the level of individuality, which according to the principle "like, attracts like", changing itself, contributes to evolutionary processors – forming consciousness.

In this way, the following steps are presented today:

1. Conscious understanding of the inner essence of man. The change of focus from its external, conditional forms of existence to internal ones. To live consciously is to realize and hold on to my true self, my own depth or higher self in everyday life.

2. Integration of the higher self into external life forms. The methodology of such ideological changes is the theosophical understanding of the indissoluble connection of consciousness and matter. In this regard, Anna Bezant states: “Consciousness and matter affect one another, because they are two parts of a single whole, both of them manifest when separated from each other and both disappear in union; and when they are separated from each other, there is always a connection between them”[6]. At the philosophical level, this connection is substantiated in the dialectic of the ontological and everyday existence of M. Heidegger[7].

3. The expansion of consciousness is due to the thinning of the membrane "ego", so that the individual no longer perceives himself as a particle, but joins a single field of consciousness. Oriental mystics call this transcendental state of satori, samadhi; Western esotericism – ecstasy, insight, illumination; psychoanalysts – "changed states of consciousness", death of ego, psychedelic episodes. Regardless of the name transpersonal, peak experiences contribute to the disincentive to one's own ego. That is why in the modern world the meditative and spiritual practices of the traditional East have become widespread in the non-traditional culture of the West. Spiritual practice should not be a fascination with the elect, but a daily work of the modern man.

4. Empathy and compassion. The inner concentration and focus on the unconditioned state is the point where empathy and compassion begin, held not on emotional short-lived states, but on the realization of the unity of being, as a single reality, of a single field of consciousness. Empathy is the way to blur the skin shell, to the dispersion of the Ego.

5. The ethics of accepting each is based on an understanding of the unity of the world and the right of each individual and individuality to exist and to manifest according to one's level of consciousness. By embracing the world in its multifaceted nature, we are expanding our vision to a holistic picture of the universe, where everything is appropriate and natural. This is a condition at the world level – the expansion of consciousness to the planetary, on the social - the formation of tolerance and the elimination of conflict and aggression.

6. Wave effect (I. Yalom). The realization that each person spreads concentric influence circles, both around others or the environment, and on a single field of cosmic consciousness, changes the world at the energy-information level. Any existence, though limited in time, or little visible in its achievements, makes sense to the universe. Material or socially conditioned things are not evolutionary, because they are finite. The resonance in the universe has what is spread at the level of consciousness: meaning, understanding, experience, the values which compose wisdom. In practice, it is widespread through the acts of anxiety, help, understanding, consolation, comfort.

7. Death as the definition of conscious life. "The memory that we will die makes us human beings"[8]. This position forms a conscious attitude towards life. Epicurus's argument of symmetry reminds us that the eternity from which we come and into which we depart is the only reality. We are torn from eternity into the illusion of temporal dimensions and not feel eternal. Moreover, eternity before birth is of little concern to us, and eternity after death frightens[9]. As death is inevitable, we must remember it throughout life, that is, to give life meaning in eternity. Keeping the memory of the eternity from which we have been torn out and contributing to understanding who I am and what consciousness is.

Modern phenomena of world, geopolitical conflicts, world crises and pandemics are a clear hint of the universe to the need for world-wide changes at the level of consciousness. COVID-19 related forced solitary confinement, self-isolation, removal from the hustle and bustle of society, its false roles and goals, natural slowing down the pace of life, abandoning unnecessary activities (the era of digitization created conditions for virtual events, conferences, communication in interest groups), conscious self-education and self-improvement, have become the reality of every person today. Through these forms, humanity must come to understanding of changes and specific actions at the individual level. Planetary consciousness is formed "from below" by a quantum leap from individual life forms as a linear process to a holographic awareness of one's higher Self as the defining part of the universe. This is the manifestation of the Theosophical postulate "All in All"[10]. According to quantum physics, the Consciousness of the Subject creates worlds, manifesting a single field of consciousness in actualized Reality, through which the "Absolute Consciousness, however, the only Self-Reality" is manifested[11].

Yuliia Shabanova, Ukraine

Doctor of Philosophical Science, Professor,

Honored Educator of Ukraine,

Head of Department of Philosophy and Pedagogics

of the Dnipro University of Technology

Head of the Scientific Group of Theosophical Society in Ukraine