Changing Human Nature

Once invited to a writer’s forum, I thought it a good idea to read a book written by Matthew Fox, another member of the panel. I wanted to see if there was any synergy between us. The organizer suggested his book, Creativity. I’m glad I asked because I found the synergy I was looking for, a section on human nature in which he listed a series of attributes that we ideally should not exhibit:

• We are not consumers,
• We are not addicts,
• We are not passive couch potatoes,
• We are not boring,
• We are not cogs in a machine,
• We are not lazy,
• We are not destroyers.

Unfortunately, although we ought NOT to exhibit these attributes (consumer, addict, boring, cogs in the machine, lazy, destructive), we still do. At the moment, in our present state of consciousness, we are mere aberrations of the ideal human nature Matthew Fox believes us capable of.

North Coast Winter Sky

Ouspensky said, "in our present state of consciousness we are asleep; we are machines; we are incapable of true knowing." So, how do we change our human nature? How do we stop feeling like “cogs in the machine?”

Remember 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece? Remember the much talked about black monolith that appears in the midst of a primitive tribe?

Walking out of the theater I had something no one else in my group of friends had. I knew what the Black Monolith meant. I was certain that it signified a dramatic shift in consciousness, a symbol for man’s first instance of self-awareness, a parable describing the discovery, the use, and the development of tools. Self recognizing other for the first time. Man, in effect, becoming modern man. The moment homo added sapiens to his pedigree. And if you think about it, the modern space shuttle is but a mere extension of the bone picked up by the primitive tribesman in Kubrick’s film. In fact, there has been a greater lapse of time between the origin of man and the discovery of that first tool than the lapse of time between the discovery of that primitive weapon and creation of the atomic bomb.

In the intervening thousands of years since that primordial moment — the hand reaching down to grab the bone at the same instant the grabber realizes its deadly purpose — there has not been another existential leap of consciousness of the same magnitude. No new black monolith. No moment of greater self-awareness spreading like wildfire through the entire race. Sure, technology has moved ahead at a rapid pace, but outside of the development of the prefrontal cortex (the region of the brain devoted to higher cognitive functions), the development of the other lobes of the brain has been minimal. It’s often said that man’s decisions are still governed by his animal brain — emotions and feelings overruling rational centers.

What does this have to do with changing human nature? In order to change our human nature we have to change our state of consciousness.

The reason human nature varies so greatly among individuals is because human nature is subordinate to the individual's current state of consciousness. The higher the state of consciousness of the individual, the nobler his nature. Unfortunately, the aggregate state of human nature at the present time has created a world of financial collapse, war, greed, illness, obesity, addiction, wide-scale sexual slavery, racial hatred.

Violent emotions, selfish habits, negative outlook, addictions, aggressive personalities, faulty mental processes have created a "lowest-common-denominator" behavioral standard. Often, we exhibit negative behavior out of frustration, because we feel like "cogs in a machine." We may even hate ourselves because of failure. That's when the trouble starts because: violence is a form of self-hate. Failure is not non-fulfillment; it is a learning opportunity.

In order to survive the changing conditions of overcrowding and diminishing resources, we can and must eliminate the negative aspects of a nature that makes us feel like cogs in a machine.

But we cannot change human nature by any traditional or orthodox means. Not by prayer, not by good works, not by psychology, education, philosophy, law, medicine, science, politics is human nature changed. Don’t believe me? Ask Mao Tse-Tung, the most dedicated social engineer of the last 100 years. The Cultural Revolution in China attempted to exorcise commercialism, venality, greed, and selfishness. It failed miserably. Failed miserably because we've been trying to change our nature by traditional means for centuries. If education were the answer, we'd have already evolved. Same for science, for law, politics, and religion. But we're still right back where we started.

 

To change our nature we must change our consciousness, which varies greatly from individual to individual.

"Thus in life there is ever the intellectual and emotional nature — the mind that reasons and the mind that feels. Of one come the men of action — generals and statesmen; of the other, the poets and dreamers — artists all."
~ Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser

Kundalini wants to balance natural tendencies, to make the manager more poetic and the artist a better organizer. Does it always work this way? Can I predict how Kundalini might affect you? Of course not, but I can show you how it affected me. 

My books are about transformation. But so were the Middle Ages — about scourging the body in order to transcend it. My work isn’t about scourging the body; it’s about perfecting it in order to transcend it, in order to develop and maintain perfect health, mental awareness, and higher consciousness throughout life, and on into future incarnations.

You see, we’ve moved beyond a purely religionist definition of transcendence. Transcendence can be as simple as surpassing one’s early circumstances to become an artist, or as elaborate as dying on the cross. We now know — or at least we should know — that there is something beyond the physical, and we don’t need prayer to invoke it. We can reach out and grab it. That is, we can take an active role in the process of connecting with the energy continuum. That is why my books are also about the biology of consciousness, about first principles, if you would, the steps to implementing our transformation in the space of a single lifetime. We can use this process to heal and perfect our beings.

As Vivek Govekar stated so eloquently in Kundalini - The Catalyst for Evolutionary Leaps in Consciousness:

"Unless there is a framework for scientific research that both provides support to those undergoing the trauma associated with the event and also carries out an in-depth analysis of the abilities, revelations and changes brought about post-awakening, we are missing out on valuable opportunities for using this phenomenon towards it's intended goal, the benefit of mankind."

So how do we change our consciousness? That’s the purpose of Kundalini — a powerful, energetic mechanism in the human body that allows us to realize our full potential. Kundalini is the motivating catalyst behind the transformational experience. It's the key to changing our state of consciousness. How? Kundalini stimulates neuroplastic activity in the brain and, as a consequence, changes our very Being. Our behavioral aberrations vanish. We are no longer cogs in the machine.

So how do we change human nature? We don’t. We run an “end run” around it; we change our state of being, our consciousness. How do we do this? By raising Kundalini in a safe, permanent fashion. How does this work? My books detail my process, but the upshot is Kundalini produces an entirely new being. It’s an active process. You can’t pray for it to happen; you can’t do it by reading philosophy, by undergoing psychoanalysis, or becoming a scientist, lawyer or doctor. If the above were possible, it would have happened already because we've been doing these things for a long time...without much success.

And you can't grasp it intellectually. Why? Because you can't see the mountaintop until you're on top of the mountain. And you can't get there without climbing!

As Bruce Lee said, “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”

You have to involve the whole being. How did I do it? I mastered three powerful meditation techniques: diaphragmatic deep breathing, control of heart rate, the backward-flowing method and, lo and behold, I was there, standing at the threshold of a new being. There are other ways, all with the same goal.

The goal Vivek pointed to in Gopi Krishna's great hypothesis:

"The aim of the evolutionary impulse that is active in the race is to mold the human brain and nervous system to a state of perception where the invisible world of intelligent cosmic forces can be cognizable to every human being."

That is your true birthright: ever expanding consciousness — a process that has taken us "from hapless bystanders, surviving the vagaries of nature and at the mercy of circumstances, to users of tools, taking charge of our own destiny, almost immediately." A process that will take us even further in the future.

Many refuse to recognize that the process is only underway, that in spite of the strides we've made — from caveman to modern man — there is a long way to go. They think we've reached the pinnacle of evolution, that the physical, material world is all there is. They pooh-pooh Near Death Experience and Kundalini states, don't think "meditation techniques, hallucinogens, yogic breathing practices, tantric sex" amount to much. In so doing, they deny their birthright, much the same way Esau — succumbing to the frailties of human nature — denied his. 

But objective study of metaphysical states is happening. Dr. Sam Parnia, a critical care doctor and director of resuscitation research at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine, studies what people experience in that period after their heart stops and before they're resuscitated. This includes visions such as bright lights and out-of-body experiences.

"The experience that people have is very personal and it's very real to them. So, for most people who've gone through these experiences, as far as they're concerned, what they've experienced is absolutely real. They've described and seen something of the other side. Now, for those of us who haven't had the experience, it's impossible to verify that, but in the same way that, for instance, if a patient comes to me and says, 'I have depression,' it would be completely unacceptable for me as a physician to simply discard that experience and say, 'Well, I don't think [so]. You may feel that you're depressed, but actually it's an illusion of having depression or you're hallucinating. Your depression, it's not really real.' So we have to remember that to the people who've had the experience, it's real to them."

'What we study is not people who are near death,' Parnia tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. 'We study people who have objectively died. ... And therefore what we've understood is that the experience that these people have of going beyond the threshold of death, entering the period after death for the first few tens of minutes or hours of time, provides us with an indication of what we're all likely to experience when we go through death.'

"In his new book Erasing Death: The Science That Is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death, Parnia examines the experiences patients describe, but whereas much discussion around the experience of death has been philosophical or personal, Parnia is looking at the subject scientifically.

"'One of the big problems that we have,' Parnia says, 'is that because we've never had a science, we've never had an objective method to go beyond the threshold of death and study what happens both biologically and from a mental and cognitive perspective.'"