102 lines
5.0 KiB
Plaintext
102 lines
5.0 KiB
Plaintext
I am posting the following for my friend Gene Kieffer, who does
|
|
not yet have access to Internet.
|
|
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
NOTICE: To carry out its assignment well, ASCENT, the newsletter,
|
|
will need Contributing Writers in all fields -- biology,
|
|
neuroscience, psychology, technology, mythology, spirituality,
|
|
etc. Articles should be 750 words or less. Please address your
|
|
letters to: Gene Kieffer, ASCENT, Post Office Box 2248, Darien, CT
|
|
06820. Or, you may send e-mail to Gene Kieffer in care of
|
|
gpmenos@firestone.princeton.edu.
|
|
|
|
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
|
|
BEST KEPT SECRET IN AMERICA:
|
|
You Can't Evolve Unless You Know You Can.
|
|
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
|
|
|
|
About ASCENT:
|
|
|
|
To tell the secret, that's the purpose of ASCENT, the newsletter
|
|
for people who want to evolve. For some unknown reason, almost
|
|
everyone, whether an evolutionist or ordinary individual, has
|
|
grown up believing that evolution is finished, that the brain has
|
|
ceased to evolve.
|
|
|
|
According to some experts, human evolution stopped over 30,000
|
|
years ago. The reason for this peculiar belief? A human skull
|
|
was found in Africa that had about the same volume as a modern
|
|
one.
|
|
|
|
Also, scientists haven't been able to detect any structural
|
|
changes in the brain that would lead them to think otherwise. But
|
|
that's almost like saying computers are *devolving*, because every
|
|
year they're getting smaller, when we know the very opposite is
|
|
true. The size of a computer has little or nothing to do with its
|
|
capacity to solve problems or the speed at which it can perform
|
|
complex computations and other difficult tasks.
|
|
|
|
Let's get off this self-defeating merry-go-round and accept the
|
|
most important fact governing our progress and our survival: We
|
|
*are* evolving! There are some who say, however, that without
|
|
verifiable proof, without empirical evidence, without scientific
|
|
demonstration, we would be deluding ourselves.
|
|
|
|
So what's the harm in that? Alright, then, consider this: Science
|
|
has no proof that we *aren't* evolving. That dusty African skull
|
|
is no proof at all. Nor is it any proof that we can't actually
|
|
*see* the brain evolving. It doesn't have to grow larger to
|
|
evolve. We've learned that much from microprocessors. Soon we'll
|
|
have the 586, and it won't be any larger than the old 8088.
|
|
|
|
ASCENT's mission is to purge the mind of all this nonsense about a
|
|
stagnant brain. That kind of idiocy makes us behave like, well,
|
|
like Homo sapiens, always ready to knock somebody over the head
|
|
with a club. After the crusty old neurons and kinks have been
|
|
cleaned up and straightened out, evolution can accelerate
|
|
unobstructed and unimpeded.
|
|
|
|
Seriously, why is it so important to believe the brain is still in
|
|
a state of organic evolution? Why can't we carry on contentedly
|
|
in the old rut, believing in "social evolution," or better yet,
|
|
"spiritual evolution," which are already popular concepts well
|
|
accepted by the intellectual leaders? Or why isn't it alright to
|
|
simply believe that the mind, or consciousness, is evolving? Why
|
|
this insistence on believing the brain itself is continuing to
|
|
evolve, even as we read this?
|
|
|
|
Good question, one answer to which has been floating around for a
|
|
long time. It goes something like this. "Don't you know that we
|
|
create our own reality?" Long before the New Age began, James
|
|
Allen published a small inspirational book, called "As A Man
|
|
Thinketh." It was a lot like "Consciously Creating
|
|
Circumstances," an earlier Rosicrucian tract. Most books on
|
|
magic, as we've learned, are quite similar in content and style.
|
|
All make the point that it just doesn't pay to think negatively
|
|
and that almost anything is possible if we think positively.
|
|
|
|
Another question. What's the matter with the much-loved story
|
|
that we are presently using only one-tenth of the brain, and since
|
|
nine-tenths is presumably still available, why the need for
|
|
further evolution?
|
|
|
|
The answer is that nature requires organic evolution in order to
|
|
tap into that dormant nine-tenths. And then, too, the great
|
|
majority of educated people have long since accepted evolution as
|
|
a fact of life. They only need a nudge to include the "fact" of
|
|
*continuing* evolution in their thinking. Not mindless evolution
|
|
in the Darwinian sense. (Evolution without the initial force of
|
|
purpose, without increase and fulfillment of purpose in the
|
|
accumulative course, is simply inconceivable.)
|
|
|
|
As James Allen says, "Law, not confusion, is the dominating
|
|
principle in the universe." And the Law of Evolution hasn't been
|
|
rescinded. It's just waiting to be discovered. "The oak sleeps
|
|
in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision
|
|
of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of
|
|
realities." If that sounds mushy, wait. ASCENT isn't going to be
|
|
a mushy newsletter in any sense of the word. It will deal mostly
|
|
in facts. And when it occasionally does speculate on what might
|
|
be, the reader will be alerted to it, because all such articles
|
|
will be labeled as such -- dreams.
|