Awakening to “The Good” and to a Deep Sense of Oneness

We have the highest potential for freedom of any being on this planet. As conscious human beings we can be aware of this freedom and make purposeful use of it. The question we address here concerns the humanly and morally best use of this freedom.

Morality enters this discourse because, if we can choose the way we act, we have the responsibility to choose it wisely. Evidently, we can act to maximize our own self-interest, and that is what most people do most of the time. But we can also act with a measure of altruism and public spirit. Acting in that way may not be contrary to our self-interest—at least not to our enlightened self-interest.

Self-interest makes us seek the satisfaction of our immediate desires and aspirations, and if our desires and aspirations are sound this is all right: then our desires and aspirations coincide. In a strongly interconnected and interacting world what is good for one is good also for the others. But what are the truly enlightened interests and aspirations?

What Is Truly Good for Each and Every One?

Philosophers have been debating what is truly good in the world for more than two thousand years. No definitive answer has emerged. In Western philosophy the view of the classical empiricists has prevailed: judgments of good and bad are subjective; they cannot be decided unequivocally. At the most they can be related to what a given person, a given culture, or a given community holds to be good. But that, too, is subjective, even if it is subjective in relation to a group: then it is intersubjective.

In Akashic philosophy we can overcome this impasse: we can discover objective criteria for the good. These criteria do not carry the certainty of logic and mathematics, but they are more than subjective or intersubjective. They are as objective as any statement can be about the world. They refer to the conditions that ensure life and wellbeing in an interconnected and interacting universe. Enhancing these conditions is objectively good. These conditions can be briefly outlined.

The Common Goal: Maintaining The System As A Living Whole

Living organisms are complex systems in a state far from thermodynamic equilibrium. They need to meet stringent conditions for maintaining themselves in their physically improbable and inherently unstable condition. What is good for them is first of all to meet these conditions. Life is the highest value. But what does it take to ensure life for a complex organism on this planet? Describing all the things that this entails would fill volumes. But there are basic principles that apply to all living beings.


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Every living system must ensure reliable access to the energy, matter, and information it needs to survive. This calls for fine-tuning all its parts to serve the common goal: to maintain the system as a living whole. The term coherence describes the basic feature of this requirement. A system consisting of finely tuned parts is a coherent system. Coherence means that every part in the system responds to every other part, compensating for deviations and reinforcing functional actions and relations. Seeking coherence for one’s self is a truly sound aspiration; it is indubitably good for us.

But in an interconnected and interacting world the requirement for coherence does not stop at the individual. Living organisms need to be internally coherent, with regard to the fine-tuning of their parts, but they also need to be externally coherent, with well-tuned relations to other organisms. Hence viable organisms in the biosphere are both individually and collectively coherent. They are supercoherent. Supercoherence indicates the condition in which a system is coherent in itself and is coherently related to other systems.

The biosphere is a network of supercoherent systems. Any species, ecology, or individual that is not coherent in itself and is not coherently related to other species and ecologies is disadvantaged in its reproductive strategies. It becomes marginalized and ultimately dies out, eliminated by the merciless workings of natural selection.

The Exception to the Rule of Coherence

The great exception to this rule is the human species. In the last few hundred years, and especially in the last decades, human societies have become progressively incoherent both with respect to each other and with their environment. They have become internally divisive and ecologically disruptive.

Human societies could nevertheless maintain themselves and even increase their numbers because they compensate for their incoherence by artificial means: they make use of powerful technologies to balance the ills they have wrought. This, of course, has its limits.

Whereas in the past these limits appeared mainly on the local level, today they surface also on the global scale. Species are dying out, diversity in the planet’s ecosystems is diminishing, the climate is changing, and the conditions for healthy living are reduced. The system of humanity on the planet is nearing the outer bounds of sustainability.

We can now say what is truly good in this crucial epoch. It is to regain our internal and external coherence: our supercoherence. This is not a utopian aspiration, it can be achieved. But it calls for major changes in the way we think and act.

Awakening to “The Good” and to a Deep Sense of Oneness

Striving effectively to supercoherence requires more than finding technological solutions to patch up the problems created by our incoherence. It requires reconnecting with a mind-set that traditional cultures possessed but modern societies have lost. This is a mind-set based on a deep sense of oneness with each other and with nature.

In today’s world many people feel separate from each other and from the world. Young people call it dualism. The prevalence of dualism has grave consequences. People who feel separate tend to be self-centered and egoistic; they do not feel connected with others and do not feel responsibility for them. Behavior inspired by this sense of duality creates tooth-and-claw competition, eruptions of mindless violence and anger, and the irresponsible degradation of the living environment. This mind-set has dominated the modern world, but there are signs that it is losing its grip on individuals and societies.

Ever more people, especially young people, are rediscovering their oneness with each other and with the world. They are rediscovering the power of love—rediscovering that love is more than the desire for sexual union, that it is a profound sense of belonging to each other and to the cosmos. This rediscovery is timely, and it is not mere fantasy: it has its roots in our holographically whole, nonlocally interconnected universe.

Love is the way to supercoherence. Achieving it is health enhancing and socially and ecologically sound. It gives rise to behaviors and aspirations that are good for us, good for others, and good for the world. Supercoherence is objectively good. It is the highest value philosophers called “The Good.”

©2014 by Ervin Laszlo. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with permission of Inner Traditions, Inc.
 www.innertraditions.com

Article Source

The Self-Actualizing Cosmos: The Akasha Revolution in Science and Human Consciousness
by Ervin Laszlo.

The Self-Actualizing Cosmos: The Akasha Revolution in Science and Human Consciousness by Ervin Laszlo.Science evolves through alternating phases of “normal science” and radical shifts that create scientific revolutions. We saw this at the turn of the 20th century, when science shifted from a Newtonian worldview to Einstein’s relativity paradigm, and again with the shift to the quantum paradigm. Now, as we recognize the nonlocal interconnection of all things in space and time, we find our scientific worldview shifting once again.

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About the Author

Ervin Laszlo, author of the article: The Birthing of a New WorldErvin Laszlo is a Hungarian philosopher of science, systems theorist, integral theorist, and classical pianist. Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, he has authored more than 75 books, which have been translated into nineteen languages, and has published in excess of four hundred articles and research papers, including six volumes of piano recordings. He is the recipient of the highest degree in philosophy and human sciences from the Sorbonne, the University of Paris, as well as of the coveted Artist Diploma of the Franz Liszt Academy of Budapest. Additional prizes and awards include four honorary doctorates. Visit his website at http://ervinlaszlo.com.