Lectures & Talks
The Globalisation of Consciousness
by Peter Yiangou
Given at the 2007 US Ibn 'Arabi Society Symposium in Berkeley:
“Unified vision, unified world?”
Listen to the audio (mp3: 9.6MB)
In this talk I would like to consider some of the major global trends in our time and what they might mean when looked at from a universal spiritual perspective, ie one which allows us to understand globally and in detail the world we live in and our place within it. If we accept that such a possibility exists and are looking for help from people who have already articulated such a perspective, we need look no further than Ibn ‘Arabi whose insights into the nature of reality are sufficiently penetrating and inclusive that they can be considered timeless and relevant to our understanding of the world today. Although one side of his contribution is quintessentially Islamic and speaks to his milieu, there is another aspect which is universal and addresses the whole of Mankind.
In the first part of the talk I will be looking at Ibn ‘Arabi’s unique contribution to our perception of Reality and the place of Mankind, followed in the second part by a series of observations of trends in the world today, and how they could be understood in this light.
The door to Ibn ‘Arabi and his school, and the consistent meaning they communicate, was opened for me by Bulent Rauf, to whom I would like to dedicate this talk in this 20th year since his death. Some of you here may not know that he was also the founding inspiration for the MIAS in 1977 – 30 yrs ago (another anniversary) at which time there were hardly any of Ibn ‘Arabi’s works available in English. One of the aims of the society was to ensure that the universal vision Ibn ‘Arabi and his school exposed be available to as many people as possible. Now, there are regular symposia here and in the UK, with international participation and dozens of his works available in translation.
In addition to this, Bulent Rauf was instrumental in the founding of the Beshara School, which was started in the UK in the early 1970’s, and has a presence in a number of other places around the world, including here in the Bay area. The aim of the school is to bring out a universal spiritual perspective, through an understanding of unity and knowledge of ourselves by direct perception, without the need for intermediaries. Bulent Rauf made it known that we have now entered a stage in human development where this is possible on a global scale. Given Ibn ‘Arabi’s pole position amongst the universalists, his works in this area form the core of the study curriculum. The Beshara School maintains that the perspective Ibn ‘Arabi points to is forever real and accessible, needs to be rediscovered afresh by each generation, and seen in the context of our lives and times. As a student of the Beshara School, this has been my approach to his work and I see it as a practical rather than an academic endeavour.
Ibn ‘Arabi’s revolution was not that he was the first to come up with the idea of Oneness – Unity was already known in the great spiritual traditions in the form of the ultimate Oneness of God, or in a hierarchy of Being leading to an Absolute, or of Nature as the Great Mother. Ibn ‘Arabi brought into the open the secret which the great mystics had always known privately – ie that once fully realised, Oneness encompasses the whole of existence, and is not limited to a transcendent deity - i.e. it doesn’t end with the oneness of God. As far as we know he is the first to formulate an intellectually rigorous system of thought based on the Unity of Existence, or Oneness of Being. Unity is a simple and compelling proposition and easy to accept as an idea - or so one thought before discovering Ibn ‘Arabi’s relentless examination of its implications, both logically and ontologically, with profound consequences for our ideas of reality and ourselves.
We can look at a few key examples of Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysics of unity to demonstrate this point - if for instance we accept the idea of the unity of existence as the ground of all being, we are also accepting, de facto, that everything is included in it – all possibilities past present and future, all time infinitely and forever, matter, universes, species, thought, consciousness now - these are all part of it. If so, how can we also sustain the idea that we might be ‘other’ or separate from it, or even ‘created’ - because logically we are not separate, even if we are unaware of the fact? Indeed, if there is nowhere ‘else’ outside of the unity of existence, can anything, even our illusion of separate individual existence and consciousness, have a valid claim to any reality whatever? And if we do accept the unity of existence, how do we avoid the pitfall of thinking that we are God? These, and many other questions, flow from accepting the downstream consequences of the unity of existence as they flow into every aspect of life.
Distilled into its essential components, Ibn ‘Arabi explains that reality, which includes ourselves, is one and inclusive so that there is nothing ‘else’ that can know it. So better to give up the illusion that we are somehow separate, and accept that we are already known, even if we don’t yet know. When we do know ourselves, this is what we find out, so there is no point starting from the untenable position of thinking of ourselves as separate in the first place. Instead, start from what we know must be the truth. It is a system of thought that stands our normal assumptions on their heads, and turns them inside out – and also makes perfect sense when you think about it. There is nowhere to go, no path to travel on, no idea of God to find, no ego to get rid of – just a process of waking up into the one and only consciousness already singularised as ourselves, and seeing things as they really are. Ibn ‘Arabi’s recommended way back to the truth is the realisation that we never left it.
This reversal of normal assumptions leads us on to what is arguably Ibn ‘Arabi’s most important elucidation – the place of Mankind, and the potential each person has for completion, as seen from the standpoint of unity. We find that the very impulse that arises in ourselves to look for the truth originates from a primordial arrangement, before we were born. Ibn ‘Arabi explains that although ultimate Reality is complete in Itself and never manifests as such, out of a love to be known, it allows the infinite possibilities of things inherent in it their own self-expression, which includes the four dimensional universe we see, as well as the multiple dimensions we can infer. It also includes our own selves, with a pre-programmed longing for knowledge in all its forms, which itself comes from the original love to be known.
Our apparent distance from the origin is necessary for the fullest expansion of what is possible in all its fractal branching. Through knowledge, especially knowledge of oneness, we come to see that there is no distance or separation at all. It can be compared with looking at your face in the mirror – first you see and recognise the complete image, then you become aware of the details – the shape of the nose, colour of the eyes the smile, the texture of the skin, the colour of the hair, then each hair individually, and so on to the limit of the detail. It is the same original face, but consciousness is exploring and appreciating the details of the whole. Ibn ‘Arabi explains that the eternal Human prototype is like the complete image in the mirror which accurately reflects the original eternal hidden reality in every detail. All human beings emerge from this prototype in a succession we call time, and consciousness flows through them as their selves, revealing, as it were, all the details of the original ‘face’. The billions of unique human faces are thus the detailing of that single original Face which never stops being Itself. Mankind is not therefore a doomed species marooned on a planet on the outer limits of a minor galaxy, but rather an extension of consciousness to the outer limits of the possibilities.
It follows that such an all-inclusive consciousness would have complete internal consistency, so that what appears in the exterior universe would be according to a rational order, imaging that which is interior, so that our lives and destinies are integrated with the life and destiny of the era we live in and all the conditions that apply to it. All these elements combine as a complete and perfect expression of that one reality in the present moment, so that if we are looking to find what is real, we need look no further than in-to ourselves, and out-to the world we live in. Where else will we find it? In the conflation of the individual and global destinies we have exactly what we need - if only we could see things as they really are!
Ibn ‘Arabi goes further and outlines a destiny for the human race which has its beginning, development, completion and conclusion. In order to avoid apocalyptic speculation, and ever-consistent in seeing things from the perspective of unity, he places an understanding of the global human cycle firmly within the context of self-knowledge – only through knowing ourselves and discovering our essential unity with the one reality can we consciously participate in the destiny of the Humankind. He describes Adam, not only as the first of the species, but as the summation and repository of the essences of all the people to be born in this emergence of Mankind – much like our prototype in the example of the face in the mirror, mentioned above. From Adam we trace the development of Mankind through the many eras and cycles, each bringing the species as a whole closer to completion. This is the view of history taken from the standpoint of unity and reflects the movement from the oneness of the interior to the diversity of the exterior, where the possibilities are known to their fullest extent.
Prior to Jesus, prophets and sages acted as intermediaries for their communities and brought help and guidance from the interior, and God was seen by most as being distinct, far away and hidden from the creation. Although there were individuals who knew the true place of Mankind, they were an elite as there was not yet widespread receptivity for such a momentous idea. With the arrival of Jesus as the manifest Spirit, there is a tipping point and the ground is prepared for a synthesis between the Divine and Human perspectives. With the arrival of Mohammed, we see the fullest expression of the Divine as Human, and why the era of new religious law and mediation by prophets is necessarily closed so that the era of the direct perception for the many can commence, a possibility that is still in the making. This is the era to which Ibn ‘Arabi himself belongs and is a foremost exponent, and which he helps to direct. It is important to stress that, although his contribution can be seen historically as quintessentially Islamic and of his milieu, sealing as it were the Muhammedian inheritance, the fact that in so doing he also brings out and projects its essential meaning sets in motion a universal flow for the future of Mankind. This continues to be, augmented by those who follow this mode of thought.
While this tide of knowledge continued to develop amongst the spiritual elite in the Islamic world, another was forming in the Christian west which would set the stage for a further major shift in consciousness. With the assimilation of the wisdom of the Islamic world through Spain, and the migration of Byzantine scholars to Italy, the western medieval mindset began its reorientation, first with the Renaissance and then with the Reformation in the 16C which challenged the right of Rome to mediate in each person’s direct relationship to God. This was followed by the Industrial revolution and the 18C Enlightenment, and with it the beginning of modernism, which we will return to.
It is possible to join up the dots and trace the development of this movement from Ibn ‘Arabi’s time to the present day, a progression by degrees from a hierarchical and divinely mandated world view towards one in which the rights of the individual are considered at least as important as those of the collective, and in which a life in the body and a life in the spirit are not seen as alternatives, but as aspects of one existence.
We can see how one of the effects of this process of consciousness moving from the interior to the outermost limits of possibility has brought with it the empowerment of the individual as a place of manifestation. Mankind has taken centre stage, literally and philosophically, with all the consequences this implies. If we are able to accept the proposition that Mankind as a whole is developing along the lines indicated, it should be possible to identify trends in the world today to support this point of view. We would expect to find ideas and processes that are both widespread and ultimately unifying in their effects.
One of the most significant issues of the modern era is the impact humanity is having on the planet, which coincides with this time of the empowerment of the individual. It is interesting therefore that the term “The Anthropocene” – or “The Age of Mankind” - was coined by Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen in 2000 to describe the most recent period in the planet’s history, beginning in the 18C with the industrial revolution. It covers a period of huge environmental change comparable to the earlier geological periods which brought with them major climatic changes and mass extinctions. The Anthropocene is different because it is almost entirely manmade. It coincides with the ‘coming of age’ of Mankind when seen in a spiritual sense, and acceptance of our inheritance here which includes full responsibility for the planet.
The beginning of the Anthropocene coincides with the Age of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason which challenged the previously held Theocentric views of the universe and the nature of Divinity, and put Mankind firmly at the centre. This is also the beginning of modernism, and defines the way in which most of us still see the world today. As we have seen, this shift corresponds with the principle of the emergence of consciousness from the undifferentiated interior to the expressive exterior in the spiritual history of Mankind. During the infancy of the species, ultimate reality was witnessed by most people as a hidden and interior event, seen in terms of a transcendent Deity accessible only through the mediation of prophets and priests. With the migration of consciousness to its exterior resolution, as this surge reaches its fulfilment, it is reasonable to predict that that which was previously understood in terms of a transcendent God, will at some point be understood in terms of Mankind in its completion. Such an understanding is controversial – but only if we overlook the reality of Mankind who is, after all, the complete image of the real in the exterior.
The celebration of the cult of individuality which is so dominant in our time is perhaps a step on this road, but as often happens with a newly-found truth and the freedom which follows it, the limits and conditions of the new state of being are not fully understood at the outset.
In the early years of this ‘era of Mankind’, the new ideas and discoveries were articulated by people who still respected a Theocentric view of the world. Although they often came into conflict with the religious authorities, many of the great scientists and thinkers up to the early 20C – Newton and Einstein spring to mind - saw their work as exposing the mysteries of God rather than disproving His existence. With time, however, others found it increasingly difficult to sustain the limited view of a Creator in the religious sense, and theology and science began to diverge as the new paradigm began to take root. As a result, views of ultimate reality have tended to become either faith-based or science-based, and this remains one of defining difficulties of modernism. But, as we have seen, a fuller understanding of the place of Mankind would resolve these differences.
Although the principle of the empowerment of the individual is historically necessary, when taken outside of the context of unity it leads to self-interest at every level of human life. At present, we are living with a narrow definition of Mankind, where the self has become dislocated from its origin and lost its sense of direction and purpose, with destructive results. However, when we look at the larger canvas, we are still only part-way through a process, and are now being forced into facing the consequences of disunity.
It is really only in the past year or two that the terrifying consequences of climate change and the scale of the changes necessary to limit its effects have burst into global awareness. Seen in isolation, the task can seem impossible and it is easy to lapse into despair at the lack of consensus and rival interests. But what if we could understand the necessity of the change we are going through, and at the same time find a mode of being that can direct it in way that does not result in the destruction of the environment we depend on? It would be disingenuous to pretend there are easy answers to any of this, but answers there are, if we ask the right questions – perhaps we need only to look at the world in a different way in order to see them. Al Gore is right to project this as a moral and spiritual challenge, rather than a political one – and he fully deserves his Nobel Peace Price for saying so.
If we are prepared to look at what is facing Mankind now from the universal spiritual perspective outlined in this paper, it is possible to see that the very conditions which are bringing us to the threshold of a major breakthrough of consciousness also require a collective and individual willingness to change our ways to accept it.
Not so long ago, the environmental movement was driven as much by ideology as evidence, and by a sincere desire to preserve Nature from wanton destruction. This sentiment was until very recently easily dismissed by vested interests as being idealistic and incompatible with their development goals which were, after all, intended to improve the lot of their citizens. This polarity of interests has all but gone, and it is now the people with the spreadsheets, risk analyses and graphs who have found unity – sustainable economic development depends on a benign environment in which people can have a degree of security and happiness. It is the people with clipboards who have now seen the complete interdependence of all human activity, and in their way found an understanding of unity and compassion.
An increasing number of scientists and economists are arriving at what would once have been seen as spiritual conclusions through a more complete understanding of the world - perhaps they will also one day help develop the language for a new spirituality that more accurately represents a knowledge of the world truly integrated by a globalised consciousness.
In my lifetime, the population of the planet has trebled from 2 billion to 6 billion, and this is expected to increase to around 9 billion by the middle of the century. Even today there are more people alive than have ever lived before. Some argue that the planet cannot possibly support so many people and that we are already mortgaging the future – others say that it can, if we stop waste and use resources effectively. But what if this epic emergence of souls into the world today, with all their potential for an explosion of consciousness, is necessary from a spiritual perspective, and is being made possible by the equally remarkable breakthroughs and integration in economics and science? In a very short space of time we have acquired the necessary technology for agriculture, housing, infrastructure, communications, and access to resources to allow billions more people to live on this planet with a reasonable prospect of a good life. From a universal spiritual perspective the two aspects go together – the necessity of the human emergence, and the conditions which allow it. So if we are looking for a complete picture, it surely includes understanding the nature of globalisation.
The globalised world today could be seen in terms of the interdependence of a triad of aspects which define our era - these are : the emerging human potential, science and economics. Science and economics have already shown their global reach, but the triad cannot be considered complete until the emerging human potential expands into a globalized consciousness and unifies it – and in this respect there is still some way to go in understanding how our world is unfolding and in bringing out meanings from the perspective of unity. The immense forces unleashed in the world need to be directed towards their creative fulfilment - the genii is well and truly out of the bottle, and there is no going back.
We can also look at the deracination brought about by the global world economy, and how it has simultaneously brought people together as never before. To give an idea of the scale and exponential rate of change, let us consider some statistics. The average daily global turnover in foreign exchange market transactions is revealing. In 1973 it was $10-20 billion, in 1983: $60 billion, in 1992: $880 billion, in 2004: $1.9 trillion and this year it is $3.2 trillion. In China alone more than 200 million people have migrated from the countryside in less than a generation – the biggest migration in human history. The movement of capital has brought with it an unprecedented movement of people and ideas, and skills are now traded internationally. National, racial, religious and ideological boundaries are irrelevant where capital is concerned, it flows freely to release potential - human potential. Those who have pulled up their local roots and entered the global society are changed in the process and however much they try to retain their previous values, it is often in a compromised form without real conviction, and their children invariably move even further away. Whatever the side-effects, it could be seen as a movement towards a more integrated world culture, in the process of which millions, if not billions, of people are being freed from parochial constraints and given opportunities for self-improvement they would never otherwise have had.
Whatever value judgements one makes – and there are many destructive aspects in the wake of such a tectonic shift - this process is uniting the people of the world into a global awareness. Poverty still exists, but less so than ever before both proportionately and in absolute terms and there are far more people alive today in comfortable material circumstances than there have ever been. With the emergence of the great new economies of the east, hopefully followed by Africa, respected economists predict a time by the middle of the century when poverty could effectively be eradicated. And with all this unshackling of human potential let us not underestimate the significance of the end of slavery and the emancipation of women. The rise of the feminine is one of the transforming forces of our time.
I believe it is important to notice that many of the leading compassionate and unifying voices are coming from areas other than those traditionally associated with spirituality. For example, in the field of economics we have Jeffrey Sachs and Sir Nicholas Stern, both of whom have arrived at a compassionate and unified world view through their work.
We can look to science and technology as some of the other great unifying forces in the world today. Clearly, the economic revolution could not have happened without the technology and science which underpins it, and vice versa. The exponential growth of computing power, communications and the internet have all combined to facilitate the globalisation of consciousness. This is still evolving rapidly - first we had instant access to almost any information via the web 1.0, now the Facebook and YouTube generations interact globally with web 2.0, and web 3.0 is already being talked about with even higher levels of integration. Perhaps the passionate self-belief of the geeks at Google is not completely unjustified, and the zeal for ever-greater integration of information and people is a response to the imperative of a globalised consciousness which is impressing itself into our awareness with increasing intensity.
As consciousness moves inexorably outwards, encompassing the detail of all phenomena in a unified vision, it is perhaps no coincidence that we find Scientists everywhere looking for underlying laws and patterns to explain the nature of reality. The search for a Theory of Everything has become the holy grail for many and is absorbing the efforts of tens of thousands of researchers worldwide, with huge budgets. As a regular reader of the New Scientist, I am aware of a palpable sense of excitement within the scientific community that they are on the verge of an understanding which will transform our knowledge of the universe and ourselves.
Because of a suspicion of anything religious by some, and a reluctance to accept or publicly admit to the possibility of a higher intelligence by others, many physicists dress their ideas of the Divine in other clothes, like quantum theory, which is still sufficiently mysterious and non-linear to allow abstruse interpretation. Some of the recent ideas to emerge from loop quantum gravity are very metaphysical indeed, where everything in the universe emerges from a simple network of relationships, with no fundamental building blocks at all. Others like Roger Penrose and John Barrow use the idea of the Anthropic Principle which suggests that the universe requires intelligent life such as human beings to witness it, and that the improbably precise conditions and physical constants that have enabled us to be here at all are evidence of this. Even Richard Dawkins conceded in a recent interview with the Times that there may be a mega-intelligence behind the universe, but that he wouldn’t call it God!
As only reality Itself fully comprehends everything, it seems logical that a Theory of Everything will remain elusive until the consequences of a universal perspective become more widely accepted and known. However, I believe we are seeing the beginnings of a convergence of physics and metaphysics - it would be a logical consequence of the globalisation of consciousness – and in this paper we have not even considered the breakthroughs in biology, the significance of genetics and research into the functioning of the brain.
But for those who come from a conventional spiritual standpoint it may be wishful thinking to expect that the integrated vision of the future will sit comfortably with the vernacular of the past. Given that the major developments and unifying understandings of our time are being revealed directly to the human senses and intellect and are to do with observable and measurable phenomena, when these become fully integrated with the meaning of oneness in a truly universal spiritual perspective for the era, it may well be in a language we don’t recognise from our standpoint in time. Indeed, if the one Reality is undeniably manifest as Nature, witnessed everywhere by everyone as everything, what then is there left to believe in, and can we even give It a name?
If the last two hundred years can be characterised by the rise of the individual at the expense of the collective good, as witnessed by the crisis in our relationship with nature, then the next stage in human development will of necessity lead to a re-evaluation of the meaning of individuality. From the perspective outlined in this paper, what we call history is but a single Self flowing outwards in the guise of many selves, delighting in its endless ramifications. So when knowledge of our selves looking inwards meets the irresistible tide of the one Self flowing outwards, the Self and selves embrace in the dance of existence and unity manifests in its unlimited aspects.
For such a vision to find its unqualified expression at the level of human experience, certain conditions are necessary, and we could say that a globalised consciousness requires all the other types of globalisation we have pointed to for the one Self to manifest without limit. And the symmetry of oneness is such that the very bringing about of these conditions is making us face up to what we are here for. Our generation faces the choice consciously to participate in the preparation for what is to come next, allowing our descendants to be present for a possibility which we can barely imagine - the globalisation of consciousness when both unity and diversity, spirit and body, are celebrated in a single vision by the many as the One, and the One as the many.
Peter Yiangou
Peter Yiangou is currently the senior partner of an architectural practice based in the Cotswolds in the UK. His interest in Ibn 'Arabi started in 1972 when he met Bulent Rauf, the founder member of the MIAS. His interest in Ibn 'Arabi has continued since then through the activities of the Beshara School, also founded by Bulent Rauf. He spent time as head of the first Beshara Centre at Swyre Farm in the UK in 1975, and a period as Chairman of the Beshara Trust in the early 90's. He has attended 6 month and short courses at the Beshara School where Ibn 'Arabi is part of the core curriculum. In recent years he has been involved in running 10 Beshara School courses in Australia and Indonesia.