Knowledge of the eternal nature of humanity and life is largely theoretical amongst human beings. This theoretical knowledge takes the form of various assumptions, beliefs and assertions, which in turn can form systems of belief or theory. The same humanity lives largely in the physical dimension, and experiences only the physical being and life, having physical experience and living in a “purely physical” reality. What is considered to be “truth” generally consists of coherence with this physical understanding, perception and basis of all things. Everything else is deemed to be something like imagination (which itself is often understood to be physical), error, non-existent etc. For the same human beings, all the problems in the universe, and the solutions, are physical in their cause and effect. To speak of anything else is to not make sense.
Yet, in spite of this “knowledge” and these beliefs, the very same human beings are actually living as multidimensional beings, in an interconnected multidimensional reality, having experiences of all the dimensions of their being through their existence. Nevertheless, human beings are not normally aware of this; their awareness and knowledge is centred too deeply in the physical, is somewhat locked there.
This situation has been so for many thousands of years already. There is hardly a culture or civilization that has not given expression to it in one form or another. It goes without saying that there is nothing “new” in this at all; it is the normal condition of humanity to be ignorant of its multidimensional existence. Likewise, arising out of ignorance to knowledge has also been the subject of great interest through the same period, and has given rise to many kinds of expression. Some of those expressions are by now very old and quite remote from the modern mentality, such that there is hardly a meaningful contemporary relation to them: the oldest myths, whose origins cannot be traced, are perhaps the remnants of those expressions. To the more recent expressions, in the last three thousand years, there is still some contemporary relation that is meaningful and gives rise to authentic understanding, knowledge and awareness in individuals and communities. Yet, it is even difficult to say how much has been lost of the power of those expressions to bring the modern human being to actual knowledge and awareness of its eternal and multidimensional existence. Of the more modern expressions of humanity’s understanding of its nature, from the last hundreds of years, again it is difficult to determine how successful and powerful they are at bringing the individual to an authentic realization. The modern individual is faced with an enormous range of expression, from the very ancient, mythological, through the pre-scientific religious and philosophical, to the contemporary scientific, religious and philosophical. Some or many of these expressions “play” variously in the minds of individuals through their development and can assist in bringing them to one state of awareness or another. In the current age, many are brought only to the standard perspective, which arises out of and also engenders the standard experience of life i.e. as physical alone. Then again, many others are brought to different understandings of life, and through them many encounter and acquire their theoretical knowledge and awareness of themselves as eternal multidimensional beings. Still others go on to develop a greater awareness of themselves, and go beyond the theoretical.
The situation of humanity at present, its “gridlocked” situation, arises – in part – out of the fact that humanity’s wider knowledge of itself is only theoretical at best or non-existent at worst. To put it crudely, and simply, humanity just does not know enough about itself; it is too ignorant. Yet, it is not the case that the solution to the problems in the situation of humanity involves trying to make human beings aware of their eternal natures, or even trying to bring them out of a purely theoretical knowledge. This is like trying to force an infant who has not developed any language ability to become aware of the social relevance of saying “please” or “thank you”. Such a thing is entirely naïve and misguided. The whole of humanity is not unlike an infant, who has yet to develop the capacity to really understand the multidimensional nature of self. It hears people speaking about the eternal essence of being, but only noise is perceived. Perhaps some infants are able to imitate some of the sounds that are heard, but they do no coalesce into meaningful words and thus do not yet become instruments or signs of understanding. It will take many thousands of years before this multidimensional understanding could become the “norm”, in the way that the mono-dimensional understanding is today. Until then, humanity must continue to suffer the consequences of ignorance (though, remember, it is the ignorance of youth, and cannot be helped).
No, instead the solution to the problems involves, to a large degree, accepting things as they are, and trying to understand the reality of the situation, which involves understanding that people, generally, do not have understanding and cannot have it, according to universal and fundamental principles of development. It is not possible to be forced to understand; even if it were possible, it could only ever be absolutely wrong. The solution must involve accepting the lack of development of inherent capacities, and the resulting failure, weakness and incompetence that must express itself in human activity. It does not come down to personal choice; it is not an individual’s fault that they do not understand. No, it means learning to accept the negative consequences of ignorance that manifest as various forms of suffering, at the individual and collective levels of being and experience. Because real knowledge of being and life is lacking, or is only theoretical, human society must learn to wait patiently to develop a better understanding, and must bear the burden that its incomprehension results in.
Human society must move through alternating periods of darkness and light on its way to a higher development, just as the child must suffer nightmares and joys as its bones grow, and its mind. Of course, this does not mean that those who do know better should not do what they can to ease unnecessary suffering. Indeed, in this, perhaps, their true utility is found.