Human Consciousness and Its Evolution

Project 432794: Richard W. Coan: Human Consciousness and Its Evolution * * * * * For ages, people have pondered their place in the universe and in time. They have sought to understand their origin as sensing and thinking beings and wondered about their future as sentient creatures. In Western culture, we find relevant ideas stemming from Judeo-Christian traditions, classical Greek philosophy, and the sciences and arts. In Asia, we can find still more streams of thought, including those rooted in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Views about the evolution of consciousness take many forms. They differ with respect to what they consider the essential nature of consciousness, its origin, possible stages in the course of its development, and any goal or goals to which its evolution may lead. In earlier work, the author surveyed major views regarding the ideal goal of personal development - the goal represented by such terms as maturity, normality, mental health, self-actualization, and self-realization. He concluded that the major views running through Eastern and Western thought represent five basic modes of fulfillment: efficiency, creativity, inner harmony, relatedness, and transcendence. In this book he argues that these five modes also represent five ways of conceptualizing the ideal goal of psychic evolution, both in the individual and in our collective evolution. Each of these views is expressed in various forms in Western thought. Western science and philosophy have tended to emphasize the mode of efficiency in terms of realistic and rational thinking. A strain in Western thought stressing creativity has recurrently surged since the Renaissance. The cultivation of Christian love places more emphasis on relatedness. A concern with inner harmony is seen in contemporary streams of psychotherapy. Mystical traditions of both East and West stress transcendence - moving beyond the illusion or limited sense of one’s separate individual identity. Valuable ideas regarding individuation and evolution have been offered by Jung, Neumann, Bronowski, Aurobindo, Wilber, and Teilhard de Chardin. Some writers and some movements may contend that consciousness naturally evolves along a pathway that leads directly in the developing individual and in the human species as a whole toward a goal corresponding to one of the five modes. The author, however, stresses the importance of flexibility. As we develop individually and collectively, we need access to different modes of experience. Surely too, in any ultimate state of realization, we would want access to alternative modes of experience.