CHAPTER 10
From a bacterium to humans, this world has billions of living beings and this is a bio-diversity which makes the planet earth a truly mesmerizing and probably the most unique one in the entire universe.
This diversity is something we humans do not often see, realize and count for in our daily thinking and rational actions. Let alone the diversity of all creatures on earth, we do not basically think of and admit the diversity within our human species… actually, we never usually think of us as a species evolved out of billions of years of evolution.
Humans generally think of the entire world population as one common pool of almost equal beings, divided by geographies and culture. Actually, most humans only see and think about the small pool of people in their ambient social environment and local geographical limits.
The bitter reality is, like the biodiversities of other creatures, we humans also have the similar diversity among us and this diversity is not only in geographical segregation and in cultural exclusivity but originally and essentially in consciousness. It is the consciousness that is as diverse among humans on this planet as is the biodiversity. From a tiny bacterium to a mighty elephant or whale, living beings on this planet have different physical make up and commensurate physical and mental capacities.
The millions of species on this planet have actually, different levels of consciousness, depending upon the physical and biological make up of their existence on the earth. The humans also have diverse consciousness levels even as their physical and biological make up are more than similar. Almost 99 percent of genes of all humans are same. But the consciousness varies because different humans have different brain and mind evolution.
World-renowned scientific minds have done a cross-cultural mapping of all possible and diverse states, structures, memes, types, levels, stages, and waves of human consciousness. As human development has been an evolutionary process, different human consciousness are on diverse and often overlapping stages of conscious development and evolution.
Clare Grave's work, forward and refined by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan calls this approach as Spiral Dynamics. It sees human development as proceeding through eight general stages or classes of consciousness. The world is a unique meshwork and mosaic of these different colors of human consciousness.
As Beck puts it, "The focus of the work is not on types of people, but types in people."
The first six levels are "subsistence levels" marked by first tier thinking." Then there occurs a revolutionary shift in consciousness; the emergence of "being levels" and "second-tier thinking," of which there are two major waves. Each class of consciousness has been assigned a color.
The first-tier of six stages are:
1. Beige: Archaic-Instinctual:
2. Purple: Magical Animistic:
3. Red: Power Gods:
4. Blue: Mythic Order:
5. Orange: Scientific Achievement:
6. Green: The Sensitive Self:
Second-tier integral consciousness:
7. Yellow: Integrative:
8. Turquoise: Holistic:
If one believes in evolutionary process of human development, then only one can accept and understand all this. The fact remains that all these diverse stages of human consciousness are in conflict and competition with each other. Every color of consciousness dislikes and distrusts the other colors, as the subjective truths for all sets of colors of consciousness are so diverse, in contrasts and competitive to each other that there shall always be huge amount of conflict and chaos on this planet.
The huge trouble is, almost 40 percent of world population is in blue colored mythical order whereas 30 percent in the antagonistic orange color. Together, these two sets of consciousness hold 80 percent of power positions of the planet. So, one can see why the conflicts and chaos of the world cannot be abated.
Interestingly, the integrative and holistic consciousness of yellow and turquoise shades holds only less than 1.5 percent of the world population. This second-tier human consciousness, which sees and accepts the human consciousness in an integrative and holistic way, assimilating all shades of consciousness into one whole to make a singular world culture for all humans is relatively new and very rare.
This consciousness enjoys only one percent of global power. Naturally, such consciousness is in utter minority. Too insignificant to be even considered a rational consciousness by other shades of consciousness. Rather, all other consciousness would consider it a huge hypocrisy and almost a sure madness.
The bitter reality is, there is nothing called ignorance and wrong on this planet. There is only pluralistic and subjective knowledge and truths. Every conscious being considers his ‘take’ on ‘realism’ around him or her as the right and only true take on things. Rest of the consciousnesses is something he or she considers as ‘revisable’ or at best ‘over-ridable’. Many also consider all other consciousness to change as per his or her take. This missionary and fundamentalist consciousness is on the rise.
So, an integrative, holistic and singularly objective consciousness for all humans is something which is as rare as the singularity on this planet. The biodiversity is the rule and this shall prevail always. The cognitive-diversity, which is the product and function of competing and conflicting states of diverse consciousnesses is what makes this planet earth so very mesmerizing and unique in this universe… truly!
This rainbow of human consciousness ensures that every consciousness sees and accepts the realism colored in a diverse shades resulting in diversity of worldviews and pluralistically subjective realisms.
Ancient wisdom knew about all this and called it ‘Maaya’. The rainbow ensures, the world lives in a Maaya that engulfs everything in its ‘viraat swaroop’ (absolute cosmic realism)!
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