Future Developments, or:
What’s the next turn of experience?
While looking at how the forest of experience has grown since the Paleolithic, we could ask ourselves: Was the most recent change – the discovery of the unconscious – also the last transformation? Has the history of experience come to an end? There is no reason to think so. However, future directions are still uncertain.
The Stoics already believed that the whole cosmos is a conscious living being, permeated by a “spirit” called “pneuma“. Teilhard des Chardin hoped that the human spirit could get in touch with this cosmic pneuma. Or have I misunderstood him here? Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme also tie in with Teilhard’s ideas. However, the search for new dimensions of experience is not limited to theologians and cosmologists.
Karl Gustav Jung and Wolfgang Pauli worked together all their lives on the striking phenomenon of synchronicity. Jung used this term to describe two (or more) temporally correlated events that are not linked by a causal relationship — such as when two people think of each other at the same time and then call each other synchronously. One of Jung’s and Pauli’s ideas was that this link could be based on quantum entanglement.
Other researchers have also focused on the role of quantum physics. Since the 1960s and Eugene Wigner’s hypotheses, the idea emerged that the human brain and especially the mysterious phenomenon of consciousness are based on quantum mechanical principles. Physicists and physicians like David Bohm, Richard Penrose and Stuart Hameroff have further developed this quantum theory of consciousness.
So far, there is neither consensus on future developments, nor are any of the above projects beyond controversy. Personally, I have always found it astonishing that the experience of time has so far played no role as a genuine dimension of experience. Perhaps time is the missing link of all previous speculations and the gateway to the next dimension of experience?
If you have an idea: please contact me.
<- Rehash the “History”