A change in awareness

‘2025 is the time for an expansion of human consciousness that will shock some, but be welcomed by others,’ argues David Derrington, in this thought-provoking philosophical reflection.

Sometimes you wake from a dream wondering if it has a significance. One morning recently I woke from a dream, remembering nothing except it ending with me walking through a gateway and a clear understanding of its meaning.

It's about a change in awareness. Like changes in maths:

1. starting to use 0 as an actual number in calculations;

2. using what had been derisively called imaginary numbers to form complex numbers;

3. using an infinitely small quantity – the infinitesimal – in calculus.

If zero means nothing, then how can it exist? If minus x minus = plus, how can the square root of -1 be a number worth bothering with?

The philosopher David Hume(1711-1776). Portrait by Allan Ramsay, 1766, National Portrait Gallery.

David Hume, considered by many to be the greatest philosopher to write in the English language, dismissed the infinitesimal as more shocking to reason than all priestly dogmas, invented on purpose to tame and subdue the rebellious reason of mankind (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1st Enquiry Sect XII #124).

But mathematical awareness expanded, despite these changes which seemed to contradict principles well established in the discipline.

My dream was of a widespread change in awareness of Everything. An expansion of Consciousness to meet the world of the later 2020s.

Newton and Leibniz

Although the German thinker's term of calculus came to be generally accepted, it is well known that in England Newton was developing what he called fluxions. When challenged by those who, following Hume*, asked Newton about the actual size of the infinitesimal he is reported to have replied “as small as you like”.

But the interesting thing about Newton and Leibniz is that they were working independently and unknown to each other.

Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

The time had come for calculus in the 1680s, even though it shocked brilliant minds, Bishop Berkeley as well as Hume...

The time has come...

My recent dream tells me that 2025 is the time for an expansion of human consciousness that will shock some, but be welcomed by others.

It will be:

1. Cosmic. For those who believe in God it will involve an expanded view of Creation and the finding of our place in it. An opportunity for atheists and agnostics to review their thinking and beliefs.

2. An updated self-image for Humanity. A (re-)discovery and developing of resources within ourselves enabling us: 

(a) to relate wisely to increasing Disclosure of Non-Human Intelligences and technologies, 

(b) to work productively and safely with Artificial General Intelligence and 

(c) as an organic alternative to wholesale transhumanism – to use implants, chips and bionics in medicine, but not in education, sport or the military.

3. A unified spiritual and scientific framework of reality beyond 3D appearances, as a basis for relating to the world and the Cosmos, and interacting with them.

4. A growing understanding of alternatives to conflict and competition for scarce resources.

Are there issues in the above that are mistaken, or need clarifying? Time will tell, and I'd rather we were reading the signs of the times with these thoughts in mind earlier than later.

~~~

*'A real quantity, infinitely less than any finite quantity, containing quantities infinitely less than itself, and so on in infinitum; this is an edifice so bold and prodigious, that it is too weighty for any pretended demonstration to support, because it shocks the clearest and most natural principles of human reason'. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1st Enquiry Sect XII #124.