That the information is multiplying at that rate during just one lifetime indicates that something is going on here right now that is utterly unprecedented, and we’re in such indication of acceleration of experiences of human beings; the integration of the accelerated, the experienced, to produce awarenesses that are indicative of humanity going through some very, very important kind of transition into some kind of new relationship to Universe, I’d say. The kind of acceleration that would occur after the child has been formed in the womb, taking the nine months, and then suddenly begins to issue from the womb out into an entirely new world.
We are dealing in a totality of humanity, not the (up to my generation) completely divided humanity spread very far apart on our planet.
Human beings on our planet have been able to take inventories of the relative abundance of chemical elements in a sweep-out of an 11.5-billion-year observation. That we have that kind of capability despite our absolutely negligible magnitude, physically—that we can deal with our minds in such magnitudes, and do so quite reliably—gives a hint that the human being must have some very great significance in this scheme, because we don’t know of any other phenomenon that has this mind; the human mind.
Synergy means: behaviors of whole systems—and a minimum system would be two—behaviors of whole systems unpredicted by behavior of any of the parts of the system when those parts are considered separately, one from the other.
When you and I use the word “design,” we use it to mean a complex in which the various components are ordered in respect to one with the other. That’s a design in contradistinction to randomness. There is a deliberate placement and ordering. So I say, then: human mind is gradually discovering—if you are looking at a plurality of generalized principles—a great a priori design of Universe. And the human mind has access to the rules and the design of Universe—a little glimpse of it—because as we keep pulling the curtain up slightly, we realize that there is a lot more that we don’t know.
When you come to the great moments—the actual fact of how great generalized principles are discovered—you come to a priori absolute mystery. Within which a priori absolute mystery, this most sublime and reliable relationship is manifest, is existing. So that, to me, the more intimate you become with the actual working moments of those who made the great discoveries, the more deeply moved you are by an a priori great mystery.
There is nothing in atoms per se that predicts chemical compounding. There is nothing in chemical compounds per se that predicts biological protoplasm. There is nothing in biological protoplasm per se that predicts camel and palm tree and the respiratory exchange of gases between the mammals and the vegetation. In fact, you discover that the larger complex of Universe is never being predicted by the lesser.
I find that our whole education system around the world is organized on the basis of the little child being ignorant. Assuming that the little child that’s born is going to have to be taught—in a sense, it’s an empty container waiting for information to be given to it from the grown-ups. And so the little child demonstrates time and again an interest in the whole Universe. A child is very enthusiastic about the planetarium. A little child will ask the most beautiful questions about total Universe, continually embarrassing the grownups who have become very specialized and can’t answer great comprehensive questions.
I then felt that it would be very necessary to describe Universe in the terms of experience. So I said, “What do I mean by the word ‘Universe’?” I said, “I must mean the aggregate of all of humanity’s consciously apprehended and communicated experiences.”
The metaphysical experience is a very preponderant one. All that is going on in this room between you and I has been metaphysical. What we might call “understanding” is utterly metaphysical. There are no arrows, there is nothing going on to really weigh or indicate, really, understanding. I find it is a very extraordinary matter. I can see your eyes physically, and your eyes will communicate to me as my tongue can wag and make sounds in the air waves, which gives you some kind of words, and so forth. But the understanding is not physical.
Problems, problems, problems! That we are here for problem-solving. Not to have problems out of the way in some stupid, sublime—something called peace—but here strictly for problem-solving. And the better you get at it, the more problems you’re going to get to solve.
What we’re out to really discover, what we can, is how Universe really does operate, why we are here, and how we begin to participate in the big game of Universe itself rather than the game we’ve been playing on our planet Earth, which is really quite unrealistic and been highly distortable.