I recently returned to my home in Australia. On the flight from Singapore I looked out the window somewhere above the Western Australian coast. It was a dark night – no moon. Below were the scattered lights of the Pilbara – station (ranch) country. Desert. The land was completely black, broken only by a solitary light here or there. Somewhere further west I knew the land gave way to ocean, and from there spread up to sky. And in the sky were the shining lights of familiar stars, including the Southern Cross.

All of this – earth, ocean, sky – was not separated this night the way it usually is. No coast, no horizon. Without the reflecting moon it was all so dark that it looked like one scene, one canvas, one stage. The sky and the stars moved amongst the ocean and land, and the land and its lights moved freely amongst the stars. All was dark, with star and human light interweaving.

***

With so many cultural and natural upheavals taking place in the world at present – with so many phenomena forcing us back upon ourselves – and with so many ‘transition’ experiences existing for individuals and groups, we are confronted with numerous questions. Change is all around us, and all within us. From the most macro to the most micro situations, something is being asked of us. We can feel – like many people of the Arab world, for instance – that existing social conditions are no longer appropriate for the full reality of the human being today. Such conditions are of the past and are asking for transformation. Likewise, when faced with such out-of-date social structures, and with numerous natural disasters, we can also have a feeling that something within ourselves is asking for similar transformation. We can have the feeling: No longer can we experience the world with the same consciousness as we have previously been doing; that in order to overcome such natural and social crises, something of ourselves must also develop.

Such feelings as these – that something is not right in the world and in our own selves; that the world has become something hostile to the essential nature of the human being; that the essential nature of the human being does not find itself rightly in the world – can lead to all sorts of consequences. Change must come, we may rightly feel, but it must also come in the right way. If we do not bring these feelings to the full light of consciousness by permeating them with thoroughly worked-through thoughts, then our actions can take on revolutionary, re-actionary or event violent tendencies.

One test of such a situation may be to ask ourselves: What is it we are actually fighting for?

To our feelings we must also add clear thoughts. To our noble, and often beautiful, feelings we hold for change we must also add truth. If we do so we will move from being revolutionary to being evolutionary, for we will be able to act not simply in reactionary ways, but in ways which are in accordance with the reality of the change being asked for in the world today. The transformation of the world is of course necessary, but it must be in accordance with what the world itself is needing to become. In order to act in such a way, our thinking must align with what the world itself is asking for in us. In our thinking our own becoming must align with the stream of world becoming. If I make a space for the becoming of the world in my own thinking activity, then something of the transformed world-picture can begin to speak itself in me. I then can act in accordance with my own highest potential, and in accordance with the highest possibilities of the world. I make of myself a free instrument in service of world possibilities. I transform the world not according to what I think it should be, but in accordance with how it thinks itself in me.

Such is the reality of what is confronting us in every micro, meso and macro natural and cultural difficulty in the world today. In a way, we have attracted these difficulties to ourselves in order that we can overcome all that holds us back from our own – and the world’s – lawful becoming.

The only truly transformative-evolutionary force in the world and the human being is the poetic – is the non-material, the creative – the spirit. In adding to our feeling for social change all that stems from poeticised and spiritualised thinking activity we are changing ourselves in accordance with that which the world itself is asking for. Out of this we can develop the necessary pictures for our very real next steps – and they will be lawful next steps because they contain within them the only truly transformative agent in the world. Evolution thereby steps itself out in us. We are stepped. We are evolved. The world becomes, in and through us. We are becomed. We are poeticised. We are en-spirited. We are spoken by the true speaking of the cosmos. We are Worded.

Through such activity we birth freedom in the cosmos. In overcoming our separation between I and all that is not-I (including our own bodies) we, through love, bring freedom into the cosmos. We awaken, as fully creative human beings, in a field of true freedom and of love. It guides us on, bridging the gap, and we become carers for the newborn part of ourselves that holds this as a reality in and for the world. We become with the world.

Through such activity as this we can awaken experientially within the field of true, beautiful and good next steps for the human being and the world. Every natural and cultural, world and personal disaster calls us more fully to this task. For within every disaster lives our own poetic self – with the poetic world – calling us on. Through such activity we can, without theory but in reality, develop the eyes necessary to see what it is we are in fact fighting for.

And so what is it that we can see? What is it that we are actually fighting for? We fight for the human being. We fight for the future of the world and of the human being.

We fight to create social structures worthy of the human being: body, soul and spirit. We fight to create a social world in which we can find the full reality of the human being – in which we can truly find ourselves. We thereby create the opportunity for others to develop themselves in accordance with their own becoming – with who they truly are. One feeds the other. We, in developing ourselves through the poetic light of clear thinking, feeling and willing, can awaken in the world waiting to be made. In making it we make a space for the future development of the human being.

The boundary between I and not-I, between self and world is hereby overcome. The subjective-objective duality is resolved – not theoretically, but experientially-perceptually. In and through the human being the world is seen and made anew. True and poetic science and art, through true religious experience. The human being stands in the centre of everything. Personal and world becoming overlap, without losing the differentiation of either. We stand as free and individual beings in service of the Gods, whose religion is the human being. The horizon line dissolves, and we find ourselves amongst the stars, and the stars amongst our human lights. The Earth mingles with the heavens, and heaven steps down upon the earth.

The human being becomes, and the world with it.

***

Only a social organism that makes a space for truly poetic thinking activity of the human being is appropriate for our time. This must be a free field. All spiritual-cultural activity must be free. Schools, media, academia, civil society as a whole. Freedom must reign here. Teachers must be able to design their own curriculum, for example. No subjugation to economic or political interests. Freedom must be the guiding star in all spiritual-cultural activity.

Only a social organism that recognises each human being’s right to this kind of spiritual-cultural activity, and also to having their needs met – only a social organism of this kind is appropriate for the human being of today. Equality for all human beings regardless of their social situation or standing. Equality for all human beings in the creation and carrying out of laws and agreements. No interference from economic interests. Equality must be the guiding star in all political and legal life.

Only a social organism that strives to work together economically in order that the needs of all human beings can be met – only a social organism of this kind is worthy of the human being today. Economic solidarity to meet real human needs. Not competition for personal gain. No economic interference in other realms. Solidarity to meet human needs, and to finance, through profits transformed into gift money, the further development of spiritual-cultural activity. Solidarity as the guiding star of economic activity.

The untangling of the existing shadowy threads of culture, polity and economy. The bringing of them back together again, in the right way. Civil society recognising its task as the torchbearer of cultural life. Government as having only a political function. Business representing only economic activity. All organised and arranged so that ever-new and life-giving impulses can flow into society in the same way as they flow into the human being through the separation of shadowy and entangled thinking, feeling and willing activity, and of the bringing of them back together again in the right way – where the human being is thereby able to awaken in the field of their own and the world’s becoming, receiving further impulses, from this field of freedom, for future work and further poetic transformation.

Such social organisation as this is poetic. All poetry needs to be individualised by the poet, as much as each place needs to individualise the poetic social organism.

Through conditions such as this shall we find the human being within society. Through social conditions such as this shall we create a world worthy of the human being, and in so doing create an opportunity for the human being to fulfil its evolutionary task in the course of world becoming.

John Stubley

Published May, 2011 on youthsection.org