Spirituality has always been a fundamental part of human life. It is the search for meaning and purpose beyond the physical world. One of the most significant spiritual leaders in history is Buddha, who taught about the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. But have we progressed spiritually since his time?
In this article, we will explore the spiritual progress of humanity since the Buddha's time and how we can continue to evolve our consciousness.
Definitions of Consciousness and Awareness
Consciousness refers to the ability to be aware of oneself as a being, and to reflect on one's existence. This attribute is unique to humans and cannot be found in any computer, no matter how advanced it may be.
Awareness, on the other hand, is defined as knowledge and understanding that something exists or is happening. Personally, I define Awareness in spiritual terms as the level of consciousness a soul reached. Imagine a building 12 stories high, which represents the potential levels (dimensions as vibration) of consciousness in this universe. A person can take the elevator in this building and start to explore the floors there, and when reaching the 3rd floor he exits the elevator and starts exploring around. His awareness in this case is at the 3rd level out of 12 potential levels as consciousness in this example.
Now, for the sake of the explanation, let’s expand the definition of awareness and refine it in horizontal awareness, meaning how knowledgeable a person is about the exterior perceivable world. Horizontal awareness is what an average person is aware of in daily life through his 5 senses, plus what science confirms and he believes in.
We also define vertical/spiritual awareness, which is how well connected a person is with higher dimensions or vibrations, or at least that he believes that there is something concrete beyond his 5 senses awareness, like energy, God, prophets, miracles, spiritual guides, kundalini awakening, spiritual awareness, soul growth, etc. Vertical awareness is the focus of religions and spiritual traditions.
Ancient spirituality in Buddha's times
Discussing now the ancient times of Krishna, Buddha, Lao Tze, Jesus, etc, I would say that as horizontal awareness they were very limited compared to us. Think that 2500 or more years ago, an average farmer would not travel more than 30 miles away from his village all his life. Even many nobles traveled only very rarely between their town and the capital, and very few went traveling abroad. Distant travel at that time took very long, was expensive, and even dangerous; compared to current times people were isolated back then. Add to this that there was no middle class, and no science so any source of information with authority rested in the sacred book of its religion. Hence, another continent could have been on another planet since it didn’t exist in the collective knowledge, Earth was thought flat and the center of the universe, and time with minute precision didn’t exist since clocks as we know them appeared just maybe 150-200 hundred years ago, etc.
Comparing the spiritual awareness of ancient times to that of the present day, we can see that, while people in the past had limited horizontal awareness due to a lack of exposure to other cultures and the absence of science, their vertical awareness was often better. They had a strong faith in an unseen world beyond their senses, and many felt connected to nature, which is reflected in the emergence of spiritual schools like yoga. In contrast, modern-day humans have far greater horizontal awareness due to technological advancements, but we have become increasingly disconnected from nature and spiritual practices.
Modern spirituality in the XXI century
Talking now about XXI century current times, I think nobody can argue that as horizontal awareness we are infinitely better than ancient times. I am certain that if a person from 2500 years ago would be brought to present times when looking around he would think he reached Heavens and we all are gods since our super-powers were described in the sacred books of Vedas, bible, Quran, etc. as belonging only to gods. Technology beats many ancient miracles that were dreamed of only by ancient humans.
Considering now vertical awareness in current times, things start to become interesting ... In ancient times what a person felt as emotions or feelings were not considered something relevant, since only the word of God was important and human feelings were considered just transient, changing all the time and unreliable. Since 300-400 years maybe, we started exploring more our emotions, and the focus shifted from God to a person’s inner emotions, and as Nietzsche said “God was dead” since the focus shifted to a person's feelings. This is the main event that separated the average person from higher vibrations, from the spiritual world, and made atheism a widespread thing, which would have been inconceivable even 200 years ago.
Our disconnection from nature has also led to a decline in our spiritual awareness. The focus on human emotions, rather than faith in God, has led to the rise of atheism, and we have become more reliant on science as our personal deity. The majority of people have become simple-minded and reject anything not yet confirmed by science, and many Harvard graduates lack the higher awareness that one might expect from such high performers people.
Since we as a civilization are disconnected both from the higher vibrations and also from Earth energies, I would say a modern human is more disconnected both energetically and as a soul from higher vibrations since for the majority of people Science is their personal God; anything not confirmed by science is nonsense for him. This disconnection from nature and higher vibrations explain also why a spiritual process like kundalini awakening and kundalini rising is much more difficult now than in ancient times.
Because of global access to higher technological education, the majority of people, including Harvard graduates, are quite simple-minded in this respect. For them things are only in white and black, they never heard of grey tones, of things not yet discovered, etc. A high IQ doesn’t at all guarantee a higher awareness, unfortunately.
On the other hand, it is true that due to global information access, potentially anyone has access to spiritual information compared with ancient times, and can practice it even without leaving his job, an impossible thing in ancient times. This accelerates the separation between the group of atheists and the "spirituals".
In conclusion, in my opinion, the ancients were much lower than us in horizontal awareness, but higher in vertical awareness. Or put the other way, modern homo sapiens are much higher in horizontal awareness, but considerably less in vertical awareness.
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You can learn more by reading other posts in this spiritual site that are coming from a very different and fresh angle and based on a very long and personal experience and research, and not from books.
You might also consider a service like Psychic Readings in the Services section of this site from the ones listed here and get a spiritual diagnostic, or attend my spiritual School of Body and Soul Ascension Mastery so to raise your body and soul awareness, and reach into higher dimensions.
