What Science Is Now Saying About Humanity

Dear Reader,

It is quite extraordinary that last week I asked the question "Does Truth Come From Science Or From God?" only for something to occur this week to prompt me to take this issue a stage further. I suddenly came across a recent attempt by a scientist to explain what I would call the basis of the spiritual aspect of man, but which he (the scientist concerned) would simply call his thesis on the human condition.

A biologist cum psychologist by the name of Jeremy Griffiths published (2016) a book called Freedom: The End Of The Human Condition, based on his own work derived and evolved from that of the celebrated author Sir Laurens van der Post, with whom he worked in the last years of his (van der Post's) life.

Jeremy Griffiths has an impressive website on which there is a page that invites one to look at either a video interview (made in 2020) or the transcript of that interview, at this link, where a note states:

This booklet provides the ideal, very short, introductory summary of Jeremy Griffith’s definitive treatise on the human condition in his book FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition. It consists of the transcript of acclaimed British actor and broadcaster Craig Conway’s astonishing, world-changing and world-saving 2020 interview with Jeremy about his book FREEDOM — which presents the completely redeeming, uplifting and healing understanding of the core mystery and problem about human behaviour of our so-called ‘good and evil’-stricken human condition — thus ending all the conflict and suffering in human life at its source, and providing the now urgently needed road map for the complete rehabilitation and transformation of our lives and world!

Now here I have to question how "Craig Conway" has such a reputation as well as questioning the reality of the words "world saving". However, this interview, the book itself and the website are extremely impressive in content and purport.

He states (and I agree with him in his general view) that mankind (I would say modern man) does not have a genuine view of itself, that all kinds of influences affect his view on life and, unfortunately, shroud his reality. The "reality" according to Griffiths is that man is essentially a caring being, but he all too frequently allows himself to not recognise himself as that. Griffiths explains his view of the causes. Griffiths further states that various prophets or other teachers lived to remind or wake up mankind to know their true selves.

But - caveat emptor, says the law.

There is surely an obvious flaw in this mammoth work. Griffiths goes to such great lengths to tell us that man is intrinsically good and claims his is a science that has found something new. However, in my view ordinary people know already they have a 'heart'! They know intuitively what their essence is. Do we really need a new science to tell us that?

If I were to go back 70 years, or even less, I can recall the warm nature of the people that lived around us, even though no one owned very much. There were always incidents of kindness that people would be keen to narrate. Even today I find much of the same.

It seems to me, therefore, that Griffiths is a scientist who is talking to people who are trained to think in straight jackets, as he is. For some reason - presumably, because he is a scientist! - he assumes the view that all people think as he does and by only thinking in a certain trained way will you see his point.

Well, they will if the people who follow what he says are schooled in the same pattern as he!

For Griffiths and his organisation to claim (as they do) that this science "Solves The Human Condition And Saves The World!" is quite misleading. This science may act as some form of basis, but by itself, it will not solve nor save anything, in my view. I believe there is another dimension that needs to be recognised before that can happen.

Nevertheless, so long as the foregoing is born in mind, I see Griffiths's work as useful as a wake-up call to humanity but is probably more useful as a guide to science and scientists as a whole if modern science is to have a successful future. At least it can prompt science towards another, more accurate, dimension to study. It is yet another step that is perhaps being provided for modern science to achieve closer proximity to the world of total Truth.

And perhaps his work might also help to shape our education in a better way.

Now, let us assume that Griffiths is trying to help and not hinder; let us look more at what he actually says.

In common with many works emanating from the Western purview, the 'prophets' identified by Griffiths are essentially those we know of through our schooling and are relatively well-known in the West. He rather skims over other (non-western) sources as though they are not significant and also alludes to many modern investigators and Western writers on the topic of man who, in a number of cases, have evolved their views based on Eastern sources. Men such as Ralph Waldo Emerson were bowled over by the contents of the Vedas.

Sadly, the author also appears to have a limited view of history.

Nowhere does he take seriously the idea that the truth can be found elsewhere rather than being limited to the Old Testament, western Christianity and Greece. Admittedly he is not alone in this attitude. He, therefore, rather disregards the sciences established in ancient India and takes the view that the scientific approach is a relatively recent - and Western - innovation. Well, yes, it is in the form it has taken these last 400 years, as being a separate field of activity from consciousness. Until recently, that is, as science is quietly finding out more about the universe and man's relationship to it.

In the following statement, Griffiths does not give credit to even Islam for bringing the basis of today's sciences to Europe and least of all credit to the idea that Islam in turn (even Greece) acquired most of their knowledge (indirectly or otherwise) from India. To him, therefore, science is a relatively new thing:

Yes, the ultimate knowledge that science—that part of our society that was assigned the special task of searching for knowledge—had to find was self-knowledge, understanding of our corrupted human condition. Certainly science, being practised by insecure, human-condition-afraid humans, had to go about that search in a denial complying, mechanistic way, avoiding any confronting truth about the human condition.

The author, having stated that was the first stage of science, went on to say that:

It always had to remember that at some point the second stage had to take place, where someone secure enough in self could confront the human condition and synthesise the explanation of it from those hard-won insights into the mechanisms of the workings of our world that its practitioners had found.

The outcome is that, regrettably, the author (being essentially a scientist) does not perceive that having more-or-less correctly established what the erroneous 'human condition' is, and proceeds to state what man really is (which is a vehicle of love), does not equate mankind's escape route as being entwined with the whole nor its source.  If I read him correctly, Griffiths rather enforces the view that man is all alone, having to work things out by and within himself, when in fact man has other faculties that Griffiths has not quite identified. 

Jeremy Griffiths - while doing science a significant service to bring forth at least part of the real nature of man - appears to be locked into the scientific perception that human reality only exists within physical faculties. That view is a distinct Western view. 

Griffiths disregards the Hindu/Buddhist/Jain perception that each individual is really describable as the Atma (a soul), which in turn is but a part or aspect of the Paramatma, the Great Soul. The Eastern "reality" is that man is not separate from the Creator nor his 'neighbour' (as Jesus referred to all other possessors of the Atma). The Atma never dies, but the body (perceptions and all) returns to its physical source.

Griffiths does not even allude to the fact (it is beginning to be accepted as a fact) that Jesus walked in other nations apart from Judea, that he travelled to the lands of India, Tibet and Persia between the ages of 12 and 29, and therefore that Jesus knew that what he taught was not specific only to his teaching but was the ultimate spiritual teaching carried on and taught by other traditions. Jesus, however, had the singular task of revealing the Greatest Truth through his own personal example.

Yet Griffiths refers to William Blake (the seer and poet) and his statement that:

All [our distant ancestors] had originally one language, and one religion: this was the religion of Jesus, the everlasting Gospel. Antiquity preaches the Gospel of Jesus.

Griffiths actually further states that the Gospel of Jesus was "the Gospel of original innocence", but that is not quite the correct definition. "Innocence", yes, but in the context that his innocence was the knowledge of his innocent connection with (what he called) the Father, as, indeed, all beings are connected and as taught by all true spiritual teachings. All is One, therefore the need for humility and compassion: if you hurt another then you are really hurting yourself. What goes around comes around. Ordinary people usually know and believe in that dictum.

But Griffiths constantly refers to his (Griffiths') greatest inspiration as people that have been the primary inspiration to the Western hemisphere, stating:

So, the very great denial-free thinking prophets in recorded history, namely Abraham, Moses, Plato and Christ, made the most important contributions to humanity’s great journey to enlightenment.

Well, that's a very selective list as to who were "the very great denial-free thinking prophets in recorded history". In fact, I would say "Why Plato and not Socrates, his teacher?!" But Socrates is just one that is missing here. Krishna, Zoroaster, the Buddha (who said that he came from a long tradition of Buddhas), Lao Tsu, Mahavira and Muhammed are just some of 'the others' outside the Western hemisphere. They all - in one form or another - promote the idea of needing to "Know thyself", and that All is One (i.e. monotheistic). They, also, lived lives of self-denial and put other life before themselves. They were greatly inspired beings. 

And in Hindu tradition there is a reference to great avatars that periodically appear on Earth, not including great spiritual teachers such as Adi Shankara. Guru Nanak and Paramahamsa, just to name but three in Indian tradition. A list is virtually endless, particularly when all true saints of Christianity and Islam are recollected. 

Written spiritual insights by mystics (Sufis and Christian) abound. The Sufi named Attar, for example, wrote a delightful yet mystical insight named "The Conference of the Birds", while ibn al-Arabi's very deep philosophy is admired in the West, including Oxford University.

They all came to remind man (by word and/or action) of his real condition, the condition that Griffiths says is a "new science". His is, in fact,  a "science" (and partial at that) that is virtually as old as man himself and has been taught to those who would listen long before Griffiths came along, and (I would argue) is far more complete as a teaching (or series of teachings) to truly help mankind to spiritually evolve.

But Griffiths speaks only of "prophets" and so perhaps his vision as to who are the most beneficial leaders of mankind is constrained.

God works in mysterious ways, does He not? And by the very way by which He works His magic it seems clear to me that there is purpose in creation and that man has a special role in its development - so long (as Griffiths rightly maintains) that man firstly seeks out his real identity.

However, when it comes down to it, the message that Griffiths conveys in such detailed terms is possibly summed up in this Biblical phrase:

Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? (1 Corinthians 3:16-17)

I would suggest that phrase in itself is enough for the reader to set forth on a course of self-enquiry to find out just what this "Spirit" is and how to relate to it!

We surely do not need to intellectually study an entirely new - and incomplete - formal science to get to grips with who we are!

Thank you for reading this.