This new era, however, for Sarkar is not one that pits spirituality against science. Sarkar believes that technological development controlled by non-capitalists, by humanists, will lead to increased economic growth, intellectual development and social equality. Sarkar, in fact, sees the development of technology that will have "mind" in it, that is, technology that will have some level of self-awareness. Most likely this will result from developments in artificial intelligence. Sarkar also forecasts that once full employment is reached, and once the untapped potential of humans, individually and collectively, is increasingly realized, instead of massive unemployment because of productivity gains from robotics, we will simply reduce our work week, such that "one day, we may only work five minutes a week. Being not always engrossed in the anxiety about grains and clothes, there will be no misuse of mental and spiritual wealth. [We] will be able to devote more time to sports, literary discourses and spiritual pursuits."
Sarkar sees the problem of food solved primarily through the cooperative economic structure. Each region will utilize its own raw materials and develop industries appropriate to the local environment. By encouraging self-sufficiency and self-reliance, some of the advantages of global trade will be lost in the short run--the North in particular will face a reduction in its standard of living--however as regions develop and as economic gains are redistributed, then trade between different regions will flourish. Trade then will be between equals, not centers and peripheries, not the powerful and the emaciated. Sarkar also forecasts that food tablets will be invented to deal with any temporary food shortages that may arise. In addition, "medical science will increase longevity"23 to perhaps to 150 years, and "in certain fields (we) will even be able to infuse life in the dead."24 Sarkar also predicts that by "changing individual glands, a dishonest man may become an honest man."25 However, glandular changes will not be able to transform root behavior structures; only spiritual practices, according to Sarkar, can fundamentally transform the structure of the human mind. However, he, unlike some futurists such as F.M. Esfandiary, who predict that we are on the threshold of immortality and that we may soon uncover "an aging gene,"26 believes that death cannot be escaped as brain decay cannot be postponed.
Sarkar also forecasts that children will be born in "human reproduction laboratories,"27 and parents will choose the characteristics of their children. Sarkar forecasts that in the long term future we will become thin beings with large heads and will lose our physical reproductive facilities. We will become primarily intellectual/psychic beings. According to Sarkar, we will gradually take on the functions now done by Cosmic Mind (loosely "Nature"): we will in mythic language become as "Gods." This image should be contrasted with that of other spiritual visionaries and futurists who believe that technological development should be severely limited and that we should not tamper with "Nature."28
Sarkar has developed a new theory of information transfer based on the existence of microvita. These "entities" can be used to transfer ideas and viruses throughout the planet. There are positive microvita which increase feelings of well being and negative microvita which lead to individual and social sickness. Microvita are also responsible for the creation of life and its evolutionary development. Their evolutionary energy can be harnessed by humans thus increasing the speed of human and planetary evolution. However, this harnessing cannot be done through physical technological means but through the use of intellectual and spiritual resources of humans.
Along with microvita changing human development, there will be other gigantic changes. Richard Gauthier in the article, "The Greenhouse Effect, Ice Ages, and Evolution," presents some of Sarkar's future-oriented scientific thinking. "In 1986 Sarkar indicated that major pole shifts of the Earth are generally associated with ice ages. More recently he emphasized that there will be an ice age with the coming polar shift. There will be major biological, historical, agricultural and human psychic changes both before and after the ice age."29
In addition, as mentioned earlier, while for Sarkar, history moves in structured patterns, on occasion there are galloping jumps. According to Gauthier: "A pole shift is such a jump. History moves into a new era at this time. The threshold of the new era has already been crossed. Before the ice age here will be big intellectual and biological changes in human beings, animals and plants."30
In the long term future, we will become an increasingly technologically developed society with spirituality as the base and the goal of life. We will look back at the days of the nation-state and the great capitalist and totalitarian communist empires and wonder why it was ever doubted that they could not be transformed. And eventually, we will become primarily psychic beings travelling to other planets through space technology (the conquest of space will be in the forefront given the upcoming Martial Era)31, and even through our minds, that is, we will be able to leave our bodies in one place and travel with our minds. The stars will eventually become our home. We will have granted legal rights to all humans as well as plants. What of the threat of nuclear war? For Sarkar, mind remains more powerful than matter and nuclear weapons are fundamentally matter. Thus, he believes that we will discover ways to counter nuclear devices, especially with the end of the arms race and the military-industrial complex that capitalist and communist poles have created.
The problem of power and exploitation will not go away, of course. Most likely it will be fought at the mental realm, between ideologies and perhaps even at the level of psychic warfare. The martial era will then naturally develop its own contradictions as the centralization of the polity may eventually lead to oppression. New visions of the future will then emerge.
Sarkar's vision of the future is also a program for spiritual, economic and political change. He, along with others, has initiated PROUT movements throughout the world. Although the self-reliant, cultural people's movements are still small, Sarkar believes that eventually they will reach a critical size and then pose a significant challenge to the present world system. ....to be continued
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Source: KurzweilAI.net
Posted by proutist-universal on February 9, 2006 12:32 AM
