FROM THE AGE OF REASON TO CONSCIENCENESS

“Humanity has passed few thousand years of spiritual and only five hundred years of
materialistic education. And now the issue of primary importance is what education
should have our kids today”, - thinks Ida Acobian, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences.

***-… It is new 21 century AD and we started to realize, that there is urgent need to
change the education system not only from the pedagogical point of view, but also its
whole matter. Our science during 500 years of its development was able to build such a
miracle as computer – logic machine with truly unimaginable potentials, so now artificial
intellect became perhaps ideal for human brain. However it is very dangerous delusion.
In order to understand it, we will need to consider this issue on the level of foundations
and sources of science.
It is widely accepted that our science begins with Galileo and Newton, with physics as
science about “nonliving” nature. To examine its sources one must follow even further –
to the beginning of our age, age of Reason. And it begins in Ancient Greece since
Socrates and Plato, when “human mystical” made a transition into “human reasonable
and rational”. Our science is already in time of “pure” reason and intellect, dissecting
world into pieces, particles, elements to perceive everything by scientific method of
analysis. Namely, humanity has passed a long way of cognition from ancient wisdom to
the information. What is that information? It is sputtered knowledge fragmented finally to
“two bits”, which is assembled, integrated in computer by supplying energy from outside.
So modern education in colleges and schools is given on the computer language.
*** - What’s wrong with that? Man, who understood fascination of computer will never
give up.
*** - And there is no need to give up. It is necessary to know possibilities of man and
computer, or artificial intellect, working on the basis of binary system: yes-no. Man uses
just smallest part of his brain’s potential, and after all he is not only intellect, not only
head, but also heart, and will… He creates engineering and technology based on science
to serve for his welfare. And now technology dictates its conditions. There comes a time
of computer domination, making a button pusher and service personnel of that miracle
out of man, impending to become a monster, embroiling a man in spider web of the
internet.
We have to clearly realize, that human brain radically differs from computer –
assembler, integrator of human knowledge. After all, original function of human brain is
synthesis, thinking, and creativity. Creativity starts where we step into the field of
unknown, guided by already known. Computer, certainly, is great help at least because
human brain is not able (and not have) to store that size of information –“information
blocks”, which is possible to keep in electronic memory. Computer knowledge is dead
information, and to give kids education in the way like storing information in computer is
a great mistake, fraught with serious consequences. By the way, for such an education it
wouldn’t be enough neither 10, or 12 years of college education.
Today we enter new time of synthesis of knowledge, i.e. transition back,
information – knowledge - wisdom… Pure reason reveals its own limits. Science tends to
the unification and Great integration and finds inferiority on its own ways of
development. “Time is forgotten dimension”, exclaimed Nobel physics award winner Ilia
Prigogin. “Life is forgotten problem” may repeat biologist. Physics, known as science
about “nonliving” nature, raises now problem of transition from “nonliving” to “living”
in the person of theories of self organization.
*** In your opinion, in what extent spirituality appears through modern cognition?
*** By raising a question about “transition” from “nonliving” to “living”, science
is hitting the very heart of spiritual knowledge, without a full realization of it. Let us
think how it is possible to make a transition from soulless nature, i.e. dismembered by
reason and killed by intellect to living one? How is it possible resurrection in science? So
that physics makes bombs by one hand and creates scientific-technological apocalypse,
and by another one knocks at the door of spirit.
*** - You were three months in America. What has impressed you at most?
*** - For example the way they teach kids. Student has to cram multiplication table for
speed. Who mutters the table for shortest time receives highest score. Namely, there is
competition between human intellect with machine from school-days, and artificial
intellect is becoming more and more like an ideal for human brain. American (I talk
about masses, not about individual persons) needs human contact less and less, by
replacing it with virtual computer or internet one. And that tendency started there a long
time ago. As early as in the beginning of past century Grigory Gurdjieff warned about
danger of conversion of man into machine. Now scientific investigations to replace
human brain with silicon, computer based one are in progress.
***- So, in your opinion, how should be new education system to avoid such a
robotization?
***- Modern education should be integral, built on unified foundations. There is no need
to load heads of youngsters by blocks of atomized information, separately by arithmetic,
algebra, physics, biology, and so on, which are not connected with each other and
required a lots of time and efforts to remember them. It is necessary to make a transition
from that peripheral, obsolescent cognition to the central education.
***-How do you picture it, explain please.
***-Today as a result of fragmentation, periphery of cognitive circle is densely populated
by scientific disciplines, each of them talks on its own language and does not understand
its neighbor – such a Babylonian, when mathematician and cybernetic prove the same
theorem without knowing it. But this cognitive circle has center, although not yet
revealed enough, where all disciplines intersect in one point, i.e. one said about the same
state of the world, but on different languages.
***-Then please give us your recipe, what to do?
***-It is necessary bring to light that center, which is namely what we call unified
foundations of science. To see how science itself develops in that direction, cooperating
efforts almost all sciences for the solution of one problem – transition from “nonliving”
to “living”. Humanity has passed schools of mystical and reasonable education not for
survival as bio-robots or ape (in case of nuclear disaster), but to make a transition from
the school into Life, when man implements into deed all his accumulated knowledge,
conscious action. Conscious man is aware of the consequences of his deeds and is
responsible for that consequences. Today age of Reason comes to its end. Great transition
from old agonizing age of Reason to new age of Consciousness is to take place. We have
an occasion to live in most difficult time, when old age must concede to the new one.
Agony can not be pleasant by any means. Not being able to see that way out, or trying to
stuck in old crisis time, means to give away to despair... And it is especially difficult in
here, in siege Armenia, since issue of survival for us is not abstract problem but most
vital concrete question: will we be able to survive in such conditions? And therefore the
way out, the only “needle's eye” of salvation for all, is opening up not somewhere, but
here. For where the beginning is, there the end will be too.
It’s said that the darkest hour is followed by sunrise...
Absolutely. Or, why evil is so active today? Because light is seen from opposite
side. And the brighter light, the denser darkness. We have to learn to see the light, turn
our faces to the light, in order do not fall into despair and perish. Forces, which are
trying to control situation on the planet, found long time ago, that we Armenians are too
much unpredictable, to control us, moreover we are “infected” by the idea of freedom,
Christian thirst to be Son of God alike, therefore there should be no Armenians on their
own land. They first tried to exterminate the Nation physically, but later they became
more cunning and smart, and realized that bloodletting makes the Spirit of nation stronger.
And they finally guessed that spoiling of soul is more effective...
Today we have no right to stop in the middle of the road, know by halves, to be
not aware of what is happening with us, what is our goal, our mission, if you wish. If we
want to survive without losing our qualities, we are “condemned” to examine foundations,
and sources. Who are we, where are we from, and where are we going? But we are still
looking towards the past. It is dangerous state, since we risk to get stuck in the past,
which is necessary for us to comprehend the future. We have to turn our faces to the
future, since future begins here and is opening up right here at the foot of Ararat
mountain.
What you said is more like a call to the action. And we have to start with...?
Education, of course. To start prepare teachers and do not spare no effort, to free
Nation from state of unbelief, inactivity and despair.

Kari Amirkhanyan