The ONE and the ALL: An Evolutionary Approach to God, Self and Transcendence

His Holiness the Dalai Lama states, “We need a worldview grounded in science that does not deny the richness of human nature and the validity of modes of knowing other than the scientific”. This book directly addresses the Dalai Lama’s invitation. The story of humankind’s journey on this planet, starting some 200,000 years ago with the first hunter gatherer tribes in the plains of Africa must be one of the most compelling stories that can be told. This story tells us of our place on this planet. Since the publication of Charles Darwin’s book, ‘Origin of Species’, we now have a scientific/evolutionary story of humankind’s origins. Religions throughout history have also offered a story about our place in the universe, often based upon notions of a God, the creator of the universe. This God is often conceived as some sort of supernatural power ‘out there’ somewhere that imposes a moral order on the folk. However this view of God is simply untenable within the scientific/evolutionary worldview. According to the perennial philosophy, each world religion, regardless of its cultural or historical context, is a different expression of a fundamental truth. This fundamental truth can be summed up in the ancient Vedantic sentence ‘Tat Tvam Asi’, (or Thou Art That). The ONE and the ALL explores deeply what ‘Thou Art That’ may mean from a scientific/evolutionary perspective. It does this following the evolution of human consciousness from primitive organisms to our primate ancestors through to modern humans today. Many differing disciplines are traversed in The One and the ALL. These disciplines include the Philosophy of Science, Psychology, Linguistics, Evolutionary theory, Anthropology, History of Religion, Philosophy of Mind, Sociology, The Nature of Perception and Consciousness as well as Ethics and Morality. I invite you to share in this wonderful story about the ascent of humankind.