Testimony on Human Potential: How High do we go?
What is our potential? Strip away the details and every religious system, every philosophical worldview, every social science framework is, at bottom, an answer to that question, an estimate of what a human being is and what a human being can become.
When it comes to this question, there is a lot of noise in the world system. However, if you strip it all down there are two commonly offered answers to the question, a church answer and a science answer.
The church answer, which you’ll be familiar with if you’ve ever spent time in a church, ashram, temple, or lodge, says you are a falling, possibly failing, angel, a soul ejected from the garden, here to redeem yourself, to learn lessons, to work off karma across many lifetimes striving, all along the way, to earn your way back to the “good place.”
The science answer says you are a rising ape, an evolving primate, an accident of selection clawing its way up from a violent primordial past, here to compete, survive, and expire at the top of some hill. Terry Pratchett, choosing between them, noted dryly: “Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel?” (Daily Mail, 2008).
Falling angel or rising ape? Make your choice from the options on offer. Choose and then live your life accordingly.
Interestingly, it really doesn’t matter which answer you choose because both answers are cut from the same cloth. They both agree on the basics. Both answers posit that you are small and deficient, broken or incomplete in some way. Both say your life is a struggle, either for redemption or for survival. Both say you are on a path towards something better, redemption or evolutionary greatness. Whatever their differences, both are narratives of a diminished humanity.
Rumours of glory
Running alongside these two official narratives, through every era and every culture, there has persisted a third, rumoured option. This option is institutionally homeless. There aren’t any schools or churches that teach it. Nevertheless, it persists. It is passed down from person to person in poem, prose, and song, and more than a single painting or two. It comes, as psychologist William James said, from people who have had direct experience of the ultimate, from philosophers who reasoned their way past materialism, from scientists (including the architects of modern physics) who found consciousness wherever they looked, and from poets, and songwriters, and artists who glimpsed something luminous in the human frame. Their testimony amounts to a very different estimate of our potential: that a human being is not a defective soul on probation nor a clever ape but a spark of incarnated divinity — consciousness itself, descended into a body not on accident nor as punishment for sin, but as participation in and enjoyment of creation. Testimonials here suggest our capacities vastly exceed what official narratives allow. Here the message is not you are small and imperfect. Here the message is you are bigger and stronger than you suppose.
Of course, these testimonials are just that, testimonials. They do not represent the arduous empirical research and rigorous analytical thinking that goes into science, but they are also not mere statements of faith. These are testimonials, affidavits if you will, from people all over the world in every single time period who have had experiences that violate scientific and religious canon, that we are small and insignificant, that we are violent and sick and broken. It is anecdotal evidence, that’s true, but there’s a lot of it. There is more than enough to make a strong case for further investigation. If you think about it, you probably have your own affidavit to share, and we invite you to share it below. When a rumour is this pervasive, when it arrives independently from every tradition, every century, and every method of inquiry, including from within science itself, the correct response is not perfunctory dismissal, it is curiosity and, most importantly,
Anyway, without further ado, I give you, the testimony.
The Cultural Testimony
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.” — William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (c. 1790)
“I am large, I contain multitudes.” — Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” (1855)
“The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.” — Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (1912)
“The point of intersection of the timeless with time is an occupation for the saint.” — T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (1941)
“I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us.” — John Lennon (1966)
“We are… we are, we are, we are… we are God.” — Childish Gambino, “We Are God” (2024). https://open.spotify.com/track/50YZAls4cS1sZxvWxCTh3y
Beneath the pain fear, etched on the faces, something is shining like gold but better, rumours of glory.” Bruce Cockburn, Rumours of Glory. https://open.spotify.com/track/1N4j2CZThfd3roc3BIaBC6
The Mystic’s Testimony
“The stupid man thinks he is the body, the book-learned man identifies himself with the mixture of body and soul, while the sage… thinks, ‘I am Brahman.'” — Vivekachudamani (attr. Adi Shankara), v. 160
“Transcending caste, creed, family, and lineage… beyond space, time, and sense-objects — that Brahman art thou; meditate on this within yourself.” — Vivekachudamani, v. 254
“You are a distinct portion of the essence of God in yourself… You carry a God about within you, and know nothing of it.” — Epictetus, Discourses II.8
“Mine are the heavens and mine is the earth… God himself is mine and for me, because Christ is mine and all for me. Do not engage yourself in something less.” — St. John of the Cross
“I gazed upon God with the eye of truth and said to Him: ‘Who is this?’ He said, ‘This is neither I nor other than I. There is no God but I.'” — Bayazid al-Bistami
“I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is I: we are two spirits dwelling in one body. If thou seest me, thou seest Him.” — Mansur al-Hallaj
“The image of God is found essentially and personally in all mankind. Each possesses it whole, entire and undivided.” — Jan van Ruusbroec
“Rejoice with me, I have become God.” — The Sister Catherine Treatise (c. 1320)
“My Me is God, nor do I recognize any other Me except my God himself.” — St. Catherine of Genoa
“The seed of God is in us… Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God’s seed into God.” — Meister Eckhart
“Knowing the science of ‘I am God’ is the science of bodies; becoming ‘I am God’ is the science of religions.” — Rumi, Mathnavi, Book II
“He who knows himself knows his Lord.” — Sufi tradition
“Behold but One in all things; it is the second that leads you astray.” — Kabir
“I am you; you are me. You are the waves; I am the ocean. Know this and be free; be divine.” — Sathya Sai Baba
“Thou art My lamp and My light is in thee.” — Bahá’u’lláh, The Hidden Words
“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” — 1 Corinthians 3:16
The scholar of mysticism Rufus M. Jones, surveying this record, concluded that the mystic experience points to a self that is “bosomed on a larger Realm of Consciousness from which we draw our being… and with which we may correspond” — and that “the facts, at any rate, all point in this direction” (Studies in Mystical Religion, 1909).
The Philosopher’s Testimony
“The soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist… has knowledge of them all.” — Plato, Meno 81c
“No eye ever saw the sun without becoming sun-like… You must become first all godlike and all beautiful if you intend to see God and beauty.” — Plotinus, Enneads I.6.9
“The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains which is eternal… we feel and experience that we are eternal.” — Spinoza, Ethics V (1677)
“The conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which saving experiences come.” — William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
“The universe… [is] a machine for the making of gods.” — Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932)
“The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not?” — C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)
The Scientific Testimony
Most surprising to those raised on the “rising ape” narrative is how many of the architects of modern science itself rejected flat materialism — some on the basis of the physics they helped create.
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.” — Max Planck, interview, The Observer (1931)
“The total number of minds in the universe is one.” — Erwin Schrödinger, My View of the World (1961)
“To put the conclusion crudely — the stuff of the world is mind-stuff.” — Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1928)
“The universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine.” — James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe (1930)
“The more I examine the universe… the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.” — Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe (1979)
Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell reported what researchers now call the overview effect: “You develop an instant global consciousness… From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty” (1974). Mitchell went on to found the Institute of Noetic Sciences to study exactly the capacities in humans that may exist.
Choices, Choices, Choices
So there you have it.
What is human potential?
Honestly? I don’t know. I’ve heard rumours and I’ve personally had some experiences. However, before I settle on an answer I want to see more research in all relevant areas, biological, psychological, historical, sociological, etc. The science of it is not totally barren in this regard. There is some research in this area, but it’s disjointed and spattered throughout the scholarly corpus.
That’s what this page is for. This page is to encourage you, whomever you are, to do some research. Somebody has to do it. Why not you? If you’re university student or researcher, look into it. Investigate it. Write a bibliography. Do a study. Conduct a survey. Write a paper about it. When you’re done, report your findings back here. There’s a lot of research talent out there and we can move this forward quickly if we all spend some time working from a different premise.
If you are not a researcher, if you are just a person with some questions, ask those questions! Start a conversation.
You know…
Talk about it.
Not about the first two choices, the fallen angel or ascending ape choice. We’ve talked and taken those ones to our death too many times. We need to talk about the third one, the hopeful one, the empowering one. You can start by sharing your experiences. Fill out the survey below. You never know, this might put you on a path to something entirely new.
