I am posting the following for my friend Gene Kieffer, who does
not yet have access to Internet.

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NOTICE: To carry out its assignment well, ASCENT, the newsletter,
will need Contributing Writers in all fields -- biology,
neuroscience, psychology, technology, mythology, spirituality,
etc. Articles should be 750 words or less.  Please address your
letters to: Gene Kieffer, ASCENT, Post Office Box 2248, Darien, CT
06820.  Or, you may send e-mail to Gene Kieffer in care of
gpmenos@firestone.princeton.edu.

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      BEST KEPT SECRET IN AMERICA:        
      You Can't Evolve Unless You Know You Can.
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About ASCENT:

To tell the secret, that's the purpose of ASCENT, the newsletter
for people who want to evolve.  For some unknown reason, almost
everyone, whether an evolutionist or ordinary individual, has
grown up believing that evolution is finished, that the brain has
ceased to evolve.

According to some experts, human evolution stopped over 30,000
years ago.  The reason for this peculiar belief?  A human skull
was found in Africa that had about the same volume as a modern
one.

Also, scientists haven't been able to detect any structural
changes in the brain that would lead them to think otherwise.  But
that's almost like saying computers are *devolving*, because every
year they're getting smaller, when we know the very opposite is
true.  The size of a computer has little or nothing to do with its
capacity to solve problems or the speed at which it can perform
complex computations and other difficult tasks.

Let's get off this self-defeating merry-go-round and accept the
most important fact governing our progress and our survival: We
*are* evolving!  There are some who say, however, that without
verifiable proof, without empirical evidence, without scientific
demonstration, we would be deluding ourselves.

So what's the harm in that?  Alright, then, consider this: Science
has no proof that we *aren't* evolving. That dusty African skull
is no proof at all.  Nor is it any proof that we can't actually
*see* the brain evolving.  It doesn't have to grow larger to
evolve. We've learned that much from microprocessors.  Soon we'll
have the 586, and it won't be any larger than the old 8088.

ASCENT's mission is to purge the mind of all this nonsense about a
stagnant brain.  That kind of idiocy makes us behave like, well,
like Homo sapiens, always ready to knock somebody over the head
with a club.  After the crusty old neurons and kinks have been
cleaned up and straightened out, evolution can accelerate
unobstructed and unimpeded.

Seriously, why is it so important to believe the brain is still in
a state of organic evolution?  Why can't we carry on contentedly
in the old rut, believing in "social evolution," or better yet,
"spiritual evolution," which are already popular concepts well
accepted by the intellectual leaders?  Or why isn't it alright to
simply believe that the mind, or consciousness, is evolving?  Why
this insistence on believing the brain itself is continuing to
evolve, even as we read this?

Good question, one answer to which has been floating around for a
long time.  It goes something like this. "Don't you know that we
create our own reality?"  Long before the New Age began, James
Allen published a small inspirational book, called "As A Man
Thinketh."  It was a lot like "Consciously Creating
Circumstances," an earlier Rosicrucian tract.  Most books on
magic, as we've learned, are quite similar in content and style.
All make the point that it just doesn't pay to think negatively
and that almost anything is possible if we think positively.

Another question.  What's the matter with the much-loved story
that we are presently using only one-tenth of the brain, and since
nine-tenths is presumably still available, why the need for
further evolution?

The answer is that nature requires organic evolution in order to
tap into that dormant nine-tenths.  And then, too, the great
majority of educated people have long since accepted evolution as
a fact of life.  They only need a nudge to include the "fact" of
*continuing* evolution in their thinking.  Not mindless evolution
in the Darwinian sense.  (Evolution without the initial force of
purpose, without increase and fulfillment of purpose in the
accumulative course, is simply inconceivable.)

As James Allen says, "Law, not confusion, is the dominating
principle in the universe."  And the Law of Evolution hasn't been
rescinded.  It's just waiting to be discovered.  "The oak sleeps
in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision
of the soul a waking angel stirs.  Dreams are the seedlings of
realities."  If that sounds mushy, wait.  ASCENT isn't going to be
a mushy newsletter in any sense of the word.  It will deal mostly
in facts.  And when it occasionally does speculate on what might
be, the reader will be alerted to it, because all such articles
will be labeled as such -- dreams.
