Supernatural Growth Theory

Humans can only discover¹. Just as some people look at a glass filled halfway with water and feel “there’s only half left,” while others feel “there’s still half left,” how we take an event depends on our circumstances at the time. Someone walking through a desert with a parched throat will likely feel there is only half left, while someone on the receiving end of aruhara² and being forced to down their drink in one go may well feel there is still half left.

In the same way, every time we learn something in daily life, some of us may feel “I’m getting smarter and smarter,” while others may feel “I still know next to nothing.” If the water were the whole of creation and the glass were your own mind, would your feelings about knowing change? Suppose the only way you could come to know the world were by collecting tiny droplets, one at a time, at the bottom of the glass. “Huh? Something just dripped into my glass on its own. What is it?” And while you are still puzzling over it, it vanishes: “Wait, it’s gone.” Or else: “This time a lot fell, and quite a bit has collected.” “It doesn’t smell of anything.” “How does it taste?” “Is it safe to touch?” You check with your senses, and only after repeating this many times over a long period do you gradually begin to grasp something like a pattern.

In the end, nobody knows the right answer to what the water in the glass represents; there are only people who imagine, “Maybe it means this.” If their guess is right, when a new drop falls they may say, “Just as I thought,” or they may say, “Wait, this is nothing like what I expected.” What’s more, when it comes to getting new drops, there is really nothing we can do except pray, “Rain down more!” Until new drops arrive, all we can do is wait, perhaps playing the pattern-finding game once again with the water left in the glass. For example, we know nothing about ancient ways of life until we find fossils, and we know nothing about the favorite foods of extraterrestrial life until we find traces of life on other planets.

The Search for Truth Begins with Nature Worship

We researchers at Polymath Research hold to a policy of drawing our discoveries from nature alone. We value what a small flower in the natural world helps us notice over what any eminent figure in the human world may proclaim. The beauty of nature is order within chaos; it exists everywhere in this world as geometric patterns that include time and are constantly changing. Naturally, we ourselves are part of those patterns, and the universe is the whole environment, ourselves included³. Nature, then, is the universe, and whether we can feel it seems to depend on the sensitivity of our hearts. It is not half so important to know as to feel⁴.

The heart is something like an antenna for the universe. Ever since science was invented, the exploration of the immensely large and the infinitesimally small, as actually seen by peering through telescopes and microscopes, has come to be regarded as the search for truth. We humans now possess a great many tools that let us see what was once invisible and hear what was once inaudible, tools that, carried back to the distant past, would have had us feared as wizards or even gods.

Yet the search for truth is not the exclusive domain of science. Long before science was invented, the search for truth was the exclusive domain of religion. When we humans were hunter-gatherers, we lived lives immersed in nature as a matter of course. Going further back, humans left life in the trees, stood upon the ground, began walking on two legs, and began making vessels and blades from stone. Gaining intelligence and physical strength, we went from being prey to being predators. We began to use fire and to bury our dead. Even millions of years after diverging as “humans,” the workings of nature often remained unpredictable. As our intelligence developed, we came to feel awe before the incomprehensible mysteries of nature. Gradually we began to worship nature and to “pray.” Following this lineage, we can say that the human search for truth has, from its very beginning, carried a religious meaning grounded in nature worship, which regards nature as divine. Even if the products of science make possible technologies that could be mistaken for the work of gods, the search for truth cannot be pursued without nature worship.

As hunter-gatherers, as farmers and nomads, as astrologers, as philosophers, and now as scientists, we humans have continued the search for truth without change. Then what about the time before religion was born, back when we were hunter-gatherers…? Before we began to think about nature, were we not searching for truth? Do animals other than humans search for truth? What about plants? Fungi? Are all living things other than humans not “smart” enough to search for truth? Or is there some reason why only “smart” humans have to search for it, such as not knowing what the truth is and therefore being forced to go looking? Perhaps, in fact, we know it when we are born and have simply forgotten it… Is that really so impossible?

Science Cannot Stand In for Nature

Like the relationship between astrology, which draws meaning from the stars of the universe, and astronomy, which looks only at their motion without drawing meaning from it, the relationship between faith in nature and faith in science reveals what we humans are thinking right now.

To believers in nature, science is of little value. They gratefully make use of whatever nature provides. They wait for uncontrollable problems to resolve themselves naturally. They see “global” problems as a collection of “local” ones and practice good thoughts and good deeds within their own reach. They believe that even large problems will fade away naturally through the accumulation of small acts. They dislike one-off stunts by central authorities and quietly seek a way of life in harmony with nature. Though ridiculed by the powerful believers in science, they try to live in accordance with nature. They tend to love Studio Ghibli films.

To believers in science, on the other hand, nature is of little value. They have no doubt that everything can be controlled through what experts painstakingly create by artificial means, and they think any problem can be solved through the power of science. They believe that “global” problems can be solved by scaling a solution proven to work in the laboratory up to the “global” level. Rather than distributed, bottom-up processing, they favor fast-acting, one-shot, magic-bullet solutions imposed top-down by centralized power. They demand evidence for everything they do and everything they say, and try to live in accordance with science. They tend to love papers published in the top-tier peer-reviewed journal Nature and papers with many citations.

Some may angrily protest, “That’s not true!” But nearly all the “solutions” science produces have ended up, unintentionally, running counter to nature. Often what seemed solved in the short term turned out, in the long term, to have worsened the problem through side effects. In the natural world, conversely, what seemed a disaster in the short term often turns out, in the long term, to be a blessing in disguise. When human intervention works, it is usually in cases where humans had earlier caused the problem by doing something unnecessary.

Some may angrily protest, “It’s thanks to science that we live such comfortable lives!” Yet many people on Earth still live without enjoying any of the benefits of science. But not a single person lives without the benefits of nature. However artificial and comfortable the spaces we inhabit in highly advanced scientific cities, we breathe air produced by nature, and we stay alive by taking in other living things that nature produces. Modern science cannot fully replace these. Future science probably cannot either. The achievements of science may be great feats in the human world, but in the natural world they are aberrations. Looked at from nature’s standpoint, the workings of science can be seen in that way.

I firmly believe that intelligence should be used not to devise ways of replacing the workings of nature, but to truly understand those workings and put them to good use. And now that all of humanity faces difficult problems on a planetary scale, I think we should carefully take stock of what nature has given us as intelligent beings. If we can make use of those gifts as nature intends, neither too much nor too little but exactly as much as is needed, we should be able to accomplish great work that deserves to be called a feat both for us humans and for the natural world.

It Is Not Science but the Heart That Unravels Mysteries

Today there is a prevailing view that using science to uncover the structures and patterns hidden behind natural phenomena is the only path in the search for truth. Seen from a cosmic perspective, science is the path of specialization, the sharpening of particular senses. Take an easy-to-grasp example: the eyes. Science is very poor at dealing with what cannot be seen. It understands almost nothing about the principles of things invisible to the eye. Regarding mysteries that cannot be seen, such as the universe, the Earth, life, or consciousness, science is powerless.

On the other hand, science is powerful when it comes to matters that are not mysterious. Because the essence of science is specialization, it is good at externalizing bodily functions. As extensions of our ability to see, it built cameras to record still images, microscopes to observe the infinitesimal world, and telescopes to observe the immense one. As extensions of our ability to speak, it created letters, books, telephones, and the internet so that we can communicate with people far away or long ago. As extensions of our ability to move, it made cars so we could run, ships so we could swim, and airplanes so we could fly. It built rockets to leave the Earth, and just when you thought we would use them to travel through space, we used them instead to spit lavishly at the homes of our fellow humans far away on Earth.

Science exists to enhance bodily functions. In the hands of science, any bodily function can be enhanced, so it ends up extending even the ability to spit and the ability to bring down a fist. I wish it would hurry up and extend the giant self-control and giant sense of ethics needed to refrain from using that giant spit and giant fist. Truly. ASAP.

To repeat, science cannot unravel mysteries. Science only helps build the tools for unraveling them. It is the heart that unravels mysteries. But the heart cannot be externalized and extended. The heart is moved by consciousness, and consciousness is something invisible and metaphysical. Is it too small to see, or too large to see? Or does it have no form at all? We do not even know that. Even the world’s most advanced science today cannot externalize the heart.

A Theory That Applies the Principles of Life’s Perfection and Diversity to Growth

At the core of Supernatural Growth Theory lies the theory of preserving perfection. Perfection here means polymathic potential: a state that is whole and flawless, complete from the very beginning. Humans, or rather all living things, are born possessing perfection. We call this the principle of the perfection of life. Boldly, this theory of growth takes as its core doing nothing to that state of perfection. “Do absolutely nothing unnecessary!” is the essence of the theory of preserving perfection. You might even call it a theory of nothingness. Do nothing unnecessary. In other words, when it comes to humans, do not “educate.” “Educators” are unnecessary too. All that is needed are opportunities to encounter a rich variety of living things as companions with whom we share our lives. The more diverse the life, the better. We call this the principle of the diversity of life. No education, only aid to life. In this, we carry on the cosmic spirit of the founder of a famous theory that, through the contributions of education scientists, has ended up becoming more educational. The principle of the perfection of life and the principle of the diversity of life are both universally applicable throughout the cosmos, and the theory of preserving perfection is, in theory, universally applicable throughout the cosmos as well. This theory of growth meets the cosmic standard of being applicable to every living thing, not just humans.

Every living being is born polymathic, endowed with a gift from heaven. A gift from heaven is a role given by heaven, that is, by the universe, and being polymathic means being able to adapt to any environment. In the case of humans, however, the reality is that we gradually lose this perfection after birth. As we acquire human common sense, we gradually become distorted. Human interference warps the form that nature gave us. We forget the role the universe gave us and become able to adapt only to limited environments.

So we need help to restore that form to the perfect shape it had at birth. This is done not by direct intervention but indirectly, by preparing an environment in which children can recover on their own. Once the soil becomes healthy, the living things that grow in it naturally grow healthy. This is not a metaphor. Humans, being part of nature, are strongly affected by the health of the ecosystems to which they belong. Restoring ecosystems means restoring our own health. In other words, restoring the Earth’s ecosystems is how we prepare the environment in which children grow. Left to nature, however, this takes time. Perhaps centuries, perhaps ten thousand years. If the effects of anti-natural behavior are strong, recovery may never come at all. Far from recovering, if the anti-natural trend continues to intensify, the countdown to extinction will only speed up. Meanwhile, children keep growing up in a global environment that becomes harsher every year, in soil that can hardly be called healthy. No living thing can live cut off from the soil. No living thing can survive by polluting the sea. This holds true even if we extend the discussion beyond human children to the young of all living things.

Supernatural Growth Means Bringing More Life to Flourish in the Universe

Supernatural growth refers to a supernatural succession toward the natural state. A supernatural succession means understanding the intentions of the universe and assisting the vector of natural succession. The universe is pressing us humans to make a choice. It is asking: “If you keep behaving selfishly and against nature, I will destroy you and wait for another intelligent life form to appear; but if you behave altruistically and in accordance with nature, I will look after you for as long as you do. So, what will it be?” In the several thousand years since this question reached us and became known to many, the selfish and altruistic vectors within us humans have canceled each other out as we came this far. And in the last hundred years or so, the selfish vector has come to overwhelm the altruistic one.

The polluting effect of humans on nature is beginning to exceed the Earth’s capacity to purify itself. We are fundamentally misusing the bodily functions we have enhanced through specialization. The intelligence given to us by the universe should be used to consider how to bring as much life as possible to flourish, not how to take as much life as possible, yet the technologies we invent serve almost entirely the latter. There are almost no technologies for the former. That is why deserts keep spreading, the number of sick people keeps growing, and conflicts over energy and resources only grow fiercer.

Use intelligence to bring much life to flourish. Once we understand the workings of the universe, this follows inevitably. It was nature, that is, the universe, that brought forth such a rich variety of life. Then why did the universe bring forth such a rich variety of life?

The universe abhors all waste. Bringing forth a rich variety of life only to take that life away would be the most wasteful thing of all. The universe would never do anything so wasteful. It follows, then, that the universe is trying to bring forth ever more life. Our human technologies for taking ever more life, whatever the reasons behind them, are anti-natural and can only be called anti-cosmic. They could even be called acts of defiance against the universe.

It is an undeniable fact that such a vector exists within us humans, but there is a path by which we can cancel it out with a larger opposing vector and come into accord with nature and with the universe. That opposing vector is bringing ever more life to flourish, but how on earth can it be achieved? Can we do nothing but pray for peace? This problem is a time bomb, and it cannot be put off into the future. Left alone, it will surely explode. What should we humans do?

Supernatural Growth Theory Works for Everything

There is probably only one way to bring ever more life to flourish: to strengthen natural diversity, just as the workings of nature have done throughout the Earth’s long history. This is consistent with the principle of the diversity of life. For humans to grow means for all other life to grow. For all life to grow means for the Earth to grow. For the Earth to grow means for the universe to grow.

All is one. I believe this truth, found in the teachings of every religion past and present, East and West, is one of the laws running through all things in the universe. Supernatural Growth Theory can be thought of as effective for the growth of all living things, humans included, as well as planets and the universe itself.

Everything has a reason to exist. The universe abhors waste. Anything that exists in the universe has some role. With that perspective, I think you will see that strengthening natural diversity naturally expands natural ecosystems. The methods for expanding ecosystems can also be applied directly to creating them. In other words, these methods can be used even in places such as deserts, where ecosystems have been torn to shreds by anti-natural forces. It would take considerably longer than on planet Earth, where networks of ecosystems are already established and which has a biosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere in addition to its geosphere, but in theory these methods could also be used to terraform other planets. This theory of growth meets the cosmic standard of being applicable to every planet, not just the Earth.

Anyone Can Easily Practice Supernatural Growth

What will be required of us humans from now on? I am confident my answer probably won’t match an anthropologist’s. If we think in terms of what the universe asks of us, so that we humans can understand and assist its workings, there are many things. For example: aiming for polymathy rather than specializing; imagining things dynamically rather than statically; grasping things holistically rather than breaking them down and reducing them; doing supernatural rather than anti-natural work; expressing our altruistic rather than our selfish nature.

I think these are achieved naturally if we do not lose the polymathic potential we are born with before reaching adulthood and our whole personality develops. Even those who have lost their polymathic potential because their environment was unkind to them have a way to recover it: make a habit of coming into contact with as many and as varied living things as possible every day. By touching soil and plants and restoring our connection with nature, we should be able to discover for ourselves our role on Earth.

Finally, if you didn’t quite follow everything so far, get some soil and a pot, and try sowing seeds of as many kinds of plants as you can. Ideally, layer the soil with pumice at the bottom, then red clay soil (akadama), then black soil (kuro-tsuchi), but if that’s too much trouble, red soil alone or black soil alone is fine. However, potting soil with fertilizer mixed in is an absolute no-go. Liquid fertilizer is also a no-go. Think of the goal as simply watering and observing, without giving any fertilizer or chemicals. A large, wide pot is best, but any size you can place outdoors, such as on a balcony, will do. Always keep the pot outside. For plants, it may be good to start with hardy herbs such as thyme, sage, oregano, rosemary, chamomile, and mint. Herbs have many uses, so if you’re curious, look them up and you’ll make unexpected discoveries. There may even be a plant that solves a problem you’ve been struggling with. It’s perfectly fine to ignore the instructions on the seed packets entirely. As you add seeds of plants you like, the diversity of your pot will grow stronger and its ecosystem will expand. If you’d like to learn more, try searching for “Synecoportal” (Shineko Pōtaru).

The supernatural quality of obtaining and sowing many seeds, watering moderately, and observing the daily changes becomes an opportunity to notice the polymathic potential within yourself. If you do this kind of supernatural work every day, your thinking will naturally become holistic and more altruistic. In fact, we are simply giving this kind of engagement with life the name “supernatural growth”; anyone can do it if they want to, and it is not difficult at all. All you have to do is discard the common sense humans have mistakenly acquired and, in its place, give priority to cosmic rightness, always and everywhere.

The Only Standard: Whether It Holds Up in the Universe

Many theories of growth (in the case of humans, theories of education) have appeared over the years; some have been widely accepted, while others have fallen out of use and been forgotten. Being widely accepted does not make a theory cosmically right, and, conversely, having fallen out of use and been forgotten does not make it cosmically wrong. Some theories are made up of cosmically right parts and cosmically wrong parts. Even widely accepted theories eventually become stale, and that is because the influence of human common sense grows stronger.

How many humans grow up through a process of growth in accord with the universe? At present, even by the most generous estimate, it is probably under 1%, and certainly not more than 50%. If so, since human common sense is cosmic nonsense, as the influence of human common sense grows stronger, the proportion of cosmically wrong parts will gradually increase. Such theories may seem effective in the short term, but in the long term their true colors will always show. In today’s world, since cosmic common sense is also human nonsense, continuing to care about whether something is cosmically right may well be a social disadvantage in the first place. There is, after all, the convenient phrase “a difference in values.”

Only the principles that remain when we judge solely by whether something holds up in the universe, rather than by human common sense, are worth passing on to the future. There are probably almost no places on Earth researching theories of growth (in the case of humans, theories of education) from that perspective.

We plan to keep writing about many things in the hope that more people will come to research by the same cosmic standard as we do. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments⁵.

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Footnotes

1. A quote from Buckminster Fuller. ↩

2. Short for “alcohol harassment”: harassment involving alcohol. ↩

3. A quote from Buckminster Fuller. ↩

4. A quote from Rachel Carson. ↩

5. This article compiles a series of essays posted on our official Instagram account. We post new writing almost every day, so if you’re interested, please follow us. ↩