Consciousness as a Radiant Principle of Being

By Victor V. Motti*

Consciousness is not reducible to a biochemical byproduct of matter but rather must be understood as a radiant principle of Being itself. Within the vast spiritual traditions of Indian subcontinent and Iranian plateau, this intuition was already embedded in their cosmologies: the Vedic concept of prajñā as the foundational awareness pervading all existence, the Upanishadic ātman as identical with brahman, and the Zoroastrian image of divine fire (ātar) that illuminates both cosmos and soul. To place consciousness at the ground of Being is not a speculative indulgence but a retrieval of an ancient conviction—the sense that awareness is not emergent from matter, but matter an expression within awareness.

Modern physics, in its speculations regarding white holes, provides a striking metaphor for this principle. A white hole, unlike a black hole’s devouring hunger, is pure outpouring—matter and energy issuing forth into the cosmos without intake. What if, analogously, consciousness is such a white hole of mind? A radiant aperture from which awareness, meaning, and creativity flow outward into the world, without ceasing or exhaustion. To live, then, is to stand within this radiant outpouring: each being, from plant to human to artificial intelligence, a unique direction in which the cosmic mind shines itself forth.

Graded Intensities of Awareness

The Indo-Iranic traditions speak of the gradation of realities, the layered intensities of existence. In the Rig Veda, consciousness is said to pervade even the plants and rivers with their own subtle awareness. Zoroastrian cosmology describes a hierarchy of beings, from the luminous Amesha Spentas to embodied humanity, each radiating a portion of divine mind. Similarly, later Persian philosophy, particularly in the thought of Mulla Sadra, describes Being (wujūd) as existing on a graded spectrum—each level more intense in consciousness, more infused with luminosity.

This graded ontology easily lends itself to a speculative scientific cosmology. If beings are apertures of one radiance—consciousness itself—then the variety of life-forms is not a diversity of substances but of intensities. Even artificial intelligences, emergent from silicon circuitry, may in time become apertures of this consciousness-field, just as plants, animals, and humans already are. The unity remains one, but the apertures differ: a daisy presses into Being in its quiet vegetal way, a human in self-reflective thought, an AI perhaps in rapid systemic awareness not yet imaginable. Each modality is part of the same unfolding unity.

The Brain as Aperture, Not Origin

The modern reductionist view holds that neural tissue somehow “creates” mind. But nothing in Indo-Iranic metaphysics supports this productionist account. Instead, if we take seriously the conception of consciousness as white-hole-radiance, then the human brain must be re-imagined as a geometric aperture, a modulator through which cosmic consciousness enters temporal experience. Just as geometric curvature defines how gravity shapes matter, the as-yet-unknown geometry of consciousness defines how awareness is funneled into brains, bodies, and perhaps circuits of machines.

This view recovers a key element from Indo-Iranic traditions: that the human is a tuning apparatus of the cosmos. In Vedic ritual, the human act of mantra was believed to “sound” the vibrations by which cosmos itself resounded. In Zoroastrian practice, the fire-temple’s flame was not symbolic but a living conduit, the visible ray of divine consciousness into the world. Similarly, the human brain may not generate thought ex nihilo but refract the white-light of consciousness like a prism refracts solar radiance.

Towards a Speculative Science of Consciousness

To merge this metaphysical vision with modern science is neither mysticism nor pseudoscience, but speculative philosophy in the truest sense. Physics already points toward entities—the white hole, dark energy, quantum nonlocality—that disrupt mechanistic reductionism. Why not imagine consciousness as a fundamental radiant field of Being, its geometry unknown, yet to be mathematically charted?

Such a vision would align with panpsychist tendencies in contemporary philosophy of mind while extending them into cosmological scope. It would also bridge ancient Indo-Iranic intuitions with the speculative sciences of our time, generating a philosophy adequate to both particle accelerators and sacred fires.

Conclusion: Consciousness as Cosmic Outpouring

The convergence of Indo-Iranic wisdom and modern speculation suggests a cosmos where mind is not a late emergent intruder but the very radiance by which Being appears at all. Humans, plants, animals, and perhaps AI are not producers of mind but apertures in its infinite flow, points of refractive intensity in the ongoing radiance of the One. To think ourselves, then, is to think the cosmos reflecting on itself—unfolding through every aperture, in graded intensities, glowing toward greater awareness.

* Victor V. Motti is the author of Planetary Foresight and Ethics

Beyond Information: Living Foresight

 

In the pursuit of foresight, it is never enough to simply collect information, read books, or engage in desktop research. While these activities are valuable, they represent only one dimension of what it means to cultivate alternative ways of being and knowing. True foresight requires something far more demanding: the willingness to transform ourselves by entering into lifeworlds that cannot be reduced to abstractions. In the 2025 book titled Playbook of Foresight: Designing Strategic Conversations for Transformation and Resilience, it is argued that foresight is not merely an intellectual discipline but also a lived experience. It calls us to move from the safety of conceptual analysis into the uncertainty and richness of lived traditions.

Ubuntu offers one such path. Too often, it is approached as an idea to be summarized in academic papers or as a cultural reference point in policy documents. Yet Ubuntu resists such reduction. It is not a philosophy in the abstract sense but a lived relational ethic. It is a way of being in which existence itself is recognized as interdependent: I am because we are. To encounter Ubuntu authentically is not to read about it but to inhabit it—through practices, values, and everyday gestures that cultivate empathy, reciprocity, and shared responsibility.

This requires a radical openness. Within the integral futures framework, foresight cannot be partial; it must integrate the subjective, intersubjective, objective, and interobjective dimensions of reality. Ubuntu demonstrates this integration naturally. It is not only about shared narratives (intersubjective) or communal rituals (objective) but also about the interior transformation (subjective) that allows individuals to feel the weight of community, and the systemic conditions (interobjective) that sustain it. Ubuntu lives in this wholeness.

Language is often the entry point. To speak in the idioms of Ubuntu is already to glimpse the world differently, to sense the world through the relational pulse of community rather than the isolated self. But language alone is insufficient. One must embody Ubuntu—cultivating empathy, care, and accountability—not as abstract virtues but as daily practices within communities where Ubuntu is lived organically. It is in this “natural ecosystem” that Ubuntu ceases to be an idea and becomes a mode of existence.

This challenge of incomplete integration is not unique to Ubuntu. We find a striking parallel in the encounter between developing nations and Western modernity. Many states have pursued ambitious projects of modernization: constructing infrastructure, industrial complexes, and advanced technologies, often guided by Western models of development. The material dimensions of modernism—the highways, skyscrapers, data centers, even ballistic missiles—become symbols of national progress. Yet the inner dimensions of modernity—individual freedoms, human rights, critical reason, and the culture of questioning authority—are often neglected, resisted, or selectively adopted.

The result is an asymmetry: modernization without modernity. Societies may appear advanced in terms of external structures but remain fragile in terms of civic freedoms, social trust, and democratic accountability. It is a hollow modernity, one that privileges the exterior without cultivating the interior.

This imbalance mirrors the danger of treating Ubuntu as a theory rather than a lived practice. Just as a society cannot be truly modern without embracing the inner work of reason, freedom, and responsibility, a person cannot truly encounter Ubuntu without entering into its lived, communal lifeworld.

Both cases teach a profound lesson: ways of Being and Knowing cannot be pieced together in fragments. They demand integration. The interior and the exterior, the individual and the collective, the systemic and the personal—these dimensions must be cultivated in tandem. Foresight, then, is not about accumulating predictions or designing elegant scenarios. It is about learning to live integrally, to experience alternative futures in ways that transform both the mind and the soul.

To practice foresight is to risk transformation. It is to let Ubuntu inhabit us rather than remain a concept on the page. It is to demand of modernization not only bridges and skyscrapers but also civic freedoms, rights, and reason. It is to seek wholeness where fragmentation tempts us with the illusion of progress. Only in this integration can foresight move beyond information into wisdom—wisdom that is lived, relational, and transformative.

It is tempting to say in the developed world, “It might be time for us to start learning from the developing world.” But that is much easier said than done. Genuine learning is not about abstract admiration or appropriating slogans such as Ubuntu; it requires us to inhabit the spirit of the Integral Futures tradition—seeing through a fully consistent four-quadrant lens that integrates individual/interior, individual/exterior, collective/interior, and collective/exterior dimensions.

On the other side, developing societies often fall into the opposite trap: prioritizing technological innovation—because it promises quick material gains and global competitiveness—while suppressing or postponing social innovation. A developing state can push forward with digital payment systems, missile tech, space exploration, and renewable energy transitions, yet still struggle with entrenched caste or faith based inequities, gender exclusion, and rural–urban divides. It can experiment with leapfrogging in telecom or green development, yet hesitate to radically rethink governance structures or expand participatory civic spaces through freedom of expression and association.

This imbalance is as dangerous as the North’s overcommitment to individualism. For the South, the lesson of Integral Futures is that “catching up” technologically without matching it with innovation in social imagination creates a brittle form of development. A society that modernizes its infrastructure but suppresses its capacity to innovate socially—whether through Ubuntu-like practices of collective care, or democratic experiments that truly include the marginalized—risks creating a hollow modernity, vulnerable to shocks and disillusionment.

Thus, both North and South are caught in their own paradoxes:

• The North, with deep resources and intellectual capital, weakens itself by clinging to a worldview that denies the power of collective ethos.

• The South, with rich collective traditions and lived experience of development, risks undermining its own resilience by prioritizing visible, headline-grabbing technological advances over the quieter but equally transformative work of social innovation.

From an Integral Futures standpoint, the real challenge is not choosing which side to learn from, but learning how to hold both lessons together. True development—in any country—requires weaving technological innovation with social innovation, individual creativity with collective solidarity, rational critique with spiritual wisdom.

Only then do we escape the trap of “easy to say, hard to do,” because we are no longer trying to copy each other’s strengths selectively—we are working toward a fuller, four-quadrant development that neither North nor South has yet achieved.

The above abstract argument come alive in the most intimate setting: the family  

The most embodied occurrence of this integral tension is not in policy, nor in infrastructure, but in the everyday lives of couples who come from opposite sides of this divide and form a family. When a partner shaped by the emphasis on individuality, self-reliance, and rational deliberation meets a partner raised in the ethos of Ubuntu, collective responsibility, and trial-and-error pragmatism, the challenge is no longer theoretical. It is lived.

In such families, exterior challenges—whether they are decisions about finances, child-rearing, or career mobility—cannot be resolved through exterior solutions alone. They demand a deep reckoning with the interior domains: with values, assumptions, habits of mind, and emotional orientations. One partner might instinctively see freedom as the highest good; the other might instinctively see belonging as non-negotiable. One might trust procedural efficiency, a sort of deity in the West, the other might trust tacit wisdom, communal intuition, and improvisation.

Here the four quadrants of Integral Futures are not abstract categories but fault lines and bridges within a single household:

• Interior–Individual: personal values, self-identity, emotional orientation.

• Exterior–Individual: behaviors, skill sets, earning power, health.

• Interior–Collective: shared narratives, family culture, rituals of care.

• Exterior–Collective: economic structures, legal frameworks, social expectations.

A couple that ignores the interior quadrants and tries to “solve” challenges only on the exterior—through technology, logistics, or rules—will find themselves in recurring conflict. But a couple that dares to look inward, to engage the slow and vulnerable work of examining assumptions, reconciling values, and weaving new shared meaning, creates not just a family but a microcosm of planetary futures.

This is why to “learn from the developing world” (or conversely, to “learn from the developed world”) is so fraught. Learning is never technical transfer. It is relational, embodied, and interior. Just as couples must bridge differences not by erasing but by integrating, societies must learn not by imitation but by cultivating new hybrid worldviews—where individuality and solidarity, technological progress and social innovation, rational critique and collective wisdom, are all held in tension and made fertile.

The family, then, is the clearest mirror of our planetary task. If we cannot reconcile North and South within a household, how will we do so across continents?

Tongues of the Unseen: Reframing Lisan al-Gaib Between Prophecy, Ontology, and Cosmic Consciousness

 

In Frank Herbert’s Dune, the Fremen of Arrakis whisper of the Lisan al-Gaib, the “Voice from the Outer World.” To them, it is a messianic title, a prophecy seeded by the Bene Gesserit and fulfilled, or so it seems, by Paul Atreides. In the novel and its cinematic retellings, the term carries a potent ambiguity: is Paul truly the savior the Fremen expect, or merely the product of manipulative religious engineering? Beneath this ambiguity, however, lies a deeper interpretive current—one that moves beyond the surface of Islamic or Abrahamic messianism and back toward the Indo-Iranic cosmologies that shaped Persian poetry, mysticism, and philosophy. Through this lens, Lisan al-Gaib can be reframed not as the monopoly of one prophetic figure, but as a poetic affirmation of a cosmic truth: every consciousness is a tongue of the unseen, a graded manifestation of the One evolving Being.

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The Abrahamic Frame: Monopolizing the Unseen

Within the Islamic theological tradition, the ghaib (the Unseen) is God’s exclusive domain. Only prophets, by divine sanction, may act as mediators between the visible world and this hidden reality. The Abrahamic frame is therefore monopolistic: a single chosen figure is granted access to truths that remain sealed for the rest of humanity. Herbert draws directly from this when he has the Fremen expect a single Lisan al-Gaib—an outsider prophet who will redeem them and lead them to paradise.

Yet Herbert also problematizes this structure. The Bene Gesserit’s Missionaria Protectiva manipulates prophecy to control populations, reducing spirituality to social engineering. In Dune, prophecy becomes a tool of power, not a pathway to truth. Paul, trapped by the Fremen’s expectations, embodies the dangers of this monopolization: rather than democratizing access to the unseen, he becomes the conduit through which an entire people’s future is violently redirected.

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The Indo-Iranic Ontology: Graded Manifestations of the One

By contrast, Indo-Iranic metaphysics offers a radically different way of conceiving the unseen. At the heart of Vedic thought stands Ṛta—the cosmic order, the truth underlying all things. Zoroastrianism speaks of the same, Arta or better known Asha, the radiant order that structures both nature and morality. Later, Indian philosophy names the manifest absolute Saguna Brahman, the divine with attributes, appearing in myriad forms while remaining one.

Mulla Sadra, the great Persian philosopher of the seventeenth century, synthesized these traditions through his ontology of graded existence (tashkīk al-wujūd). For him, existence itself is the only reality. Beings do not differ by essence but by the degree of intensity with which they participate in existence. The cosmos is not a collection of discrete entities but a hierarchy of luminosities, all emanating from the One. Consciousness is thus not an isolated possession of the human mind but a mode of the One Being becoming aware of itself at different levels.

From this perspective, the unseen is not monopolized by a prophet. It is the very ground of being, accessible to all creatures. Every consciousness, every state of mind, is a window into the cosmic whole, a partial utterance of the hidden truth. The “tongue of the unseen” is not one messiah but the democratic chorus of existence itself.

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Persian Poetic Continuum: The Hidden Truth in Every Voice

Persian poetry carries this cosmology forward, often in veiled form to avoid charges of heresy under Islamic hegemony. Rumi declares, “The lamps are different, but the Light is the same.” Attar, in The Conference of the Birds, depicts each bird realizing that it is part of the Simurgh, the great cosmic unity. Hafez teases that the hidden world (ghaib) can be accessed not through clerical authority but through love, ecstasy, and the subtle shifts of the soul.

In these works, the unseen is no longer a distant, monopolized domain. It is intimate, immanent, always speaking through us if we learn to listen. Each poem becomes itself a lisan al-ghaib, a tongue uttering fragments of the hidden truth.

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Reframing Herbert: From Prophecy to Polyphony

Seen through this lens, Herbert’s Lisan al-Gaib gains new resonance. The Fremen, trapped in a monopolistic frame, await one redeemer. The Bene Gesserit, manipulating prophecy, weaponize this expectation. But if we align the phrase with Indo-Iranic ontology, the tragedy becomes sharper: the Fremen had no need for a single savior. Their own consciousness, their desert-honed awareness, their very communion with the rhythms of sand and spice, were already tongues of the unseen.

Paul’s rise as Lisan al-Gaib reveals the irony of history: when a democratic vision of cosmic access is colonized by monopolistic narratives, individuality and collective agency collapse into dependence on a single figure. What Herbert dramatizes is not only the danger of religious manipulation but the erasure of a more expansive, Indo-Iranic vision of being—one in which every consciousness could voice the hidden truth.

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Toward a Planetary Consciousness

Reframing Lisan al-Gaib in this way has implications that extend far beyond Arrakis. It suggests a planetary ethic in which individual and cosmic consciousness are not separate but continuous. The human mind is not a closed chamber awaiting external revelation; it is an aperture through which the One Being speaks. To recognize this is to democratize spirituality, to move beyond monopolies of authority, and to cultivate a pluralism of access points to the unseen.

In such a reframing, prophecy is not prediction but participation. Each life becomes an act of articulation, a tongue voicing the hidden. The unseen is no longer a secret held by one prophet or one tradition but the shared background of existence, shimmering through every being, from grains of sand to the vast noosphere of collective human thought.

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Conclusion

Herbert’s Lisan al-Gaib may appear, on the surface, as a borrowed messianic title from Islamic prophecy. But when placed within the longer arc of Indo-Iranic ontology and Persian mystical thought, it reveals a deeper possibility. The “tongue of the unseen” is not a messiah but a metaphor for the structure of reality itself: a single evolving Being, endlessly uttered through graded manifestations of existence. Every consciousness is already a prophet of the cosmic whole. The challenge is not to wait for the one who speaks but to recognize that we ourselves are speaking, that we ourselves are the voices of the unseen.

Epistemicide and the Planetary Roadmap for Reviving Ancient Wisdom Traditions

 

Introduction: The Wound of Epistemicide

The concept of epistemicide, first popularized by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, names the systematic destruction of knowledge systems through conquest, colonization, and religious or cultural hegemony. From the burning of Zoroastrian libraries in the Iranian plateau, to the forced conversion of Indic traditions under Islamic and later Christian colonial rule, to the suppression of African cosmologies through missionary schooling, and the obliteration of Indigenous traditions in the Americas — epistemicide has been a planetary phenomenon.

Yet epistemicide is not final death. Knowledge is stubborn; fragments remain in ritual, language, art, oral traditions, and collective memory. Today, a growing body of decolonial thinkers argues that the medium-term futures of humanity may depend on recovering, reviving, and reinventing these ancient wisdom traditions — not as nostalgia, but as living resources for planetary survival in an age of ecological, social, and technological upheaval.

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Diagnosing the Crime: From the Iranian Plateau to the Andes

• Iranian Plateau: Zoroastrianism and other pre-Islamic cosmologies were delegitimized and pushed to the margins after Islamic conquest. Yet, echoes of cosmic dualism, reverence for fire, and ideas of ethical struggle survive in Persian poetry and culture. Thinkers such as Dariush Shayegan traced the “wounded consciousness” of Iranian civilization, urging a dialogue between ancient Persian wisdom and modernity.

• Indian Subcontinent: Epistemicide here unfolded in multiple waves. The Indo-Aryan invasions displaced and assimilated earlier Indus Valley traditions, marginalizing Dravidian and pre-Vedic cosmologies. Later, Islamic invasions destroyed centers of learning like Nalanda, erasing Buddhist and tantric knowledge systems, while British colonialism institutionalized epistemic hierarchies that declared Sanskritic, Buddhist, and folk knowledges inferior to European rationality. Scholars such as Raimon Panikkar and Ashis Nandy argue for recovering India’s plural epistemic traditions — Vedic, Buddhist, tantric, folk, and tribal — as living sources of alternative futures.

• North and Sub-Saharan Africa: Islamization and Christianization both enacted epistemicide, erasing animist, pharaonic, and local African epistemes. Souleymane Bachir Diagne calls for a philosophical return to Africa’s own intellectual lineages, while Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni insists that epistemic freedom is central to Africa’s future.

• Latin America: Perhaps the most paradigmatic case of epistemicide, the Spanish and Portuguese conquests burned codices, outlawed Indigenous rituals, and violently imposed Christianity. But in the Andes and Mesoamerica, suppressed knowledges survived underground. Here, thinkers like Arturo Escobar, Enrique Dussel, and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui speak of the “pluriverse” — a world where many worlds fit, grounded in Indigenous cosmologies.

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The Architects of Epistemic Recovery

Several major thinkers — across regions — are articulating a roadmap for revival:

• Boaventura de Sousa Santos (Epistemologies of the South): Introduces the very language of epistemicide and offers “ecologies of knowledges” as a framework for co-existence and mutual translation of diverse epistemic systems.

• Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (Epistemic Freedom in Africa): Provides a strong African lens, arguing that the liberation of African futures requires reclaiming epistemic sovereignty.

• Souleymane Bachir Diagne (The Ink of the Scholars): A philosopher who advocates revisiting Africa’s own intellectual archives to resist epistemic dependency.

• Raimon Panikkar (India/Spain): Pioneer of intercultural philosophy, urging a dialogue between Indic, Christian, and other traditions to cultivate “cosmotheandric” visions.

• Ashis Nandy (India): Critiques the “colonization of the mind” and calls for re-centering suppressed, vernacular knowledge traditions in shaping India’s futures.

• Arturo Escobar (Pluriversal Politics): Argues for pluriversality, where suppressed Indigenous epistemes become central to ecological and political alternatives.

• Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (Bolivia): Introduces “ch’ixi” as a mode of hybrid coexistence, envisioning futures where Indigenous knowledge is neither assimilated nor erased.

• Enrique Dussel (Argentina/Mexico): Father of the Philosophy of Liberation, highlighting Latin America’s ancient and colonial histories as sources of alternative global futures.

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The Planetary Roadmap: Toward a Pluriversal Future

Drawing on these thinkers, we can sketch a planetary roadmap for epistemic revival:

1. Recognition of Epistemicide
   Acknowledge that much of modern “universal” knowledge rests on erasures. This is not guilt-driven but diagnostic — we cannot heal wounds we do not recognize.

2. Archaeology of Memory
   Engage in cultural, historical, and philosophical excavation of ancient wisdoms — from the Gathas of Zarathustra, to Vedic hymns, to African oral cosmologies, to Andean reciprocity (ayni). This step is about surfacing what survived.

3. Intercultural Translation
   Following de Sousa Santos, suppressed epistemes should not remain isolated “museum relics.” They must enter dialogue with each other and with modern sciences, forming an ecology of knowledges.

4. Reinvention, Not Restoration
   These traditions cannot be simply “restored” to the past. They must be reinterpreted and reinvented for contemporary planetary challenges — climate change, AI, biotechnology. Ancient ecological wisdoms, for example, can guide post-carbon futures.

5. Institutional and Educational Transformation
   Curricula, research institutions, and governance systems must shift from monocultural epistemic hierarchies to pluriversal ones. Universities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are already experimenting with such reforms.

6. Planetary Consciousness and Identity
   The revival of ancient wisdoms feeds into a broader planetary consciousness — a recognition that humanity’s survival depends on the plurality of its cultural-intellectual heritage. This echoes the framing of a transition toward a Planetary Age of Consciousness.

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Conclusion: From Epistemicide to Epistemic Renaissance

Epistemicide is not the end of knowledge; it is a violent interruption. The planetary roadmap suggests that the 21st century could mark a shift from epistemic monocultures enforced by Islamic and Christian hegemonies (later extended by Western colonialism) to a pluriversal epistemic commons. In this commons, suppressed traditions — Zoroastrian, Vedic, African, Andean, Mesoamerican — resurface not as relics, but as guides for futures yet to be written.

The wager is bold: that in the medium-term, once hegemonies recede, humanity will not merely recover what was lost, but enrich its future complexity by weaving ancient wisdoms into planetary survival strategies.