i-eclectica.org

Former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell believes in a binary, or dyadic model of the universe in which consciousness must be taken into account as a causal element.

As a scientist and an astronaut, Mitchell has been personally searching for answers to this fundamental dichotomy. He conducted in-flight experiments in extra-sensory perception with professional psychics back on earth and reported a success rate that was phenomenally greater than that predicted by chance. In 1971, while on the Apollo 14 mission, he looked back at the earth from his space capsule and knew intuitively that an intelligence was at work in the universe.

Mitchell’s epiphany in space did not end there. He returned to earth, left the space program, and founded the Institute for Noetic Sciences in Sausalito, California. “It is becoming increasingly clear that the human mind and physical universe do not exist independently,” he says. “Something as yet indefinable connects them. This connective link — between mind and matter, intelligence and intuition — is what Noetic Sciences is all about.”

Mitchell chose the word noetic from the Green work nous, meaning “mind, intelligence, and understanding.” The word noetic encompasses the intellect’s ability to reason, the perceptions of the physical senses, and the intuitive, spiritual, or inner ways of knowing. “The psychic part of the intuitive function, that is, the ability to perceive information in ways unexplainable, is a natural part of the universe. It is available to everyone. We have got to experience powerful intuition, psychokinesis, and healing to know that it is real. There is nothing magical or mystical about it. It is only that aspect of the unknown which we cannot explain yet,” Mitchell says.

While most physicists believe that everything can be reduced to matter and energy, and mentalists take the view that consciousness is the causal element, Mitchell believes that both are mutually necessary. “Like the north and south pole, you need both matter and consciousness for the universe to be complete.” Mitchell sees mainstream science as primarily reductionist, breaking the atoms down to elemental particles. Although that is valid for the physical spectrum, he believes that you have to take into account the nonphysical spectrum, as well. You have to ask, “What is the most elemental thing about our nonphysical essence?” For Mitchell, who holds a doctorate in aeronautics and who has spent eighteen years developing this scientific theory, the answer is information - the ability and intent to distinguish between two simultaneous states. Like a north pole and a south pole, energy then becomes the basis of physical reality and information the basis of consciousness.

Mitchell’s model is unique in its integration of the principles of physics with principles of the new science. “Physics says the matter/energy is the creator of all while the religious camp says that the mind is the creator of all. Everyone is trying to create a monadic model, one that posits one or the other as correct,” he says. And he believes that in failing to recognize the binary or dual nature of the physical and nonphysical dimensions, scientists are restricting their own efforts to find answers.

For example, Mitchell points to the difficulty that physicists have had in trying to come up with a unified field theory. Scientists today have one set of equations for subatomic activity and a different set of equations for atomic activity. A unified field theory would allow them to develop consistent equations for both subatomic and atomic activity. “It’s clear that they are interconnected and that the subatomic level affects what happens at the cosmic level. Tiny, subtle effects do have a major impact, but it’s not clear that with the present state of knowledge scientists can write the same equation for both cosmic and subatomic levels,” Mitchell notes.

Until science studies the fundamental interaction between micro determinism and macro determinism no scientist will be able to develop a unified field theory. As Mitchell points out, “Scientists will never find the unified field theory until they look at human consciousness. Mind and mental phenomena are the last challenge of physics.”

The posting above is excerpted from Dr. Laurie Nadel’s Sixth Sense: Unlocking Your Ultimate Mind Power with Judy Haims and Robert Stempson (ASJA Press) available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk . It was published by The Bleeping Herald.

The following is an article by my friend Glenys published in MatriFocus. The paper reflects on a couple of yearly seasonal mythical and mystical celebrations, Beltane and Samhain, ancient events revived in both, the Southern and Northern hemispheres. The aspect I particularly like about Gleny’s thoughts is that she conceptualises the planet as an continuous ‘living’ space, in which life is based on relationship and arises from the ageless processes of passing away and regeneration. Life is constant renewal at all scales, in a place without boundaries and mechanical processes; it is a dance to which every particle is invited and takes part in.

Beltane/Samhain @ EarthGaia

by Glenys Livingstone

The Sacred Reciprocity of EarthGaia

On the surface of it, Beltane celebrates sex and Samhain celebrates death. A great contrast, yet these events are tightly coupled in language, science, and the reciprocity of our respective holidays. The French word for orgasm literally means “a little death” — the felt experience seems similar. In evolutionary science, the advent of meiotic[1] sex is connected to the advent of death.[2] Across the globe, we celebrate both at the same moment. It is Beltane in the Southern Hemisphere, the season of sweet desire for being. That desire is the Cosmic “glue” which holds all form together and allows the dance of life. In the Northern Hemisphere it is Samhain, the season of celebrating the falling apart of all form, the end of desire which allows death and transformation.

At these cross-quarters “the veil is thin that divides the worlds.” Traditionally, both holidays have been times of high revelry and deep intimacy with our place. One celebrates a genetic fertility and the other a trans-genetic/imaginal fertility[3], becoming aware that form and formlessness actually are continuous. As Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky expressed it early last century:

At each moment there are a hundred million million tons of living matter in the biosphere, always in a state of movement. The mass is decomposed, forms itself anew…. Generations are thus born at intervals of time from ten minutes to hundreds of years … through death, birth, metabolism and growth … unceasingly. [Vernadsky, p.34]

This place that we live within is a constant interchange, a reciprocity, like a breath. We live within a sensuous “breathing landscape,” as ecologist David Abram writes, a “field of intelligence in which our actions (and whole beings) participate.”[Abram] Our bodyminds and all bodies exchange substances with the Earth, though the disembodied, and sanitized mainstream culture tries to flush those substances “away.” Aboriginal cosmologies have never forgotten this: The exchange of bodily fluids with land is a valued and significant participation in the very flow of life and relationship with the ancestors.[McDonald] We may recognize this today in the context of the Gaian exchange — local, global, and perhaps beyond.

Biologist Lynn Margulis, co-author of the Gaia Theory, describes how the biosphere evolved into a continuously changing habitat:

The oxygen we breathe, the humid atmosphere inside of which we live, and the mildly alkaline ocean waters in which the kelp and whales bathe are not determined by a physical universe run by mechanical laws; the surroundings are products of life interacting at the planet’s surface. Fundamentally, life on Earth owes its long and continuing existence to these metabolic, physiological, behavioural, and evolutionary interactions. [Barlow]

“Natural selection,” so often understood as a merciless law imposed on creatures, is actually a communal reality.

EarthGaia is not a fixed environment to which organisms must conform. She does not dictate outcomes. “Natural selection,” so often understood as a merciless law imposed on creatures, is actually a communal reality — and perhaps Darwin himself meant it that way. Organism and environment are in a constant communion of decomposition and renewal, a mutual receiving that never fades away — and that is essentially erotic.

Gaia-Universe, Earth, Self: A Unity of Being

EarthGaia is not separate from UniverseGaia. There is no “out there.” Gaia is “in here,” as much as anywhere. Earth floats in the “heavens” — the “heavens” are where we are. We know that Earth is a jewel in the womb of space — we have seen Her. We know that She is stardust; Her dirt is transfigured stuff of the stars. Ten percent of our bodyminds is original hydrogen, recycled many times over. The rest is born in stars, as Earth herself is.[4] Earth is a small seed, a cell, whole in Herself yet a small particle. And so it is for any single being, self, articulation of Her. We are a nested reality. It is simply a matter of perspective.

In 1926 — long before the human eye had actually seen Earth from space — Vladimir Vernadsky was able to hold a vision of Her in her “cosmic surroundings.”[5] He developed a hypothesis of the biosphere “as a unitary agent molding the earth’s crust as a primary geological force” that was in relationship with the cosmic energies of radiation, particularly solar radiation. Vernadsky scientifically and poetically describes a holistic vision of Cosmos and Earth, and at times refers to humankind as a “geological entity.” For him, the biosphere is “a place of transformation” of cosmic energies. He says:

The biosphere is as much, or even more, the creation of the Sun as it is a manifestation of Earth-processes. Ancient religious traditions which regarded terrestrial creatures, especially human beings, as ‘children of the Sun’ were much nearer the truth than those which looked upon them as a mere ephemeral creation. [Vernadsky, pp.iv-9]

Vernadsky asserts that the phenomena in the biosphere can only be understood in the context of the entire cosmos: “related to the structure of atoms, to their places in the cosmos and to their evolution in the history of the cosmos.”[ibid.]

Where in fact, do we make the cut between self and other, animate and inanimate, human and habitat, earth and cosmos? Nothing seems to be exempt from the dynamics of relationship, the energetic flow of coming into being and passing away, These dynamics are our constant companions — in both an everyday and an ultimate way. Perhaps the Universe is subject to the same dynamics. Some indigenous religious traditions have stories of the whole Cosmos coming into being, passing away, and regenerating. Recent Western scientific research supports this too: “…an ageless and self-renewing Universe” whose stars, even ancient ones, are “like short-lived fireflies in the grand scheme of things.”[Than] The flux of being appears to be reiterated at all scales.

The thinness of the veils between the worlds, the sentience of that space, the cyclical connection of the old and the new are supported from a scientific point of view, and in a multivalent way — for example, recent scientific studies indicate that organic life may be born from inorganic matter[6]. Particles of plasma, normally considered inorganic, can undergo self-organization resulting in helical structures that become charged and are attracted to each other, thus taking on qualities of living matter — they are “autonomous, they reproduce and they evolve”.[WorldScience] In a recent interview, cosmologist Brian Swimme gave a short version of the whole story of evolution. He said:

You take hydrogen gas, and you leave it alone, and it turns into rosebushes, giraffes, and humans.… The reason I like that version is that hydrogen gas is odorless and colorless, and in the prejudice of our Western civilization, we see it as just material stuff. There’s not much there. You just take hydrogen, leave it alone, and it turns into a human — that’s a pretty interesting bit of information. [Bridle]

The Dance of Life

The tangible and visible dance of life celebrated at Beltane clearly grows from the dissolution, the dance of death and transformation at Samhain. The veils are thin, and globally it is all one dance. Perhaps those who have gone before are closer than we are sometimes wont to feel, as close as the taking in and letting go of breath — we may receive them more deeply in heart and mind.

The purpose of religious practice is to help us know in our bodyminds the deep truths we believe to be so. We strengthen those truths by speaking and enacting them, spelling ourselves. The root of the word “religion” is religio, meaning to bind or connect (in a positive sense of belonging).

The Sabbats mirror each other. Both celebrate an Erotic relationship with our place, this Earth and Cosmos, a deep attraction to knowing that we are She, and that we desire Her.

From all eternity the Beloved unveiled Her beauty in the solitude of the unseen. She held up the mirror to Her own face. She displayed Her loveliness to Herself…. All was One. There was no duality, no pretense of ‘mine’ or ‘thine.’ [Jami][7]

A Planetary Samhain Moment

We live in times of the passing of so much — it seems to be a planetary Samhain Moment. Huge transformation is afoot. Evolution biologist and futurist Elisabet Sahtouris has used the metaphor of the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly to identify the situation. She says:

If you see the old system as a caterpillar crunching its way through the ecosystem, eating up to three hundred times its weight in a single day, bloating itself until it just can’t function anymore, and then going to sleep with its skin hardening into a chrysalis. What happens in its body is that little imaginal disks (as they’re called by biologists) begin to appear in the body of the caterpillar and its immune system attacks them. But they keep coming up stronger and they start to link with each other. As they connect, as they link with each other, they mature into fully-fledged cells and more and more of them aggregate until the immune system of the caterpillar just can’t function any more. At that point the body of the caterpillar melts into a nutritive soup that can feed the butterfly. [Sahtouris]

Then drawing upon the story of Gaian Unfolding, of how we ourselves as multi-cellular bodyminds morphed into being, Sahtouris draws an analogy between this great leap — of single cells evolving into co-operative bodies, to the present challenge of us multi-celled humans evolving into a “multi-cellular” type global body.[Sahtouris] She believes we are ready to make this great leap into a co-operative global body in harmony with other species and our Earth as a whole: that the “rapidly oncoming Hot Age may well be the evolutionary driver pushing us into co-operation.” She says, “There will simply not be enough time and resources for both war and cooperative survival: we will be forced to choose.”[Alberti]

It seems that our times call for the casting away of the old in a radical way. At Samhain we can become conscious of participation in the evolution of consciousness, to fashion a myth/story that will be of service to our time. And at the same time, the concurrent Moment of Beltane may make us conscious of what we most deeply desire, conscious of Desire itself as a power of the universe[8] — as a Holy Lust for birthing the new, a Holy Lust for ongoing Creativity.

The magic of both Moments being celebrated at the same time on EarthGaia is new in our time — Her whole body is the sacred site for these stories[9] that we tell.

Notes

1. meiotic — pertaining to meiosis: cell division by which eggs and sperm are produced
2. An explanation of this by Elisabet Sahtouris can be found in the “From Protists to Polyps” chapter of her (online) book <http://www.ratical.org/LifeWeb/Erthdnce/chapter8.htm accessed 10/27/2007> or by Ursula Goodenough in the abstract of her article, “The Sacred Depths of Nature: Excerpts,” at <http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0591-2385.00298?cookieSet=1&journalCode=zygo accessed 10/27/2007>
3. Beltane celebrates a fertility based in biological conception, whilst Samhain celebrates a fertility based in imaginal conception. Thomas Berry uses the term “trans-genetic” to describe the passing on of cultural information. I mean it to describe conceiving the new with our imaginations.
4. For a full poetic and scientific version of the cosmic unfolding, see Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, NY: HarperCollins, 1992.
5. Elisabet Sahtouris questions whether Vernadsky really did perceive Earth as a whole live entity (Earthdance p.118), and refers to Scottish scientist James Hutton as having such a view in 1785 (Earthdance, p.69).
6. Webster’s dictionary definition of “valence” is “relative capacity to unite, react or interact”. By “multivalent” I mean “many different possible interactions” across apparent boundaries. Another example would be the phenomena of particles emerging into a quantum vacuum, or the birth of new solar systems out of supernovas.
7. This is similar to the Creation story of the Faery tradition of Witchcraft: see Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, SF: Harper & Rowe, 1988, p.31-32.
8. Brian Swimme refers to Allurement as a “power of the universe” in “The Powers of the Universe” DVD series, 1994.
9. I acknowledge the inspiration of Rachel Pollack, , Element Books, 1997.

References

• Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous, NY:Vintage, 1996. p.260.
• Alberti, Anna. Interview with Elisabet Sahtouris, Caposervizio Salute e Società, Redazione di Marie Claire ITALIA, in relation to Sahtouris’ position on the World Commission for Global Consciousness and Spirituality.
• Barlow, Connie (ed.). Quote from Lynn Margulis in From Gaia to Selfish Genes: Selected Writings in the Life Sciences, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1994, p.237.
• Bridle, Susan. “Comprehensive Compassion: An Interview with Brian Swimme”, What Is Enlightenment? No. 19, p.40.
• Jami, Sufi poet 1414.
• McDonald, Heather. Blood Bones and Spirit, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, p. 20-21.
• Sahtouris, Elisabet. After Darwin - Reuniting Spirituality with Science in Order to Form a New World View <http://www.ratical.org/LifeWeb/Articles/AfterDarwin.html.accessed 10./27/2007>
• Than, Ker. “Greatest Mysteries: How Did the Universe Begin?” LiveScience, August 13, 07. See <http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/070813_gm_universe.html accessed 10/27/2007> This article was brought to my attention by “rosewelsh” on pagaian.org forum.
• Vernadsky, Vladimir. The Biosphere, London: Synergetic Press, 1986 (1929)
• WorldScience. “Alien Life… from Dust Particles?” August 14, 2007. <http://www.world-science.net/othernews/070814_dust.htm accessed 10/27/2007> Quoting research published in New Journal of Physics, August 14, 2007. This article was brought to my attention by “rosewelsh” on pagaian.org forum.

Graphics Credits #D22929

• connection, © Gretchen Small. All rights reserved.
• belief, © Gretchen Small. All rights reserved.
• this pearl, © Gretchen Small. All rights reserved.

I’ve decided, I will read the Orion Magazine more often; I would even even subscribe to it if they would offer a web or software edition of it (which they seem to be working on). Here’s another article on a topic close to my heart: living sustainably not just in accordance with scientific or common sense principles, but in a deeper unity whose practical expressions go very much against our rational understanding of life and the economic maxims on how to make a living.

Under the title “Land, Farmer, Community: A Sacred Trust To Create Heaven on Earth“, Lisa M. Hamilton writes about a community in Japan called Shumei. Lisa visited Susumu Hashimoto whom she describes as the happiest person she’s ever met. “His smile is constant and electric. Even in the rain, his face seems to glow.” Hashimoto derives his happiness from farming, which he sees as the basis to accomplish - world peace!

Hashimoto’s unexpected and somewhat puzzling approach to a profession that not just in Australia but also in Japan is often associated with debt, dispossession, and even suicide, is not totally unique; what he does is called shizen nouhou, or natural agriculture. “It’s part of the devotional practice of the spiritual group Shumei, which claims 370,000 members in Japan and around the world”, and the group’s long term goal is nothing less but to create heaven on earth.

Shizen nouhou “is based on the teachings of Mokichi Okada, whose unique philosophy came as a response to living through the two world wars. He believed that healing the world would come from relearning how to respect life. One of the avenues Okada chose for this was agriculture, which he saw as humans’ fundamental connection to the natural world. He taught that humans ought to stop treating the Earth as a thing to subjugate and instead adopt a relationship of humble coexistence. Through his new way of growing and eating food, humans would learn to trust in the Earth to sustain them, and in return agree to care for it. As people learned to show respect, gratitude, and compassion toward the natural world, they would do the same for all beings, including their fellow humans. So while on the surface natural agriculture looks like plain old farming—planting, harvesting, selling—it is actually, as Hashimoto said, a way of learning to care for life and improve society.”

Not surprisingly, this humble and respectful approach to the Earth and its people leads to behaviours and interactions that are diametrically opposed to our contemporary way of life. Shumei farmers for example don’t control or manage the land - they surrender to it. They deal with what we call pests not by spraying, but by observing what is happening in a pest affected environment and learning from these observations how to make plants stronger. They also don’t add anything to the soil, not even compost - in their eyes that would be an expression of them not trusting the power inherent in the land. Instead they might change whatever plans they had for a particular field, for example by planting different crops or changing the crop cycle. This way of interacting with land, of working solely within its own potential, can lead to lower yields or even to none at all. But that does not concern the Shumei - “their goal is not quantity; it is to cultivate compassion, respect, and gratitude”.

But even for Shumei farmers, in many (if not most) situations this is a an almost certain way of creating an unviable business, which often does not even guarantee their own survival - and this is where the Shumei community at large comes in. It depends on its farmers for food and they depend on their community for growing it. With both knowing this mutual dependency and, even more importantly, sharing the same spiritual values, their support system seems to work well. “In the greater Tokyo area, a network of eleven farmers feeds fifteen hundred urban families, supplying all their produce, rice, and soybeans.” Quite mind-boggling, really, from our western, capitalistic and ego-centric perspective: by focusing on the sacred rather than the material, people as a community create sustainable survival which could not be guaranteed either for the group nor the individual producer without that synergy.

How does it practically work? Simple: the farmers farm, and the consumers create a support system that enables the farmers “to focus on spiritual priorities rather than production”. “Consumers run the distribution system. They take orders, collect money, package, sort, and deliver. They publish newsletters, organize farm tours, and host celebrations. Because supporting the farmers means adopting a seasonal diet, they give cooking classes. To replace commercially processed foods like miso and tofu, they learn to process soybeans at home. And when farmers need them in the field, they become farmers, too. The traditional hierarchy of agriculture - land serves farmers, farmers serve consumers - is replaced with a three-way partnership.”

Lisa Hamilton provides a wonderful story from her meeting with Hashimoto that shows the philosophy being alive and thriving. A few years ago, Hashimoto barely broke even, but his plan of planting more rice was jeopardised by the fact that he could hardly keep up with weeding. So he decided to rent more fields and adopt them out to his customers. “After he planted, they would do the weeding, as well as contract to buy a year’s worth of the rice at a price that reflected their paddy’s total yield—incentive to do their work well.”

Ten people signed up, people from the city, not used to farm work at all. “Throughout the summer they worked, barefoot and bent over in the blazing sun. They spent far more time there than anyone had predicted; some drove five hours just to get to the farm. In the end, the price for their rice was markedly higher than in a supermarket, even for organic. By conventional standards, not a great deal.

Yet the next year they all signed up again. Turns out they had enjoyed every minute. They had brought their whole families, and their children had relished the chance to catch frogs and squish mud through their toes. The families had asked Hashimoto to teach them to do more than weed. One man, Hideki Oonishi, had even driven out in winter to visit his fallow field. After planting the next spring, Hashimoto watched him photograph the seedlings as if they were his children.

The extra rice kept Hashimoto in business, but what mattered more to him was the new crop of people in his fields. He explained that as a natural agriculture farmer his work is to care deeply for plants and land; in doing so he produces not just food, but love. Every person who joined him meant that love multiplied.” He talked about each and every family, saying that love would lead to something bigger. Then he smiled, and there was nothing more to say.

[Photography by Lisa M. Hamilton, a California writer and photographer who is working on a book titled “Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness”]

My friend Glenys, who has worked for the last two decades on re-inventing earth-based goddess religions by merging research on ancient mythology with that of modern cosmology, has sent me a link to Esra Films and their documentary on Martin Brennan’s work in the ancient Boyne Valley (Brú na Bóinne) in Ireland. Brennan’s research and interpretation suggests, that approximately six thousand years ago, an unknown Celtic civilisation existed whose advance in astronomy and mathematics were reached again only some 2.500 years later by the Greeks - an assumption that already by itself would make me want to watch the documentary.

I have included below a short introduction to it, which has been taken from the Esra Film website (there you can also download a five-minute sneak preview of the film).

The following is an email posted by John Croft to the Gaia Foundation’s news link; it’s a deep, knowledgeable and passionate reflection on the crossroad we as a planetary species are on right now.

“As we move beyond the ten-thousand year Holocene interregnum of the last Ice Age, rather than returning to the cooler autumn and winter of the Pleistocene glacial optimum, we are racing towards a global summer unlike any ever before witnessed upon the earth. This summer of global warming poses the greatest spiritual challenge ever confronted by humankind.

Humans were a product of the Ages of Ice, a period where the light-reflective capacity of Gaia, the living planet, was maximized by the white mirrors of large fields of snow and glaciers across the north of the world. During this period London and New York were both under nearly a mile of Ice. But although the great northern forests were not there, the fall in sea level exposed continental margins to a depth of nearly 130 metres, and this now lost land, covered by living forests, was augmented by a colder sea and its flourishing phytoplankton. Life at this time flourished with a complexity and abundance never before seen. And in Africa, within this complexity of life from one species of bipedal chimpanzee was born homo sapiens sapiens, the supposedly doubly wise man.

With us was born a greater altruism, a caring for each other not possessed to the same degree by other animals. At the same time was born the potential of unspeakable cruelties, and a flexibility of choice of our own fate to a higher degree. Our abilities with hindsight and foresight, our flexibility with cultural learning, our long childhood and its need for socialization from parents and peers, and the immense power of prepositional language created a predator of a kind never before seen on Earth, from a Gaian point of view we were the master parasite. The effects were felt as they rippled throughout the biosphere. Everywhere modern man went, saw a collapse in megafauna, until we learned ecological wisdom and ceased being eaters of our own future.

Gaia, in whose body we reside, is immensely old - nearly one third the age of the universe. As our sun reaches middle age, its heating has provided Gaia with new sources of energy, and has coped by burying more and more carbon, and creating an oxygen atmosphere, enabling more complex forms of life to evolve. Gaia needs this life, because in the fullness of time, the heating of the sun will exceed the ability of the Earth to cope, and unless Gaia can go to seed and reproduce herself creating daughter biospheres in the spaces between the planets and ultimately the stars, Gaia will die. It is for this reason that Gaia has been experimenting lately with individual intelligence.

The discovery of the fields of fossil energy, of the ancient sunlight buried beneath our feet gave the globalising culture of western Europe, a technological edge over all other people on the planet and permitted an ego-locking individualism on a scale never seen before. Unlike earlier cultures we could destroy our local communities, subsidizing the costs of this loss with the hidden subsidy of Gaia’s coal and oil. And so we have created the least resilient culture yet seen on Earth, a culture of such mind-boggling complexity, that it would be almost impossible to regenerate it from first principles. In a strange way we have destroyed or weakened all communities that link individuals, so that nothing now separates the globalised eternally growing economy and the isolated individual. The ultimate parasite is now engaged in the task of consuming the Earth itself, its own life support systems that underpin its future continued existence as a culture, or the life of its own future offspring.

The peril of our spiritual crisis, is that we have unleashed an irresistible force: that of the human imagination and technological creativity, within what is an immovable object, the finite nature of the life of the planet itself, with a sense of complete irresponsibility for the outcome. Something of these three has got to, and will, give way.

Climate change is now upon us. Human urban civilisation in the past has always been fostered by periods of stable climate. For only then could we cultivate the food surpluses necessary to support the non-food producing classes of artisans and craftsmen, priests, healers, teachers, merchants, soldiers, artists and rulers upon which civilisations have depended. Looking at the record of the thirty one civilisations with which we have shared this planet demonstrates that civilisations seem to usually collapse during periods of rapid climate change. Food production is threatened, the elite struggles for declining surpluses get more vicious, and complexity unable to sustain itself, collapses. Dieing civilisations appear to be caught into a structural contradiction of their own devising, a mental trap of limited thinking from which they can only escape from through the rigor of a new Dark Age.

It is time that we awoke from the trap of industrial growth and built a society that is no longer a consumer parasite upon, but is rather symbiotic and synergistic with the life of Gaia as a whole. To do so in the little time we have left before Gaia decides that we human are as expendable as the dinosaurs is the greatest challenge that ever confronted humankind. It vastly exceeds earlier periods of culture change such as that when Greco Roman world views confronted the temple based cultures of the Middle East that spawned the great Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is of much greater significance than the earlier Axial Age introduction of monetarised and literate iron-age economies that gave birth to Buddhism and Hinduism in India, or Daoism and Confucianism in China. These were regional crises. Never before have we faced a global crisis of such magnitude and rapidity.

We must extend our ability to care, wider than it has ever been before. No longer is caring for oneself, one’s family or community enough. Even caring for our nations, as we have done over the last 300 years is far too narrow. The crisis of global warming means we have to now care for a whole planet, and for every species of life we share it with. Humans need to start functioning as the thinking neo-cortex of the brain of Gaia, because if we do not do this we will become as extinct as the dodo, and time is running out. Through us Gaia seeks to en-soul itself. It needs to do so for its own survival. It is a task that is going to take all 6.5 billion of us to achieve, and require every skill and capacity of each one of us. Not to participate in this task is to risk suicide, and will weaken the ability of us all to make the transition to the Greatest Turning of history.

We live in an amazing time, a time that has been long in preparation and will never again be repeated. We stand at the pivot of history. Gaia herself seeks to have our species leave its adolescence behind and assume its responsibilities of adulthood. This task is going to take the harvesting of the gifts and wisdoms granted to us by all 31 of the civilisations of the last five thousand years. It needs the insights and abilities of all the first nations indigenous cultures of every continent. We need to distill the wisdom and insights of all sages, teachers, and spiritual students, swamis, gurus, prophets, saints and martyrs that have ever existed. Nothing can be left out, nothing can be forgotten - we need it all.

Recently it has been stated that there is no alternative to Globalisation, but this is a globalisation of corporations and we are not yet global enough. We need to be truly aware of the needs of the globe as a whole, of the needs of the living body of Gaia itself. It has been said that we have arrived at the “end of history”, but then we have been surprised to find history continuing and the end is not yet in sight. We have been proclaimed to be a post-industrial
civilisation, living in an information age, and yet what we find, these are just points along a trajectory that began long before. We have to cease being human beings and start becoming to be human becomings. Our species is not yet human, as we are not yet humane enough. Our selfishness and greed is still too all consuming. Not yet have we harvested our full potential as a human species. Only then will we have arrived as the end of history. Only then can we start living in a post-industrial culture. We have become trapped in a cul-de-sac of our own devising, and as a result of the coming climate change we are being asked to restart our own evolution as a species, an evolution that has been stalled by 50 centuries of bloody struggles within and between civilisations. We have to start truly living, instead of sleepwalking our lives away, adhering to and living by the greatest moralities that we can. We are all of us pilgrims on this journey, no-one can be left behind. It will take sacrifice of some of our comforts, and may require us to give up some of the things we hold dear, so that others may simply live. It will take daily mindfulness of a kind we have hereto only dreamed of, and the building of communities of practice in all walks of life.

It is the spiritual second coming that we have all been awaiting, but of a kind not foreseen and not anticipated.”