INTRODUCTION

A Universal Love Story

This is a love story. A love story for the entire Universe: you, me, and every living organism.

Act I opened billions of years ago when a wave of light from the sun collided with a particle of matter. That spark of love between Father Sun and Mother Earth gave birth to a child on this blue-green spheroid. That precocious child, called life, has made Earth its playground ever since, multiplying into an endless array of magnificent forms. Some of those forms are with us today, but many more have become extinct and will never be known.

The curtain rose on Act II of this love story some 700 million years ago when certain single-celled organisms decided they’d had it with the single life. Realizing they couldn’t live alone, they turned to one another and said (in whatever primal language single cells speak) “Baby, I need your lovin’.” And thus, the multicellular organism was created.

Act III began over a million years ago when multicellular organisms evolved into the first consciously aware humans to arrive on the scene. With consciousness, life was able to observe itself, reflect, and create its own future. Life could experience and appreciate love and joy. Life could even laugh at itself and, eventually, come to write books like the one you hold in your hands.

Act IV traces the evolution of human clans who joined forces and carved the globe into nation states. At the present time, we find ourselves near the closing moments of this act, wondering if the play ends here, like a Greek tragedy that always ends badly. Looking at our chaotic world of human dysfunction and environmental crisis, we seem to be headed for an inevitable train wreck. Fortunately for us, the Greeks also had five-act plays; these were comedies filled with laughter, joy, happiness, and love.

Spontaneous Evolution is a story about how we can safely navigate from Act IV to Act V. The good news is that biology and evolution are on our side.

Inherent within all living organisms is an innate drive to survive, known by science as the biological imperative. Contrary to what conventional science and religion have been telling us, evolution is neither random nor predetermined but rather an intelligent dance between organism and environment. When conditions are ripe—either through crisis or opportunity—something unpredictable happens to bring the biosphere into a new balance at a higher level of coherence.

While we often perceive of examples of spontaneous remission as miraculous healings that happen by the grace of God, looking a little deeper we see something else at work. Quite often these fortunate individuals actively participate in their own healing by consciously or unconsciously making a key, significant change in their beliefs and behaviors.

So here is the bad news and the good news. The story of human life on Earth is yet to be determined. If there is to be an Act V, it will depend on whether we humans are willing to make changes in our individual and collective beliefs and behaviors and whether we are able to make these changes in time.

For millennia, our spiritual teachers have been pointing us in the direction of love. Now science is confirming that ancient wisdom. We are each and all cells in the body of an evolving giant super-organism we call humanity. Because humans have free will, we can choose to either rise to that new level of emergence or, in the manner of dinosaurs, fall by the wayside.

The religions that grew out of the cradle of civilization, the Fertile Crescent that is modern day Iraq—which, ironically, is now in danger of being the grave of civilization—have all had the notion of redemption through some savior. In that sense, the coming of the Messiah in Act V will turn the play of life into a human comedy.

All good comedies need a joke, so here is the punch line: we are the answer to our own prayers.

THE RISE OF THE PHOENIX

At the current time, many people find themselves transfixed by disturbing symptoms that seem to mark civilization’s devolution. However, this myopic focus distracts us from seeing the Light in the darkness.

Whether you call this Light love or knowledge, its flame grows brighter each day. The Light reveals that civilization is in a birthing process as the old way of life falls away and a new one emerges.

This pattern of evolution resembles the phoenix, a sacred firebird in Egyptian mythology. At the end of its life, the phoenix builds a nest of cinnamon twigs that it then ignites. Both nest and bird burn fiercely, but from the ashes arises a new, young phoenix that is fated to experience the same life cycle.

A modern version of the myth is portrayed in the film The Flight of the Phoenix, which provides an epic example of conflict resolution, mastering challenges, and transformation. The story begins when an oil exploration team abandons its oilrig in the Sahara Desert. The crew encounters a hitchhiking stranger who joins them, and together they fly off in a twin-engine cargo plane. When the plane crashes in the middle of the desert, the crew and passengers are stranded. Meanwhile, a band of cutthroat nomads follows the trail of jettisoned cargo to the downed plane.

Just like in the real world, a power struggle ensues for control of this small community. Who will prevail: the strongest individual or the one who controls the resources? As it turns out, neither. Faced with infighting that threatens to destroy their community and endanger them all, the group is forced to develop a plan The hitchhiking stranger, who claims to be an aircraft designer, presents what seems to be an improbable plan to build a viable aircraft from the plane’s wreckage. With no other options, the community has no choice but to give this outlandish new idea a chance. Galvanized by this new vision, they band together to create the impossible. In true Hollywood fashion and not a moment too soon, with the nomads firing their guns at the ramshackle aircraft, the untested plane lifts off on its maiden voyage to safety.

The story of a structure failing and something else rising is a familiar one that plays over and over again in the biosphere. Life is in a constant state of perpetual re-creation.

HUMANIFEST DESTINY

If you find it hard to imagine that we can ever get from the crises that we are facing now to a more loving and functional world, consider the tale of another world in transition. Imagine you are a single cell among millions that comprise a growing caterpillar. The structure around you has been operating like a well-oiled machine, and the larva world has been creeping along predictably. Then one day, the machine begins to shudder and shake. The system begins to fail. Cells begin to commit suicide. There is a sense of darkness and impending doom.

From within the dying population, a new breed of cells begins to emerge, called imaginal cells. Clustering in community, they devise a plan to create something entirely new from the wreckage. Out of the decay arises a great flying machine—a butterfly—that enables the survivor cells to escape from the ashes and experience a beautiful world, far beyond imagination. Here is the amazing thing: the caterpillar and the butterfly have the exact same DNA. They are the same organism but are receiving and responding to a different organizing signal.

That is where we are today. When we read the newspaper and watch the evening news, we see the media reporting a caterpillar world. And yet everywhere, human imaginal cells are awakening to a new possibility. They are clustering, communicating, and tuning into a new, coherent signal of love.

Love, we will find, is not some mushy-gushy sentiment but the vibrational glue that will help build this new flying machine and manifest our destiny as humanity—what we call “humanifest destiny.”

Chances are you are among the evolutionary imaginal cells who are contributing to the birth of this new version of humanity. Although it may not seem evident now, the future is in our hands. To secure that future, we must first empower ourselves with the knowledge of who we truly are. With a firm understanding of how our programming shapes our lives and the knowledge necessary to change that programming, we can rewrite our destiny.

Spontaneous Evolution introduces the notion that a miraculous healing awaits this planet once we accept our new responsibility to collectively tend the Garden rather than fight over the turf. When a critical mass of people truly own this belief in their hearts and minds and actually begin living from this truth, our world will emerge from the darkness in what will amount to a spontaneous evolution.

By the time you finish Spontaneous Evolution, we hope you will have a better understanding of past programming, current knowledge, and future possibilities. Most importantly, you will see how all of us can change our programming, our own and civilization’s, to create the world we’ve always dreamed is possible.

Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D., and Steve Bhaerman