Deep in the hidden process of our metamorphosis we can see a natural design — an evolutionary pattern to guide us toward the next stage of transformation. We intuit the presence of the still-invisible societal butterfly, yet how do we become it? What we are seeking is a worldview that will call forth our creative action and direct our immense powers toward life-oriented and evolutionary purposes. That guiding worldview is, I believe, conscious evolution. It holds that through our unprecedented scientific, technological, social, and spiritual capacities we can evolve consciously and cocreatively with nature and the deeper patterns of creation (traditionally called God), thus enabling us to manifest a future commensurate with our unlimited species and planetary potential.
Conscious evolution as a worldview began to emerge in the latter half of the twentieth century because of scientific, social, and technological abilities that have given us the power to affect the evolution of life on Earth. Conscious evolution is a metadiscipline; the purpose of this metadiscipline is to learn how to be responsible for the ethical guidance of our evolution. It is a quest to understand the processes of developmental change, to identify inherent values for the purpose of learning how to cooperate with these processes toward chosen and positive futures, both near term and long range.
This worldview is the fruit of all human history and the opening of the next stage of human development. It has come into focus midway in the life cycle of our planet with the maturation of the noosphere. Conscious evolution is awakening in humans. Like imaginal cells nearing the time of metamorphosis, we are just beginning to self-assemble into various new social organs. We are guided intuitively by a vision of a new life to come and a desire to fulfill unique creativity in the cocreation of that new life.
As mentioned earlier, conscious evolution heralds the second great event in the history of the universe. We are not speaking of some minor new idea but of an advance in the evolution of evolution itself. Eric Chaisson wrote in ZYGON:
Technologically competent life differs fundamentally from lower forms of life. We are different because we have learned to tinker not only with matter but also with evolution. Whereas previously the gene and the environment (be it stellar, planetary, geological, or cultural) governed evolution, we humans on planet Earth are rather suddenly gaining control of both these agents of change. . . . We now stand at the verge of manipulating life itself, potentially altering the genetic makeup of human beings [and even cloning ourselves]. We are, in fact, forcing a change in the way things change. . . . The emergence of technologically intelligent life on Earth, and perhaps elsewhere, heralds a whole new era, a Life Era. Why? Because technology, for all its pitfalls, enables life to begin to control matter, much as matter evolved to control radiative energy more than 10 billion years ago.
Though a mature Life Era may never come to pass, one thing seems certain: Our generation on planet Earth, as well as any other neophyte technological life forms populating the universe, is now participating in an astronomically significant transformation. We perceive the dawn of a whole new reign of cosmic development, an era of opportunity for life forms to begin truly to fathom their role in the cosmos, to unlock the secrets of the Universe, indeed to decipher who we really are and whence we came.. . . The implications of our newly gained power over matter are nothing short of cosmic. . . . As sentient beings we are currently beginning to exert a weighty influence in the establishment of a “universal life” with all its attendant features, not least of which potentially include species immortality and cosmic consciousness.1
The capacity for conscious evolution means that our species has become capable of understanding, resonating with, and consciously incarnating the processes of creation itself. Already we can fathom the miracle of cosmogenesis — the story of the evolution of the cosmos. We can reach into the heart of nature and see the invisible workings of creation — the atom, gene, brain, ecological systems, stars, and galaxies. Spiritually we are attuning to the patterns of evolution within us as we begin to transcend the illusion of separation born out of the phase of self-conscious humanity. As we do so, we internalize and embody the impulse of evolution, the tendency in evolution toward greater complexity, consciousness, and freedom.
Whether or not there is other life in the universe, our role, if we learn conscious evolution, is to become partners in the process of creation, enhancing life on Earth and bringing Earth’s life into the universe. We rightly stand in awe of the magnificence of cosmogenesis as well as in reverence for ourselves as creatures of this monumental process.
As Catholic scholar Beatrice Bruteau wrote in “Symbiotic Cosmos,” in a chapter entitled “Holy Technology”:
From having felt completely at the mercy of the natural world, we begin gradually to feel in a position of power over the natural world. There is a third stage of this development, and that is the sense of the natural world itself producing beings that can so intelligently and freely and creatively manipulate the natural world. We ourselves are products of the self-making world, and what we do by our technologies is continue the self-making of this world. When the technologically changed environment has in turn changed us, then we must see that this also is part of the self-making of the world.
Human extensions by means of technology are not to be opposed to “Nature.” They are themselves part of what Nature is doing. It is the Cosmos itself, as the human being, that is doing these things as its own autopoietic (self-creating) development. . . and there is nothing riskier than creating a world so that it can grow up to be free and creative itself — I think that we must see our technology as something holy, as part of — at the moment, the vital advancing edge of the autopoietic, symbiotic cosmos.2
There is no hubris in the concept of conscious evolution — no pride that humans alone, by willful decision for selfish ends, with no regard for the laws of nature or the relationship with other species, can guide the process of change. We can clearly see that such self-centered behavior will destroy us. Conscious evolution inspires in us a mysterious and humble awareness that we have been created by this awesome process of evolution and are now being transformed by it to take a more mature role as cocreators. In this view we do not stand apart from nature, but, rather, we are nature evolving.
Nor is the concept anthropocentric. From the perspective of conscious evolution, Homo sapiens, in our current phase, is a transitional species. We are not viable in this state of separated consciousness with so much power. We will either evolve or become extinct.
Yet, we are advancing toward conscious evolution with every new discovery made by the collective efforts of hundreds of thousands of individuals. In the biological revolution, in the healing arts, in humanistic, transpersonal, and spiritual psychologies of growth, in social innovations in the fields of health, education, and the media, in business, science, and the arts, we are learning new abilities to cocreate with nature. And we are doing so based on human nature’s intentional motivation, not as passive experiencers but as conscious participants of and codesigners with evolution. In fact, we are evolution becoming self-aware.
How do we know that conscious evolution is the next quantum jump? We don’t. Yet we do know, from the history of quantum transformations, that such radical change will eventually occur. Our evolutionary history has a long heritage of astonishing innovations. Let us remember, it is the nature of nature to transform, especially when life hits a growth limit.
I believe that the capacity for conscious evolution is a design innovation comparable in importance to other major evolutionary innovations. Let’s briefly review the extraordinary history of quantum changes through design innovations, to gain a deeper insight into the potential of our capacity.
The design innovation that formed matter and Earth was the synthesis of the elements — from hydrogen and helium to iron and gold. It took billions of years for nature to create a way to synthesize radiative energy to form the metals and minerals that make up our bodies today. Out of formless, shimmering gasses and explosions of supernovas the elements were formed, condensing light and motion into matter and providing the substance of all subsequent evolution.
For the origin of human life, the design innovation was the genetic code — DNA intelligence — the exquisitely complex information at the heart of every cell coded with instructions that build our bodies. This nearly invisible information system coiled in the strands of our DNA holds the memory of the entire evolution of life and, some believe, the coding for further life to come. Timothy Leary stated this controversial hypothesis in Info-Psychology: A Manual on the Use of the Human Nervous System According to the Instructions of the Manufacturers:
The DNA code contains the blueprint of the past and the future. The caterpillar DNA contains the design for construction and operation of the butterfly body. Geneticists are just now discovering “unused” sections of the DNA, masked by histones and activated by non-histone proteins, which are thought to contain the blueprint of the future. Evolution is not a blind, accidental, improvising process. The DNA code is a prospective blueprint, which can be deciphered.3
Only since the 1950s, when the language of DNA was deciphered, have we known how the complex process of building our body-minds was accomplished. The awesome intelligence at the nucleus of every cell guides embryogenesis from a fertilized egg through birth, maturation, and death. (Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance, mentioned earlier, hypothesizes that there is more to it than instructions from DNA — suggesting there may be an invisible field that holds the experience of all members of a species.) And Bruce Lipton, in The Biology of Belief, finds that it is the membrane around the cell that holds the cell’s intelligence.4
One of the critical design innovations for the biosphere and multicellular life was the process of photosynthesis, which occurred hundreds of millions of years ago, and transformed our barren planet into a living biosphere.
The design innovation that allowed the emergence of Homo sapiens from the animal world was language, culture, and the ability to communicate exo-genetically — outside the genetic code. In Science and Sanity Alfred Korzybski called this ability “time-binding” — the capacity to pass on information to one another through language, symbols, arts, and music.5 Whereas biological evolution takes millions of years, cultural and social evolution takes place within hundreds of years and now at a faster pace — only decades. Through language, each generation learns from the one before, vastly accelerating the process of change. Language and culture built the noosphere, just as the process of photosynthesis and biological organisms — plants, animals, insects — built the biosphere.
Conscious evolution is the next design innovation. It is based on our ability to understand the innovations of the past, such that we can consciously codesign our future, drawing on the knowledge of how nature formed matter, how DNA intelligence works, how photosynthesis occurs, how ecological systems are maintained, and how language, culture, and technology affect us. Conscious evolution is a natural extension of the ongoing process of evolutionary innovations leading to greater awareness, freedom, and capacity.
The new worldview already exists in an early stage. There is a large and growing body of knowledge in almost every arena — science, psychology, cosmology, art, literature, philosophy, and business. For example, a group of evolutionary leaders (www.evolutionaryleaders.net) have issued a Call to Conscious Evolution. However, there is not yet an established field within the intellectual community called conscious evolution to coordinate all the separate insights. Our fledgling worldview is still almost invisible, yet it is drawing to it brilliant minds in every field and function who hold the mysterious sense of hope for the future.