New Revolutions For Small Planet

CHAPTER NINE

Field of Dreams:

Participating in a New Mindful Reality

Human beings and all living things are a coalescence of energy in a field of energy connected to every other thing in the world. This pulsating energy field is the central engine of our being and our consciousness … At its most fundamental this new science answers questions that have perplexed scientists for hundreds of years.

Lynne McTaggart

Humanity has just entered what is probably the greatest transformation it has ever known … Something is happening in the structure of human consciousness. It is another species of life that is just beginning.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

In the previous chapter I explored the notion that human life is a dynamic part of a living, creative cosmos. As such, evolution and consciousness are not to be considered as linear processes that occur within a vacuum, but are scales of development that have their counterparts within a universe that is conscious-orientated. That is, consciousness is primary within what we can perceive as a materially visible cosmic order. It is appearing increasingly probable that biological life and consciousness both co-exist within nonlocal fields of energy. Further, our latest scientific discoveries and technological innovations are helping to prepare humanity for the realization that meaningful relations can operate at-a-distance; and energetic connections manifest through nonlocal fields of information transference and exchange. With this in mind I would like to continue this journey, and to take you, the reader, further down the rabbit-hole of conscious enquiry.

As we delve further into the study of biophysics and biofields (as introduced in the previous chapter) we find that some of the latest research reveals that a form of quantum coherence operates within living biological systems through what are known as biological excitations and biophoton emission. In this context ‘coherence’ refers to wave patterns that converge harmoniously. A popular example of this is the laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) whereby the multiple waves of amplified light are directed in a narrow beam in coherence that results in a condensed and greatly empowered energy. This means that metabolic energy is stored as a form of electromechanical and electromagnetic excitations. It is these coherent excitations that are considered responsible for generating and maintaining long-range order via the transformation of energy and very weak electromagnetic signals. After nearly 20 years of experimental research, Fritz-Albert Popp put forward the hypothesis that biophotons are emitted from a coherent electrodynamic field within the living system.¹ What this describes is that each living cell is giving off, or resonating, a biophoton field of coherent energy. If each cell is emitting this field then the whole living system is, in effect, a resonating field – a ubiquitous nonlocal field. And since it is by the means of biophotons that the living system communicates, then there is near instantaneous intercommunication throughout. This, claims Popp, is the basis for coherent biological organization – referred to as quantum coherence.

This discovery led Popp to state that the capacity for evolution rests not on aggressive struggle and rivalry but on the capacity for communication and cooperation. In this sense the in-built capacity for species evolution is not based on the individual but rather on living systems that are interlinked within a coherent whole:

Living systems are thus neither the subjects alone, nor objects isolated, but both subjects and objects in a mutually communicating universe of meaning … Just as the cells in an organism take on different tasks for the whole, different populations enfold information not only for themselves, but for all other organisms, expanding the consciousness of the whole, while at the same time becoming more and more aware of this collective consciousness.²

This implies that all biological organisms continuously emit radiations of light that form a field of coherence and communication. Coherence, it appears, is the byword for living systems.

Researchers at the Californian HeartMath Institute have been investigating cardiac coherence through exposure to specific emotions. It has been found that when a person experiences positive feelings like love, care, appreciation and joy, their electrocardiograph becomes coherent. On the other hand, when exposed to negative emotions like anger, worry, or hostility, the electrocardiograph shows incoherent patterns. The phenomenon of biological coherence has been speculated to be the factor behind the transfer of healing energies between people.

In one experiment two people (one healer/sender and one patient/receiver) were separated at a distance, as well as being electromagnetically shielded by Faraday cages. Under these conditions it was found that a synchronization of the brainwaves occurred between healer and patient at the specific moments when ‘healing energy’ was sent. Likewise, research undertaken in more than 25 studies has shown that the brainwaves of all 4 brain areas synchronize and become more coherent during meditation, even in people inexperienced in meditation. Further, according to scientific researcher Marco Bischof:

… studies by biophoton researchers have demonstrated that the coherence increase of the EEG in meditation is correlated to a corresponding increase of the coherence of biophoton emission from the body of the subjects … meditation not only makes the brain waves more coherent, but also increases the coherence of the biophoton field of the whole organism.³

The biophoton field of the human (the human biofield) is said to consist of numerous partial fields that superpose in multiple ways, and that the overall state of the biofield is constituted by their various interactions. It has also been postulated that the biophoton field forms the basis of memory and regulates biochemical and morphogenetic processes.⁴ The various degrees of coherence might also be a factor between different degrees of consciousness that are manifested, or at least the degree of a living being’s state of awareness.

These relatively new developments in biophysics have also discovered that all biological organisms are constituted by a liquid crystalline medium; and that DNA is a liquid crystal lattice-type structure (which some refer to as a liquid crystal gel) whereby body cells are involved in a holographic instantaneous communication via the biophoton field. Moreover, biophysics has discovered that living organisms are permeated by quantum wave forms. Biophysicist Mae-Wan Ho informs us that:

… the visible body just happens to be where the wave function of the organism is most dense. Invisible quantum waves are spreading out from each of us and permeating into all other organisms. At the same time, each of us has the waves of every other organism entangled within our own make-up … We are participants in the creation drama that is constantly unfolding. We are constantly co-creating and re-creating ourselves and other organisms in the universe.⁵

This incredible new information actually positions each living being within a nonlocal quantum field consisting of wave interferences (where bodies meet). The liquid crystalline structure within living systems is also responsible for the direct current (DC) electrodynamic field that permeates the entire body of all animals. It has also been noted that the DC field has a mode of semiconduction that is much faster than the nervous system.⁶ Human consciousness, we are told, is not only in a ‘wave-interference’ relationship with other mind-fields, but also is constantly transmitting and receiving information. This new understanding of the human quantum/informational field also gives credibility to the existence of extrasensory perceptions (ESP) and related abilities, that was referred to in the previous chapter. Our bodies as well as our brains appear to function like receivers/de-coders within an information energy field that is constantly in flux. As clinical psychiatrist Daniel Siegel notes:

The neural networks throughout the interior of the body, including those surrounding the hollow organs, such as the intestines and the heart, send complex sensory input to the skull-based brain … Such input from the body forms a vital source of intuition and powerfully influences our reasoning and the way we create meaning in our lives.⁷

This further tells us that the body forms an extended mind, or informational neural field, with the brain as the receiver and interpreter of the signals. According to Siegel, the human mind is a ‘relational and embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information’.⁸

Given that DNA is a liquid crystal lattice-type structure which emits biophotons, this leads to a new understanding that it may in fact have properties that give rise to a quantum field. In light of these recent findings we may begin to refer to DNA as being quantum DNA. That is, DNA not only operates in a linear fashion to encode genetic information and protein building, but also emits a nonlocal energy field. It is within this field that instantaneous communication can occur through a coherent pattern of waves at the quantum level. This suggests that the 97 per cent of human DNA that is not involved in protein building is active within a quantum state. It may well be that increased manifestations of field-like, nonlocal forms of intuition and knowing (what may be termed speculatively as quantum consciousness) will come from part-activation of the portion of DNA that so far has baffled our scientists with its function.

Such a potential activation of our ‘quantum DNA’ may likely be related to a future state of human consciousness, and has until now remained dormant in response to human consciousness not being sufficiently prepared for its manifestation. This field ‘life-force’ may be similar to the pervasive ‘pranic energy’ which, as Gopi Krishna states, forms the impulse for evolutionary growth in the human nervous system:

… an ever-present possibility, existing in all human beings by virtue of the evolutionary process still at work in the race, tending to create a condition of the brain and nervous system that can enable one to transcend the existing boundaries of the mind and acquire a state of consciousness far above that which is the normal heritage of mankind at present.⁹

This transcendental stage of consciousness, depicted above as being a part of our natural evolutionary heritage, is connected with the human brain and nervous system. We now know that we have a DNA quantum field activated within our bodies. Some biophysicists are already discussing whether quantum processes may not be a common denominator for all living processes. As such, a quantum informational field throughout the human body will determine the coherence of our biofields. This makes one wonder to what degree human consciousness would be affected by various external impacts (environmental, cultural and cosmic), especially in relation to fluctuations in the electromagnetic frequencies caused from terrestrial, solar and cosmic sources.

The possibility of a scientific validation of the existence of nonlocal fields of consciousness would place greater emphasis upon recognizing a form of collective or group consciousness within humanity. With this in mind we would do well to return to those practices, recommended for centuries by spiritual traditions and teachers, that would enhance such states: that is, meditation, reflection, watchfulness and mindfulness, etc. Einstein was famous as a daydreamer throughout his life and he often claimed that the greatest inspiration came to him when in such states. Enhanced connectivity between humanity may thus be served by each of us paying more attention to our inner states and striving for harmony and balance in our lives.

A vast range of materials exist to help in enhancing these inner (or ‘quantum’) states, and can be found within many traditions, whether from the major religions (Christian, Islamic, Judaic, Sikh); or from other streams of wisdom such as Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism and similar meditative practices. There are also many written materials that have the function to stimulate right-hemisphere activity. This is the case with many Sufic stories (such as the Mulla Nasrudin tales), as well as famous stories from the Thousand and One Nights, and poems from Jalalludin Rumi (which are now best-sellers in the West).

Within such states many people have recorded experiencing very profound connections with what has generally been termed the collective consciousness. Philosopher Ervin Laszlo refers to this collective information field as the Akashic Field.¹⁰ There is now reason to speculate that this so-called nonlocal Akashic Field is in fact a part of our shared (and overlapping) quantum fields of consciousness. Modern science has for a long time considered the human brain as the centre of consciousness; yet this belongs to the materialistic and linear thinking that consciousness is a product of complex matter. The brain is indeed our most complex neurological arrangement, consisting of the most intricate network of synapses. Yet it is more likely that the brain functions as a receiver and transcriber of electrical signals that are emitted from the body’s biofields. In this way the trillions of parts of our human DNA act as a coherent quantum field to regulate every part of our body in each simultaneous moment.

The human body is thus a resonating quantum field that could be the repository for human consciousness. Our reality is therefore provided by the work of the brain that transcribes signals into perceptions, yet it is the DNA which is a living intelligence. This idea of DNA being a living intelligence is not new to many indigenous wisdom traditions. For example, as anthropologist Jeremy Narby pointed out, shamans who undergo trance states often seem to be communicating with DNA as a means of acquiring knowledge about plants, healing and spirit worlds.¹¹ Subsequently, Narby explored how Nature is also imbued with this form of living intelligence which acts as survival patterns to enable evolutionary growth.¹² Shamans, intuitives, and others who are able to tap into this living intelligence find a ‘design’ or blueprint behind all physical structures, which points to a quantum field of living intelligence that acts as an evolutionary impulse within all living systems.

These findings hold the potential for a radical re-writing not only of modern science but also of how modern cultures operate. For example, the social environment in Western societies largely ignores the harmonious development of the left–right working of the brain, opting instead to focus more on a left-brain rational functioning that operates as mechanical, linear, competitive and narrow. The abstract right-brain, with its magical world of creative visionary thinking, has been mostly sidelined throughout our recent history, as documented by Iain McGilchrist in his excellent scholarly book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. Yet much of human right-brain activity was the source for indigenous wisdom, shamanic practices, and similar traditions that Western materialistic thought has sought to ignore over the years. Often our own intellectual training conditions us to think of such ‘magical practices’ as primitive, barbaric, and worthy of little more than Western colonialism or re-education. Yet those of us in the ‘civilized’ West, with our left-hemisphere dominated brain, live in the everyday world of material things and separate objects. The world would seem a very different place if we were to recognize it as a nonlocal field of energetic connections.

A Participatory Field-View of Reality

Recent decades have seen an advance in the ecological view of living systems, and the interconnectedness and interaction between humans, nature and environment. However, this new paradigm of thought should not be restricted to the material level, but needs to be extended also to embrace the nonmaterial levels of the human psyche and consciousness. I have attempted to explore in this book how, in recent decades, the world of the inner self has opened up; how it has been explored through transpersonal sciences, self-realization and individual self-actualization, and how the inner realm of human consciousness is no longer separated from us as a prohibited space somewhere inside our heads. Through our various cultures we are developing the language, the skills and nuances to sense and articulate our personal, revelatory experiences. The once shamanic realm of contact with non-material energies is gradually being externalized into a physical reality of altered perceptual paradigms.

Even our new scientific discoveries are explaining and validating nonlocal realities of connection and energetic entanglement. As discussed in Chapter Seven, the notion of mirror neurons and empathy is the forerunner to understanding the fundamental interrelationships of sentient beings. And now we are learning that extended fields of conscious information and communication exist between individuals and groups as a medium of coherence that may further entangle humanity into a collective ‘grand family’. As Sarah Hrdy writes in Mothers and Others:

Were it not for the peculiar combination of empathy and mind reading we would not have evolved to be humans at all … Without the capacity to put ourselves cognitively and emotionally in someone else’s shoes … Homo sapiens would never have evolved at all.¹³

From infancy, to adolescence, and to adulthood, the distinction between inside and outside, objective and subjective, has always been a transient, undefined boundary – only that socio-cultural conditioning has sought to crystallize these fluctuating borders. However, today there are increasing numbers of people who are beginning to perceive the presence of subtle energy fields, whether around their bodies, around the bodies of others, or in the environment. The interest in metaphysical subjects these days has exploded, with a new language and mindset emerging to deal with these increasingly common phenomena. It is now becoming acceptable to speak in terms of reiki, chi, pranic energy, and even in terms of quantum energy. Not only are many cultures and societies learning to deal with a new wave of technological social networks – with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – but also with an increase in energetic awareness of human connections and an extended mind.

In a sense, humanity is learning how to be a more interactive collective family. Never before in our known history of the species have we come to a point where we are sailing in the same ship, afflicted by the same concerns, and affected similarly by a range of global impacts. When a poor harvest affects the growing areas in China, Australia and the US, for example, the world food distribution networks reverberate across all nations. When a virus pandemic spreads out from a crowded poultry market somewhere in South Asia, it affects all nations without reserve, grinding transport hubs to a slow crawl. This realization is now dawning on the peoples of the world: that we are already a part of the field fabric of a collective family.

This realization is being keenly felt, too, by the younger generations: generations that are growing up accustomed to having a network of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of virtual friends across the globe; sharing intimacy and empathizing easily with an international social group of like-minded souls. This younger generation is manifesting, whether conscious of it or not, a nonlocal-field level of relationships. It is almost like a state of resonance that supports the person as a differentiated individual whilst at the same time reaching out into linked networks that become part of a diversified whole. It is a form that mimics the quantum state of the particle and the wave: each person is clearly isolated from another by physical space, yet is at the same time very much entangled in a conscious space of connectivity and communication. In other words, each is participating in a field-view of reality; a reality that creates an extended set of responsibilities as one’s thoughts and actions can reverberate much further afield. In this worldview:

… the substantiality of the world almost vanishes while relationships become central: locality, individuality and separateness are less important than nonlocality, wholeness and connectedness. The picture shifts from an ‘objective worldview’ of a world composed of separate objects seen only from the outside and interacting mechanistically by their surfaces, to a field worldview where there are no separate objects and no clear boundaries. The new worldview is a ‘participative worldview’, as it constitutes also a shift from viewing the world from the outside to experiencing everything from the inside: therefore with the field view the psychic aspect of reality is becoming predominant, because the experiencing subject posits itself not anymore outside the world, but becomes part of it.¹⁴

The human individual has the capacity to be consciously aware of the effect of thoughts and actions upon others: to consider their reactions, to reflect upon their thoughts, and to decide whether to behave differently. In other words, each person has the ability to develop consciously, and with awareness, from each interaction with both the external and internal experiences. Sociologists have, up until now, been largely focused on human identity as characterized by individualization, especially so in ‘modern/postmodern’ society, where each person appears to be categorized as acting with autonomy, with a self-fashioning, service-to-self attitude. Yet this is a myopic vision on two counts: on one hand it neglects that humans are social animals and instinctively seek groupings and attachments; and on the other it fails to recognize that the nature of human consciousness also undergoes change along with socio-cultural revolutions. It may be very likely that a form of consciousness will emerge, at first on the periphery, perhaps with the younger generations, that will then seep into the core of all our future societies.

Social scientist Duane Elgin has mapped out what he considers to represent the shifting states of human consciousness over historical epochs. He notes these to be:

1 Contracted consciousness (early humans)

2 Sensing consciousness (hunter-gatherers)

3 Feeling consciousness (agrarian era)

4 Thinking consciousness (scientific-industrial era)

5 Observing consciousness (communications era)

6 Compassionate consciousness (bonding era)

7 Flow consciousness (surpassing era)

Using this scale it would appear that global humanity is now shifting from the communications era (observing consciousness) into the bonding era (compassionate consciousness). We could perhaps also re-title the bonding era to become the community era and see this as representing increased empathy. This transition from exhibiting an observing consciousness towards manifesting a compassionate consciousness would represent the move from the ‘old-mind’ energies towards the ‘new-mind’ energies that were discussed in the earlier chapters (see Part Two) and which signified the rite of passage or global initiation that were referred to.

Likewise, the surpassing era could be renamed as the new energy era and represent not only the rise of nonlocal field awareness but also symbolize scientific developments into new era energy forms and an increased understanding of the subtle forces of the universe. This era of flow consciousness would fit well with the next evolution of human consciousness that appears to be showing elements of a transpersonal-integral nature.

None of these states, however, are completely separate from each other; rather, they overlap and merge as one era fades and converges into the next, the new coming in initially at the periphery until it reaches a tipping point where it becomes the new paradigm. Already, flow consciousness is slowly percolating into our perceptual paradigms as more and more people embrace and instinctively trust non-material information. The dominant materialist worldview is under increased scrutiny as more people awaken to the possibility that their intuitive glimpses – dreams, visions, premonitions, etc. – are trusted sources of information that originate from alternative senses. Through seeking practices that were once considered metaphysical (or even strange), such as spiritual practices, yoga, meditation, psychotherapy, transpersonal therapy, bio-feedback and altered states of consciousness, people are accessing a once-hidden, or rather neglected, realm of senses and self-knowing.

As more people realize that the subtle realm of extrasensory information is not a figment of fantasy or delusion, but in fact has a scientific foundation, these states of consciousness will become more widely accepted, credible and sought. Also, we may find that our orthodox social institutions will begin to incorporate them into the status quo of consensus reality and experience. However, such a transition will not be immediate; as philosopher Ervin Laszlo says:

The consciousness of individuals can transform instantly, through a sudden insight or revelatory experience, but the consciousness of the species is likely to take time to spread in society. There are people today who live with a traditional or a medieval consciousness, and a few with the consciousness of Stone Age tribes. In the same way there will be humans in the next generation who will achieve transpersonal consciousness, while others, the great majority at first, will persist in the ego-bound consciousness that characterized most of the 20th century. In time, however, a more evolved consciousness is likely to spread over all the continents. It will spread by a form of contagion. An evolved mind is ‘infectious’, it affects less evolved minds … A more evolved consciousness will motivate people to develop their own consciousness, it will transform humanity’s collective unconscious. Unless we produce a major societal or ecological catastrophe, most of our species will eventually graduate to transpersonal consciousness, and the next step in the evolution of human consciousness will be achieved.¹⁵

Whilst the transition may not appear to unfold suddenly to us, within evolutionary terms it will be a revolution. And participating in this unfolding consciousness revolution will be both a personal growth imperative as well as a collective human responsibility.

As humanity enters a time of social and cultural change, of altered perceptions and challenges to our worldview, we are almost certainly going to be coerced into altered modes of consciousness. In other words, in order to readapt and to survive the breakdowns of the old mind/old energy (discussed in Chapters Four and Five), our collective worldview will need to shift to an ecological nonlocal and more intuitive mode. This shift, as described by the Yuga cycles, will mark a developmental understanding about both the physical laws of subtle energy as well as the growing capacities of non-material energies of human comprehension, connection and communion. In the words of psychiatrist Ede Frecska ¹⁶, this involves a shift towards a more direct-intuitive-nonlocal mode of perception. According to Frecska’s investigations he notes that humankind throughout history has spent great reserves of energy in trying to alter states of consciousness, and that human culture is characterized by the existence of institutionalized procedures for altering consciousness, suggesting that such activities are a near-universal characteristic of human culture.¹⁷ In a survey by Erika Bourguignon of 488 societies it was found that 437 of them had one or more culturally patterned forms of altered states of consciousness.

However, what I am proposing is that with the influx of new magnetic and cosmic energies entering the Earth, caused by the Earth’s orbital position upon the spiral of the Yuga cycle (see Chapter Six), humanity may be undergoing a natural form of consciousness mutation within an evolutionary pattern. This new influx of energies is likely to impact upon all fields – Earth’s magnetic field, the human electromagnetic and biofields, and the quantum fields emitted by the DNA of all living beings. Frecska notes that:

If nonlocal data enters our sensory cortex we are likely to project this into our perceptual field in the form of visions and/or apparitions … our physical body, and our ego, acts as an anchoring point for perceptual-cognitive-symbolic processing. Rationality and physical science regulates information from the perceptual-cognitive-symbolic mode; we can say that what is called mysticism, or paranormal, operates on the direct-intuitive-nonlocal mode – this latter mode, however, correlates with the quantum entanglement aspect of quantum physics.¹⁸

Whilst these two modes of the cognitive and the intuitive may operate simultaneously, and have been known as the subjective and objective modes of knowledge, our modern societies have largely prioritized the objective interpretation and dismissed the subjective as the imaginative realm. This ‘imaginative’ realm of subjective experience is most active when we are children, although quickly diminishes as our social institutions and peer conditioning intervene to install a consensus social reality. Yet the direct-intuitive-nonlocal mode of perception is an evolutionary trait that is still with us, and which may be beginning to manifest in the new generations of intuitive children. How we process information, how we perceive ourselves within the bigger picture – i.e. as part of a living or dead universe – will always underlie and inform the state of our culture.

It is possible that the nonlocal connections between our species will be one of the aspects that will become more dominant in the years ahead; just as the Internet is a physical representation of these nonlocal ties and relations. The direct-intuitive-nonlocal mode (as Frecska calls it) will surely be a more effective means of comprehension and understanding as it bypasses the sensory organs that act as interpretive filters. Also, the direct-intuitive-nonlocal mode operates outside of linguistic barriers, which may explain why many altered state experiences have offered similar results. Whether in the similarity of hybrid creatures found in cave drawings from around the world,¹⁹ from the experiences of subjects under dimethyltryptamine (DMT),²⁰ or from the various accounts of shamanic journeys into the non-material realm,²¹ the subjective mode has depicted quite a consistent universal picture and experience.

Many traditional rituals and wisdom traditions actually function to break down the ordinary consensus cognition; the use of specific sounds/rhythms (drumming, chanting), fasting, frenzied dancing, etc., may work to stress the cognitive and rational mode of perception to the point that, unable to cope or ‘control’ the situation, an alternate state of consciousness comes to the fore. Clinical psychiatrist Dr Rick Strassman proposes that in such states the brain releases certain amounts of naturally present DMT which stimulates the direct-intuitive-nonlocal mode.²² Similarly, Frecska hypothesizes that shamans are able to enter the nonlocal state and, by mastering nonlocal connections, interpret the information they absorb and bring it back to the local rational world. What was once considered to be the realm of the supernatural can now be seen as the nonlocal field universe. Shamans, and similar practitioners, were those people who first learnt how to utilize human capacity for entering, through systemic procedure, nonlocal fields of information and connection, and to bring this knowledge back to a local reality.

Graham Hancock believes that ‘all human beings have the capacity to be shamans and that in some societies the proportion of men and women in the population who exercise this capacity may be quite large’.²³ The nonlocal field perception of reality is now being experienced by more and more people, from all walks of life, who are accessing an altered state of consciousness, whether it be from a prescribed ritual, religious/spiritual exercises, or spontaneous bursts of intuition and insight. Some of these experiences have been categorized as ‘extraordinary encounters’, and have been noted to affect a person’s inner state as well as physiology.

I described in Chapter Three how psychologists Kenneth Ring and Margot Grey had both conducted studies on people who reported near-death experiences. It was found that they often returned from the experience with a changed worldview, one that embraced the living universe concept and the primacy of consciousness. Ring’s study groups almost all tended to agree that their experiences reflected a purposive intelligence and that they were part of an accelerating evolutionary current that is driving humanity towards higher consciousness. Both Ring and Grey concluded that such encounters into the nonlocal realm appeared to offer a gateway to a ‘radical, biologically based transformation of the human personality’.²⁴

Ring and Grey believe that having an extraordinary experience with a nonlocal connectedness actually impacted the human nervous system, possibly releasing transformative energy, or at least in some form affecting the biological system of the individual. They view people who have experienced the nonlocal realm, whether through the near-death experience or other methods, as being the forerunners of a new species of humanity. Both agree that the real significance of such nonlocal encounters may actually be in their ‘evolutionary implications for humanity’. Ring, who has studied the near-death experience for nearly 40 years, has concluded that encounters with a nonlocal reality appear to accelerate a psychophysical transformation, and that such encounters may well herald what he calls the shamanizing of modern humanity; that is, helping to develop humanity’s latent capacities for a direct, intuitive mode of perception.²⁵

The participatory field-view of reality reflects an intuitive mode of perception that somehow penetrates into a nonlocal field of connection, communication and comprehension. As discussed, this understanding is now being validated by the latest findings in the quantum sciences, notably quantum mechanics and biophysics. The information now being obtained about the characteristics and behaviour of biophotons, and of quantum coherence within living systems, reinforces a holographic picture of nonlocal reality. Leading physicists are now speculating that quantum computation lies at the heart of most physical processes, as mentioned in Chapter Eight. Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff propose a model of consciousness that is attributed to quantum computation in cytoskeletal proteins organized into a network of microtubules within the brain’s neurons. This organization creates a nonlocal field with the cytoskeletal matrix serving as an antenna. Anthropologist and shamanic practitioner Hank Wesselman notes in this regard that:

Recent changes to quantum theory and current discoveries in neurobiology reveal that the brain organizes information holographically and functions like a massively parallel quantum computer, with the microtubules in the neurons of the brain being the likely quantum hologram receptors.

It has been suggested that the quantum hologram is the wave portion of the wave-particle duality for macroscale objects. It has also been proposed that the quantum hologram may tie the phenomenal universe of quantum, micro, macro, and cosmic-sized phenomena together, and that the quantum hologram may be the mechanism through which nature learns. This knowledge implies that the quantum hologram may be the basis for all perception, including psychic awareness.²⁶

This suggests that the brain can function in resonance with the whole universe through nonlocal information-energy fields and thus provides the missing link between objective science and subjective experience. As Frecska puts it: ‘Nonlocality is to the physicist what interconnectedness is to the mystic, quantum hologram is the foundation through which to understand virtually all paranormal phenomena.’²⁷ In other words, when the human brain interacts with local aspects of the universe through a cognitive-linear perception, we form what we know as our consensus view of reality. Yet when our brains, for whatever reasons, suddenly (or gradually) enter into a direct nonlocal interaction with the universe’s energy fields, then we have a unique perception of non-ordinary states of consciousness.

These forays into direct nonlocal consciousness used to be the domain of experienced practitioners (shamans, mystics, psychics) who may have undergone rigorous and lengthy training. Our ‘everyday consciousness’ of the local view of the universe is largely unprepared for the realms of non-ordinary reality. In our present era, and in Western civilization especially, the nonlocal mode of perception (subjective experience) has not been encouraged, or even recognized, and so has atrophied and become the province of the esoteric sciences. It may be because the local cognitive view of reality allows for an increased sense of individualism, favoured by the ego, and as such is the sphere of power, money, competition and greed. The nonlocal view of reality, however, embraces cooperation, connection, correspondence and collective comprehension. And it seems that we are already witnessing the emergence of this new feature of human consciousness.

Imaginal Worlds, New Generations

The notion of the energetic field view of reality, underlined by quantum processes, could be a step towards the next stage in human evolution – the evolutionary development of quantum consciousness that is the basis for the collective mind of the human species. Various mystics and consciousness researchers have alluded to this by a variety of names; they range from cosmic consciousness, superconsciousness, transpersonal consciousness, integral consciousness, and more. All these descriptions share a common theme; namely, the rise of intuition, empathy, greater connectivity to the world and to people, and a sense of ‘knowing’ about what each given situation demands. Further, the emergence of a form of quantum consciousness would likely instil within each person a sense of the greater cosmic whole; the realization that humanity exists and evolves within a universe of intelligence and meaning, a living universe. This would serve to impart within humanity a more profound, and acknowledged, spiritual impulse.

In this book I have put forward the idea that our solar system, which of course includes Earth, may be part of a larger orbit around a binary star that corresponds to larger epochs of time, specifically periods of relapse and regeneration. As the solar orbit enters a cycle of regeneration there are stronger cosmic forces (gravitational, magnetic, plasma, etc.) that could all in some way result in increased wave patterns (vibrations) entering into the quantum DNA field and catalysing a shift in the consciousness of humanity. If such a vibratory shift is a potential means of catalysing quantum consciousness, this could then lead to increased intuitive faculties and extrasensory phenomena not only becoming an implicate part of our lives but also opening up access to greater creativity and inventive capacities for participating and designing our way ahead in the world. The rise of these attributes within a small percentage of people, initially, could eventually lead to a critical mass that would tip human consciousness into a new perceptual paradigm and worldview.

Forms and intimations of these new consciousness patterns are already emerging in the world, but as yet they have not become a part of mainstream research. Such evolutionary ‘mutational’ agents include visionaries, mystics, artists, psychics, intuitives, spiritual teachers, and what have been termed the new ‘Indigo Children’. As Dr Richard Bucke stated in his work Cosmic Consciousness the early signs of this new evolutionary development have been appearing within humankind for some time:

The simple truth is, that there has lived on the earth, ‘appearing at intervals’, for thousands of years among ordinary men, the first faint beginnings of another race … This new race is in the act of being born from us, and in the near future it will occupy and possess the earth.²⁸

This suggests that there have been attempts, or social movements, to help prepare the ‘mental soil’ for a new consciousness to slowly seed and grow. On the whole, social/cultural/material forces are slow to react to the need for an evolving paradigm of human consciousness. Yet this is nothing new, as throughout recorded history many individuals who have felt an awareness of the need to seed an evolutionary impulse into social life have been caught up in revolutionary events or been involved in social-cultural upheavals. These events and human efforts may indicate, according to Gopi Krishna, a stirring of the human evolutionary impulse:

I can safely assert that the progress made by mankind in any direction, from the subhuman level to the present, has been far less due to man’s own efforts than to the activity of the evolutionary forces at work within him. Every incentive to invention, discovery, aesthetics, and the development of improved social and political organizations invariably comes from within, from the depths of his consciousness by the grace of … the superintelligent Evolutionary Force in human beings.²⁹

Perhaps it can be speculated here that in order for continued cultural and species growth there are particular periods of human history wherein humanity becomes ready, or in need of, the activation of particular faculties or evolutionary traits. It may be that during this transition period towards an understanding of the finer, more subtle energies of the cosmos (to paraphrase Sri Yukteswar), humanity will adapt, or be forced to develop, new creative and inspired aspects of consciousness. However, as in all paradigm shifts, old energies inevitably must give way to the new, and it may only be a matter of time before new generations move into evolving consciousness and its physical expressions. It is thus critical that an understanding of spiritual matters begins to permeate our everyday lives as a counterbalance to our social materialism. As one thinker recently stated:

We live in changing times whereby humanity is undergoing a transformation. Our consciousness, which has a vast potential for further development, must undergo a release from old, binding structures, and break out towards a rapid expansion … We need to understand phenomena at deeper levels, and not just accept what we are told, or what is fed to us through well-structured social institutions and channels. We must learn to accept that our thinking is a great tangible spiritual force for change.³⁰

In these years ahead it will be to our benefit if we try to develop a consciousness that is both open to spiritual impulses whilst simultaneously aware and attentive to the latest in scientific research. It is essential that we revitalize our collective sense of wellbeing and connectedness – our entanglement and empathy – as part of our shared human journey. Each person may be pushed or catalysed into balancing energies of both their inner and outer lives, and to strengthen their sense of connectedness, empathy and creative vision. It is possible that a new state of quantum consciousness will allow humanity access to an unimaginable energetic field of information. This would then open up new vistas of creative intelligence that could be the forerunners to the next stage along our ascending evolutionary path.

The imaginal realm, a term coined by Henry Corbin, suggests a state that is sensitized and open to alternate imaginative vision. We sometimes see this realm active in our children as they often tend to hover between fantasy and the physical world. Yet it is a discredit to our modern material cultures that this imaginal vision is conditioned out of our children as it is deemed contrary to ‘normal’ development. According to child therapist Bobbie Sandoz many indigenous cultures view the period from 6 to 12 years of age as the best time to teach children the powers of their psychic experiences, such as telepathically communicating with animals, nature and non-worldly entities. Sandoz explains that in modern cultures:

… we have disdainfully labeled this a period of ‘magical thinking’ in which the child ‘erroneously’ believes that his thoughts have the power to actually influence the results of his world. Instead of honoring the power and value of this very real magic and its scientific basis, we have viewed it as an age-related phenomenon in need of being suppressed.³¹

Yet it appears that this pattern is now shifting as more and more reports from educators, therapists and social workers reveal the changing nature of our new generation of children. As one example, Dr Linda Silverman, a clinical and counselling psychologist who runs the Gifted Development Center in the US, has studied gifted children for over 45 years and notes that:

I have been astonished by the children who have come into my life in recent years. It feels like they are a new breed … Their heredity and environment are not fundamentally different from all the children we’ve encountered in the past. Yet, there is a remarkable difference in these children from the children we’ve known in the past. The only explanation I can think of is evolution. I believe we are witnessing the evolution of the human species, and that this evolution is becoming apparent first among the gifted.³²

The Gifted Development Center has assessed 800 exceptionally gifted children for over 25 years, with nearly all of them exhibiting ‘whole brain’ development and functioning; that is, left- and right-brain hemispheres operating as if an integrated whole. Psychologist Kenneth Ring uses the word ‘Edglings’ to describe such youngsters who he feels may be closer to a form of higher development in human potential than most of us. He likens these individuals to those who have undergone tribal sacred rituals that develop within a person a spiritual sensitivity and a sense of the sacredness of Earth.

The 21st century may well be the time when the human species begins to bear witness to a new form of consciousness entering into the collective stream; an integrated field-type consciousness that no longer tolerates the old paradigm structure of ego-driven greed and materialist pursuits. Rather than being a full-frontal revolt, from the periphery of human consciousness will emerge a wave of reformist change: a new generation of young people driven to contribute to constructive social change, indifferent to the old hierarchical structures of control and power. Yet just who are these new children we may be talking about here?

In 1999 the book The Indigo Children was published and opened the lid on a new phenomenon that suggested humanity was witnessing the beginnings of a consciousness shift through the new generation of children being born, the new-paradigm forerunners. Yet why are these children being labelled as the ‘Indigos’? After all, the name has a kind of New Age tint to it. Well, the story begins with a woman called Nancy Ann Tappe, who has a neurological condition known as synaesthesia, which means that her brain cross-wires two senses and the result, in her case, is that she is able to ‘see’ colours. This is different from the psychic ability to view auras; in Tappe’s case it was simply that her brain picked up colours from people according to their set categories of behaviour. After monitoring this for a number of years, Tappe was able to intuit a person’s character and way of being from the colour she ‘saw’ associated with them.

Then something happened – she began to see a ‘new colour’ coming into the world, and that this new colour was coming from the children. It was an indigo-blue colour that was only appearing around children. For Tappe this represented a new kind of person that was being born on the planet, and suggested that the new generations were coming into the world with a slightly different range of feelings, behaviour, thinking; a different sense of presence.

Unfortunately, much misinformation has now sprung up concerning the subject of Indigo children. The most widespread misleading claim is that all Indigos are super-psychic children, some with glowing auras, who exhibit unique gifts of clairvoyance, healing, etc. Some claims even go so far as to say they are all incarnated space children being born now to help save the world. Such names as Star Children, Crystal Children and Rainbow Children are being cashed in and promoted, with centres popping up, and books being hastily written, to help parents and children come to terms with their new abilities. In the end, it’s not about names, nor is it about trying to be different: the bottom line is that it seems that the younger generation of children are exhibiting a different form of consciousness, set of attitudes and perceptions about the world. For example, whilst many of the older generations grew up trusting and abiding by authority, without much questioning, the younger generation are finding themselves at odds with the system: it seems crazy to them and they want to question it. It is about value systems, and their values are making it difficult for them to fit into our obsolete programming and mindsets.

According to Tappe, 97 per cent of children under the age of 10 are Indigos, and 60 per cent of children older than 15 are as well.³⁴ Lee Carroll, who first wrote about this phenomenon in The Indigo Children (with Jan Tober), describes these new children as feeling entitled, and not ready to compromise to old systems and mind-sets. He notes that 10 years after publishing the first book it is finally being acknowledged that ‘today’s children represent an evolution of the human species’.³⁵ Indeed, recognition is spreading; there are now Indigo Children Centres throughout South America: Chile (Niños Indigo Chile); the Indigo Network (Red Indigo) with members in Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela, Guatemala and Chile.

If Tappe is correct, then the great majority of people entering the world are being born with a new form of consciousness; yet it is neither super-psychic nor other-worldly; it appears to exhibit a different way of looking at the world. According to Jennifer Townsley, a college professor, some of these children require a new set of communication rules as they don’t respond to the traditional threats of verbal or physical punishment. They also, say Townsley, have a stronger, more intuitive sense of community and of shared goals. These children expect respect and no longer adhere to established hierarchies; therefore communication can be difficult if an elder begins to talk down to them as they don’t respond to this. Townsley further noted that many of these young children have little interest in validating the roles expected of them; they prefer to establish new and creative relationships rather than adhering to stereotypes.

We just have to look at the list of today’s child disorders to see that something is going on here: ADD (attention-deficit disorder); ADHD (attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder), ODD (oppositional-defiant disorder); PDD (pervasive developmental disorder); AS (Asperger’s syndrome); SID (sensory-integration dysfunction); ASD (autistic-spectrum disorder). In the US it has been estimated that 1 out of 10 children are categorized as mentally ill and more than 7 million have ADD; cases of ADHD are up 600 per cent since 1990 and autism is considered an epidemic.³⁷

Children are now the fastest growing segment of the prescription drug market as they are over-supplied with Ritalin, Prozac, Risperdal, Concerta and other behavioural medicines. Julie Rosenshein, as a school consultant and witness to this situation, feels that these children are carrying around the ‘rage of our planet’, and as such they need support to process and deal with their rage, to direct it towards constructive ends. The tragic alternative, as Rosenshein reminds us, is an increase in extreme outbursts, such as that witnessed at the Columbine High School shootings, and others.

On the more positive side we are now seeing many of these early youngsters entering into business and career paths. The wave of new perceptive thinking is creeping into our social infrastructures and it will be from here, from within, that we will likely see constructive change. It will be here that the new energies of change, as opposed to the old energies of hierarchical power and control (see Chapters Four and Five), will gradually transform our cultural fabric over time. Bruce Doyle III, a business executive and consultant, is already noticing this change. He sees this new wave of young employees as wanting to work for people who respect them, and in a place where they can have self-expression. They seek flexibility in the workplace, and an atmosphere that fosters creativity: these are the employees of companies like Google and Facebook where employees wear jeans, work in brightly coloured environments, and have a shared network of camaraderie. Increased satisfaction in the workplace is now a must, or such work will be rejected. Again, Doyle notices that these young people are not concerned with stereotypes, or having to adhere to fixed roles, and they especially rebel against the orthodox judgments of others.

After noticing these characteristics in the new employees, Doyle decided to do his own survey, and to ask his own questions. What he found from the results was that these young people had a strong passion for self-expression, for helping others, for achieving life goals and for loving relationships. For example, when asked ‘What are you committed to in your life?’ the largest response category (57 per cent) included such replies as ‘Changing the “systems” to help people in crisis’; ‘Championing issues to quality of life as opposed to a more prevalent focus on quantity of life’; and ‘Giving back to others and being a role model for children.’ They also expressed strong personal values, such as being true to oneself, freedom and independence, trust, honesty, respect, empathy and loyalty. They appeared to attach less importance to material values and possessions, and more to achieving something of value in their lives.

Doyle noted, from his survey, that the overall top-five attributes of those questioned came in as:

1 Have strong empathy for others (84 per cent)

2 Have an obvious sense of self (73 per cent)

3 Often see better ways of doing things at home, school, or work (70 per cent)

4 Are a talented daydreamer and/or visionary (66 per cent)

5 Are very creative (66 per cent)

In concluding, Doyle writes that: ‘The Indigos want to work in an environment that is fun, well organized, and efficient. They want responsibility, autonomy, and an atmosphere of flexibility.’³⁸ Doyle feels that this younger generation will drive forwards new visions with their creativity, and will supply the solutions required to ‘move civilization to the next level of consciousness’. Already, there are signs that some of these young people are seeing more of the playing ‘field’ than the rest of us.

The Holographic Healing Field

Adam McLeod is no normal young man. As a young boy he exhibited unusual abilities to see into people’s biofields; specifically, he began to realize that he could tap into the body’s quantum information. Adam has now gone on to become a renowned international healer and speaker, as well as studying molecular biology and biochemistry in a bid to bring a scientific framework into his alternative healing practices.³⁹ What Adam says is that every physical object emits information in the form of quantum data. The body’s field of quantum information is then accessed and assessed by the healer. Adam firmly believes that all particles are fundamentally connected to each other, and all information and knowledge is available in the quantum field.

For Adam, every physical object emits its own quantum hologram or image, regardless of where it is located, and he views the field of quantum information as a web of pathways connecting everything to everything else. It is this network of interconnections that Adam accesses when performing energy healing on someone. Of this he says that:

Our consciousness and the universal consciousness is an interconnection of constant information exchange. Some day, a truth as obvious as this won’t have to be seen as self-revelation but instead will be readily accepted.⁴⁰

Adam, as a young man, exhibits a great intuitive understanding of how a quantum holographic reality operates, regardless of his accolades as an alternative healer. It is worth noting here how Adam’s own view on quantum reality sits squarely with what has already been said in previous chapters on biophotons and the quantum field.

Adam posits that the goal of every cell is to communicate in harmony with every other cell. This, he says, suggests that, when viewed on a larger scale, every living being is naturally inclined to want to be in communicative harmony with every other being. Thus, when people resonate together (in love, work, relationships, etc.) a synergistic effect naturally arises. This is because, Adam tells us, when we are conceived, biophoton emissions start coordinating the development of our cells. And as soon as light begins coordinating the formation of our cells, consciousness emerges. Our brains, however, act to access the quantum energy fields around us to organize, process and interpret this information so that it has local meaning for us. That is, direct nonlocal information is brought into a local, cognitive and meaningful reality for us. What appears as separate to us is only an illusion. Adam makes a profound statement in this regard when he says that:

The barriers of individualism we have erected are nothing more than facades. A global shift in consciousness will erode these barriers as our evolution continues.⁴¹

Perhaps part of the empathy shift (see Chapter Seven) will involve an intuitive recognition of this fundamental human unity. After all, it appears that we all have the same capacity to access these nonlocal fields of information. Even on an individual bodily level it seems that our human biofields form a communicative web of emotions, thoughts, memory and data (as indicated in Rupert Sheldrake’s hypothesis of morphic resonance). It is a question of whether we, as individuals, are able to decipher the information of the nonlocal fields into meaningful, conscious signals. If not, all this information will remain outside the remit of our senses. Adam suggests that we can each exercise our connection to the nonlocal quantum field just like exercising a muscle; he advises that we practise paying more attention to our intuition, or gut instinct. This may be an important point as our thoughts can affect the quantum fields around us, which may then have an effect on others nonlocally: our very thoughts are thus amplified beyond our normal conscious awareness and physical domains.

This is the very basis of Adam’s healing – the nonlocal transference of intention. He claims that the light emitted from a healer’s intentions enters another person, influencing a series of chemical reactions that benefit the person’s health. Everything in this context is a complex array of vibrating frequencies, with certain frequencies having specific information. In this regard, consciousness does not reside solely in the brain, but is within every atom, cell and subatomic particle that constitutes the human body; this is exactly what some of the latest discoveries in the new sciences are finding out. Adam believes that the flow of energy/information, and our access to it, is constantly evolving and changing. With continued evolution, he notes, we will be able to access information from the field more easily. Most people have experienced, to some degree or other, the sense of intuition, and these intuitive abilities are likely to increase, the more we pay attention to them. To quote from the Persian poet Rumi’s Masnavi: ‘New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity. Therefore, O man, increase your necessity, so that you may increase your perception.’ Or, as Adam puts it:

I believe that consciousness is becoming more complex all the time as the collective consciousness rapidly evolves to higher levels. People are becoming more aware of how consciousness functions and are making better use of it. They are deliberately manipulating their intuitive abilities to access information and therefore are developing stronger intuition, better mental telepathy and increased self-healing ability. Awareness increases the ease with which people can connect to the field.⁴²

From Adam’s writings, lectures and publically available materials, his core message is that healing must involve a person’s own participation. Each individual’s consciousness must combine with the intentions of everyone involved. In this regard, consciousness is a collective manifestation, and thus, in turn, influences everything else as we collectively form a web of connections between us and our environment. Perhaps this has answered our earlier question of whether human beings exist in a dynamic, living universe or in a lifeless, mechanical one. In the end though, this acknowledgement has to be a personal choice.

The world we are all living in now is undergoing vast and rapid change, and it may serve us well to reflect on this. Indeed, learning to know the world in a new way will be quite a task. Yet if we are part of an ongoing spiral of great ages (Yugas) then we will indeed keep arriving where we once started – and each arrival will be a new memory, and require us to learn anew. So if our present ascending Dwapara Yuga will bring human-kind different forms of energy, technology, and 50 per cent of brain capacity, as Sri Yukteswar claims (see Chapter Six), then what reflections can we begin to make on this? That, I leave for the next chapter.