CHAPTER TEN

Critical Thresholds:

An Emerging New Worldview

God wanted to hide his secrets in a secure place. ‘Would I put them on the moon?’ he reflected. ‘But then, one day human beings could get there, and it could be that those who arrive there would not be worthy of the secret knowledge. Or perhaps I should hide them in the depths of the ocean,’ God entertained another possibility. But, again, for the same reasons, he dismissed it. Then the solution occurred to Him – ‘I shall put my secrets in the inner sanctum of man’s own mind. Then only those who really deserve it will be able to get to them.’

An anecdotal story by unknown persons in the Amazon

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

Winston Churchill

There is an oral folk tale, attributed to the fool Mulla Nasrudin, about an exchange with wise men on the subject of knowledge that goes something like this:

The philosophers, logicians and doctors of law were drawn up at Court to examine Mulla Nasrudin. This was a serious case, because he had admitted going from village to village saying: ‘The so-called wise men are ignorant, irresolute, and confused.’ He was charged with undermining the security of the State.

‘You may speak first,’ said the King.

‘Have paper and pens brought,’ said the Mulla. Paper and pens were brought.

‘Give some to each of the first seven savants.’ The pens were distributed.

‘Have them separately write an answer to this question: “What is bread?”’ This was done. The papers were handed to the King who read them out:

The first said: ‘Bread is a food.’

The second: ‘It is flour and water.’

The third: ‘A gift of God.’

The fourth: ‘Baked dough.’

The fifth: ‘Changeable, according to how you mean “bread”.’

The sixth: ‘A nutritious substance.’

The seventh: ‘Nobody really knows.’

‘When they decide what bread is,’ said Nasrudin, ‘it will be possible for them to decide other things. For example, whether I am right or wrong. Can you entrust matters of assessment and judgment to people like this? Is it not strange that they cannot agree about something which they eat each day, yet are unanimous that I am a heretic?’¹

An odd story to begin a chapter with perhaps; yet in our own ways we are all a mixture of wisdom and foolishness. And in the end who can really know the future? There are a great many clairvoyants, psychics, proclaimed mystics, gurus and future forecasters who make a living from predicting the future. With most people it ends up as a matter of perception and maybe an abstract grasp of the bigger picture too. Perhaps each of us has a piece of this bigger picture, yet not the whole scenario. For this reason the speculations and views I have expressed within these pages are meant, I hope, to at least stimulate thought. Further to this, I am attempting to present scenarios that pertain to my perception of events and these changing times we are so notably now passing through. As with everything, it is each person’s responsibility to question the material they are presented with, and to question themselves. In the end, it is up to individuals what they make of the information they have, and the worldview they form from this.

One of the things I do take issue with is how many future forecasts are established upon the current consciousness or way of thinking. By this I mean that they extrapolate the future based upon what has gone before; there is a lack of ability to discern the uncertain, the unpredictable, and the unexpected. There are too many trend-based reports that fail to foresee unpredictable, chaotic and complex tipping-points. This lack of foresight continues to project that the world will go on developing within a relatively stable environment. Yet it is likely that the future will show different dynamics of development: not linear but the nonlinear dynamics of complex systems where energies are in a continual state of flux – or dynamic equilibrium. It is closer to the truth to say that humanity has managed to arrive at the 21st century through a growing series of critical thresholds, moving towards current global, social and environmental limits. And it is at such thresholds where new, often unexpected, arrangements are forced into being.

It is my understanding that our current transition will emerge through a mix of the following critical thresholds:

1 Violent political upheavals, such as in the Middle East due to deteriorating living standards, soaring food prices and corrupt regimes

2 Ad-hoc de-centralized and networked terrorist groups acting in guerrilla fashion

3 Rapidly changing weather patterns, affecting economies, food and populations

4 Growing organized anti-Western, anti-capitalism and anti-globalization movements

5 Shifting geopolitical players and relations such as those between China, India, Russia and Brazil

6 Collapse of the US position as the leading empire

7 Collapse of world financial markets and economies, etc.

These are just some of the scenarios that are already in play, and 2011, within its first month of January, saw many of these features highlighted through the uprisings in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya. Also in the early months of 2011 the world witnessed the torrential flooding of Queensland, Australia; the erratic heavy snowstorms over Europe and the North American continent; and the horrendous tsunami and radiation leak in Japan. The global economy continues to falter and sway dangerously close to a tipping-point of collapse. In terms of bankrupt sovereign states, and the incredible amount of debt held throughout the world, it is more a case now of the emperor’s new clothes, and who will be first to point the finger towards our economic nakedness.

It is significant that in times of relative social stability, human consciousness plays a lesser role in the behaviour of society; yet when a society reaches the limits of its stability, and becomes chaotic and vulnerable, then that society becomes sensitive and responsive to even the smallest fluctuations in the consciousness of its citizens; in such changes as values, beliefs, perceptions and worldviews. Human consciousness becomes a significant stimulus and catalyst for change during these times of social instability. When order returns, people readapt to the changes, learn of the weaknesses, and generally show resilience in creating relations and institutions more in keeping with the new times, worldviews and challenges. It is these moments that shake us out of our lethargy and spur us into reflection and action. It should be said that no-one is perfect, and I wholeheartedly include myself here, yet we need to shift our thinking away from the familiar, the known comfort zones, and start to conceive, be inspired by, that which may lie just slightly beyond our standard frameworks.

Human history is also a form of collective amnesia; we only remember what has been agreed upon as being important to us, and in a manner that we are able to comprehend. This artificially constructed sense of our history often appears as a short line of linear progress rather than a far vaster historical pattern of sporadic leaps and cycles of growth and decline, like a grand year of seasons. A comparative view might be that supplied by Brian Aldiss’s science-fiction series the Helliconia trilogy in which the planet Helliconia has a very long year (called The Great Year), which is equivalent to some 2,500 Earth years. Each book follows the rise and decline of civilization through each season (spring, summer, winter). By the end of summer, human civilization has developed to a level similar to that of advanced European Renaissance, only to inevitably regress once again when the centuries-long winter arrives. The trilogy also suggests that some elements of human society are able to preserve knowledge during the winter ‘dark ages’ that can be used in the coming season/cycle to once again develop a scientific-industrial civilization.

In a similar manner, it can be said that our global human civilization is in the early throes of its spring, casting off the old systems and infrastructures that have helped it achieve passage through the intervening ‘winter’ centuries. We may, after all, be responsible for nurturing the early seeds of a new cultural birth. The way ahead, for all of us, will surely be a challenging, yet deeply rewarding, journey and learning curve. However, we need to lose some of our evolutionary baggage during this transition of labour.

Psychologist Robert Ornstein and biologist Paul Ehrlich have noted that thanks to our evolutionary history we have a background in an ‘us vs them’ attitude to our world that we have brought with us into our present day. Also, that our antiquated ideas of family values divide the world into sets of us and them, divisions that are reflected in politics, in education, in national and international conflicts, and in the way we deal with the environmental crisis.² This division, once a natural human schism, no longer works for us; we first need to recognize that we are in need of changing some of our cultural conditionings. Yet human beings are largely social animals, not only in the sense of family and relations, but also in regard to our high degree of conditioning. Evolutionary biologists have long noted that the limitation on our head size at birth causes the modern human to be born ‘premature’, in the evolutionary sense. (This limitation is due to the fact that humans, as bipedals, have a narrow birth canal.) The head is not fully developed at birth, and for this reason human babies require more time of care than other animals before being able to look after themselves and be self-sufficient.

Much of our growth thus occurs after birth when we are in a social environment; hence humans are more susceptible to social conditioning and are largely ‘wired’ (neurologically patterned) in a social environment instead of being born ‘ready’. It also takes many years after birth for a human being to fully develop their frontal lobes of the brain. This fact has not been lost as a metaphor for our global society, as Ornstein and Ehrlich note:

Just as an adolescent has not fully developed the frontal lobes of its brain that supply social skill and restraint, our global society has not yet fully developed the institutions that would supply the same skill and restraint on an Earth-wide scale.³

This is referring to humans having existed for something like a fifth of the average life span of a mammalian species, and a fifth of a human life span is roughly the end of adolescence. As we are very much the social animal it is essential that in these upcoming years, as we restructure our social and psychological frameworks, we expand our connections and cooperation with our larger human family – after all, to varying degrees we are now in the same boat, and the current and ensuing problems facing us on this planet are common to us all. And this is exactly what has been occurring over the past several decades with the rapid rise of our technologies of communication and connection. Our human psyches have been undergoing preparation for a new era of social organization and communication.

A Psychology for the Third Millennium

The human psyche is able to adapt and evolve according to social and environmental impacts and influences. How we communicate as a ‘social animal’ wires our neuronal brains and forms our psyche. As was discussed in earlier chapters, the shift to information as an energy, and the exchange of information-energy, has helped to usher in not only new forms of social organization but has also influenced how we have ‘wired’ our brains. When our mind and attention are focused in specific ways we create neural firing patterns that link and integrate with previously unconnected areas of the brain. In this way synaptic linkages are strengthened, the brain becomes more interconnected, and the human mind becomes more adaptive.

According to psychologist Daniel Siegel the brain undergoes genetically programmed ‘neural pruning sprees’, which he says involves removing various neural connections to better organize brain circuitry. In other words, the neural connections that are no longer used become disconnected (deactivated), thus strengthening those regularly used synaptic connections, which helps the brain to operate more efficiently. As the phrase goes – neurons that fire together, wire together.

What is also significant is that the human brain is not solely an organ situated in the head. Physiologically the human mind is embodied throughout the whole body to regulate the flow of energy and information. Siegel tells us that neural networks throughout the interior of the body, around the heart and our various organs, are intimately interwoven and send sensory input/information to the brain. This input from the body forms a vital source of our intuition and, says Siegel, also influences our reasoning and the way we create meaning in our lives.⁴ In this sense the body forms an extended mind, only that the brain is the receiver and interpreter of the signals. Again this corresponds to the ‘field theory’ of living systems discussed in Chapters Eight and Nine, where previously I suggested that conscious energies and electromagnetic forces constituted biofields and fields of conscious (holographic) information. In this context we see that physical organs, through their neural and sensory networks, form another type of extended brain, or distributed mind. In both cases living systems, rather than involving separate actions, are in fact a field-network of integrated processes. This type of knowledge, I suggest, will gradually come to represent how we view our dynamic, living universe – a relational system of integrated processes and energies.

Our modern sense of self-awareness, and our bodily extended mind, have clearly evolved to root us in our social world: a world of extended relations and social networks. Humanity, it can be said, has been hard-wired to extend its linkages, connections and communication networks. We are also hard-wired to adapt physically in response to experience, and new neural processes in our brains can come into being with intentional effort – with focused awareness and concentration. This capacity to create new neural connections, and thus new mental skill sets through experience, has been termed neuroplasticity. The human brain of today has to respond to the incredible amount of energy and information that is flowing through our environments and embedded in our cultural experiences. By being aware of our experiences and environmental impacts and influences we can gain a better understanding of how our brain and thinking become patterned. This awareness is what Siegel calls mindsight:

In sum, experience creates the repeated neural firing that can lead to gene expression, protein production, and changes in both the genetic regulation of neurons and the structural connections in the brain. By harnessing the power of awareness to strategically stimulate the brain’s firing, mindsight enables us to voluntarily change a firing pattern that was laid down involuntarily.⁵

Thus, how we focus our attention greatly shapes the structure of our brains; and the ability to grow new neural connections is available throughout our lives and not only in our young formative years. This knowledge encourages us to nurture our mindfulness, to establish greater self-awareness, and to pay attention to our intentions and thinking patterns. Neuroplasticity also encourages us to be more reflective over our connections with others, and to develop our social skills that underlie empathy and compassion. These new ‘wired connections’ are exactly what are becoming activated through the rise of new media and communication tools.

Information is our current dominant form of energy, and as mentioned earlier in the book, each new energy revolution stimulates also a revolution in human communications; in turn catalysing new patterns and organization within the human psyche. Examples of this process include the introduction of cuneiform tablets at Sumer that ushered in early city organization; and Gutenberg’s printing press that helped to democratize Europe and encourage distributed information-sharing. The Gutenberg printing press was a dramatic revolution in that it made information more available within the public domain, and affected the physical and physiological condition of those exposed to printed information. Not only did the general masses take up reading on a large scale but also the very act of reading (which for Latinized Western cultures was left-to-right) stimulated parts of the human brain hitherto underused.⁶ The sudden increase in a reading public put emphasis upon the need for greater social organization as the written word became responsible for promoting increased individualism and instances of opposition to ruling structures (as is very much the case today).

And so today our distributed digital networks of communication are re-wiring and re-patterning human consciousness through their diverse and pervasive interconnections. Such international connections breach cultural and national borders and force us to self-reflect on our identity, values and ethics. With more and more people accessing connections outside of the heavily corporate-controlled mainstream media, gaining information from a social media that is more distributed, independent and alternative, more people are being exposed to a wide range of viewpoints, beliefs and narratives. This exposure to new patterns of information helps us to break out from rigid, narrow and myopic scenarios.

It is my hypothesis, as I have previously expressed, that humankind is on the threshold of a great shift in its collective psyche; however, this may be preceded by a series of traumatic events – a global near-death experience as suggested in Chapter Three. This potential transition has been ‘visioned’ by Christopher Bache, an educator in transpersonal psychology, who whilst in an altered state of consciousness underwent an amazing series of visions. In these visions he witnessed a global system collapse, followed by the gradual crystallization of a new planetary culture. Bache speaks of a social awakening that is coming, a time when we will shift from ‘the atomised cells of our historical past’ towards a more integrative and inclusive communion. Everything we are currently undergoing, in our personal lives and on a global level, he says, is paving the way for this future. In his series of visions Bache saw that:

… out of the seething desires of history, out of the violent conflicts and of the scheming of individuals and nations, there was now driving forward a new awareness in human consciousness. Its birth in us no less difficult or violent than the birth of a new continent through volcanic upheaval. It drives upward from the floor of our being, requiring a transposition of everything that has gone before to make room for its new organisational patterns.⁷

Bache also had the understanding that mind/consciousness is primary, and that humanity is nearing an era whereby physical experience will be more influenced through the ‘power of “coherent consciousness”’ (Bache’s terms). This, however, would not manifest at the level of ‘egoic-consciousness’ but would require a deeper integral style of consciousness.

The visions of Christopher Bache are just one example of many indications that we may be moving towards a restructuring of our psychological and social structures, on both local and global scales. Our own human nature – our inner psyche – may be undergoing a restructuring (or rather rewiring) as we are pushed and/or encouraged to evaluate how we consider ourselves not only within our local environments, the physical world at large, but also in a grander, cosmological sense. Does the human evolutionary journey have meaning? What are our responsibilities for now and the generations to come? A re-patterning of the self can lead to new priorities in our lives, to be more in balance with our needs rather than swamped by our wants. Perhaps we will be compelled to orientate ourselves towards needs rather than wants in order to have a more focused path upon which to drive forwards.

This re-patterning and restructuring of social relations incorporates new styles and modes of interpersonal connections and communications. It heralds a new set of shared values, understanding, empathy and respect. As a global family we have already suffered enough from egocentric systems and a world driven by power, greed and control. These institutions are now archaic and destructive to our continued survival. They are the dregs of an old mode of existence, one that is unsuitable for a world to come. The ideal set of relations would be that which honours the Golden Rule: social exchanges based on mutual trust and respect. We may be a long way from this, yet the seeds have been planted, and are growing in firm soil around the world – in projects, communities, social networks and organizations.

The world systems for a new era are not likely to emerge from an elite base, like the Medici-influenced Renaissance that sprang up in Florence in the Late Middle Ages, but rather from a groundswell of people-centred change. The new ‘renaissance’ will come from the periphery or from the bottom up, a distributed and networked emergence of conscious individuals and groupings. Like ink dots on blotting paper, these conscious and creative centres will spread their influence through decentralized channels and processes until a time will come when the ink dots begin to fill the blotting paper. The social changes of the future are likely to come from revolutionary movements from the people; a shift catalysed within the hearts, spirit and minds of the people.

Movements for social and spiritual change are already growing, adding more pressure to the older institutions, which will be forced to adapt or die off. Paul Hawken’s Blessed Unrest details some of these activist/actionist movements with over one million of such groups worldwide. More and more people are already insisting on increased social responsibility from business, as people become more choosy according to their values. The old mind/old world energy systems of scarcity and control are ripe for change. The new revolutions in psyche and action will be more in tune with the new energies, and no longer tolerant of the old systems.

We are transitioning from the older linear mind of the industrial-globalization ‘modernity project’ of the last two centuries into a life-sustaining, ecological-cosmological new world mind. We are fostering values that will be inherited by the world to come and thus have an obligation to rewire ourselves to a more integral, empathic world. Part of the role of our global communications has been to adjust our minds into functioning across nonlinear relations; to become accustomed to dealing with multiple connections rather than single ones; and to become immersed in varied and diverse relations and not just local families and communities. We are now beginning to embody myriad viewpoints, beliefs and identities. As a species we are beginning to fuse; although we are still fragmented and rife with cracks and schisms.

The initiation from our species infancy into adolescence will require a moral and ethical growth. We are called to respond differently to the world around us – not in fear or with anxiety, with trepidation or apprehension; but with robustness, energy, flexibility, creativity and positive intentions. The world in which we live is an ecology of which we are a part – we must learn to respect this, to feel it, and to develop our lives around it. The world we are moving into requires of us that we both inspire and be inspired. What we are witnessing, now for the first time as a planetary species, is a transition between world ages, from one mode of psychic reality to the next. Our scope for shared collective consciousness and intention will continue to have a greater capacity to affect our environment and our potential futures. Just as the use of electricity has altered our industrial skylines, so we can learn to use the energy of our collective psyche to transform our world into the community skylines we wish to see for the future. In the words of psychologist Daniel Siegel:

As patterns of energy and information flow are passed among people within a culture and across generations, it is the mind that is shaping brain growth within our evolving human societies. The good news about this perspective from science is that we can use an intentional attitude in our modern lives to actually change the course of cultural evolution in a positive direction. Cultivating mindsight in ourselves and in one another, we can nurture this inner knowing in our children and make it a way of being in the world. We can choose to advance the nature of the mind for the benefit of each of us now and for future generations who will walk this earth, breathe this air, and live this life we call being human.⁸

Like never before, our connective and communicative environments are becoming embedded with our bio-psycho-social influences. We are establishing what Siegel terms ‘interpersonal neurobiology’; how our social relationships influence and affect our nervous system. We are unable to separate the neurological functioning of the human being from the environment. Our various social and cultural impacts, influences and experiences are rewiring our neural circuitry. It is thus imperative that we have positive and constructive external stimuli with which to foster and support conscious development. The scale of adjustment to live differently may be enormous, or will be to those without adequate preparation.

It is no understatement to say that the human species has entered a period of profound, fundamental and unprecedented change. As such, we need to acquire new skills in order to co-exist with a world seeking to develop more integral and profound relations with the larger fabric of life: planetary, solar and cosmic. Every evolutionary/revolutionary change requires a change in consciousness; this has always been the case. We are slowly beginning to recognize this fact and to notice a change in our psychology and consciousness. Philosopher and humanist Ervin Laszlo has outlined what he calls the ‘Ten Benchmarks of an Evolved Consciousness’, which he lists as:

1 Live in ways that enable all other people to live as well, satisfying your needs without detracting from the chances of other people to satisfy theirs.

2 Live in ways that respect the lives of others and that respect the right to the economic and cultural development of all people, wherever they live and whatever their ethnic origin, sex, citizenship, station in life, and belief system.

3 Live in ways that safeguard the intrinsic right to living and to an environment supportive of life for all the things that live and grow on Earth.

4 Pursue happiness, freedom and personal fulfilment in harmony with the integrity of nature and with consideration for the similar pursuits of others in society.

5 Require that your government relate to other nations and peoples peacefully and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing the legitimate aspirations for a better life and a healthy environment of all the people in the human family.

6 Require business enterprises to accept responsibility for all their stakeholders as well as for the sustainability of their environment, demanding that they produce goods and offer services that satisfy legitimate demand without impairing nature and reducing the opportunities of smaller and less privileged entrants to compete in the same marketplace.

7 Require public media to provide a constant stream of reliable information on basic trends and crucial processes to enable you and other citizens and consumers to reach informed decisions on issues that affect your and their life and well-being.

8 Make room in your life to help those less privileged than you to live a life of dignity, free from the struggles and humiliations of abject poverty.

9 Encourage young people and open-minded people of all ages to evolve the spirit that could empower them to make ethical decisions of their own on issues that decide their future and the future of their children.

10 Work with like-minded people to preserve or restore the essential balances of the environment, with attention to your neighborhood, your country or region, and the whole of the biosphere.⁹

These benchmarks of an evolved consciousness, as Laszlo outlines, suggest a transcendent mind that forms relations and ties both locally and globally, both physically and non-physically. These, again, support the precepts of a quantum-field consciousness that embraces the local field of the person as well as having nonlocal influence. The traits may form what is increasingly being viewed as an ecological identity; perhaps even the stirrings of the cosmic self? The person acts and behaves both as an individual and as a part of the greater connected whole. These multiple relations form a more varied, rich and complex life; what psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi terms as essential for an evolving self. Csikszentmihalyi believes that a truly fluid evolving self needs to seek out and be involved in a range of activities and relations that stretch the self; to find new challenges and the commitment to develop new skills and learning.

Another trait of an evolving transcendent self, notes Csikszentmihalyi, is the ‘mastery of wisdom and spirituality’; meaning the ability to see beyond the appearance of things, and to see through deceptions: to ‘grasp the essential relationship between the forces that impinge on consciousness’.¹⁰ Also important in Csikszentmihalyi’s framework for harmonious evolution is our ability to ‘invest psychic energy in the future’. By this he means that a person should not only have trust in what is to come, but also to actively engage with ‘unforeseen opportunities’ to build towards a positive and constructive future.

What both Laszlo and Csikszentmihalyi are effectively saying is that a transcendent, evolving consciousness develops through those who engage in human activity that expresses both greater individuation and a greater sense of oneness and unity. An evolving consciousness also reflects the understanding that conscious energy is primary, and the need to be aware and open to ideas and impacts of evolutionary and spiritual thinking. The view that consciousness is a primary force/energy in our reality is the key to helping people expand their consciousness and identify with ever more nonlocal ties and responsibilities: from one’s family and community to the world, all life on Earth, and eventually to all life in our known universe. It is our materialistic thinking that has become dysfunctional and which now forms the backbone of a type of social pathology, which has little idea or social index of how to measure our quality of life.

These days, a country’s GDP only serves to indicate its economic inefficiency and says nothing about the wellbeing of its citizens. Negative social attributes have become rewards for our global economic system and for the modern way of life. Our social relations have for too long been representative more of an exchange of economic values and goods rather than our empathic wellbeing. It seems as if we have been living within a ‘topsy-turvy’ upside-down reality.

In an interesting study that links brain science to investment behaviour, researchers concluded that people with an impaired ability to experience emotions could actually make better financial decisions than other non-impaired people. The research is part of a new academic interdisciplinary field called ‘neuroeconomics’ that explores the role biology plays in economic decision-making by combining insights from cognitive neuroscience, psychology and economics. This new study, published in the journal Psychological Science, shows that people with brain damage that impaired their ability to experience emotions outperformed other people in an investment game. The study suggests that a lack of emotional responsiveness gives people an advantage in economic circumstances as emotionally impaired people are more willing to take high risks because they lacked fear. Players with ‘normal’ brain wiring, however, are more cautious in their dealings and interactions. A co-author of the study has even suggested that people who are high-risk takers or good investors may possess a form of ‘functional psychopathy’.¹¹

There we have it then – neuroeconomics has confirmed that our upside-down world is partly run by people who are social psychopaths. No wonder the old systems are failing us, and our so-called ‘modern societies’ are suffering from the effects of embedded socio-cultural disorder, disequilibrium and disharmony. It makes us wonder how our systems of politics and economics would be different if we all accepted and understood that consciousness is primary and that our thoughts are at the root of everything that manifests in our lives. In other words, how would human life be if we shifted from being ‘functional psychopaths’ to being transcendental evolutionary agents?

New Thinking for a New World

We are in need of new global leadership in the sense of respected citizens or spokespeople to step up to be our evolutionary drivers. This new catalytic impetus will not necessarily come from the top-down governments but is more likely to be from awakened sectors of the masses. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, much change will come without guns yet with human force; the power of human will for change and transformation. Governments and many current authorities are not able to fully understand, or apply the changes needed. Many controlling political bodies and corporate institutions are too static or have too much invested in the status quo to implement flexible and sometimes radical change. This is why social networks, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil bodies are more likely to push the new agenda forwards. Alongside the heavyweight political meetings like the G8 and G20 we have the NGO-centred Global Forums and a vast array of other civil-society organized meetings. It is estimated that there are around 40,000 internationally operating NGOs, with some countries having a far higher number operating domestically, such as India with over 3 million NGOs internally. These are some of the forces operating on the ground, physically; yet transition is also about managing a shift psychically, in how we think.

Albert Einstein famously remarked that ‘Everything has changed except our way of thinking.’ Our thought systems are still stuck within old patterns; the problem with patterns is that once stuck in their groove it is hard to break out, like water that has carved its channel and flows nowhere else. We need to shift our thinking away from many past ‘grooves’ and towards new value creation. Edward de Bono, who teaches people how to think, says that we can analyse the past but we need to design the future. That, he says, is the difference between suffering the future and enjoying it.

Sadly, many of our educational programmes veer to suffering the future as they promote the storage and regurgitation of information rather then the absorption, creative evaluation and reinterpretation of information and knowledge. As an educator myself for many years I have witnessed first-hand the bureaucracy that strangles academic vitality. I have seen the appalling drop in standards in the British university system where now departments are afraid to fail students because they fear dropping down the league table of successful graduates. I have personally known cases of students who have blatantly plagiarized essays, time and time again after repeated warnings, yet were never ‘allowed’ to fail because the department needs each student to pass. On the other hand, I have had students coming to me asking what to write for their essays; they ask what type of arguments and opinions am I looking for? And when I reply that it is for them to be creative and argue according to their own ideas and opinions, they complain that they will fail if they don’t write according to what is expected of them, as in other classes. In this manner students fear being creative and relying on their own judgements as they believe the ‘system’ will only pass them for showing agreement with accepted ideas. Sadly, in many cases this may be true, although certainly it wasn’t the case in my classes!

Our schools and educational systems lack educators who are able to teach people how to align with a higher purpose, hold a positive intention, and develop their will so they can accomplish constructive goals effectively. Much teaching is still linear and individualized and neglects the role of contributing to a larger need. Our Western systems of schooling were originally established to be modern forms of the workhouses, preparing youngsters to be just literate enough to enter the workforce. Today this has come full circle to the point where many employers no longer look for graduates or see them as preferable employees because they say they lack the necessary life skills. Many employers now prefer to take on people without a formal university education so that they have more opportunity to learn from a living environment. Our way of thinking, and our way of teaching thinking, needs to shift away from the learning of standard situations and the standard ways of dealing with them. We require creative minds that can think out-of-the-box, away from established patterns.

Considering neuroplasticity and our brain’s ability to rewire itself according to new experiences and impacts, if we continually entrain ourselves with established and standardized patterns and thought processes then this is how we will measure the future. After all, the human brain can only see what it is prepared to see; as a result, we will react to the new in terms of the old. As de Bono says:

If everyone is going in the same direction, then anyone who is going in a different direction is ‘wrong’. The other direction might be better – but it is still wrong.¹²

It may sound grand to say we are in need of new millennial thinking patterns and processes, yet this is indeed the case. We now require thinking habits that are different from our traditional ones; such older habits were useful in bringing us to our present stage but have now outlived their usefulness. There is an Eastern proverb that roughly translates as, ‘You may ride your donkey up to your front door, but would you ride it into your house?’ In other words, when we have arrived at a particular destination we are often required to make a transition in order to continue the journey. In this sense we may need to shift to more appropriate thinking patterns. Cleverness has been likened to a sharp-focus camera whereas wisdom is more of a wide-angle lens. What this suggests is that many clever people are not wise, and yet many people who are not especially clever in the conventional sense are wise.

Perhaps wisdom is more about learning to deal with myriad life experiences, complex arrangements, and being flexible to changing circumstances when they present themselves. And, as the wide-angle lens suggests, being able to see, understand and act upon the bigger picture. Poor thinking is often caused by inaccurate perception, and our mainstream institutions (educational/media) do a good job of promoting lazy thinking and ideas. It doesn’t matter how loudly one shouts a bad idea, it’s still going to remain a bad idea however far it travels through our global communications. Part of our inability to perceive the bigger picture lies in how Western civilization, especially, has largely ignored the development of the right-hemisphere 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. Whilst logical thinking certainly is essential, it requires balancing with a more creative, visual and abstract style of perception. To put it simply, the left-brain likes to work with logic and facts whilst the right brain works more with perception, design and possibilities. It has been noted that for centuries certain inner teaching traditions have provided stories, tales, jokes and riddles etc., as a way to stimulate right-hemisphere activity. In these traditions it has been long known that providing unbalanced brain stimulation will result in incorrect perceptions. As one ancient anecdote (attributed to Miraza Ahsan of Tabriz) says: ‘Show a man too many camel’s bones, or show them to him too often, and he will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one.’

Edward de Bono rightly asks why thinking isn’t taught in our schools: ‘Is it because thinking is not considered important? Is it because many people believe that thinking cannot be taught? Is this because we believe we are already teaching thinking?’¹³ I don’t know, I have no answer to this. In truth, no-one actually ‘teaches’ us how to think. We may have classes in philosophy (patterns of thinking); in linguistics (the study of language); in epistemology (the theory of knowledge); yet no-one actually shows us how to think. Perhaps one solution to this is to provide a balanced and far-ranging curriculum and as broad a spectrum of knowledge in our schooling as possible. For example, the following is a list – which in no way claims to be exhaustive – of some potential ideas to be included in an educational curriculum.¹⁴

•  Early School: at an early stage our young children are taught – by algebra and alphabet – to use predominantly the left portion of their brain rather than abstract patterns. Before linear language, spend more time with games and puzzles; shapes, sounds, colours. Also, why not begin with being taught creation myths from different cultures: learn folk songs; stories/tales; dance/drama; poetry and rhymes. As children develop they could be introduced into notions of the self: self-actualization and a sense of identity, and be supported and encouraged to work in groups, for work and games. Aim to develop collaborative and co-solving activities.

•  Society & Culture: introduce young learners to the notion of systems: how things of the world are related, natural ecosystems, and natural cycles. Also, discuss ancient anthropological human history – of early cave dwellers and their sacred art/cave paintings and abstract sense of the ‘beyond’. Examine what constitutes ‘culture’?; how hunter-gatherers formed the first agrarian societies; the emergence of early civilizations; priestly caste and power hierarchies, and the shift into patriarchal societies. Look at the wonders of the world and architectural monuments of past civilizations: Egypt, South America, Asia, South Asia, Arabia, etc., including the Chinese, Persian, Arabic, Ottoman, Indo-European, Mongolian, Aztec, Mayan etc., empires and cultures. Teach how Arabic learning, knowledge and science came into the West. Examine Western feudal and aristocratic societies, early city states, and the rise and fall of complex societies. Examine the shift from the Dark Ages/Medieval times to the Renaissance; the rise of the modern nation-states; the discovery of the New World and the history of colonialism and colonial nation states. Study revolutions – French, American, English, Bolshevik, Orange, etc. – as a means of examining the rise of individuals within society and the notion of social liberty; the presence and function of warfare within the rise of nations and empires. Look at modernism, the Industrial Revolution, and the transition to modernity and the 20th century: technology and the rise of mega-cities. The age of radical seeking – ideas of spiritual movements, especially late 19th century to 21st century; the age of acceleration – emergence of a new world, 1960s onwards. The rise of a global civilization: aspects of the ethics of a planetary culture – sustainability and integral systems; individual and collective responsibility. Post-modernity and multi-culturalism.

•  World Philosophies & Teachings: world religions – Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Tao, Confucius, etc.; classic philosophies of, for example, Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Zoroaster, Swedenberg, Wittgenstein, etc.; and the question of what are morality and ethics? Discuss wholeness and empathy and value systems. Self, ego and the social construction of identity.

•  Environment: geological cycles and a history of global natural catastrophes; history of great migrations; ice ages; extinctions, etc. Biodiversity and ecosystems; fossil fuels and resource depletion; sustainability and alternative energy; climate change and its global effects, etc. Discuss Lovelock’s Gaia Theory; emergent communities; holism, ecology and systems theory.

•  Communication: the Gutenberg Press – the social effects of printed books. A history of communication technologies: telegraph, telephone, radar, radio, TV, Internet. Ideas on the democratization of information. Global travel – the rise of transport. The rise of networks and decentralized and distributed communications. Modern digital social networks; digital identities; non-governmental organizations.

•  Finance: the origins of money and transactions; how money is created and utilized; the origins of the banking industry and types of banking. Teach the basics in financial practices.

•  Science: how scientific revolutions and discoveries changed the world. As well as the existing basics in biology, chemistry and physics, etc., add some information on: complex systems, quantum mechanics, holography, string theory, neuroscience, nanotechnology, quantum biology, astronomy and facts of the universe, stars and galaxy formation, genetics and latest DNA research.

•  Computing: basic training in the major programming languages; discussions on bio-machines/artificial intelligence (smart/natural computing); bioinformatics; biomimicry; and DNA computing.

•  Metaphysics: consciousness studies and latest psi research; different models of human consciousness. Global consciousness, conscious evolution and the noosphere. Discuss the near-death experience and its effects on people. Is there an afterlife? Shamanism and other indigenous teachings.

•  Music: the genres and their celebrated artists and musical movements.

•  Art: the periods, movements and their celebrated painters.

These are only some ideas, and are not meant to cover the whole spectrum of possible learning. Learning should be a two-way process where the teachers, as conscious communicators, should also be open to learning new things from their students. Students in the future are likely to be less willing to swallow rote learning, handed out parrot-fashion, and more inclined to respond to a mutual flow of ideas, experimentalism and flexible teachings. In this manner the teacher-communicator must be open to accepting that they might not know everything after all! Learning should be open to questioning, interpretation and dialogue – not the usual one-way ‘this is the truth – take it or leave it’ antiquated style.

What is learned in the classrooms of the future should have a practical application outside in life. It is important that learning shifts away from its historical roots in the workhouse, orientating and training youngsters for the factory, and begins to represent a body of understanding with knowledge that helps to integrate all learners into a meaningful and changing global world. This issue of education needs to be an ongoing debate, with ideas endlessly flowing in order to stimulate open and flexible minds. New channels need to be opened up for the flow of emerging youthful rivers, away from their old-patterned and dry river-beds.

In response to this need there are already new institutions of learning emerging throughout the world that utilize new technologies of communication and are aimed at a distributed, diverse range of students. One example is the Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University, a global online university whose Chancellor, Ervin Laszlo, has stated that the aim is to offer an educational programme that integrates fields of knowledge rather than promoting disciplinary divisions. The PhD programme pioneers disciplinary hybridization with its Consciousness Studies programmes linked to both natural sciences and humanities. This new online university plans to promote a vision of the world as a planetary community, examining issues of consciousness and sustainable transformation. It is certain that more centres of learning like this will become established to deal with a need for ‘wholeness’ learning; knowledge that is trans-disciplinary rather than fragmented by divisions and hierarchical specialism. This is just one example of how shifts within a civilization can assist in promoting change and transformation.

One way or another, change will happen; those civilizations in the past that either could not or did not adapt, finally fell by the wayside. There are many varied reasons why societies and civilizations succumb to collapse.¹⁵ Yet what is significant now about this current transition era is that we, for the first time in our known history, are close to forming a planetary civilization. In other words, we are in the midst of the emergence, the birth pangs, of a planetary era. At the same time, many of our current infrastructures and global systems are in meltdown (see Chapters Four and Five), whilst our planetary communications systems are fostering the manifestation of a collective empathic psyche amongst the citizens of the world. Our energy resource situation is in dire need of a revolution, a tipping point into a new era of energy use, whilst we are in the midst of a communications revolution as protestors worldwide make use of the Internet and mobile phones to organize and orchestrate their rallies, such as the ‘Occupy’ movements that began in September 2011. The energy of resources and communications is shifting along with energies of human consciousness – these are truly revolutionary times. At the same time, it may be fortuitous that planet Earth is going through its own ascending arc of energetic renewal, as depicted in the Hindu Yugas. We are today witnesses to the new revolutions for our small planet.

Global Revolution as a Global Rebirth

In view of what has already been said concerning the nature of cyclic change and the need for balance and sustainability within our global ecosystems, then humanity’s frantic technological pursuit of unlimited economic growth, exploitation of non-renewable resources, and exponential increase of industrial pollution appears to be dangerous insanity. Looking around us we can see that materialism and technologies of control have become the dominant paradigm. The Internet can be either a self-organizing means of true democracy and freedom of information, or the largest top-down spy network. Technology needs to be utilized with the correct spirit and intention for it to work for us and with us, rather than against us.

Yet at the present time we are also drowning in national and consumer debt; there has been a corruption of science and religion through hierarchical institutions; and our belief systems are forced into false dialectics, such as ‘good’ vs ‘bad’; ‘friend’ vs enemy’; and ‘Darwinism’ vs ‘Creationism’. If we take a cursory glance at our global politics we find evidence that there are many psychopathic activities at work. As a species we still manifest an immature consciousness. It has been said that the main obstacle to our human development is our lack of knowledge about consciousness itself, and the idea that many of our actions are based on thoughtful decisions is just a grand delusion.

As I outlined in Chapter Four, planet Earth is a finite resource and yet our energy-intensive lifestyles (especially in the industrializing nations) show an unhealthy addiction to oil. Our modern global energy system is now so integrated that components, equipment, etc. are outsourced and involved in an elaborate oil-dependent chain of transport and delivery. Furthermore, oil prices play a key role in the global economy, through inflation with its knock-on effects. We are also beset by food and water supply concerns, with many agricultural growing regions now affected by climatic change, topsoil erosion, desertification, etc., not to mention the political mechanisms at work to control the global food supply chains. These developing concerns have not gone unnoticed. Already in 2011 we saw the ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions, the many protests in European countries (such as los indignados in Spain) and the ‘Occupy’ protests that began in the US and have spread worldwide.

What this perhaps shows is that we are collectively an immature consciousness that is waking up to the injustices and absurdities of the situation. The study of psychohistory, a discipline that applies the findings of psychology and psychoanalysis to the study of history and political science, reveals that many wars have begun because of the psychological history of key political leaders, their system of values and process of decision-making. Psychohistorians have analysed how the nature of revolutions may in fact be related to the influence of child-rearing practices of that particular historical period. Lloyd deMause, a scholar who has researched psychohistory for the past four decades, has outlined a psychohistorical theory of history, applying it to politics, culture and warfare, showing the connections between childhood and the evolution of the psyche and society. Our present human psyche, being at an infant or child level, has created a global civilization that in terms of aggression, warfare, greed and control, is likewise infantile. For example, the atomic bomb dropped over the Japanese city of Hiroshima during WWII carried the painted nickname ‘The Little Boy’, and the agreed-upon message sent to Washington as a signal of successful detonation was ‘The baby was born’.

Carol Cohn, who wrote the paper ‘Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals’,¹⁶ spent a year immersed in the almost entirely male world of defence intellectuals. She collected some extremely interesting facts confirming the perinatal dimension in nuclear warfare. In her research she confirms the significance of the motif of ‘male birth’ and ‘male creation’ as important forces underlying the psychology of nuclear warfare. For example, Cohn notes how in 1942, Ernest Lawrence sent a telegram to a Chicago group of physicists developing the nuclear bomb that read: ‘Congratulations to the new parents. Can hardly wait to see the new arrival.’ At Los Alamos, the atom bomb was referred to as ‘Oppenheimer’s baby’. This, amongst many other historical examples, shows how even as grown ‘mature’ individuals, including some of the greatest scientific minds, we still manifest infantile behaviour, like boys playing with their baby toys.

According to the new insights of psychohistory, along with consciousness research, it is revealed to us that we all carry in our deep unconscious, powerful energies and emotions, many of which are associated with the trauma of birth that we have not adequately processed and assimilated. These unprocessed emotions often play out on the global stage, confirming that much of our social distress originates from an immature psyche. We have exteriorized in the modern world many of the essential themes of the death–rebirth process that a person involved in deep personal transformation has to face and come to terms with internally. Transpersonal psychologist Stanislav Grof notes that:

It seems that we are all involved in a process that parallels the psychological death and rebirth that so many people have experienced individually in non-ordinary states of consciousness. If we continue to act out the destructive tendencies from our deep unconscious, we will undoubtedly destroy ourselves and all life on our planet. However, if we succeed in internalizing this process on a large enough scale, it might result in evolutionary progress that can take us as far beyond our present condition as we now are from the primates.’¹⁷

It is for this reason that it is imperative that the upcoming years, the ‘birth’ journey through the collective near-death experience, be an initiation into a new period of psychological growth and evolution of human consciousness.

Out of the epiphany of awakening, as experienced in such moments as a transpersonal experience, comes the inner desire, the spontaneous emergence, to develop our deep sense of humanitarian and ecological concerns. With a growth in human consciousness often comes the need to get involved in service for some common purpose. This appears to be based on an intuitive awareness that each of us is ultimately entwined and connected within the entire web of existence. Yet before the emergent awareness of our collective humanity becomes global, there will be seen many outbursts of revolution. This is why I am suggesting that before humanity emerges from this darker patch (our metaphorical underworld journey), the vestiges of the ‘old mind’ will attempt to increase their grip of power over our social lives. In other words, to combat a rising tide of collective human consciousness towards betterment and a more harmonious world order, many nations, regimes and power structures will increase their restrictions upon human freedoms of speech, expression and liberty. However, as Terence McKenna once put it, very succinctly: ‘The history of the silly monkey is over, one way or another.’¹⁸ For the revolutionary change to come, we need to throw off our ‘silly monkey’ minds and self-cultivate a heightened, more aware expression of conscious living.

Consciousness may well be the energy of the future that fuels our global society into adolescence and renewed growth. It will be the collective strength of our combined intentions and mindful actions that will pull us up by our bootstraps from the metaphoric – and literal – old-energy regimes of black goo and the dangerous blackened coal pits. The revolutions currently occurring on our small yet beautiful planet will pave the way for a psychophysical transformation of life on Earth. I believe that the human race is in line for some great changes, as a more creative, empathic, collectively integrated field of consciousness emerges into being; or rather, into awareness. Again, Stanislav Grof notes that:

We seem to be involved in a dramatic race for time that has no precedent in the entire history of humanity. What is at stake is nothing less than the future of life on this planet. If we continue the old strategies, which in their consequences are clearly extremely destructive and self-destructive, it is unlikely that the human species will survive. However, if a sufficient number of people could undergo the process of deep inner transformation, we might reach a level of consciousness evolution where we would deserve the name we have so proudly given to our species: Homo sapiens sapiens.¹⁹

Humanity is in the midst of a dramatic race towards a goal for evolutionary development within this crucial window of time where a great many changes are hanging in the balance. This moment in our world history offers not only potential for great social change, but also necessary adaptation through great natural upheaval and disruptions. Cultural and psychological conditions for improvement will emerge alongside physical pressures for change; such as messy resource wars, natural disasters and catastrophes, dictatorial suppression, economic hardships and civil unrest.

At the same time, however, the global revolution occurring at this time is also a revolution in our sciences, our understanding of consciousness, and our way of thinking. The upcoming years and decades will provide much opportunity for discovering and learning more about the ‘finer’ energies available in our physical and psychic realms. For example, it is possible that our science will gain an understanding of how to utilize the dark energy of the universe or similar means of harnessing energy from the untapped universal energies within our physical cosmos. There may also be advances in understanding how to control quantum energy fields, electromagnetic fields and vacuum energy fields, as well as increasing use of magnetism. We have also to consider advances in nanotechnology and microtechnology. Our sustainable futures are likely to increasingly shift towards a new generation of clean and safe energy, away from the dirty, heavily financially motivated fossil fuels and towards a more egalitarian form of energy supply, distribution and use. As more clean energy processes are developed there will be a geopolitical power shift amongst our nations. This is also likely to occur alongside much needed systemic change in our global systems of economy, food and planetary resources.

As I have attempted to explain within the pages of this book, we are now entering a period of opportunity for change and betterment like never before in our recent history. Such unique historical moments may never be present again at exactly the right time when they are so badly needed; well, perhaps not in our lifetimes. What we may now be witnessing in these tumultuous times is the rise of intuition, empathy, greater connectivity to the world and to people, and a sense of ‘knowing’ about what each given situation demands. At the same time, both our sciences and our human intuition are beginning to awaken to the understanding that consciousness is primary within what we perceive to be a materially ordered universe. Within these new paradigms we are gaining insight into a field-perception of living systems; that is, biological life and consciousness both coexist within nonlocal fields of energy. Our latest scientific discoveries and technological innovations are helping to prepare humanity for the realization that meaningful relations can operate at a distance, stimulating empathic relations in global contexts through nonlocal fields of information transfer and exchange. It would appear that humanity may indeed be more prepared than we realize within the psychophysical transformation now occurring on planet Earth.

This shift in understanding moves us towards the acknowledgement that humanity plays a small yet meaningful part within a much grander and epic dynamic, living cosmos. This may be part of an evolutionary catalyst within humanity to steer us towards a revitalized, compelling and harmonious human future within the natural order of cyclic change.