I wrote this book as a vehicle to express my philosophical view on the evolution of the universe and humankind’s part in it. I could have presented the material in non-fiction prose, as some had suggested, but I felt the allegorical teacher/seeker plot structure would help to make the ideas more accessible to readers. I hope I have succeeded. If sufficient interest is piqued by this work, I will be more than eager to attempt a more scholarly treatment of the principles put forth in these pages.
With one exception, the characters in the book are all fictional and are not intended to resemble actual people. That one exception is Mr. Grant, whose personage in part is drawn from the late Congressman George E. Brown, Jr. In developing the story, I followed the writer’s maxim to “write what you know.” Early in my career, I worked on Capitol Hill for Congressman Brown, whose brawny stature is every bit Mr. Grant’s. I was a young aide who worked on space policy issues, so this was a familiar and appropriate setting in which to craft my story. Many of Cong. Brown’s devoted staffers and supporters actually did in fact consider him a “guru” in many ways. He had a richly curious intellect. He saw things in a larger context and was inclined to quote philosophical and spiritual writings. One of his favorite quotes, “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverb 29:18), was permanently inscribed on the wall in the House Science and Technology Committee hearing room during his tenure as the committee’s chairman. It was Congressman Brown who introduced the Space Settlement Act of 1988, a bill I wrote for him. He championed the measure for its inclusion into the NASA Authorization bill, which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. Though I never engaged in a conversation with Congressman Brown that in any way resembled those between the story’s characters John and Mr. Grant, I like to think that he would have appreciated the philosophical inquiry presented in their dialogue.
Many of the philosophical and scientific concepts in this book were liberally drawn from the works of extraordinary thinkers. At the risk of leaving out key individuals, the following are those who have most influenced my thinking:
Dr. Gerard K. O’Neill (1927-1992): He was the genius who started my journey of wonderment of the possibilities in space. Dr. O’Neill convinced the world that human settlement of space was a real possibility with his 1976 book The High Frontier.
Frank White: Frank is an old friend and closest kindred spirit, who first opened my eyes wide to the evolutionary nature of human expansion into space. In his pivotal book The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution, he wrote, “The purpose of human space exploration cannot be found in human desires and ambitions alone, but must be viewed as a phenomenon actively encouraged by universal forces.” Therein lays the kernel of the Obligation perspective.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: Barbara is an amazing soul whose path I was privileged to walk in for a short time. She is an author, futurist, the leading visionary in the Conscious Evolution discourse, and a space evolutionary to the core. She was an early and generous supporter of Dr. O’Neill and the story of her epic attempt to purchase a Saturn V rocket to send a commercial mission to the moon in the early seventies is a tale worthy of major motion picture.
Andrew Cohen: Andrew is an important contemporary spiritual teacher who is also an unflinching champion of evolutionary spirituality, and speaks forcefully about the Evolutionary Impulse. As I describe later, it was in his presence that the insight of the Obligation first crystallized in my mind.
Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955): This Jesuit priest-theologian and a distinguished geologist-paleontologist first suggested, in The Phenomenon of Man, that humankind was evolving to higher and higher states of consciousness.
Howard Bloom: Howard is the prolific genius whose exhaustive study of the history of the universe, human civilization, and science has drawn stunning conclusions explaining why we are the way we are. His books, including Global Brain and The God Problem, are masterpieces of finding the underlying relationships of all things.
Krafft Ehricke (1917-1984): This German rocket scientist wrote forcefully of the Extraterrestrial Imperative, the idea that humanity can no more remain Earth-bound than a baby can remain in the mother’s womb.
Ken Wilbur: Ken is great contemporary American philosopher, whose expansive work on Integral Consciousness helped me to see all life processes as interconnected.
Eric Chaisson: Eric is a cosmologist whose work on Cosmic Evolution has truly expanded Darwinian Theory to encompass all there is in the universe.
In addition, Don Beck’s work on the theory of Spiral Dynamics is a theory of the evolution of social consciousness from earliest human culture to modern civilization.
I have provided a bibliography of books and articles by these and others that I recommend for further reading on concepts relating to the Obligation perspective.
I would like to also applaud the many space advocates who are already responding to the pull of the Obligation toward space migration. They are the Conscious Evolvers of the Seventh Endowment in our midst—those hard at work in today’s space movement. Rick Tumlinson and Robert Zubrin are a couple of names that come immediately to mind. Tumlinson is Co-Founder of the Space Frontier Foundation and Chairman of Deep Space Industries. Zubrin is President of the Mars Society and author of The Case for Mars. Zubrin and Tumlinson are the “bad boys” of the space movement. Their irreverent approach to space advocacy has made them the bane of many in the aerospace establishment. Their influence, however, has literally turned the tide of history, and has set us on a course toward space settlement.
Equally effective, and perhaps more mainstream, are other space champions such as Peter Diamandis, Founder of the X PRIZE Foundation and the Singularity Institute, Elon Musk, Founder and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, Jeff Greason, Founder and CEO of XCOR Aerospace, Robert Bigelow, Founder and CEO of Bigelow Aerospace and George Whitesides, CEO of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. These are among the most visible of a significant cadre of Conscious Evolvers who have unabashedly proclaimed their desire to help create a future that includes human settlements of space.
I particularly want to recognize my colleagues from the Alliance to Rescue Civilization, an organization that promoted backing up civilization’s hard drive by building human-occupied arks on the moon and elsewhere as insurance against extinction level events on Earth. I was privileged to work on this effort with William E. Burrows, New York Times journalist and award-winning author of This New Ocean and The Survival Imperative, and the late Dr. Robert Shapiro, noted origins-of-life researcher and author of Planetary Dreams. These men exhibited the Protector Endowment in its purest form.
The list is long of those who are hard at work attempting to create a new civilization in space, and my apologies for many omissions worthy of mention. All of these individuals are carrying the banner. If they have their way, and I believe they will, life will spring anew on other worlds before this century is out.
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All the great minds mentioned above inspired and helped me shape the full scope of the Obligation perspective. However, the distinctive element of the Obligation worldview I present in this book, to my knowledge, has not previously been articulated. You may, therefore, find it interesting to hear the story of my moment of revelation.
It was May 2002 and I was attending a five-day retreat with Andrew Cohen in Lenox, Massachusetts. For those who have not participated in a spiritual retreat, the experience is a profound opportunity to let all of your preconceptions fall away in order to create an opening to receive new insights. It was on the third day. The morning meditation session had ended and nearly every other attendee had left the hall. I remained fixed in a deep meditative state with no desire to end the session. While it is difficult to articulate, it was in that state that I had for the first time what is called the experience of “the One without the second.” In that moment I knew myself as the Absolute. It was truly a revelatory moment. There were no fireworks or grand visions like those John experienced. It was simply a supreme moment of stillness, an experience of being the Witness.
In my hotel room that evening, lying awake in bed, my thoughts turned to my passion for space settlement. I played with the old question that had teased my mind from a young age. Why were people so interested in space exploration and settlement? Why was space settlement something that I felt we, as a civilization, had to do? Then without warning there finally came an answer to my lifelong query. In an instant, as I stared at the ceiling, it became absolutely clear to me. From the very dawn of humankind’s existence, we were fixed with the responsibility of one day carrying the seeds of life out into the universe. Space travel is not something we do for any other reason than that it is our raison d’être. It is encoded in our DNA. Life on Earth needed a way to spread beyond this planet, and it created the means to achieve that end: humankind. From the earliest tribal culture I saw the evolution of civilization rapidly progress, generation after generation. Incremental advance after incremental advance. It was a roiling cauldron of activity when taken as a whole, all of which landing civilization where it is today at the very threshold of space, poised to make the final push to fulfill that most ancient of primordial demands.
It was during this rush of recognition in a dark hotel room that I had an experience similar to that of the character John in this book where his body tingled. I got out of bed and looked in the mirror, and like John I barely recognized my own reflection. I felt that sense of looking out with eyes that had not looked out that way in a long time. For me it was a moment of awakening. From this kernel of insight, and many hours and years of contemplation on it, I developed broader concepts presented in the previous pages.
I am perfectly aware that there are non-spiritual explanations for my epiphany. The last thing I wish to do here is spark a discussion over whether I was touched by God, or just had a cool moment of insight. And from a practical standpoint, I don’t think it matters either way. I share my story of awakening only to emphasize that these notions truly came spontaneously to me, whether divinely or neurologically hatched.
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So, where do we go from here? I suspect the challenges for the space movement going forward will be even greater than they have been to date, and will not ease up until we finally reach the essential milestone, when a community of people is living independently in a part of the solar system beyond Earth. Expansion after that point should be easier. I encourage you, if you are motivated by this challenge, to steel yourself for the difficulty ahead and not be distracted by naysayers, politics, economics and all the rest. It is my belief that you are engaged in a sacred struggle and must not let anything stand in your way. The space movement has been thriving since Dr. Gerard O’Neill inspired the formation of the L-5 Society in the mid-1970’s. Many of those early activists joined the ranks of the budding, and now maturing, commercial space community. Their successes are inspiring new generations of activists who feel the urge to be part of this evolutionary process. We have reached an incredible threshold thanks to the efforts of the folks mentioned above and many others. But the going will get even tougher as we move steadily toward the end game.
So, if you’re in this for the ride, buckle up. Things are going to get very bumpy. Your personal resolve and intention will be the only thing between success and failure. This is where a Conscious Evolver perspective is extremely useful. Granted, it may sound a bit esoteric. But, anyone seriously involved in helping to advance civilization toward space migration already is feeling the Evolutionary Impulse, and is likely already exhibiting the qualities of the Conscious Evolver Endowment.
If the perspective I’ve expressed in these pages resonates with you, I encourage you to explore more deeply the implications, and what it might mean in your life and the world around you. Dive into the writings of the authors mentioned above and others in related fields. I’ve included a limited bibliography for your consideration. You can also be part of the Obligation community at www.theobligationbook.com.