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An evolutionary perspective

Basically, the situation we human beings face today is this. We, as a species and as individuals, are the product of some twelve to fifteen billion years of evolution. None of us would be here today, just as we are, without this evolutionary history. But evolution has not stopped; it is still the guiding principle behind all our lives. It is therefore imperative, if we are to consciously and intelligently harmonize our lives with Life, that we understand the fundamental principles that underlie these evolutionary processes.

Now all evolutionary processes, whether they be chemical, biological, mental, social, or whatever, follow the same underlying pattern. They progress through a process of differentiation and integration, of divergence and convergence. Both of these opposite tendencies are essential if an evolutionary process is to be complete. If one is more dominant than the other, the result is an intermediate state of lop-sidedness.

The overall effect of these evolutionary tendencies is a growth in the complexity of structures. So evolution progresses from simplicity to complexity. The growth of our own bodies is the most natural example here. Other obvious examples are the complexity of modern society and of the Internet, through which we are communicating.

These dual characteristics of evolution are examples of an even more fundamental principle at work in the Universe: for every set of situations an opposite set also exists. I call this the Principle of Duality, which naturally embraces the most fundamental duality of all, that between nonduality and duality.

The overall effect of the principle of duality for evolution is that every structure that grows inevitably decays and dies. There are no exceptions; everything in the Universe goes through a life and death cycle. And as Shakyamuni Buddha discovered, if we do not accept the universality of impermanence, we shall inevitably suffer.

So this is not a question of being either optimistic or pessimistic about the future. Whatever is going to happen to us will happen, whether we like it or not. For as Ramana Maharshi wrote when his mother tried to persuade him to leave the holy mountain Arunachala and return home, "What is not meant to happen will not happen, however much you wish it. What is meant to happen will happen, no matter what you do to prevent it. This is certain".

Ramana Maharshi concluded from this that "the best path is to remain silent". But that is not the only option we have. While some are guided towards silence, others are guided towards action in the full knowledge of the laws of motion of society. That is in the nature of things. So what can we see about the future that our children and children's children will be carried into?

Our next evolutionary leap

Well, as I see the situation, it is an evolutionary inevitability that one day Life will help us all to liberate ourselves from our suffering. As both a cause and an effect of this process, the awakening of love, consciousness, and intelligence that we are witnessing in the world today will, in the years to come, accelerate at a rate that we can hardly imagine today.

We are thus on the threshold of what Peter Russell has called our "next evolutionary leap", a change that will lead to a global society that is radically different from that which we are immersed in today. Indeed, this change is so radical and so far-reaching that it is really without precedent in the twelve billion years of evolution.

Nevertheless, it is possible to see some similarities in the situation we face today with other radical changes in the past. These similarities are happening at three levels, all of which are taking place simultaneously:

  1. We are rapidly approaching the death of the two materialistic economic systems, capitalism and communism, which have dominated human affairs for the past two centuries, and the death of the materialistic science that begat them. In the new epoch, the basic science will not be physics, but omniology. Omniology and relational logic will complete the scientific revolution that has been emerging during the past few decades, just as Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy completed the Scientific Revolution begun by Copernicus 150 years earlier.

  2. We are witnessing the decline and eventual death of Western civilization, which, through the global economy, dominates the world today. In A Study of History, Arnold Toynbee showed that civilizations come to an end when a Universal State comes to dominate the civilization just before its final disintegration. The Roman Empire played this role in the Hellenic civilization. Today, the American economic hegemony is playing a similar role in Western civilization. It cannot be long now before it goes the same way as the Roman Empire.
  3. We are approaching the end of the anthropocentric, patriarchal, mentalistic era that has characterized all cultures during the past four or five thousand years.

A revolution in science

We can compare the first level to the scientific revolutions that such people as Newton, Lavoisier, and Einstein created. Following Thomas S. Kuhn's classic work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, these major changes in the way that we see the world are called paradigm shifts or changes.

Today, we are in the middle of another major scientific revolution, one which will lead to the understanding and realization that Consciousness is the primary reality, not the physical universe as is widely believed today. But this switch does not constitute a paradigm change in the conventional sense, for Consciousness is limitless and has no borders or divisions within it. It therefore cannot really be called a paradigm, which means 'pattern'.

One of the implications of recognizing Consciousness as the primary reality is that the divisions we make today between science, philosophy, and religion, and between the East and the West, will disappear. So this change does not so much represent a scientific revolution within the currently accepted framework of science. Rather, it represents a revolution in what is generally regarded as science today; it is a revolution in the way that scientific revolutions come about.

When this new way of looking at Reality becomes generally accepted, the world that will exist then will be as different from the world today as the world of the present times are from the middle ages, as Willis Harman, the late president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, pointed out at the "Charting Paradigm Shifts" conference as long ago as 1986.

The life and death of civilizations

Another way of looking at this fundamental change is in terms of the rise and fall of civilizations. Arnold Toynbee, in his monumental work A Study of History, identified some twenty-one major civilizations in the world over the past five or six thousand years. Fritjof Capra, in The Turning Point, depicts the life and death cycle of a few of these civilizations, those around the Mediterranean.

Toynbee identified some common patterns in these civilizations, each of which has passed through the stages of genesis, growth, time of troubles, universal state, and death. For instance, the Hellenic civilization was born out of the disintegration of the preceding Aegean or Minoan civilization around 1100 BCE, it grew and developed for the next few centuries, to be followed by a time of troubles from 431-31 BCE. The universal state of the Hellenic civilization was the Roman Empire.

In general, Toynbee identified three key factors that lead to the breakdown of civilizations:

  1. A failure of the creative power in the minority.
  2. An answering withdrawal of mimesis [mimicry] on the part of the majority.
  3. A consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole.

By minority here, he meant the leaders who originally brought the civilization into being and their followers, who sought to maintain it in an unchanging state, contrary to the fundamental laws of the Nature. Universal states are thus "the products of dominant minorities; that is, of once creative minorities that have lost their creative power".

So how do we apply Toynbee's model to the Western civilization that now dominates the whole world? Well, in a way, we should really look at Western civilization in two parts, the first when Christianity was the dominant force, and the second, the secular society that arose from the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when science and and materialistic economies became dominant.

However, as Christianity is still the dominant religion in the USA, which acts in a hegemonic role within Western civilization, it is appropriate to consider the Christian and the secular phases as one. From this perspective, we can regard the world wars of the twentieth century as the time of troubles. Out of this has arisen the global economy that now looks distinctly like a universal state in Toynbee's model.

Yet the dominant minority of economists, financiers, and accountants who run the global economy today are not responding to the unique challenge presented to us by the invention of the stored-program computer. Neither are the mainstream churches and scientists, led by another minority, responding to the great longing for spiritual fulfillment that exists in an increasing number of people today.

The alternative establishment, who initially appeared to be pioneering a quite new way of life and learning, has lost steam in recent years. Very little radically new has appeared from this group during the 1990s as they have attempted to work within the existing infrastructure of society.

All this is a clear sign of a civilization nearing the end of its life. It can now only be a matter of time before a new creative minority emerges in society, a minority that eventually will grow to become the majority as the tidal wave of consciousness sweeps through the human race.

It is not really possible to categorize this creative minority because the only characteristic that individuals within it share is that they are learning to transcend the categories. It is therefore not organized, for there is no category around which it could be so organized. This anarchistic group of people is thus quite invisible to the mind, to those people who still like to stick labels on themselves and others, such as 'New Age' or 'Zen Buddhist'. The group pioneering the new civilization can thus be seen only when the Intelligence is allowed to function with full clarity, unimpeded by the categorizing and judging mind.

The four stages of evolution

The death of Western civilization will mark another major watershed in evolutionary history. To see this, we need to turn to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's model of evolution as a whole.

Teilhard identified four major stages of evolution, the first three of which he called cosmogenesis, the emergence of the physical universe, biogenesis, the evolution of self-reproducing forms of life, and noogenesis, the development of the human mind.

It is vitally important to note here that life did not begin with the emergence of the first singe-cell organisms some 3.5 billion years ago and that evolution did not end a few tens of thousands of years ago when the human body reached the form it has today. This means that evolution as a whole cannot be fully explained in terms of the evolution of the species. A broader and deeper perspective is required that goes beyond the working of the DNA molecule.

From this broader perspective, it is possible to see that Life, the power behind all evolutionary processes, is a property of the Absolute Whole, just like Love, Consciousness, Intelligence, Spirit, and Truth. In other words, evolution does not progress without divine intervention, as is being advocated by a number of leading biologists and philosophers today. Indeed, the very term biology is a misnomer. What biologists study is forms of life, not Life itself. So biology should really be called biomorphology.

Teilhard saw the last stage of evolution coming about when all the diverse strands of evolution converge into one great megasynthesis. The great awakening of consciousness that would arise from this megasynthesis would usher in the fourth period of evolution, which he rather tentatively called Christogenesis, since he was a Jesuit priest.

However, to get a more accurate prophesy of this fourth stage, we need to turn to Richard Maurice Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness, published in 1901. By studying the consciousness of a number of highly conscious individuals, Bucke foresaw that "our descendants will sooner or later reach, as a race, the condition of cosmic consciousness". And when this day arrives, there will no longer be any need for churches, priests, or any other intermediary to come between the individual and the Absolute, which he called God. For by this time, all individuals will know God through their own "direct unmistakable intercourse". All the religions that have existed for the past few thousand years would then simply disappear.

To get a third perspective on this fourth stage of evolution, we can best turn to Ken Wilber's Up From Eden. In this book, Ken Wilber identifies a number of stages in human phylogeny. At the cost of some loss of detail, these can be reduced to three stages, the subconscious or prepersonal, the self-conscious or personal, and the superconscious or transpersonal. Because the various stages of evolution are not of equal duration, these three phases roughly correspond to the last three of Teilhard's four stages.

A key point that Ken Wilber makes in his book is that the level of consciousness of some individuals is often well in advance of the consciousness of society as a whole at any one time. This means that there is considerable overlap between these stages. However, we can say that the first of these, which corresponds to the end of biogenesis, lasted from the time of the earliest hominids, through the matrifocal civilizations of the first farming communities, to the dawn of human history.

Then four or five thousand years ago came what is called the Fall in the Bible. This led to the mental-egoic, patriarchal stage of human evolution, with which we are all familiar. However, there are many signs in society today that this noogenetic period is giving way to a spiritually based consciousness, when intelligence rather than the intellect will become the dominant mode of knowing.

We can associate the words body, mind, and spirit with the three phases of human evolution. These words show quite clearly why we are entering this final stage of evolution at this time in human history. If we are to rise above the level of our computers, machines that enhance the capabilities of the human mind, and reach our fullest potential as human beings, we can do so only through Spirit.

The way that we view time is also quite different in each of these three stages. During the subconscious era, time was essentially cyclical, reflecting the effect of the seasons on the farming communities at that time. Then, with the invention of history a few thousand years ago, time became linear in nature. In the age of Spirit, the emphasis will change once again, this time to the timeless, eternal now.

Timelessness arises quite naturally from Wholeness. When we unify all opposites, there is no longer any interval between birth and death, between the beginning and the end of the physical universe or of evolution, between my own birth and death, between the birth and death of civilizations, or between the birth and death of the human race itself. Evolution and Life both begin and end with Wholeness. Wholeness is the Alpha and Omega of the Universe.

Another major difference between these three major phases of human evolution is in sexual orientation. During the prepersonal, somatic era, societies were primarily matriarchal or matrifocal in character. Then in the mentalistic era of the past few thousand years, virtually all cultures in the world have been patriarchal, with women often being treated as inferior, as second-class citizens.

But in the age of Spirit that we are beginning to enter today, neither men nor women will dominate over the other. Egocentred authoritarianism will come to an end as we learn to maintain a balance between our masculine and feminine energies, in what is called in Buddhism the Middle Way. Again, this is simply a manifestation of the union of opposites that arises out of Wholeness.

Now for this radical change to take place, evolution needs to change from a process when ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis to one where phylogenesis recapitulates the ontogenesis of those who are pioneering the emerging culture. In other words, for a minority of individuals, the future is now. There are a number of people living their lives today in a manner that will become the norm when the awakening of consciousness spreads throughout the global community. These people are already living the vision of the new society, albeit within the worldly context of the traditional cultural landscape.

Arthur Koestler's The Ghost in the Machine gives us another perspective on this transition from a mental-egoic culture to a paragonian society that is based on Life, Love, Consciousness, Intelligence, Spirit, and Truth. In the biosphere, if all individuals in a species simply follow in their ontogeny the phylogeny of the species, then no new species could ever evolve. Radical new directions cannot evolve from adult structures, which are highly specialized, they can only evolve from young, embryonic forms.

This latter process is called paedomorphosis, the forming of the young, in contrast to gerontomorphosis, the forming of the old. Gerontomorphosis can only lead to an evolutionary dead end, while paedomorphosis is a rejuvenating process.

These principles of paedomorphosis and gerontomorphosis apply equally in the noosphere. Mainstream science is a good example of gerontomorphosis at work at any one time, and scientific revolutions sometimes display paedomorphic characteristics. For instance, Copernicus' heliocentric theory of the solar system effectively returned to Aristarchus' heliocentric view developed before the Ptolemaic view gained a grip on conventional thinking.

If science is not to drive itself into an evolutionary dead end, then radically new directions in human learning need to come about to give science new life, a new sense of purpose. This can sometimes happen because some individuals do not assimilate what is taught in the schools and universities, but follow their own independent learning path from an early age, a clear example of paedomorphosis at work.

Then in later years, they may well decide to demolish the Tower of Babel that represents the accumulation of all knowledge to start again de novo. That is essentially what has happened to me in my own ontogeny.

Furthermore, this paedomorphic process has a phylogenetic dimension. By freeing me from my delusions, evolution has in effect returned to the innocence of the mythical Garden of Eden, before the patriarchal stage of evolution gained its dominance in the world.

This is not to say that humanity is about to return to the relatively peaceful times of the matrifocal civilizations, as many ecofeminists believe. To think this would be to fall for what Ken Wilber calls the pre/trans fallacy, where the prepersonal and transpersonal are conflated because they are both different from the personal. The paragonian epoch that we are about to enter will be nondualistic, with both men and women having the freedom to grow and develop in a completely natural way.

So while paedomorphosis and gerontomorphosis are not well-known words, and despite the fact that Arthur Koestler called these words 'ugly', they nevertheless well describe the evolutionary transformation that humanity is currently passing through. Before we enter the final stage of evolution, we need to reconstruct the whole of the noosphere from the very beginning, as if the past four or five thousand years of human learning never existed.

The overall effect of these developments is that in the paragonian epoch, human ontogenesis will not stop short at the mental-egoic stage, as it mostly does at present, but continue to reach deep spiritual understanding. Individuals' developmental process through life and death will then correspond to the whole of human phylogenesis, from life to death, much as Ken Wilber describes in The Atman Project and Up from Eden.

Relating to each other

When civilizations are in the relatively stable middle part of their life and death cycle, it is generally not too difficult for the participants in the culture to communicate with each other. All individuals share a set of common beliefs and customs that give the civilization its social cohesion.

However, when civilizations die, thus enabling a quite new civilization to emerge, there is no common ground or context within which individuals can communicate with understanding with each other. The old certainties disappear, as the rising tide of consciousness teaches individuals to look at familiar situations in a quite new way.

That is the state that Western civilization is in today, in our relativistic, postmodern age. The old certainties are disappearing, but new certainties based on the Absolute, on what we all share in common, have not yet fully emerged. We are thus today in a transition stage between the mental-egoic stage of human evolution and the fully awakened paragonian epoch.

To understand the implications of this on our relationships with each other, I use another metaphor. I liken the rising tide of consciousness to a pot of water being put on to boil. We, as individuals, are the molecules of water in the pot.

If we look at the pot as a whole, at the macro level, we can be quite sure that as the heat increases, more and more molecules of water will escape from the pot as steam. However, it is not possible to predict which individual molecules with gain their freedom first. Paradoxically, the random movement of all the individual molecules produces an effect that is quite predictable.

Today, the pot has not quite reached boiling point; the rising tide of consciousness, which is the source of energy for the pot, has not yet become a tidal wave, when there will be millions of molecules gaining their freedom.

In the meantime, how are we, as individual molecules, to relate to each other? While it is quite easy to see where evolution is carrying us at the macro level, it is not so easy for each of us, as unique individuals at the micro level, to see our own lives in this cosmic context.

Indeed, we can expect that many people will prefer to stay living in the pot as water for as long as possible. To return to the metaphor of the Titanic, there are undoubtedly many who would prefer to remain in luxury on the sinking ship, rather than venture out into unknown waters.

For, as Max Planck sadly remarked in his autobiography: "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it".

So how many generations will it take for humanity to make the transformation to the fourth and final stage of human evolution? Well, from all accounts, the transformation from the second to the third stages took one or two thousand years.

But with the rising tide of consciousness about to become a tidal wave, this next transformation is likely to happen within one or two generations, not one or two millennia. It will be a time of an unprecedented rate of change, the like of which has never been seen before.

Furthermore, it is most important to note that this process will be quite different from the radical changes that have been made in the noosphere during the past few thousand years.

For instance, in the Middle Ages, it was widely believed that the Earth is the stationary centre of the solar system and that the sun revolves around the Earth. Then Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton showed that this belief was not true. It is the Earth that revolves around the sun.

Now what happened here is that before the Copernican revolution, a heliocentric view was rejected as false, and after this great scientific revolution, the geocentric view was considered to be false. This is the way of the dualistic mind. It holds on to one pair of opposites and rejects the other.

But this is not the way of Intelligence. Intelligence sees both sides of every story. This is essential if we are to create a complete and accurate map or model of the totality of existence. For false beliefs exist in the world. So if these are not included in a comprehensive world-view, we can never see the Whole, we shall never be able to base our lives on the Truth. For the Truth embraces all opposites, including what is true and what is false. For what is true is not the Truth. In the words of Fritz Schumacher, we must "accept everything, reject nothing", if we are to find Wholeness.

Thus in my model of the totality of existence, I do not reject that which is false. For to do so, my model would be only a partial representation of that which exists, it would not be all-inclusive. Rather, I simply label as false those statements that I can see are not true, much as I might notice that a room is large or small, for instance.

What then guides my behaviour is what is meaningful to me, that which is appropriate for any particular situation. I make hundreds of such decisions everyday. I choose to go in one direction rather than another. But that does not mean that I reject those multiple paths I do not choose to follow; they just are not relevant to me in the moment.

Meaning is the energetic principle behind all our behaviour, indeed behind everything that happens in the Universe. Now in the relativistic world of form, what is meaningful is relative to the situation. For instance, a mathematics text book used by a university student normally has very little meaning to a ten-year old. Similarly, spiritual and psychological therapies vary considerably in meaning depending where individuals have reached in their development.

Another important factor in determining meaning is the context in which a particular situation is viewed. When we take a narrow perspective, we inevitably limit the horizons of our vision. We can only really see the meaning of the situation when we stand back to take a broader perspective. Ultimately, we can only find true meaning in our lives when we look at them in the context of the timeless, formless Absolute Whole.

And when we do this, what might appear to be meaningful in one context, might be quite meaningless in a broader context. For instance, if our lives are governed by our own egocentric survival, we generally cannot see that such behaviour is threatening to the survival of the human race as a whole.

Today, because of the fragmentation of our learning, the context in which we view our lives is severely limited. As a consequence, what we are taught in our schools, churches, and businesses as the truth often turns out to be false when viewed from the context of the Whole. This applies most especially to the three pillars of unwisdom that provide the foundation for Western civilization.

However, these fundamental beliefs, and others that arise from them, often provide people with their sense of security and identity in the world. They are thus highly meaningful and valuable; they are not meaningless at all. Freeing ourselves of what is false does not mean that we should reject these beliefs. Most particularly it does not mean that we should reject those people who are not yet able to see the Whole.

Inevitably, as the pot of water begins to evaporate as steam, many molecules will remain in the pot as water for as long as possible, and will do so until the pot is almost completely dry. So we, as individuals, are all at various stages of awakening, of freeing ourselves of our delusions. That is in the way of things. So to make judgements about where individuals are in their own ontogeny is not particularly helpful.

Each and every one of us has what David Gershon and Gail Straub, co-founders of the Empowerment Workshop, call our growing edge. If we move too far ahead of our growing edge at any time, we could well be paralyzed with fear. Alternatively, if we live far short of our growing edge, then we shall make very little progress in facing our fears. The key then is to find our growing edge at any particular time and to arrange the circumstances of our lives so that we can pass through it to the next stage of development.

In setting up this web site, I am only too aware that people have many different growing edges. What I am writing could be just what some are looking for in their own development at this time, while for others it might may well be too overwhelming.

Nevertheless, I feel that it is necessary to state what I can see to be true as clearly, succinctly, and compassionately as possible. I know full well that what I am saying might well hurt many people. But that cannot be helped. Facing the truth can be very painful. But that is exactly what we need to do if future generations are to carry evolution to its ultimate destiny.

So here are just a few of our more significant cultural delusions, including the three pillars of unwisdom, and what we can see when we integrate all knowledge into a coherent whole:

Delusionary, partial views

Clear-sighted, whole views

The physical universe of our external senses is the primary reality, and all human experience can potentially be explained in terms of the mathematical laws of physics. The timeless, formless Absolute, denoted as Love or Consciousness, is the primary reality, out of which the relativistic world of form arises. In the oft-repeated words of the spiritual teacher, Ramesh S. Balsekar, "All there is, is Consciousness".
The origin of the universe can be found by sending multibillion-dollar telescopes into outer space. The origin of the Universe can be found at any time of the day or night by simply looking inside into the depths of the psyche. It doesn't cost a cent or a penny.
There exists a fundamental particle out of which the whole universe is built. All forms, whether they be physical or nonphysical in nature are abstractions from the great ocean of Consciousness, like currents within the ocean and waves and ripples on the surface.
All energy is a function of matter, as exemplified by Einstein's famous equation E=mc2. Energy, in its most general sense, is a function of meaning. The value of energy patterns in any particular situation is determined by their appropriateness or significance. This view of energy arises quite naturally when we create a coherent semantic model of the Universe, rather than the fragmented mathematical models of the physicists.
Following Shannon and Wiener, information can be probabilistically measured as if it is a material object. Information has meaning, whose qualitative value can only be determined in the context in which it informs.
The deductive logic of Aristotle and his followers provides a true representation of human reasoning. Human reasoning progresses by a process of classification and association in a nonlinear fashion. Any logic that does not reflect this is only a partial truth.
If we are to be consistent in our reasoning and find the truth of things, we must reject all self-contradictions. Self-contradictions are an inherent property of the Universe. So if the maps or models that we create do not reflect this, they cannot possibly be a true representation of reality.
Evolution progresses solely through a process of natural selection, without any divine intervention. Evolution progresses by a process of differentiation and integration, acting through time, but constantly being fed new energy through the action of Life arising from the timeless Absolute. The accelerating pace of evolution that we are witnessing today arises through the action of new relationships between forms as they synergistically integrate into more and more cohesive structures. It is thus relationships that are the driving power in the Universe.
Life began some three and a half billion years ago with the formation of the first single-celled organisms. Life does not have a beginning in time; it originates in the timeless.
The DNA molecule determines all human behaviour and characteristics. We all have what the Greeks and Romans called a daemon or genius within us, what we might also call the soul, which determines our own uniqueness as individuals in the manifest world of form.
Consciousness and intelligence are properties of the brain and mind, and by extension, of machines, such as computers. Consciousness and Intelligence arise directly from the Absolute, Consciousness as a form of light, and Intelligence as the eyesight of Consciousness, what is called the Witness in some spiritual teachings.
The sole cause of mental disturbances and physical illness is biochemical. We, as unique individuals, have many levels in the ocean of Consciousness, most simply depicted as the Great Chain of Being: matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit. Disturbances in any of these levels can affect all other levels, for they are all interrelated. So if we are to heal ourselves, we need to fully integrate all these levels into a coherent and ordered whole.
There is a chasm between God the creator and the created that can never be bridged. There is no division in Consciousness between our individual beings and the Absolute. We are all both divine and human.
We human beings are created in the image of God. The Absolute has no form, no surface image, and so nothing in the world of form can mimic its appearance.
Money is a commodity with value. Money is a unit of measure, like ounces and and metres. So to buy and sell money as a commodity is like trading in grams and yards. Yet over 95% of all financial exchanges by volume in the world today involve trading in money as a commodity and are not concerned with the everyday goods and services that we exchange between ourselves. This behaviour is like a cancerous growth, which will before long lead us into extinction unless we can irradicate this cancer from the collective psyche before it does so.
Human beings are commodities to be bought and sold in the marketplace just like cattle, soap powder, and guns. The value of our fellow human beings cannot be determined in a quantitative measure like money. So to record human values in management accounting models along with the value of office furniture and travel expenditure is dehumanizing and demeaning. Such a way of managing our work activities does not respect the dignity of human beings, and does little to support us in reaching our highest potential as human beings in whichever direction our creative daemon might take us.
Economic and technological growth are the leading edge of evolution, not human growth. The purpose of life on Earth is not to make money or to build ever more powerful machines, like computers or space ships. It is to return home to our divine Source, to where it all began in the timeless. And when this is done, Alpha and Omega are one; there are no longer any divisions in Consciousness.

Resistance to change

I have no doubt that there will be much reluctance to let go of the set of beliefs listed on the left-hand side of this table. So those finding themselves being guided by the tidal wave of consciousness to integrate all knowledge into a coherent whole, are likely to encounter much resistance, not only within themselves, but also from the world around them. This is quite natural, although things might not be easy for a time. Seeing beliefs that we once thought as meaningful and valuable in a new light might well prove most discomforting.

Most particularly, freeing ourselves of our cultural delusions means that we don't belong anywhere. So one of our basic needs--that of belonging--cannot be satisfied in the fragmented world that exists today. That is one of the reasons why I am intending to set up the Paragonian Institute. Those individuals who find themselves breaking free of the constraints that inhibit our learning today will need an understanding and compassionate network to support them.

It might help with this process of cultural transformation to look at it from a cosmic perspective. For instance, Peter Russell points out in The Global Brain Awakens that at the very beginning of cosmogenesis the temperature was far too hot for any simple atomic nuclei that emerged to survive. They would have been annihilated instantly in the primordial fireball. It was only when the temperature had dropped sufficiently that stable atomic nuclei could form.

A similar phenomenon took place at the birth of the biosphere. The first cells were born into an intensely hostile environment, and would not have survived for long. It was only when a sufficient number of living cells had emerged that they were able to establish a stable foothold. What was an aberration in the old environment became the environment itself, providing a secure home for these simple cells to grow and multiply.

Then about a billion years later, there was another major crisis in evolution. The first simple cells did not breath oxygen, they produced it as a pollutant. Initially, this oxygen was absorbed by minerals, such as iron, and so these algae and bacteria were not threatened. However, over time, all the available iron was used up and oxygen began to form in the atmosphere, thus threatening to destroy the bacteria that had evolved.

The crisis was averted because other types of bacteria emerged that could tolerate the poisonous oxygen. These bacteria went on to become animals, while the original photosynthesizing bacteria responsible for the crisis became plants.

There is a similar situation in society today as the mental-egoic phase of human evolution nears its end. The 'pollutant' that is emerging today in society is the Truth. As the innocence of Consciousness is being laid bare, a new 'species' is evolving that not only tolerates and accepts the Truth, but positively seeks it. But the truth of life is extremely uncomfortable to many who are afraid of death, and they sometimes attempt to exterminate it, or more often ignore it.

This can be no more graphically illustrated than by the story of Ignaz Semmelweiss recounted by Arthur Koestler in The Act of Creation. Semmelweiss, a Hungarian doctor working in Vienna in the mid-1800s, discovered that if doctors, students, and nurses washed their hands in chlorinated lime water before entering the maternity ward, then the number of women dying from puerperal fever dropped considerably. Indeed, within two years, the number of deaths in Semmelweiss' ward dropped from 12% to 1%.

Semmelweiss' reward for this discovery was to be hounded out of Vienna by doctors who resented the suggestion that they carried death on their hands. Semmelweiss went to Budapest, but was treated in a similar manner after denouncing his opponents as murderers. Semmelweiss eventually went raving mad and died in a mental hospital.

This story well illustrates the struggle that the truth has in emerging within a culture that is not based on the Truth. However, this is not only a conflict between individuals; these opposite tendencies can often be seen within single individuals. It is therefore not surprising that the world today is in a very confused state. We are a society in transition. The old has not yet died away, yet the new that can embrace the old has not yet bloomed into its full maturity.

In these circumstances, all any of us can do as individuals is to live our vision as best we can today. For it is only by doing this that we shall be able to create an environment that will give future generations the opportunity to realize the Truth, and thereby reach their highest potential as conscious, intelligent, loving beings.

And when this happens, humanity collectively will have reached the Omega point of evolution. The only thing that will have been annihilated in the fireball of today's society is the sense of a separate self; our own individual experience of consciousness will have expanded to fill the great ocean of Consciousness. There will then be no need to do, become, or possess anything. It is in this state of blazing Love and Consciousness that evolution will have reached its glorious culmination, and the human race will be able to die in peace, free from all fear and self-importance.

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