Another avenue that is opening up and becoming a more recognised and debated issue is the concept of 'collective intelligence' - and related fields of collective wisdom and consciousness. This area is expanding rapidly, with many rewarding and insightful contributions - in fact, it's hard to keep track of what is being released. One web-blog of note is 'Blog of Collective Intelligence' and 'Minding the Planet' - both of which can be accessed via the links of the right of my page under the heading 'Blogs of Note'.

There are also moves to take collective intelligence into democracy and social institutions - see the 'Co-Intelligence Institute'

Another writer-teacher has said :

"The goal of the spiritual life in the twenty-first century is to become one with the forward movement of the life-process, one with the evolutionary impulse emanating from the source of creation itself. The purpose of enlightenment in the time we are living in is not the transcendence of this world, but its transformation, using our very own lives as the vehicles for this most urgent endeavor. It's up to each and every one of us to do whatever we need to do to raise ourselves to a much higher level of engagement with life, so that our very consciousness becomes enlightened with the knowledge of its own meaning and purpose.

It is only recently that we have begun to understand how crucial a role we play in the evolutionary process. We all participate in this mystery called human incarnation, but usually our participation is unconscious. That means we don't truly know who we are, what we are doing, or why we are here. And because of this, our capacity to participate in life remains superficial. The spiritual impulse, which is not different from the impulse to evolve, is experienced in the human heart as the longing for liberation. That longing, if it is pursued to the end, culminates dramatically in the life-changing revelation of not only the source of our very being, but also our raison d'etre, the purpose of human incarnation beyond ego. That purpose is the abandoned, unconditional, deeply committed, CONSCIOUS participation in the life-process for the sake of the evolution of consciousness itself. This revelation, and our response to it, is the goal of spiritual life, and the meaning of enlightenment in the twenty-first century."
Andrew Cohen

All this falls into line with the avenues I have also been following - the 'imaginal cells' are beginning to awaken...