Some 'experience' to consider:

"The great difficulty I have is describing the enormity of what is being birthed. The true focus of this creative process is not individuals but all humanity. It is actually trying to reawaken the entire species. What is emerging is a consciousness of unprecedented proportions, the entire human species integrated into a unified field of awareness. The species reconnected with its fundamental nature. Our thoughts tuned to Source Consciousness. Having moved beyond linear time into "Deep Time", I experienced this both as a projected destiny and also as a realised actuality. It was simultaneously something to be accomplished and something already accomplished. This quantum jump in our evolutionary status precipitated a wholesale reorganisation of global culture. It signalled a turning-point that would forever divide the human story into the before and after of THE GREAT AWAKENING.

I saw humanity climbing out of a valley and just ahead, on the other side of the mountain peak and beyond our present sight, was a brilliant, sun-drenched world that was about to break over us. The time frame was enormous. After millions of years of struggle and ascent, we were poised on the brink of a sunrise that would forever change the conditions of life on this planet. All current structures would quickly become irrelevant. All truths would quickly be rendered passe. Truly a new epoch was dawning. The lives of everyone living on the edge of this pivotal time in history had been helping to bring about this global shift."

Duane Elgin says that:

"Despite all our good intentions, without this coming era of collective distress and adversity, the human family is unlikely to awaken to its global identity and evolutionary responsibility. It is the immense suffering of millions - even billions - of precious human beings coupled with the widespread destruction of many other life-forms that will burn through our complacency and isolation. Needles suffering is the psychological and psychic fire that can awaken our compassion and fuse individuals, communities, and nations into a cohesive and consciously organised global civilisation."

This is a point which I feel holds much resonance.

In a similar manner, Peter Russell says:

" The set of global problems that humanity is facing presently may turn out to be as important to our continued evolution as 'the oxygen crisis' was. Never in the history of the human race have the dangers been so extreme; yet in their role as evolutionary catalysts, they may be just what is needed to push us to a higher level"

Again, in light of recent events, and the state of climate change overall; it is reasonable to predict that we have an unstable geo-political situation ahead. Do things happen without a reason?

For decades now voices have been predicting an imminent global crisis followed by the spiritual rejuvenation of the planet...some have claimed that a revolution is taking place in the depths of humanity's collective unconscious as we enter our greatest planetary crisis - a turning point of global survival.

Are we approaching the 'dark night of the collective soul' where geopolitical upheavals, disasters, catastrophes - both natural and human - create disorder and death...only to forge in the furnace of evolution the impetus needed to jump/shock us into a new epoch of collective cooperation and social species networking?

Can we ever go forward as individuals now? Perhaps we go forward collectively or not at all - we don't share our collective unconscious archtypes for nothing!

BIOCOMPUTATION: A Conversation with J. Craig Venter, Ray Kurzweil, Rodney Brooks.

This 12,000 word article examines the new work being carried out by the partnership of the above three leading thinkers in the world of biotechnology.

Here is an extract:

"Ray Kurzweil believes "we are entering a new era. Some of us call it the Singularity. It's a merger between human intelligence and machine intelligence which is going to create something bigger than itself. It's the cutting edge of evolution on our planet. One can make a strong case that it's actually the cutting edge of the evolution of intelligence in general, because there's no indication that it has occurred anywhere else. To me that is what human civilization is all about. It is part of our destiny, and part of the destiny of evolution, to continue to progress ever faster and to grow the power of intelligence exponentially."

It also includes web-broadcasts of their speeches: a recommended read/listen

Technology could grow beyond human control, warns Millennium report:

"The State of the Future 2005 report is produced by the United Nations University's Millennium Project - a global think tank of foresight experts, academics and policy makers. It analyses current global trends and examines in detail some of the current and future challenges facing the world.

Setting the scene, the report states: 'Future synergies among nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science can dramatically improve the human condition by increasing the availability of food, energy and water and by connecting people and information anywhere. The effect will be to increase collective intelligence and create value and efficiency while lowering costs."