I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Joyful & Harmonious Festive Season and end to 2011. May we pass this time with balanced Hearts & Minds & Deep Spirit. I am in appreciation for each moment I can share with others. My blessings for a smooth transition to 2012 – May this next year be deeply fulfilling & meanginful to each one of us. Festive Wishes – ENJOY!!

A New Century of Social Innovation

Man has in him two distinct master impulses, the individualistic and the communal, a personal life and a social life, a personal motive of conduct and a social motive of conduct. The possibility of their opposition and the attempt to find their equation lie at the very roots of human civilisation.
-- Sri Aurobindo, The Future Evolution of Man

The upcoming decades will be different from what has gone before. Our global society is in the midst of great transformations that will usher in new social and cultural formations. Many nations have been living the high life as a result of the prosperity afforded by rapid industrial, technological and material growth. The long tail of this -- the technological revolution -- has been fundamental in stretching tentacles of dependency far and wide. Complex structures of supply, demand and energy are now near to their breaking points.The new century for humankind begins as the traditional structures provided by governments and social and political institutions are overwhelmed and no longer capable of serving humankind in its best interests. Problems and difficulties are likely to continue rising up, like a tsunami, and manifesting in our immediate social environments. Yet unlike a natural tsunami, these social uprisings can also serve to clean the slate and clear the brushwood. They can provide the opportunity for individuals and communities to re-evaluate their life priorities. It can be a time for reconstruction and reorientation based on newly-emerging perceptions of how better to lead a fulfilling life. Yet this outcome, perhaps, will not be for everyone: There will still be many who choose to return to the old, familiar, tried-and tested ways. However, this will prove difficult, as some of the old systems will no longer be functional.

New forms of social innovation need to be encouraged to emerge from the chrysalis of the fossilized structures. By this it is meant that more appropriate and creative social, economic, technological, cultural and political edifices can replace current dysfunctional systems. For example, new -- or previous -- skill sets can return for inclusion in our social and community roles. This may force many people to shift from office and administration jobs, from the service and manufacturing sectors, toward functions that serve a regional and localized need. These may include community teaching (in both theory and practical skills), maintenance and construction, localized economies (both currency and barter), permaculture, farming, creative inventions, regional management, community committees and more. Many farms may need to shift (or return) to organic forms of agriculture and crop growth in order to combat the rise in soil depletion. As many of us are now aware, petrochemicals and synthetic fertilizers negatively polarize the soil. While they may produce apparently abundant growth in the short term, in the long term they deplete the soil and exhaust its natural growing capability. The food produced is thus often lacking in nutrients and minerals. In short, many methods now employed will be forced, or catalyzed, into change.

Never doubt that individuals have the necessary skills to respond to critical needs. As the expression goes, necessity is the mother of invention. New knowledge sets can be learned and passed on; apprenticeships can become widespread once again as sustainable skill sets become more valuable and appreciated than institutional and service-sector jobs. Never doubt that communities can find the resources to reshape local cohesion and growth. Creativity and inventiveness are central to the human talent for tinkering. Innovation is the prerogative of people, not the governments. Let us not forget that transformation comes from the tiniest changes.

As events begin to unfold around the world and social changes become more manifest, it is likely that more and more people will feel the "pull-and-push" toward downsizing and re-evaluating their life principles and needs. The old thinking and energies of self-survival and material gain will need to be replaced with a new paradigm of creation, communication and collaboration. The new imperatives and opportunities now arising will require us to embark on a path toward revitalized partnership relations of community. The era of global excess and greed, which filtered down to the masses as consumer excess and credit greed, is no longer a viable future path. We have now been getting a wake-up call we cannot ignore. As one-time business advisor David Korten put it: "Rather than to give in to despair in this often frightening time, let us rejoice in the privilege of being alive at a moment of creative opportunity unprecedented in the human experience ... Let our descendants look back on this time as the time of the Great Turning, when humanity made a bold choice to birth a new era devoted to actualizing the higher potentials of our human nature -- We are the ones we have been waiting for."

We have been waiting for the opportunity and challenge to adjust to new changes. In this respect, we have been waiting long enough for what will be an epochal transition. The challenges facing us are not so much about a "one-off change," which once enacted will leave us to sit comfortably in our newly-adapted state. Rather, we are being encouraged to shift into a permanent state of adaptation so as to be better placed to face uncertainty. Such uncertainties may push social affairs toward reorganization at more contracted levels and scales of activity. In the face of these contractions, individuals need to start thinking soon about what courses of action to take. We can walk into the future willingly, or we can be back-flipped kicking and screaming like children. Either way, it seems highly likely that novel social innovations are coming down the line.
According to social commentator James Howard Kunstler, those of us who presently live in the comfortable Western countries are facing "the comprehensive downscaling, rescaling, downsizing, and relocalizing of all our activities, a radical reorganization of the way we live in the most fundamental particulars." This may come as a shock to many people who are still somewhat unaware of the vast changes occurring in the world today. Yet does this mean we are to be transported back into the Dark Ages where tumultuous events will play out over a prolonged period of time? Not necessarily; rather it may be the case, I suspect, that once the social turbulence has passed, which may well be a relatively short-lived situation rather than a protracted one, there will be a different kind of age. It may well be a return to values and relationships no longer obscured by unbalance and folly. And it could very well lead to a new century of social innovation. This is my hope.

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WorldShift Now!

Worldshift International (an organization I co-founded) has now launched its very own social network - WS NOW! - where we hope to bring like-minded people together: to share ideas, blog postings, videos, discussions - and the 'Substance of We Feeling'. So please come and join us at - www.worldshift-now.org - and help us to develop together.

WS Now! - A Conscious Evolution Initiative

 

www.worldshift-now.org

 

Co-creating a new paradigm in which social, cultural, political, and conscious evolution form the foundations of a harmonious global society

WorldShift International

A Global Conscious Evolution Initiative
It has been said that our generation is the first in history that can decide
whether it’s the last in history. We need to add that our generation is also the
first in history that can decide whether it will be the first generation of a new
phase in history. We have reached a watershed in our social and cultural
evolution.
Dr. Ervin Laszlo

WorldShift International (WSI) is an autonomous worldshift initiative that seeks to promote, support, and engage with the concept of a world shift within our current global systems, as well as an inner-world shift at a personal level, and an evolutionary shift in human consciousness.

The WorldShift International website is a portal to information that supports and encourages both an inner-world, and external world shift, and aims to provide resources that will help to empower individuals in their own process, as well as an awareness for the urgent need for global change. WorldShift International also hosts the ‘WorldShift Now!’ social network, inviting individuals to create, develop and share their own networks of WorldShift aligned interests and activities with like-minded people.

WSI offers a platform upon which it invites collaboration with like-minded individuals, groups, and organizations for cultural, political, social, environmental, ecological and economical reform, and for the establishment of a healthy, functional and progressive global society.

WSI views as imperative the need for us all to recognize the urgent necessity for global change. Not only change in our external systems, behaviour, and practices, but also change in our very way of thinking. A new consciousness is now required if we are to successfully manage our shift forward into the 21st century. It is imperative that we seek the means to transcend the current system and to establish and nurture ways that allow us to live in creative harmony and balance with ourselves, with others, and with nature. As Buckminster Fuller said – ‘You never change anything by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete’.

WSI is committed to supporting and co-creating a positive, evolutionary change; and acknowledges the fundamental strength, dignity, resilience, and spirit of each individual and the inherent capacity we all have to make this shift.

WorldShift International: A conscious evolution initiative seeking to ensure that our generation is not the last generation, but the first generation co-creating a new paradigm in which social, cultural, political, and conscious evolution form the foundations of a harmonious global society.

Coming Together: Time to ‘Occupy Our We’ Feeling

It is now openly apparent, and can no longer be denied or covered over, that many of the material structures in our social world have become a transparent fiction: our financial systems, our job securities, pensions, etc. It is becoming increasingly difficult to believe that these structures will continue to provide for our needs. As our rafts search for land, our paddles are being taken away from us. This has happened time and again. That is why it is important now that we realize the responsibility to reach the shore is in our own hands. And when we eventually find fertile land it will be from our own efforts — and the cultivation that much more rewarding. As personal circumstances become more affected by the changes occurring in the world it will become necessary that people “wake-up” to new responsibilities and decisions. This is what we have been seeing throughout 2011, first with the Arab Spring social revolutions, and now with the Occupy movements. Many people now realize and accept that the upcoming years will be different from what has gone before.
As these physical changes begin to impact and encroach upon each person’s well-being, voices will be rising from within the self and calling for a new way forward. Action should not be an act alone; it needs to be accompanied by an equal, if not greater, act of inner awareness. Each pathway of experience is unique to every person for there are as many ways to the inner self/knowing as there are people’s hearts. Nor is the true spirit one of contemplation alone, for the spiritual ideal of our era now is one of considerate and compassionate action. And through this action, change will come. How difficult or easy these changes will be depends much upon the response of each person. What is important is not only the event itself but also how each person deals with it. The challenges we face may be out of our hands, yet each of us has the power to choose how we respond to them.

Willaru Huayta, a spiritual messenger in the Inca tradition, has been traveling the globe telling people that: “The world is at a critical point of transition, which is highlighted by the crisis in spiritual and moral principles. Nationality is no longer important… Human truth is one. The most important thing now is to awaken the consciousness in a positive form.” The upcoming changes, to some degree, are unstoppable, yet they function to “sweep the house clean” rather than to reinforce any negativity. This is important to remember so that we do not mistakenly feel over-powered by the disruptions coming with the change. Such disturbances, however distasteful, are necessary — just as the odour of bleach is distasteful and potentially harmful, yet its function is to clean and purify. As the world struggles to accommodate the necessary changes there will be countless ripples spreading out into the personal lives of many people. Whilst for some people meditation may prove a means of practising inner balance and focusing intentions, for others there may well be a need for disciplined action.

Part of this can be fulfilled by shifting our behaviour patterns away from a self-centered and material consumerist lifestyle to a more community-centered set of values. As Nobel prize winning author Doris Lessing wrote in her book “Shikasta,” the “broken” Earth needs to regain the energies of SOWF (“Substance Of We Feeling”). The keys to growth and renewal have been planted within each person. Much will be expected from people in the coming years as they face increased fears and challenges; challenges for which history holds few guidelines for the immediate future. Such challenges, whilst resonating within the heart of each person, must surely be in harmony also with our social contexts and responsibilities. The spirit does not live in isolation, but walks with us in life. As the Native American elder “grandfather” says (in a series of books by Tom Brown, Jr.): “Trying to live a spiritual life in modern society is the most difficult path one can walk. It is a path of pain, of isolation and of shaken faith, but that is the only way that our vision can become reality.”

The human species is, after all, a social species (as anthropologists keenly like to remind us). It is easy to behave “spiritually” when one is confined to the hermit’s cave — then our only struggles are with our ceaseless thoughts. However, sincere spiritual activity also requires that each individual understands and accepts the role of their social participation, of their presence and responsibility with friends, family and within the community. It may well be that as times become harder for many people the emphasis will shift toward the need for more integral communities. Social development needs to come through “right action” — with the knowledge and understanding that growth can be achieved more harmoniously when worked at through right intentions and actions.

A “Substance Of We Feeling” is needed like wine grapes need a good soil. As a global community of individuals we are being pushed toward developing and supporting a creative and shared developmental consciousness. Through a combination of physical changes on the social, cultural and political levels, people worldwide will begin to awaken to the audacity of our situation. From this there may be further “awakenings” as the ironic, incredulous and absurd factors of many of our lifestyles are brazenly shown in the shocking light they deserve.

However, there is great need to “work.” We have a responsibility to work toward revitalizing our connection with our “selves” as well as our communities — to regenerate our relationship with the world we live in. This is not a time to fear for loss, but rather a time to aspire to new possibilities. A renewal and regeneration brings in new air, new potentialities and new gains. There is no clinging to the old when there is much vigorous work to be done. Any spiritual endeavour cannot — or should not — be separated from the physical. The human is a physical creature that is nourished from a physical world. Whilst we sojourn on this planet, and whilst our home remains physical, we have a responsibility to manifest our spirit within the physical domain. This is what is required of us, and deep within we all inherently know this. We are here to work together — time to occupy our “we” feeling. Or, as Doris Lessing would say: our “Substance of We Feeling.”

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THE WORLDSHIFT 20 DECLARATION

The new declaration from the WorldShift Council has now been issued, as a response to the recent G20 Meeting in November. Here you can find some extracts as well as a link to the pdf of the Declaration – please distribute and share.

The WorldShift 20 Council offers its alternative to the G20 Declaration in order to call attention to shortcomings in the philosophy of the G20 and introduce a more appropriate holistic and humanistic perspective.
1. Elements of the global crisis
1.1 Financial instability
The current global monetary and financial system is innately dysfunctional on an unprecedented scale; it is approaching a breakdown. Although the on-going crisis is the biggest since the 1930s, it certainly is not the first and without fundamental reform and re-setting it will not be the last. The IMF has identified 145 banking crises, 208 monetary crashes and 72 sovereign debt crises between 1970 and 2010, crises that have repeatedly affected three-quarters of the 187 IMF member countries. These crises feedback to exacerbate each other. A banking crisis can lead to sovereign debt problem (e.g. Ireland), a sovereign debt problem to a monetary crisis (e.g. Greece); and a monetary crisis to a banking problem. Increasing globalization of markets have also become progressively destabilized and dangerously volatile by the lack of effective regulation, over leveraged financing, exponential increases in speculation and hyper-speed transactions.
Until now, governments have kept borrowing from the financial system to bail out banks. They have been tinkering at the margins with regulations, but without any meaningful reform or touching the monetary structure itself. How many crises do we need to experience, or indeed are able to withstand, before systemic problems are addressed with systemic solutions?
1.2 Climate change
Unless decisive measures are taken, the climate changes produced by global warming will come together with such profound synergies that no human power will be sufficient to retain them. They will inexorably synergize in spontaneous interactions and disastrous effect. By the end of the 21st Century, a considerable percentage of the human species may perish due to climate-induced catastrophes, epidemics of diseases sweeping into new terrains, and human conflict and war resulting from the most massive migration of peoples in human history, with hundreds of millions, even billions of climatic refugees moving across the continents. These scientific predictions merit the most sober consideration and urgent large-scale actions.
The year 2011 has seen the most significant melting of the Polar region ice caps since the “perfect storm” of atmospheric and ocean conditions in the year 2007. Ice extent for September 2011 was the second lowest in the satellite record for the month. The last five years (2007 to 2011) have had the five lowest September extents in the satellite record. The linear rate of decline is now -84,700 square kilometres (-32,700 square miles) per year, or -12% per decade relative to the 1979 to 2000 average.
1.3 Nuclear weapons
The abolition of nuclear weapons, in turn, is no longer merely a lofty goal and noble aspiration: it is essential for human survival. Peace is impossible as long as the threat of nuclear war hangs over our heads. A Nuclear Weapons Convention prohibiting the production as well as the use of all nuclear weapons in all circumstances is urgently needed. In a democratic world, such a Convention must be constructed by awakening the public to the threat of maintaining vast arsenals of weapons that could destroy all life on Earth. Such an awakening is already in progress.
In 21 countries, including the five major nuclear powers, polls show that 76 percent of people support negotiation of a treaty banning all nuclear weapons. But powerful military-industrial complexes are trading on the fear that has been purposively foisted on the public. An impartial debate on the subject is almost impossible, and in consequence it is difficult to bring about the consensus needed to initiate democratic measures that could eliminate the nuclear ‘Sword of Damocles’ hanging over our heads.
1.4 Population growth
In the year 1911, the world population was approximately 1.8 billion. In 2011 it has reached 7 billion an increase of almost 400% in just 100 years. The United Nations predicted that World Population could reach 10 billion by 2100, even if the birthrate in all countries slows over time to a replacement level. More than 95 per cent of the future population increase will come from less developed countries (defined as all countries except the U.S.A., Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand) where the populations are overwhelmingly young.
…
THE BOTTOM LINE
Argentina yesterday, Greece today—Italy and Spain tomorrow, Serbia, Poland and Hungary the day after? Sub-prime crisis yesterday, banking crisis today, major-power default tomorrow? The economic, financial and political systems that dominate the world are fundamentally flawed. Global economic and financial instability is an indication of a structural malady. Band-aid solutions applied to the symptoms of this malady are not enough. The malady itself needs to be addressed.
THE WS20 RECOMMENDATION
The G20 leaders need to appoint an independent body to examine the structural causes of instability in the world and recommend effective approaches to cope with it. This body is not to represent the governments of the G20 and is not to report uniquely to the governments. It is to be composed of ethical individuals who serve in their own capacity and represent the basic human interest: the interest of every woman, man and child on the planet. They are to report directly to the people, enlisting the cooperation of the world’s foresighted and ethical media.
In a democracy it is the people who lead, and in a global democracy it is all the world’s people who must lead. The world’s people have woken up: they are ready. They are divesting themselves of dictatorships and hierarchies, they are raising their voice and forming networks and alliances through throughout the globe. They know that the world is reaching a watershed, and that the year 2012 will be decisive to deconstruct the old and launch the new.
The malady is real, but the cure exists, individuals who have the integrity and the wisdom to identify the cure exist, and the people are ready to respond and take the lead. The leaders of the G20 could be the catalyst of an urgently needed worldshift. This would be in the leaders’ own interest. A tidal wave of change is coming, and leaders either enable the people to ride its crest or will be swept aside.

To read more, please visit the WorldShift International website

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Why We Are in Need of a Positive Worldshift

It is now apparent to even casual observers that our world is reaching a critical stage. Most of what we see in the daily news reports informs us of dramatic Earth changes as a result of climatic disruptions: earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, etc. We are also witnessing a surge in people protest as decades of corrupt or inefficient social systems are taking their toll. Yet within this outward surge of turmoil and disruption there are other shifts occurring, such as the transition from the industrial-globalization model of the last two centuries into a more ecological-cosmological worldview. We can perhaps say that our current struggles are between the present model marked by the inequalities of dysfunctional global systems, and that part of humanity which is realizing that a new model needs to be manifested and put into place. Thus, the revolution(s) we are currently witnessing are not only of the physical kind, with civil disobedience, rioting, and unrest. There are also revolutions occurring now in our perceptions and worldviews — a revolution in our collective psyche.
Why we are in need of a worldshift is that the old model is attempting to maintain its grip on power, resulting in resource wars, loss of civil liberties, and the on-going struggle for control and management. At the same time there are many forecasts trying to predict the outcome of the present geopolitical turmoil based upon what has gone before; there is a lack of ability to discern the uncertain, the unpredictable, and the unexpected. The western mindset has a preoccupation, or even obsession, with a linear view of history and progress. Yet the concept of a linear development of human civilizations is erroneous and misleading. Many ancient teachings, both spiritual and secular, and many indigenous cultures, have long known about and taught the concept of cyclic processes that repeat themselves over long periods of historical time. These expansions in social cycles also coincide, or are co-existent with, changes in perception and worldviews. In other words, major social revolutions are accompanied by great shifts in human consciousness. Why a positive worldshift is so timely is that these decades are ripe for a new consciousness to enter into our social systems and push for change at exactly the time when such systems are at their weakest point.
The spiral of cultural history involves a complex interplay of various cycles and systems; of social systems, energy systems, and communication revolutions — all co-dependent and integral. The 21st century has been reached through a growing series of critical thresholds — ecological, biological, social, and technological — moving towards current global, social, and environmental limits. However, at such thresholds new arrangements can be catalyzed into being. The ‘modern mind’ that has exerted itself upon the present world and which largely developed through a trajectory of western history and industrialization, finally arriving at the technological age, exhibits a great deal of short-sightedness. It is a narrow mental framework that either doesn’t quite seem to understand past patterns of historical change, or doesn’t want to. It seems to posses a great amount of guilt (myth of the Fall?); a large amount of blindness (the myth of progress?); and little historical remembrance (ignorance is bliss?). It is little wonder then that a majority of people living today, especially in the developed nations, are surprised, bemused, and somewhat dazed to find themselves staring into a melting pot of uncertainty.
It is our responsibility to recognize that we are living through an extraordinary passage of change, whereby what we do for the next twenty years, from now to 2030, will create the template for the future. And what happens between now and 2050 will be a crucial period for establishing these patterns of change and getting them in place to serve for the long run.
Our current global systems, now more complex and pervasive than ever, form an intricate and entangled web of interconnections, dependencies, and dubious alliances. We are, quite literally, struggling with the older energies of black goo, sulfuric slime, and the dangerous blackened coal pits where humans dig like slaves. Yet we need to recognize, and quickly, that there’s no infinity in a finite world. Despite some of the optimistic claims from the energy industry, planet Earth is a finite resource. The world we are moving into requires new myths, whereby we are not constrained by the powers of corporate greed, political tyranny, and the suppression of human creative vision. It would certainly help if we could break away from the culture of cultivating uselessness. As if bored with our experiences, we create a whole array of artless gadgets to amuse us and infantile our hours. We live in distracting times, racing towards the cliff edge like a convoy of excited, pharma-fuelled lemmings. Instead we should be using both our physical and our psychical energies into moving through this shift and preparing for a re-arrangement of life circumstances. Rather than hoping to maintain the cracking, crumbling, and now dysfunctional status quo we should be thinking about creating an alternative path. The industrial cultures of Modernity, which are attempting to model itself as a global culture, are an artificial device — a prosthetic artifact — that devalues our original and creative component. We may be in danger of replacing the creative capacity of the human mind with technological crutches; unless, that is, we are shocked back into our ‘rightful minds’.
Yet when faced with uncertainty we might be tempted to avoid seeking out the new and to search instead where we are most secure — still within the old comfort zones/systems. The following is a classic tale that illustrates this human tendency:
Some local villagers came upon Nasrudin one night crawling around on his hands and knees under a lamppost.
‘What are you looking for?’ they asked him.
‘I’ve lost the key to my house,’ he replied.
They all got down to help him look, but after a fruitless time of searching, someone thought to ask him where he had lost the key in the first place.
‘In the house,’ Nasrudin answered.
‘Then why are you looking under the lamppost?’ he is asked.
‘Because there is more light here,’ Nasrudin replied.
There will be obstacles in the years, decades ahead, yet at the same time we should be reassured that there very definitely is a future awaiting us too. The degree, and quality, of the change ahead will depend very much upon the degree to which human consciousness is able to change; and to the degree that we can collectively, in our myriad of different ways, help to usher in and manifest a positive worldshift.

New Book Now Out!

My book ' 'NEW CONSCIOUSNESS FOR A NEW WORLD' is now out and available from all good online retailers, including Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk; and The Book Depository.

A call for a paradigm shift in human thinking in recognition of the
interconnectedness of all things—a new mind for a new world.

• Explains how the instability of our current time is part of a larger cycle of
human evolution that will soon turn toward renewal and regeneration
• Explains how to participate in the process of conscious evolution to
maintain resilience during these transitional times
• Examines new findings in quantum physics and quantum biology on the
interconnectivity of all life and how to utilize this for conscious evolution
 

For centuries, indigenous wisdom traditions have talked of an epochal shift on the
horizon, of a spiritual renaissance for the earth and her living family. Now the timelines
are converging and the potential for an energetic “upgrade” for humanity is
here, but first we must survive and evolve through the current period of transition.
Explaining that evolution is not a gradual process but more like a “shock to the
system”—radical waves of transformation after a period of dormancy—author Kingsley
Dennis reveals that we are currently undergoing an evolutionary leap and shows not
only how to survive but also thrive in this period of global upheaval and change.
Examining the nature of evolutionary cycles, he explains that the instability we are
now experiencing—climate change, economic meltdowns, and increasing political
polarization—is the convergence of complex systems that have reached a critical state.
What we need in order to push through to the coming spiritual renaissance is a paradigm
shift in human thinking and perception, a conscious evolution in recognition of
the interconnectedness of all things—a new mind for a new world. Examining new
findings in quantum physics and quantum biology on the interconnectivity of all life as
well as opportunities for us to reawaken our slumbering souls, this book offers a glimpse
of the new global society to come, a renewed humanity for the 21st century, and how
we can each participate during the process of planetary transformation.

The WorldShift Movement

On June 6th I was interviewed by Confluence Media about the WorldShift Movement. Below is an extract from this interview:

What is The WorldShift Movement?
The WorldShift Movement (WS M) was inspired by the work and vision of Ervin Laszlo. WS M was formed in November 2010 by Nicolya Christi as a volunteer, people-focused global initiative. One of the key objectives of WS M is to represent the people, to work with and through people, to empower them to make a shift in their lives, both external and internal. There are six core values represented by WS M:
Peace
Restorative Justice
Sustainability
Compassionate Action
Conscious Communication
Conscious Evolution
WS M is focused upon inspiring and empowering people to be the change for themselves and the world around them.

… there are so many movements. How does The WorldShift Movement stand out?
My personal view is that I consider this as the blotting paper metaphor: you put an ink drop on the paper, the ink starts to spread; you put another drop of ink and more ink spreads – and if you put enough drops it changes the colour of the paper. Different movements are for different people, and not everybody is drawn to the same movements. Different movements cater for different peoples needs and together we can all work towards changing the colour of the blotting paper. There are many movements out there; and WS M does not consider itself to be in competition with any of them – competition is an old paradigm state of thinking. We just have the focus and intention on what we are doing and don’t compare ourselves with others. The change of colour we can all achieve together represents, for me, the shift in peoples consciousness.

To continue reading, please visit the Confluence Media page

The Great Acceleration (Part Two)

The great acceleration that marks our move into a new planetary era suggests a model of greater connectivity and global communication (horizontal), with closer intimacy with earth customs and ethical, moral perspectives (vertical). This acceleration will make many older systems obsolete, as many people have been sensing for some time now, as events in the second-half of the 20th century have indicated. Also, within developed nations there has, over the past few decades, been a significant shift of values in that more and more people are seeking a quality of life that is away from materialism and towards meaning and happiness; towards simplifying their lifestyles (even before the recent economic crashes). So far quality of life for too many people has been provided by raiding the world’s finite energy sources and co-opting other nation’s resources. However, being forced to downsize can be a good thing, turning people’s emphasis away from external status and material possessions and to focus on what is local and meaningful – relations, local resources, working with one’s self and the needs of others. Any form of inconvenience, or even hardship, needs to be taken as a beneficial interiorizing process; a way to developing self-reflexive consciousness. Sometimes in order to gain we must first experience what it is to lose something. Troubled times can lead to an extension or manifestation of empathic consciousness, as we realize the interconnectedness of our worsening situation – just like the war ‘bunker’ mentality during World War 2, a coming together of the people in times of need. 

It is also important to remember that not all of the ‘old models’ of technology will work for us in the future. Our technologies not only need to be more fluid, as in distributed and open source systems, but also more egalitarian and democratic. Technology that aims to dominate will become less efficient and more of an obstacle for us to move forward. People will increasingly demand more transparency and justice in our national and international systems. There will be many more social protests and strikes on the horizon if these systems do not begin to better serve egalitarian and ethical human interests. Further, as the social transition goes through many years of change the world may first have to pass through a period of fragmentation due to energy depletion in the future and/or technological infrastructure problems. A new form of integral consciousness is less likely to embrace a global techno-industrial complex future, despite what some thinkers argue. However, even though there may be initial periods of fragmentation this will not diminish a collectively evolving emphatic mind that will inform a greater awareness for working together; community-building; shared values and ethics; and working towards re-modelling how the world operates. It will not be ‘business as usual’ as most future forecasters seem to predict; many forecasters simply offer a linear view that is just a more ‘planetary’ version of today’s world. This view does not take into account ‘system jumps’; the tipping points, or rather phase transitions, that characterize the energy fluctuations of growth. The future may well be a more mindful, spiritually aware and ecologically-integral period, yet it may also be a more chaotic, fragmented and disturbed global picture as the people of the world – and the world’s structures – learn to reassemble themselves into a radical new form of existence in line with the resources available to us.

This period of psychophysical transformation of life on Earth is likely to include heightened impulses for radical social change and cultural renovation; alongside new discoveries in science, energy, and our knowledge of the cosmos. There will manifest an increased drive for human betterment that will be marked through intensified activism for social, political, and ecological change; and for changes in the balance of global power. Also, large demographic shifts and the active presence of many cross-cultural movements will release much concentrated energy for psychophysical change. Planet Earth is entering a sustained period for historical change, requiring humanity not only to draw on all its physical and psychic resources, of creativity and vision, but to shift into capacities that could ultimately serve to be extremely liberating for the self.

It is certainly no small claim to say that the 3rd millennium will stimulate and nurture a new form of human consciousness. To paraphrase the famous saying of B.S. Haldane, the future of humanity may not be only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. And as Terence McKenna once said, we need to take out our conclusions from being central to our culture and replace them by a sense of the mysterious. The future may open up a greater sense of the mysterious than we have anticipated. Some of this mystery may likely surround the greater capacities inherent within the human. To help us arrive where we are already heading we will have to question, and perhaps discard, many of our belief systems. Rather, we should put the role of direct experience in place of enforced belief systems as these belief systems are self-limiting functions. It is immaterial to have beliefs when the universe is stranger than we can suppose and is thus continually over-riding our beliefs, making them limiting factors if we cling to them. Experience must be made primary; therefore the language of the self must be primary. We need a new language, and in order to have a new language we need a new sense of reality. Rather than consuming ideological visions we need to be the creators of them – to send them out. Let our visions and creativity breed and mutate like viruses in proactive and beneficial ways. Terence McKenna used to urge his listeners to ‘Live as far into the future as you can live’; reminding them also that energy is now rushing into our reality like into ‘the realm of the densely packed’. 

The opportunity is here for change and betterment like never before in our recent history. This means that the responsibility is also here; and these two factors may never be present again at exactly the right moment when they are so badly needed. What the human species may now be witnessing during this great acceleration 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. Further, being nurtured within each person is a growing sense of the greater cosmic whole: the realization that humanity exists and evolves within a universe of great wisdom and meaning. This can serve to impart within humanity a more profound, and acknowledged, spiritual impulse. 

After all, we are already on the way to where we are heading. One can see clearly that Bob Dylan was right when he sang ‘There’s something happening…but you don’t know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?’

The Great Acceleration (Part One)

As the second half of the 20th century moved over into the 3rd millennium humanity saw a rapid acceleration in almost all spheres of life. This included an acceleration in environmental degradation: biodiversity loss; over-fishing; deforestation; stratospheric pollution from chemicals; interference with global nitrogen and phosphorus cycles; holes in the Earth’s magnetosphere; ocean acidification; global freshwater decline; agricultural land use decline; topsoil depletion; etc. With the simultaneous acceleration in human populations and erratic geological conditions this could lead us to change from using the term ‘The Age of Anxiety’ to ‘The Age of Disequilibrium’. However, an acceleration of chaotic disequilibrium also has no alternative but to force a species mind-change on a global and perhaps interior level. These changes have suggested a greater shift towards individual autonomy; a deepened sense of self and psychological reflection; an increased perception of inner and outer realities; and a heightened recognition of the sensory nature of human experience. In other words, there has been an astounding growth in the psychological evolution of the human self. 

The manner in which we communicate reflects our own internal processes. It may be that the rise in global information technologies (Internet and mobile phones), which has brought into being a modern age of distributed communications, reflects a new distributed yet participatory consciousness among people. No longer are we the passive audience as during the earlier electrical revolutions of radio and television: the new model is Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and text messaging. The dialogue is now more active; people are onstage and orchestrating their own connections; managing their own forms of voice and self-expression. The turn of the century, as the 1990s tipped into the 3rd millennium, the social-civil body of the planet began to stretch its tentacles. Social networks have matured tremendously over the past decade; the list of global Non-Profit Organizations (NGOs) grows longer with each passing year. This list includes hundreds of active distributed social networks, as well as participatory news sites (such as the Huffington Post). These innovative networks are the forums for visionary thinkers; ideas spread virally through the electronic nervous system of the planet as once fringe ideas go global. A new civil body is being constructed by the distributed contributions of individuals in every conceivable physical location. Talks are broadcasted regularly – such as in the TEDtalks series of innovative lectures – and social collectives form, activate, influence, and stimulate alternative thinking and ideas. A more mature form of collective social intelligence is beginning to manifest in various parts of the globe:

the interconnection of computers around the world and a communications system that is simultaneously collective and interactive, is not an infrastructure: it is a certain way of using existing infrastructures and exploiting resources and is based on an incessant distributed inventiveness that is indissolubly technical and social…the key element of cyberspace isn’t the consumption of information or interactive services but participation in a social process of collective intelligence…

This new distributed model of civil society represents a burgeoning collective intelligence. It is an emerging intelligence embedded within the notion of systems thinking; a result of our increasing interrelatedness, being exposed to a global world of contradictory realities and multicultural perspectives. Within this rising intelligence exists elements of process thinking (Whitehead), ecological systemic philosophy (Bateson), and an élan vital (Bergson) – all the seeds sown during the latest phase of our reflective, psychological consciousness. As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin correctly stated, ‘The Age of Nations is past. The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to shake off our ancient prejudices and to build the Earth’.

The distributed, bottom-up model may be the working model for the future and, like the Internet, can be built to withstand shocks, attacks, and breakages: we re-route, we disperse and re-join at a later point in the network. This is the peer-to-peer collaborative model – a way of greater individualization within a more shared, complex, diverse yet unified field of interactions. Distributed unity may be a new model to make the old one obsolete.

Externally we seem a vast, distant, and separated collection of people, yet the reality may be much closer to home: a dense, intimate, closely entwined species of various races, individual yet sharing a non-local sense of being. The now famous game of ‘six degrees of separation’ may actually be a good working metaphor to express the close connections existing between the human race. And with the rapid rise of physical global travel and tourism to complement our virtual global communications the world has extended its nervous system to expose millions of people to each other, other cultures, and circumstances. Younger generations of people worldwide are growing up with a new expression of consciousness; the 20th century’s exploration of the psyche, mixed with technologies of communication and connection, herald a more reflexive mode of thought. People today are comfortable in expressing themselves with strangers; they explore and express their inner thoughts, feelings, emotions, and ideas with hundreds of unknown persons online, from various cultural backgrounds. More and more daily interactions are emphatic as we react and share news, stories, and emotional impacts from sources around the world. Empathy is one of the core values by which we create and sustain social life. Exposure to impacts outside of our own local and narrow environments helps us to learn tolerance, and to live with experiences that are richer and more complex, full of ambiguities, multiple realities, and shared perceptions. It is a way of constructing more social capital in our world. We see this happening in modern variations today, such as in open source software (e.g. Linux), or in collaborative tools such as Wikipedia, when a global commons for sharing can work above the individual thrust for profit and commercial gain. Or, as writer Doris Lessing liked to refer to it, the rising of the Substance of We Feeling (SOWF). 

During this accelerating phase of our socio-cultural and human inner evolution we are asked to expand and develop our cognitive, emotional, and perceptual faculties. Harvard professor of psychology Howard Gardner has outlined in his book Five Minds for the Future what he considers to be the five separate but related combinations of cognitive abilities that are needed to ‘thrive in the world during eras to come’ and which we should develop for the future. Gardner five minds, or rather mindsets, are paraphrased here as:

1. To master important subjects rather than simply knowing about them. To stay up to date with the subject and to know how to work steadily over time to improve skill and understanding.

2. To be able to integrate large quantities of multidisciplinary facts and apply them into one’s work.

3. To pose new questions, developing new solutions to existing questions, stretching disciplines and genres in new directions, or building new disciplines.

4. To be open to understanding and appreciating the perspectives and experiences of those who are different from the individual.

5. To do one’s work in an ethical way that reflects responsibilities to others and society; to reflect on the nature of one’s work and the needs and desires of the society in which one lives.

Gardner also refers to a type of ‘existential intelligence’, what he calls a ‘heightened capacity of appreciation and attention to the cosmological enigmas that define the human condition – an exceptional awareness of the metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological mysteries that have been a perennial concern for people of all cultures.’ The psychological impacts we experience will be primary in developing the perceptions necessary for the future. We are today exposed to each other in ways without precedent. The children being born as part of the new millennium (sometimes referred to as the ‘Millenials’) are growing up embedded within virtual social networks that transcend space and time, as well as cultures, national boundaries, and local ideologies. The younger generations are accustomed to send and receive within a field of distributed information in a way that may also help to nourish local networks – and not, importantly, to replace them. This may account for the increasing numbers of young people in developed nations becoming involved in community and social projects and NGOs; taking a year out to help in another culture abroad, to learn and experience, and to offer assistance. Volunteering among the young, despite what appears to be the contrary, is on the increase. Young people are even sacrificing their lives for peace and justice, as evidenced by the actions and subsequent death of Rachel Corrie in occupied Palestine. It is not only a call for equality – it is a loud call for tolerance and justice. These are signs of an emerging relational consciousness, a service-to-others (STO) as opposed to service-to-self (STS).

An Age of Radical Seeking (Part Two)

The half a century from the 1950s to the end of the millennium began with a human howl for substance and inner searching. The poet Allen Ginsberg portrayed this inner rage with his famous poem Howl:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at
dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the
ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.

The search for the heavenly connection came through a sporadic surge for experimentalism, for opening new horizons, sometimes creatively, other times throwing caution to the wind. In some instances it manifested as a hedonistic mix of intoxication, exuberance, and illumination, as in the Beat Generation and the creative expressions of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs. Other times it was channelled through the new growth of interest in Buddhism and ecology as through the work of Alan Watts, D.T. Suzuki, and Gary Snyder. A western counterculture was now emerging through the newfound popularity of eastern teachings (Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism, etc), and the experimental playfulness of mind-altering processes. The zeitgeist of the age can be seen through the psychologist and counterculture guru Timothy Leary’s famous dictum: Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out. Significantly, during this period of experimental cultural expression a new form of psychological consciousness was being explored. Through psychoanalysis and the theories of Freud, who had historicized sexuality and exposed notions of self-esteem and the inferiority complex, the 50s and 60s opened up new areas of self-evaluation. People were increasingly exploring their own feelings, self-reflection, and the interior gaze. Timothy Leary was right to suggest that the new era had shifted to ‘the politics of the nervous system’. Likewise, Theodore Roszak, in The Making of a Counter Culture (1968), noted that sociology had given way to psychology and that the trip was now inward, making everything open to question.

The inward trip during the 60s and 70s was popularized by the experimentation with psychoactive fungi/mushrooms, largely given exposure in the US by the ethnobotany of Robert Gordon Wasson. This later materialized into experimentation with the once-legal drug LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) that was initially synthesized by Albert Hofmann and popularized by the antics of Timothy Leary, and Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, amongst many others. In the 1970s the anthropological research and writings of Terence and Dennis McKenna were gaining a wider readership in their sober assessment on the role of psychedelic drugs in society. This search for non-ordinary states of consciousness also led to many westerners seeking out a shamanic training. Perhaps most popular during the late 60s and through the 1970s were the various books of Carlos Castaneda which described the authors apprenticeship with the shaman known as Don Juan. The market place was open for experimenting with human potential, as was evidenced by the popularity of the Esalen Institute, founded in Californian in 1962, that offered workshops on such subjects as meditation, Gestalt, yoga, ecology, psychology, spirituality, and holotropic breath work. Transpersonal psychology became a defined field with the publication of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology; notable names in this field included Abraham Maslow and Stanislav Grof; and later Ken Wilbur; Charles Tart; Stanley Krippner; Claudio Naranjo; and Oscar Ichazo.

Interest in transpersonal issues, of interior realms, and metaphysics opened the door to a dramatic surge in a form of spiritual beliefs quickly labelled as ‘New Age’. These included life after death; past lives; angels; auras; channelling; divination; crystals; I-Ching; spiritual healing; prayer circles; holism; organic foods; spirit guides, etc. Sacred Sexuality too became a focus with people connecting with Tantric sex, Taoist sexual practices, and Native American sacred sex traditions. There was also a surge of interest in the ancient esoteric interests of alchemy, Hermeticism, the Kabbalah, and Gnosticism. On August 16th-17th, 1987, the Harmonic Convergence gathering took place which brought many people together to celebrate the planetary alignment occurring and to facilitate the shift towards a new era on planet Earth.

Planet Earth was now in full focus, especially after the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20th 1969. The first photos of Earth taken from space seemed to galvanize peoples’ ecological awareness, alongside Rachel Carson’s 1962 environmental classic Silent Spring. The ecology movement was spurred by other such notables as Gregory Bateson; E. F. Schumacher; Arne Naess; and Thomas Berry. In 1970 US Environmental Protection Agency was established and the world held its 1st Earth Day. In 1971 Greenpeace was founded; and in 1972 the UN Environment Program was set up. The 1960s and 70s was a period of tremendous change in thinking and attitudes, with the support of feminism, sexual liberation, civil rights, CND, and freedom of expression. Despite the atrocities of the Vietnam War and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, people were still turning on and tuning in to a new energy of change. Large scale gatherings, such as in the music festivals of Woodstock and Isle of Wight, offered a place for community that celebrated a form of neo-tribalism and self-expression. These events later influenced Burning Man, Glastonbury, and other large-scale gatherings now going on worldwide. The power of change brought about the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989/90.

By the 1990s the most popular poet in US was the Persian Sufi Jalalludin Rumi; holography and the holographic universe was a new popular paradigm; the left-right working of the brain hemispheres was a popular subject; the Internet was revolutionizing communications; and notions such as the noosphere, Global Brain, and collective consciousness were almost common place. What a revolution of human thought in such a short span of human history! In-between we saw a flurry of artistic and literary movements including, in no particular order: Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Dada, Modernism, the Frankfurt School, stream of consciousness, and many more than will need a book on its own to recount. A phase of immense cultural, mental, and psychological growth has occurred in the last 150 years. As if to mark the shift, a statue of Giordano Bruno was erected in Roman piazza in 1889 at the same spot where he was burned in alive in 1600. Was this a sign that the human mind had begun to awaken?

The new scientific paradigm has come a long way since Newton’s clockwork universe. Consider that the scientific contributions to human knowledge include: quantum physics; quantum biology; biophysics; holography (holographic universe and holographic brain); string theory (multiverses and extra-dimensions); systems theory; systems philosophy; self-organization; non-equilibrium systems; chaos & complexity theory; Implicate order; Morphic resonance; and many more. Science established the Genome Project; works with nanotechnology, and quantum computing. It even produced the first successful genetic cloning, of Dolly the sheep, in Scotland in 1997. Now the virtual world is fast becoming a home for many - the new non-locality - where time-space contracts, and virtual communities play around with digital identities. Despite the dangers of these new technologies, an acceleration of possibilities marked the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the new millennium.

As a global society we are witnessing a worldwide movement, although diversified and not always united, towards a new age of the interior gaze. This age will impose great questions upon us, and demand of us profound answers, or at least heart-felt replies. A long period of seeking must inevitably conclude in a period of great responsibility. That time is upon us, and is our current challenge.

An Age of Radical Seeking (Part One)

The modern world has witnessed a different type of consciousness emerging over the past 150 years, a post-Industrial Revolution cognitive mind. New technological innovations that helped to alter our perceptions of the dimensions of space and time in the world began to birth a psychological consciousness; a consciousness that wanted to look beyond the borders and horizons of the physical frontier. The end of the 19th century was also a significant period in the rise of spiritualism and mediums, general interest in esoteric matters, and the public emergence of occult movements.

Just to give a broad overview, the 1870s onwards saw a peak in the growth of spiritualism in English-speaking countries. Interest was rife in communicating with the dead, contacting the afterlife and believing in information from the astral plane. By 1897 it was said that spiritualism had more than 8 million followers in the U.S. and Europe, with state and national conventions, lecture tours and summer camps held on a regular basis. By 1880, there were about three dozen monthly spiritualist periodicals published around the world; and in 1882 The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was established in the UK (by 1914 it had 320 registered Spiritualist Societies in Britain on its books). Around the same time as the interest in spiritualism was peaking, the Theosophy Society was established in New York City by Helena Blavatsky, Henry Olcott, and William Judge in 1875. Theosophy heralded a revival in western occultism and in perennial wisdom. It was also a forerunner to later movements that sought to bring eastern teachings and traditions to a western audience. Theosophy has had a large impact upon western mysticism as it brought forth many personages who later found their own individual channels for teaching, most notably Annie Besant, Alice Bailey, Krishnamurti, and Rudolf Steiner (who went on to establish the Anthroposophical Society). By the end of the 19th century, spirits were well and truly out of the closet.

The same period during the late 19th and early 20th centuries also saw the founding of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (known generally as the Golden Dawn), with its first temple in the UK (London) in 1888. By the mid 1890s the Golden Dawn was gaining popularity both in the UK and later in Germany especially. Well-known members include Irish poet W.B. Yeats; authors Arthur Machen and Evelyn Underhill; and infamous occultist Aleister Crowley. In a similar vein the spiritual teacher and mystic G.I. Gurdjieff was spreading his ideas from Moscow to Paris, from New York to London, aided by the teachings of former pupils P.D. Ouspensky and J.G. Bennett. In 1920 Paramahansa Yogananda arrived in the United States and established the Self-Realization Fellowship the same year, introducing thousands of westerners to the art of meditation and yoga. In 1946 Yogananda published the phenomenally successful Autobiography of a Yogi which since its publication has sold millions of copies worldwide. Other personages gathering devotees and spreading teachings throughout the western hemisphere at this time include Sri Aurobindo; Hazrat Inayat Khan; and Sri Meher Baba, amongst others. Now the floodgates were open and a whole range of mystical, occult and oriental teachings began to emerge within western society, as well as creating bridges to eastern ashrams and religious centres.

What this shows is that at this time there emerged a great wave of influence that turned people's thinking towards a more interiorized, as well as a more transcendental, state. It was a great shift from the physical towards a belief in and an exposure to non-physical realms. Coming as it did at a time of on-going industrialization and material expansion one must wonder if the timing is pure accident. Yet the 'inward turn' was not only happening in the occult sphere. In 1901 Canadian psychiatrist Richard Bucke published his now famous work Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind. A year later in 1902 Harvard psychologist William James published his series of lectures in the book The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. These ideas were beginning to circulate amongst an educated public at the same time that psychoanalysis, developed in Vienna in the 1890s by Sigmund Freud, were also percolating out into mainstream circles. The early part of the 20th century was a period when the 'collective unconscious' was becoming a conscious part of the collective mind. The theories of Freud, Jung, Reich, and other psychoanalysts were changing how people regarded human behaviour and parameters of human thinking. Early childhood impacts, experiences, repressions, and sexuality were all now being unearthed as contributing to contours of the human mind. What happened 'out there' was recognised as being a manifestation of what was going on inside a person's mind. These developments coincided with the rise of the motion pictures as a cultural phenomenon; a way of projecting ideas onto the external screen. Philosophy too was taking on new ideas about the creative vitality within the human, nature's forming of wholes greater than the sum of their parts, and the nature of flow within the universe: Henri Bergon's Creative Evolution was published in 1907 (in English 1911); Jan Smut's book Holism and Evolution in 1926; and Alfred North Whitehead's Process and Reality in 1929. Yet perhaps the most revolutionary change in human thinking came about in the realm of physics; specifically the emergence of quantum mechanics, the new quantum physics.

The early decades of the 20th century saw a revolution in physics, from Einstein's publication of his general theory of relativity in 1915, providing the standard theory on our laws of gravity, to the dual state of particles (photons) in 1926, and Heisenberg's 'Uncertainty Principle' in 1927. The people behind these new discoveries are now almost household names: Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck, Erwin Schrödingr, John von Neumann, Paul Dirac, Wolfgang Pauli, and others. By 1927 the field of quantum physics was reaching a wider acceptance amongst the scientific establishment. And in 1957 physicist Hugh Everett presented his Many Worlds Theory that postulated an infinity of parallel universes whereby the universe splits every time a quantum system makes a choice, and there are billions of quantum events taking place within each ounce of matter every second. In this model there could be another universe where the dinosaurs continued to evolve -- perhaps they evolved high intelligence and now write books on evolution! Quantum physics then finally presented to the world the concepts of particle-wave duality, non-locality, observer interference, and wave collapse. Suddenly, the world was not as fixed, durable, or mechanical as was earlier thought. It was now seen as an unpredictable, uncertain, energetic sea of chance: God did, it seem, play dice after all.

Information became the keyword for the middle of the 20th century also, with cybernetics (Weiner), Communication Theory (Shannon), and early computing (von Neumann and Turing) all emerging with rapidity. This new information revolution was capped by the eventual breakthrough discovery, in 1953, of the molecular double helix structure of DNA (Crick and Watson). The human mind was now processing information at a faster speed than at any time in known history; and most of these new developments concerned the interior gaze. The 20th century became a time for asking and answering such questions as: What lies beyond life? What is behind matter? What lies behind our conscious thoughts? What lies behind all biological life?

The thrust for human meaning, the age of a radical seeking had been born, and it manifested most clearly through the revolutionary second-half of the 20th century. (Part Two to follow)