In 1959 the Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin wrote 'The Phenomenon of Man': he also wrote numerous other books. Most of them, including the above book, were not published in his lifetime. He was not allowed to publish them, under order of the Church Authorities, for they considered them blasphemous. Yet these works show an immense vision: a far-seeing vision of the unification of Mankind - a world of interconnectedness and collectivity. A world-mind. Here are some poignant extracts from 'The Phenomenon of Man' which I hope will serve to illustrate some of the points being raised here on our evolutionary potentials & possibilities:


'…the stuff of the universe, by becoming thinking, has not yet completed its evolutionary cycle, and that we are therefore moving forward towards some new critical point that lies ahead.' (p.251)


'We are faced with a harmonised collectivity of consciousness equivalent to a sort of super-consciousness. The idea is that of the earth not only becoming covered by myriads of grains of thought, but becoming enclosed in a single thinking envelope so as to form, functionally, no more than a single vast grain of thought on the sidereal scale, the plurality of individual reflections grouping themselves together and reinforcing one another in the act of a single unanimous reflection...peoples and civilisations reached such a degree of either physical communion or economic interdependence of frontier contact that they could no longer develop save by interpenetration of one another.' (p.251/2)


'In every organised whole, the parts perfect themselves and fulfil themselves…The more 'other' they become in conjunction, the more they find themselves as 'self'.' (p.262)


'…according to the evolutionary structure of the world, we can only find our person by uniting together. There is no mind without synthesis.' (p.263)


'It may well be that in its individual capacities and penetrations our brain has reached its organic limits. But the movement does not stop there. From west to east, evolution is henceforth occupied elsewhere, in a richer and more complex domain, constructing, with all minds joined together, mind. Beyond all nations and races, the inevitable taking-as-a-whole of mankind has already begun'. (p.278)

It was mentioned in the last post how it is important how we participate in the world with Intention.

This is exactly in accordance with how quantum physics describes our physical reality: it is an observer-based reality, where the observer is not separate from but an integral part to the experience one has, or knowledge one gains, from the physical world:

in other words, the universe is a participatory universe: it responds to the observer -

this then makes such Eastern koens (meditative riddles) such as: 'If everybody stopped looking at the moon, would it disappear?' make more sense. The world exists because we are here to observe it - to participate in it.

This is ancient knowledge, yet it is now being given more credibility through our Western science: a good synopsis to this is the classic book 'Tao of Physics' by Fritjof Capra.

How we remember ourselves, observe ourselves, believe ourselves is fundamental to how we mould and create our participation with the world around us. It is an active endeavour, an active relationship...it takes TWO...

The old Hasidic tale (found in many cultures) has Jehovah/God arguing with Adam, for God was saying that Adam should be eternally grateful to Him for Adam's creation:
'ah yes', said Adam, 'but without me, how would You be known?'

I'll be away for a while....again...

Much has been happening. Travels, Meetings, Doings.

'Intention' has been of focus in what has recently passed: responsibility to oneself. The world, as material and physical as it is, is nevertheless malleable. It can be affected by the strength of one's own presence, or rather, Intention.

It is endlessly creative: our own laws of physics reminds us that it ebbs and flows into creation - endlessly renewing itself. The atoms that we are now are not those that constituted us before - all our physical body is being replaced, and replenished. Like the tide...

...so too do our thoughts, ideas, wishes, dreams, wants, desires...they come and go -they ebb, appear dynamic, rushing, then often flow away from us... so how can we remain true, solid, in such a dynamic world?

We can 'fix' ourselves...become the 'attractor' for the flux around us (to use contemporary terms) - by focusing our Intention, our Will, our density of Being. The Intention attracts the ebbing world around it..is pulled by a greater force... the world 'is' because we see it this way...what becomes can be how we passively view it...or how we participate in it with Intention.

"An important distinction between the present and the past is to be noted in the greater prevalence today of individuals who are seeking, sensing, and expressing their OWN BEING...for self-expression of the BEING among larger and larger masses of people."

Jonas Salk (discover of Polio vaccine & Nobel laureate) - 'The Survival of the Wisest' (1973)

This is one among so many similar statements...with the aid today of deeper understandings in science, we are once again seeing a convergence between spirituality & science:

the renowned historian Arnold Toynbee once said: "The ultimate work of civilisation is the unfolding of ever-deeper spiritual understanding"

Albert Einstein noted: "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind" ...both science and religion strive for Truth...both understand the dynamic nature of that which is Life: there is no division: separation is only a place where We stand...

..."Our perceiving self is nowhere to be found within the world-picture, because it itself is the world-picture" (Erwin Schrodinger - Nobel laureate)

In every moment we have a choice as to how we wish to see that moment: that choice counts, because every moment counts: we live our own world-picture. If we evolve, our world does too.

I thought this little operatic piece was a nice touch:


'He bought white ties, and he brought dress suits
He crammed his feet into bright tight boots -
And to start in life on a bran-new plan,
He christened himself Darwinian Man!
But it would not do,
The scheme fell through -
For the Maiden fair, whom the monkey craved,
Was a radiant Being,
With a brain far-seeing -
While Darwinian man, though well-behaved,
At best is only a monkey shaved!'

Gilbert, W.S. (1962). Princess Ida, In The Savoy Operas, pp.321-322, Oxford University Press, London

So from one shaved monkey to another - I'm off for a few weeks...return to the site shortly after some travels...

There is an old Chinese proverb: ‘If we don’t change our direction, we are likely to wind up where we are headed’  - and where we are headed is as much as a collective situation as it is individual. Further, it is as much of an individual psyche responsibility as it is collective. What this suggests is that how we think globally reflects the reality of the world we inhabit. Before we begin to attempt a global shift in direction, it would be more beneficial to attempt a shift in our species mind set. Again, what 'we' think determines how our future will materialise.

'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

Who are we to argue? Is the attempt at working towards a conscious evolution such a joke afterall?

Been away for a short time: yet not been idle. New impulses are drawing me further into the realm of quantum physics. Acclaimed physicist Stephen Hawking declared that the next century would be one of 'complexity': I used to agree. Now I feel that the next century will be the time of the 'Quantum'...
 
New developments in bio-physics have discovered that all biological organisms are in fact...liquid crystal! And that DNA is a liquid crystal lattice-type structure - some refer to it as a liquid crystal gel. Further, that all cells are involved in a holographic manner of instantaneous communication whilst simultaneously emitting bio-photons that are based on light. So - organisms continuously emit radiations of light that aid all parts of the organism to be in complete omniscient knowledge of the whole...
 
...Sound like the ol' mystics?
 
Conscious evolution, I feel, will benefit from further research, knowledge, and understanding from this field so that such information may become not only more known, but more accepted within our current mindset: afterall, it is our imaginations that create our reality for us.

There is an interesting article on the 'Singularity' concept now quite fashionable in certain techno-evolutionary circles, or with futurists. Without being dismissive, as many people are, I do think it has important issues, and concerns how human-techno partnership will evolve in society.

This is a synopsis from an article in the New York Times - I thought it worth quoting, especially since it refers to a 'civilization-changing event'. Whatever the trigger may be, I do certainly feel that a 'critical instability point' is getting more probable all the time:

Proceed With Caution

New York Times, June 6, 2004


Bill Joy says he thinks the probability of a "civilization-changing event" is most likely in the double digits, perhaps as high as 50 percent.

He doesn't merely ascribe these odds to terrorism; he suggests a pandemic disease might arise from a sudden accident or as a consequence of cutting-edge research. For disquieting evidence, he points out that a couple of years ago scientists assembled polio in a lab.

He says he believes that businesses doing research in areas deemed risky by their peers should be forced to take out insurance against catastrophes. He also says that science guilds should have the authority to limit access to potentially dangerous ideas.

It is worth noting that not only technology is advancing our evolutionary potential - both in terms of tools and applications - but also our scientific investigations into quantum phenomena. In fact, it seems most probable that the quantum field will be the next shift. Quantum computers are already being used for phenomenal calculations, and, perhaps more importantly for the investigations here, quantum physical behaviour is emerging as the next 'big thing' in research: biophysics.

In these terms I specifically refer to quantum coherence, and the concept of biophotons, and bioholography. For an interesting article on this area, see 'Quantum Coherence and Conscious Experience' by Mae-Wan Ho: also available through the 'Co-Globalize' link on this blog.

The idea of a 'collective intelligence' does not seem so remote if we consider it in terms of merging technology. This is now an increasing field of inquiry - serious inquiry - from talk of the 'virtual commons' to a shared 'nervous system' of knowledge. If we consider the state of blogging today - a phenomenon that has increased considerably in the last year or so. And each new technology is being taken up at increasingly exponential rates. Blogging, especially with RSS feed syndication (hopefully coming to this site in the not-too-far-distant future) allows information/knowledge to be tracked and to follow threads as if in a 'cosmopedia' (termed borrowed from Levy - see list below). Grassroots networking has also greatly benefited from techno-networking and is now one of the major social forces. See also the concept of 'smartmobs' (Rheingold) that allows a coordination of social action in near-instantaneous time. Although there is disparity in terms of global access/connectivity, with less-developed regions foregoing the industrial revolution and jumping to the Information Age (sometimes jumping straight to wireless infrastructure) I see this gap being narrowed.

Conscious Evolution then is intimately connected to the issue of how we are connected, and this indicates a merging relationship with our technologies of communication. Although what is being said here is not new, the consequences of a globally-linked species are still, I feel, under-realised. It will be immense and will catalyse the emergence of a wholly new global social structure.

Some texts worth considering:

-Bloom, H. (2000) Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
-Chardin, T. d. (1974) The Future of Man.
-Goonatilake, S. (1999) Merged Evolution: Long-Term Implications of Biotechnology and Information Technology.
-Levy, P. (1999) Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace
-Rheingold, H. (2003) Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.
-Rosnay, J. d. (2000) The Symbiotic Man: A New Understanding of the Organization of Life and a Vision of the Future
-Russell, P. (1995) The Global Brain Awakens: Our Next Evolutionary Leap
-Vinge, V. (1993) 'The Technological Singularity' http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?m=1

Recently I was asked a couple of questions:
"Do you think the path to collective intelligence will be one that must be taken intentionally? Or can a collective intelligence emerge unintentionally?

After a collective consciousness emerges, must it necessarily be aware that it is a collective consciousness? Or, can a collective intelligence exist without being self-aware?"

My response is: the path towards collective intelligence need not be taken intentionally, since it already exists. One way to refer to it is as the 'collective unconscious'. All living species are inherently connected in varying degrees of subtlety. As human thought is becoming increasingly globalised, and awareness of distant events is reaching more people, the empathy and shared thoughts/emotions that this produces is all adding to this 'unintentional' collective intelligence. The thought forms that we emanate go towards the state of our collectivity. However, what I am saying is that an intentional awareness of collective intelligence is more affective and functional. Why? Because an intentional act carries with it more force, power, and effectiveness than a non-intentional action.

This may serve to answer some of the 2nd question. A collective intelligence can exist without being self-aware because, as stated, it already exists. Yet awareness fosters active participation. A collective consciousness does not require that all 'components' or 'members' are conscious, since a conscious entity produces an exponential effect, so only a few conscious 'nodes' or people can represent the many. This is why human history has progressed from the actions of a few...yet the agents of human history have mainly been conscious drivers/participants, or either the agents of conscious entities.

Our conscious evolution then will have a much more profound effect if we, as participants, are conscious of our participatory role.

Intention is a very important element.

An interesting book to read in reference to this is Peter Russell's 'The Global Brain Awakens'

His Holiness the Dalai Lama was in Liverpool today - Thursday 27th May - and gave a speech in Liverpool Cathedral on acceptance of his honorary award from John More university: there is a live web broadcast: the whole event lasts 1h 25 m: it begins with 10 mins of music + introduction; 45 mins of the Dalai Lama speaking, followed by 20 mins of questions, then end ceremony.

Change


We should have intuited that change is best not be
avoided when it comes to call, crashing on us unsuspecting.
It’s only our normalcy, the complacency of our warmth
that steers us away into our regulatory corners.

So there’s nothing wrong then to be woken from
our catatonic slumber, our onanistic embrace,
to face the new dynamic world asunder…

Or so they say, or would like to say, I don’t know,

except that I’m restless if I stay too long, feels as if
I’m being left behind by the whole human race,
wherever they are heading.

If change is good, why do people die only a few miles
from where they first entered life, or fail to open their
windows on a sunny day, I don’t know…


23.5.04
18.36

As I have often stated, and will not tire of repeating: the future of our place in the world depends upon our own perceptions and how we view the world. As matter is a product of consciousness, then the strength of our inner vision can influence external phenomena. If there is enough 'critical mass' then a group mind scenerio is able to significantly alter the directionality of our evolutionary trajectory.

I have also posted from Elizabeth Sahtouris before. In one of her latest online articles: Vistas - Evolving Our Beliefs to Evolve Our Lives - she writes:

"That view is now crumbling under evidence produced by science itself that consciousness is not a late emerging property of evolution but the very source of the entire material world of Nature, including humanity. As that discovery spreads through society at large, along with its implications that we can dream and create the world any way we desire, we need to be well prepared for conscious creation of the reality we truly want.

While people have always created reality out of their beliefs, until now a handful of powerful people dictated the beliefs of each human culture. The glory of our own time is that the news is finally out that each and every one of us has the authority, even the mandate, to choose the beliefs by which we live and create our individual and communal lives.

To create the human future well we need good Vistas -- consciously created belief systems comprised of worldviews and the values for negotiating them courageously and lovingly."

Conscious Evolution requires the participatin of our thoughts: it is not a light thing, nor some 'New Agey' saying. The mind, as an amplifier for conscious thought/energy, can and does have direct and meaningful influence upon physical phenomena. Therefore before we expend our energies trying to change the world, it is paramount that we first change our perceptions and way of thinking: this is the path towards a conscious evolution - an evolution of intelligence.... as the late Prof. Jonas Salk referred to it - 'The Survival of the Wisest'.

Mae-Wan Ho is a brilliant and interesting researcher and Dr. at the bioelectrodynamics laboratory at the Open University, UK - see the site 'Co-globalize' for links to some of her articles. In a recent article with Fritz-Abert Popp called 'Gaia and the evolution of coherence' the conclusion was:

"Living systems are thus neither the subjects alone, nor objects isolated, but both subjects and objects in a mutually communicating universe of meaning. In contrast to the neo-Darwinist point of view, their capacity for evolution depends, not on rivalry or on might in the struggle for existence. Rather, it depends on their capacity for communication. So in a sense, it is not individuals as such which are developing but living systems interlinked into a coherent whole. Just as the cells in an organism take on different tasks for the whole, different populations enfold information not only for themselves, but for all other organisms, expanding the consciousness of the whole, while at the same time becoming more and more aware of this collective consciousness. Human consciousness may have its most significant role in the development and creative expression of the collective consciousness of nature."

The last line is significant, so I repeat - 'Human consciousness may have its most significant role in the development and creative expression of the collective consciousness of nature.'

Again, another example of our intimate relationship with the holistic world around us.

All that is going on around us is a catalyst, or reaction, to our accelerating social change.

The well-known writer Doris Lessing has said:

'But is it possible that all the bad things going on are a reaction, a dragging undertow, to a forward movement in the human social evolution that we can't easily see? Perhaps, looking back, let's say in a century or two centuries, is it possible people will say, "That was a time when extremes battled for supremacy. The human mind was developing very fast in the direction of self-knowledge, self-command, and as always happens, as always has to happen, this thrust forwards aroused its opposite, the forces of stupidity, brutality, mob thinking"? I think it is possible. I think that this is what is happening.'
('Prisons We Choose To Live Within)

I also think this is what is happening - a struggle between movements: intelligence increase and the brutality that strives to contain the primitive in us.

It seems a little strange that despite all the information we have, the knowledge gathered and claimed from centuries of historical experience, that we still haven't found how to put theory into action. The world both produced us and is produced by us. As was highlighted by the Gaia Theory - James Lovelock - the world came into being as a self-regulating organism in line with parameters of existence/maintenance set up by biological requirements. So , the world in this sense is a product of the needs of our earliest biological ancestors. Likewise, we, as a species, are born into a world with physiological faculties adapted to the existing environment: so we are also a product of the pre-existing environmental parameters - taken together, this suggests that both we and our world are symbiotically linked: we are one functioning organic whole. We are made in the image of the Universe itself. Yet why do we act as if we are separate from it?

Our understanding of the world must come through our perceptions - if we do not change the manner of our thinking, the world will not 'appear' to change for us. In this way, in order to 'change the world', we must first change ourselves. Or rather we need to change our way of thinking - this is why it is crucial to shift from a mechanistic Newtonian viewpoint, from one of separate parts, to a holistic understanding where everything fits in as part of ever dynamic processes and relationships that form an organic wholeness. If this can be achieved, then a perception of a sustainable world in balance will emerge. Our thinking at times is barbaric, held in check by fossilised beliefs and out-moded dogmas.

We are often unwilling to change because certainty is safe for us. Well, it used to be. Now it is in danger of becoming our downfall, because if we do not change our way of thinking and behaving, our global world is in danger of large-scale rape and instability. Certainty and static-ness is no longer a viable evolutionary trait.

We need to move our conscious into evolutionary drive in order to educate our thinking processes into better understanding the needs of our global predicament. We, as conscious custodians, must press the evolutionary process forward, and deliberately.

Check out the Worldwatch website in terms of ecological sustainability.

Marshall McLuhan, the prescient commentator on culture expressed the rise of our electronic age, over 30 years ago, as:

'the electronic age is the age of ecology. It's the study and projection of the total environment of organisms and people, because of the instant coherence of all factors, made possible by moving information at electric speeds. Such speed of synchronise information has rendered, for example, both wheel and assembly line obsolescent... the age of implosion is the reverse of expansion. We begin to realise in the depths of our involvement in one another as a total Human community.'(Counterblast: 36-7)

-'the effect of extending the central nervous system is not to create a worldwide city of ever expanding Dimensions but rather a global village of ever-contracting size... the globe becomes a community of continuous learning, a single campus in which everybody, irrespective of age, is involved in learning a living. In the global village of continuous learning and of total participation in the human dialogue, the problem of settlement is to extend consciousness itself and to maximise the opportunities of learning.'(Counterblast:40-1)

Here, McLuhan is correctly envisioning how our technology is able to create a greater ecology by synchronising information between humans in order to foster an implosion of connectedness towards a 'total Human community'. Further, this global Human community is for the purposes of extending our consciousness towards increasing and maximising upon our opportunities for learning - yet learning together within a more coherent social mind.

Not only is this optimistic, prescient, and intuitive - it is also highly humanitarian, visionary - and a possible future scenerio if we - as a community of global thinkers - work towards the increased dissemination of information, knowledge, and activities towards an active participation in our own personal, and later social, evolution.

This is not a fantasy - it is a very real and great possibilitiy. We no longer have to live and die within forces beyond our control. We can learn how to push the buttons - yet the right buttons.

I said in a previous post that 'As we witness this important transformational stage in sociocultural evolution, we see that both diversity and integration is necessary' - the words I used here to denote our position - 'as we witness' are misleading as it suggests that the evolutionary process is out of our hands, out of our choice, and importantly is a process that we are passive too.

This misleads us into viewing the evolutionary journey as being beyond us or outside of us - this is incorrect. We are the evolutionary journey: evolution is a creative transformation that involves us now as active participants.

We have arrived at a stage upon this long drawn-out process that we have the perceptive faculties to understand the processes of which we engage. It is about an evolution of our own intelligence, of our own conscious thinking, decisions, actions, as well as our involvement with the world around us.

The renowned ecologist Gregory Bateson wrote that:
"Darwin proposed a theory of natural selection and evolution in which the units of survival was either the family line or the species or sub-species or something of the sort. But today it is quite obvious that this is not the unit of survival in the real biological world. The units of survival is organism Plus environment. We are learning by bitter experience that the organism which destroys its environment destroys itself. If, now, we correct to the Darwinian a unit of survival to include the environment and the interaction between organism and environment, a very strange and surprising identity emerges: the unit of evolutionary survival turns out to be identical with the unit of mind."

Our choice is one of a collective 'unit of mind' - this is our social mind, one that is inherently in touch in a global sense due to our rapidly evolving communication systems - our future evolution is one that must take into account 'the environment and the interaction between organism and environment'. We are not separate from our surroundings, nor are our actions free from responsibility to our environment.

It is our choice: as Ervin Laszlo stated (see 'Club of Budapest') - it is either Evolution or Extinction.

The evolving social mind requires our consciously evolved intelligence to guide the future direction and future goals. We can be co-creators now, as we co-evolve.