QUANTUM SHIFT IN THE GLOBAL BRAIN
HOW THE NEW SCIENTIFIC REALITY CAN CHANGE US AND OUR WORLD
ERVIN LASZLO
INNER TRADITIONS 2008
PART XI
Chapter 8: Evolution, Not Extinction!
A Call From Fiji
Adi Da, a New York-born world-renowned hermit living on a remote island of Fiji, has issued an urgent call for change and transformation in the human world. He has recognized the threat of extinction and is calling for evolution. He asks that people come together to create a world united in its determination to achieve peace and sustainability and discover the unity that is basic to all things in the cosmos.
Every once in a while a prophetic voice is raised in the midst of crisis and chaos. It cuts through the walls of indifference, neglect, and just plain ignorance and exposes the heart of the issue. Adi Da expresses such a voice. Not surprisingly, it comes from one who is not part of the hustle and bustle we charitably call the business of living, and less charitably the daily rat race. It comes from one who decided early in life to keep the distance needed for clear vision and enter the silence needed for true audition. We see things best when we have them in perspective: then we see the forest and not only the trees. And we hear best when we silence the cacophony of competing voices clamoring for attention. The source of deep insight is the emptiness that is also a fullness and the profound silence that allows the voice of reason to be heard.
The heart of the issue that Adi Da addresses is none other than the issue of our collective survival – the survival of the species that calls itself Homo sapiens: “Homo the knower,” “Homo the wise.” We have reached the very edge of our species’ viability on this planet. The problems are becoming more evident everyday. Adi Da states them succinctly: “… environmental pollution, global warming, climate change, the abuse of power by corporations and governments, the necessity for new technologies and new methods in every area of human life, the scarcity of fuel resources and of natural and human resources altogether, disease, famine, poverty, overpopulation, urbanization, globalization, human migration, territorial disputes, violent crime, the pervasive accumulation (and the sometimes actual use) of excessively (and even catastrophically) destructive weapons, the tendency of national States to avoid cooperation and mutual accommodation, the tendency of national States (or factions within national States) to use war (and otherwise unspeakably dark-minded violence) as a method for achieving the goals of national and otherwise culturally idealized policies …” The list could be continued; it is long and somber. As we have seen, this scenario of business as usual leads to a dead end.
Other species went toward and into extinction through little or no fault of their own: the environment around them changed or other species invaded their niche. We do not have more powerful species to contend with, but our environment is changing because we are changing it. Homo the wise, the knower, is outsmarting himself. He is creating untenable conditions in the biosphere and stressful and potentially catastrophic conditions in the sociosphere.
What makes Homo create such conditions? Not instincts: those are oriented toward individual and collective survival. Homo sapiens, like other species, most notably the higher apes, possess “hard-wired” instincts that make them into adapted social beings. Chimpanzees who cannot swim have sometimes drowned in the moats of zoos trying to save other chimpanzees who have fallen into the water. Rhesus monkeys have been known to starve themselves for days when they could get food only by giving an electric shock to a companion. When male chimps keep fighting, female chimps have been known to take the stones out of their hands, and if they fail to make up after a fight, the females often attempt to bring them together.
- These behaviors are precursors of human morality. We humans have very likely inherited these instincts from our early ancestors.
- The instincts of modern humans no longer govern behavior. Human reason has the freedom to ignore, and even go counter to, genetically coded patterns of behavior.
- Today it is the egoic, shortsighted rationality of modern man that guides his steps.
- This kind of rationality is now testing the limits of the viability of our species.
Deep insight welling from the most basic instincts of our species for collective survival is what we need, for that – combined with the basic wisdom deposited in the great spiritual traditions and rediscovered at the cutting edge of the sciences – can lead us to a condition that is truly viable: to a civilization that is holistic, peaceful, and sustainable.
- Were it not for the emergence of such insights at crucial epochs in our history, we would not still be here. Because it is emerging again, we have a chance of being here tomorrow.
- The threats come from our egoic separateness, and the salvation from the rediscovery of our unity.
- It is a fact that can be, and is now being, recalled and rediscovered. It is recalled by spiritual masters, and rediscovered by front-line thinkers and scientists.
- Anthropologists have found that so-called primitive (but in many respects highly sophisticated) tribes are nonlocally – telepathically – connected. They have not repressed their prior unity.
- Modern humans have repressed the recognition of our prior unity and then, emboldened by misguided rationality, denied its very existence.
We are now witnessing the consequences: nature overexploited and despoiled, thousands of millions pressed into deep and seemingly hopeless poverty, and the human world fragmented into “me” and “my company” and “competitors.”
Not only are we not alone in the universe – for there is an overwhelming probability that many civilizations exist on some of the innumerable planets of this and billions of other galaxies – we are not alone because there are unseen yet now increasingly manifest forces guiding our destiny. The evidence speaks loud and clear. Voices of true reason rise, a new spirituality evolves, spiritual people tell us that a higher frequency of radiation emerges on the planet. The insight to which Adi Da gives voice is the same insight that is dawning on increasing numbers of people: a decade or two ago thousands, now millions.
The transformation of the human species has begun. A new epidemic is spreading among us: more and more people are infected by the recognition of their unity. The fragmentation of human communities and the separation of man and nature were but an interlude in human history, and that interlude is now coming to a close. We are recovering our unity, not by returning to a prior culture and consciousness, but by moving beyond the fragmented, egoic civilization that has dominated humankind for the past two centuries – moving toward a cooperative world constituted by free people who are capable of representing the interest of the human species.
It is high time to move on: the hour of decision approaches. If a critical mass among us recovers the lived experience and attains the felt realization of our prior unity we shall take action, and we can then await the hour of decision with confidence. The spread of messages coming from the deepest intuitions of which our species is capable is both the means of achieving this paramount condition and an indication that achieving it is not a question of serendipity. It is the fulfillment of our species’ deep-seated drive to safeguard and develop the consciousness that is both our blessing and our privilege – and our ineluctable responsibility to use for the benefit of all people and all things that live on Earth.
PART TWO
PARADIGM SHIFT IN SCIENCE