QUANTUM SHIFT IN THE GLOBAL BRAIN
HOW THE NEW SCIENTIFIC REALITY CAN CHANGE US AND OUR WORLD
ERVIN LASZLO
INNER TRADITIONS 2008
PART XIII
Chapter 13: The Next Evolution of Human Consciousness
Human consciousness is not a permanent fixture: cultural anthropology testifies that it developed gradually in the course of millennia. In the thirty- or fifty-thousand-year history of modern human beings, the human body did not change significantly, but human consciousness did. How will it change next? The answer to this question is of more than theoretical interest: it could decide the survival of our species.
A number of thinkers have attempted to define the next step in the evolution of human consciousness. The Indian sage Sri Aurobindo considered the emergence of superconsciousness in some individuals as the next step; in a similar vein the Swiss philosopher Jean Gebser spoke of the coming of four-dimensional integral consciousness, rising from the prior stages of archaic, magical, and mythical consciousness. The American mystic Richard Bucke portrayed cosmic consciousness as the next evolutionary stage of human consciousness, following the simple consciousness of animals and the self-consciousness of contemporary humans. Ken Wilbur’s six-level evolutionary process leads from physical consciousness pertaining to nonliving matter through biological consciousness associated with animals and mental consciousness characteristic of humans to subtle consciousness, which is archetypal, transindividual, and intuitive. It leads in turn to causal consciousness and, in the final step, to the ultimate consciousness called Consciousness as Such.
Chris Cowan and Don Beck’s colorful theory of spiral dynamics sees contemporary consciousness evolving from the strategic “orange” stage, which is materialistic, consumerist, and success-, image-, status-, and growth-oriented; to the consensual “green” stage of egalitarianism and orientation toward feelings, authenticity, sharing, caring, and community; heading toward the ecological “yellow” stage focused on natural systems, self-organization, multiple realities, and knowledge; and culminating in the holistic, “turquoise” stage of collective individualism, cosmic spirituality, and earth changes.
As already noted in chapter 10, the English engineer C. Maxwell Cade analyzed the states of consciousness manifested by healers in reference to the EEG waves they typically produce. He also analyzed what he considered the high and highest states of consciousness: states of samadhi, satori, or lucid awareness. He identified these states as the fifth state and found that, as with the states of healers, they manifest a moderate amount of beta and theta waves, a wide band of alpha waves, and no waves in the delta region. In yogis, practiced meditators, and psychic individuals the fifth state is remarkably stable. They can maintain this state even while functioning in the everyday context; it appears to have become their natural state of consciousness.
Interestingly and by no means merely coincidentally, a state of consciousness with wide amplitude in the alpha region is known to be the altered state conducive to receiving images and intuitions in the spontaneous, nonsensory mode. It is not surprising that it is prominent in meditators, healers, yogis, shamans, and spiritual people in general.
Cade’s fifth state corresponds to Gebser’s integral consciousness, Bucke’s cosmic consciousness, Wilber’s Consciousness as Such, and Cowan and Beck’s turquoise state of cosmic spirituality and Earth change. It is the transpersonal stage in the evolution of human consciousness. The physical processes underlying this stage can be understood in reference to the Akashic field (the A-field).
The roots of transpersonal consciousness in the A-field
It is standard knowledge that all we experience in our lifetime – all our perceptions, feelings, and thought processes – have cerebral functions associated with them. A-field theory adds that these functions have wave-form equivalents, since our brain, the same as other things in space and time, creates in the cosmic plenum. Our wave fronts propagate in the A-field of the plenum and interfere with the wave fronts created by the bodies and brains of other people. The resulting interference patterns are natural holograms. Generations upon generations of humans leave their holographic traces in the A-field. The individual holograms integrate in a superhologram, which is the encompassing hologram of a tribe, community, or culture. The collective holograms interface and integrate in turn with the super-superhologram of all people. This is the collective in-formation pool of humankind.
We can access the information carried by these holograms. On the holographic principle of “like connects with like,” we can access first of all the information carried by the hologram of our own brain and body. This is the source of long-term memory, extending back to the womb and even beyond. But our access to A-field holograms is not limited to our own hologram. We can also access the holograms of other people; we can tune our brain to enter into “adaptive resonance” with holograms created by brains and bodies other than our own. As a result we can enter into subtle yet effective contact with different people and with nature. We can even enter into communication with recently deceased people, as the prima facie mind-boggling experience recounted in the annex shows.
Practical consequences of the quantum shift to transpersonal consciousness
Tuning our brain to enter into adaptive resonance with the hologram of other things and other people means moving beyond today’s ego-bound and sense organ-limited consciousness to a wider transpersonal consciousness. This shift is likely to have momentous consequences. When people evolve transpersonal consciousness they become aware of their deep ties to each other, to the biosphere, and to the cosmos. They develop greater empathy with people and cultures near and far and greater sensitivity to animals, plants, and the entire biosphere. As a result a new civilization can see the light of day.
The connection between a shift in consciousness and a shift in civilization was envisaged by Native American cultures, including the Maya, Cherokee, Tayta, Xingue, Hopi, Inca, Seneca, Inuit, and Mapuche. They indicate that we are presently living under the Fifth Sun of consciousness and are on the verge of entering the Sixth Sun. the Sixth Sun will bring a new consciousness and with it a fundamental transformation of civilization.
The native cultures were right. Achieving transpersonal consciousness is likely to further progress toward a civilization based on empathy, trust, and solidarity, a Holos-civilization. But will such a civilization come about in time? This we do not know yet. We do know that more and more people will achieve transpersonal consciousness in the coming years, and if we do not destroy our life-supporting environment and decimate our numbers, a critical mass may do so.
The rapid spread of evolved consciousness is crucial for humanity’s future. Whether such consciousness reaches a critical mass will decide if humanity moves in time from the business as usual scenario leading to breakdown to the transformation scenario that leads toward a new civilization. Even if in some societies frustration caused by retrograde politics now catapults people into action, on the global level it is difficult to see how a sufficient number of people would come up with the motivation necessary to achieve a fundamental shift in values, perceptions, and behaviors in the absence of a more evolved consciousness. How could enough people come up with the will to pull together to confront the threats they face in common, to elect leaders who support projects of economic cooperation and intercultural solidarity, to adopt strategies in business where the pursuit of profit and growth is transformed by the search for corporate social and ecological responsibility, to bring online an E-Parliament that links parliamentarians worldwide in joint efforts to serve the common good, and to organize an effective network of nongovernmental organizations to restore peace in war-torn regions and ensure an adequate supply of food and water for endangered populations – how could they do all this and more if they do not reach a higher level of consciousness? In the absence of transpersonal consciousness the worldwide motivation needed to take effective action may have to await the actual occurrence of crises and catastrophes – and if these involve major tipping points, shifting to the positive scenario will be difficult, if not impossible.
We need the timely spread of transpersonal consciousness to bring about a shift in civilization. This was recognized already in 1991 by Václav Havel, then president of Czechoslavakia. In his address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, Havel said, “Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better and the catastrophe towards which this world is headed – the ecological, social, demographic, or general breakdown of civilization – will be unavoidable.”
Havel’s point was well taken, but it is not a reason for despair: human consciousness can evolve. At the innovative frontiers of society it is already evolving. This could empower the shift to a new civilization – a civilization of Holos.
This quantum shift in the global brain is humanity’s best chance. Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt the power of a small group of people to change the world. Nothing else ever has.” Small groups of people with an evolved consciousness will change the world – if they grow into a critical mass in time. There could not be a nobler or more important task in our day than to empower this evolution.
PART THREE
GLOBALSHIFT IN ACTION: THE CLUB OF BUDAPEST AND ITS INITIATIVES
The Club of Budapest is an association of ethical and responsible leading personalities in various parts of the world dedicated to the proposition that we need urgently to change the world and for that we must also change ourselves. This part gives a brief account of the history of the Club, its fields of activity, and the objectives of its major projects.