1REED

December 21, 2012 is the End of a Cycle

2009-10-20T16:03:00.001-04:00

A Commentary by Henry Reed
On the Book
Apocalypse 2012: An Investigation into Civilization's End
By Lawrence E. Joseph

What is the meaning of the Mayan's calendar ending on December 21, 2012? Prophecies surrounding that date have been causing much speculation.
Separating the objective information from the mythical is not always easy. One book that stands out because of its exclusive emphasis upon examining the scientific data relevant to that date is Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization's End (Morgan Road Books), by Lawrence E. Joseph.
It is a "just the facts" type of book. The author is a science writer for the New York Times. With no agenda to push except for a father's concern for the future of his children, Joseph set out to discover just what we really do know about the circumstances of the planet as that notorious date approaches.
It is an earth cycle that provides the Mayan end date. The earth tilts on its axis, and as the earth revolves around the sun on its annual cycle, that tilt creates the seasons of the year.
Furthermore, the earth's axis wobbles slowly, so that the tilt's direction shifts with the wobble, making its own predictable, cyclical journey that takes 26,000 years for it to complete. That is one, long cycle. To mark the beginning and end of that cycle, the Mayans chose a particular point of reference, based upon their tools of observation.
One's line of sight aimed toward the sun as it rises over the horizon on the winter solstice projects beyond the sun into the Milky Way galaxy, in which our solar system is embedded. The Mayans, and other ancient people, noted that at each winter solstice's observation, the line of sight to the rising sun points to a slightly different spot in the Milky Way.
The Mayan end date was set for when the line of sight was projected to aim at, or to be aligned with, exactly the center of the Milky Way. How they determined where the center was, or why they chose the center as their point, he doesn't explore. He does point out that scientists believe that the center is the site of a black hole.
What might be the impact of the sun blocking earth's view of that black hole once every 26,000 years is uncertain. Nevertheless, that alignment, coming up on December 21, 2012, is the basis for the Mayan's marking point of an end of an age, and the start of a new one.
The author explores many other geophysical phenomena that coincide with this timing. He finds a disturbing number of potentially hazardous phenomena, many of them cyclical and reaching their maximum potential harm to earth around the time of 2012.
The aggregate effect is an objectively stark picture of the possible fate awaiting the planet, as if the Mayans may have had other reasons for choosing to link their calendar to this event.
The earth's magnetic field, for example, has a long cycle of strengthening and weakening, and is in a weakening phase now. A pole shift is preceded by such weakening, so perhaps a polar shift is coming due. In any event, the protection the magnetic field provides, by shielding us from the effects of harmful solar radiation, is weakening.
At the same time, the ozone layer, also a protective sheath, is dissolving. The earth's path around the sun varies, so that sometimes the earth is closer and sometimes farther away from the sun. As the end date approaches, that eccentric cycle will bring earth its closest to the sun. Moreover, sun spot activity, which has enormous influence on events on earth, and follows an eleven year cycle, will be reaching its maximum activity at the same time.
Thus, as our vulnerability increases to disruptive, even deadly, solar radiation, earth will be approaching its closest point to the sun just as the sun is having the worst days of its cyclical upheavals. There are other heavenly events that seem to be reaching maximum danger around the same time, but we will stop here.
The author maintains his purpose is not to scare, but to lay out the facts. Completing a cycle is simply a fact. But facts can have emotional, symbolic overtones. Our New Year's holiday, birthdays, and seasons, to mention a few common cycles, have a deeply embedded meaning in our psyche that an end of a cycle fosters an end to some life circumstances as well, and an opportunity to start anew.
Even though humanity has lived through this 26,000 year cycle before, it's still natural to imagine that as the earth completes the cycle this time, coinciding with many other projected ominous events, some kind of enormous ending in circumstances on earth will occur, while some great new opportunities will appear to allow us to "start fresh."
The author's concluding sentence is the only hint he gives that he's in accord with the consensus among the metaphysically minded that wonderful possibilities for humanity's evolution lie within the coming challenge: "If we can find it in our hearts to look forward to it all, we'll also find a way to rise above the threat."

December 21, 2012 is the End of a Cycle

2009-10-20T16:03:00.000-04:00

Mesmer, Swedenborg and the Roots of the "New Age"

2008-03-15T16:20:00.002-04:00

The “return of Queztalcoatl,” as in the “return of Christ,” or the “restoration of Eden,” has been a common apocryphal theme. Someone or Something that is wonderful, but that has been “lost,” will be reinstated, will appear again, and things will be different—such is that theme. I’ve been wanting to do some historical research on the origins of many of the themes we’ve been considering, in order to lengthen the “arc” of each story, farther back into time, to perhaps give us a better sighting into the future.

My wife, Janis, has been reading a book The Spiritual Science of the Stars:A Guide to the Architecture of the Spirit, by Pete Stewart. Its basic premise is that for early humans, the stars were gods. So they watched them closely. The myths we have inherited are the stories these early humans saw acted out in the sky. What is amazing, mysterious, is that they could somehow conceive of a cycle that took 26,000 years to complete. It’s one thing to watch the sun go up and down and predict the coming of dawn, or the cycles of the moon, or the cyclical position of the sun at sunrise, but to notice (intuit, see the pattern) a cycle that takes 26,000 years, well, one more amazement. But the reason I’m bringing it up is that by looking at longer arcs of time, new insights arose that were not noticed by viewing shorter arcs.

In my own research on the dissolving of boundaries, the psychology of intimacy has been a major focus of study, as it is so central to self-concept and interpersonal relations, although the boundaries that are dissolving are many, and not just related to psychology. Anyway, I began to look into when in history the concept of “intimacy” arose, when did Oxford dictionary say it was first used. How did we get from a place in human relations where we did not even recognize the existence of intimacy (never gave it a thought) to a place where we create psychological support to help folks who have a fear of intimacy? From cave person to tribal life, to serfs under kings, from home-based farming to the industrial revolution, the man in the grey flannel suit, to encounter groups, to streakers, to MySpace, we have gone on an interesting journey from oneness, to separateness, and now onto a global, individualized awareness of inter-connectedness. The sense of self has developed alongside this storyline.

Anyway, enough prologue. I came across a book tucked back in my library, Perspectives on the New Age, edited by J. R. Lewis and J. G. Melton. Although the “New Age” is no longer a popular term, as the concepts have gone commercial and “mainstream,” and thus shed itself of anything flaky sounding, nevertheless, for some time, New Age was a meaningful label for a movement. How did it get started? The book is a collection of essays on various aspects of the New Age movement, but the history is what I’ve been reading about and wanted to share with you.

There are many ways to trace the history. In chapter 3, “Roots of the New Age,” Kay Alexander traces the roots of two main themes of the New Age: 1) New Thought (Christian Science to Course in Miracles.. and, of course, Edgar Cayce) and 2) Theosophy, back to two men: Anton Mesmer (1733-1815) and Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).

Swedenborg was a clairvoyant who psychically perceived levels of heavens and hells, described them, and re-introduced the Hermetic principle of "as above, so below," regarding the correspondences between different levels of reality. Mesmer is responsible for introducing a handle on a mystery we now call “hypnosis,” a primary manner of learning to follow in Swedenborg’s footsteps. How Mesmer made his “discovery” of “animal magnetism” remains unknown to me, but this “juice” was understood to be something important to healing, transformation, and spiritual realities. Today, would we call it the “force,” or the “matrix,” or maybe “spirt,” or “kundalini,” or some other supersensible power that runs through all of life.

Whereas dreams probably had a lot to do with the origins of religion, as well as the stars, being able to enter altered states for accessing special information and inspiration. Whether through meditation, self-hypnosis, my inspired heart method, or some other personal skill, we can explore those same realities that gave rise to much of the worldview that is coming into its heyday now.

The last term, “kundalini,” brings up the Hindu tradition, which of course pre-dates our two gentlemen. Theosophy, founded in New York by Blavatsky in 1875, and developing there at the same time that New Thought was spreading. Hinduism joined forces with this movement through Theosophy and also through the coming to America of such folks as Yogananda, and others. That’s not a line I’m going to explore here, but there are chapters on this particular branch of the history, for even the most ancient spiritual tradition talked about our contemporary time period. As John Major Jenkins demonstrates in his book, Galactic Alignment: The Transformation of Consciousness according to Mayan, Egyptian, and Vedic Traditions, it wasn’t just the Mayans who were aware of the 26,000 year cycle and who prophesied creative upheaval in the 2012 period.

More to come…

Dissolving the Boundary between Life and Death

2008-03-03T15:29:00.000-05:00

If there’s one thing certain about our changing times, it is that boundaries are disappearing. Pollution, computer viruses, terrorism, AIDS, digital information, the world economy—isn’t oneness wonderful? Something is in process that is taking us, kicking and screaming, toward the interconnected world we’ve always preached about, but seem unready to handle. The dissolving boundary between the objective world “out there” and the subjective world “in here” is especially troublesome for our identities. Out-of-body experiences that prove clairvoyant and alien abductions that leave physical scars are two examples where the realm of the mind and the realm of the physical world seem to overlap or coalesce. We keep a tight distinction between what is only “imaginary,” and what is (physically) “real.” But with the birth of quantum mechanics that distinction was destined to be dissolved. What is happening to our world, to humanity? We might suggest that there’s something afoot whose aim seems to be to “shamanize humanity.” There’s a growing collection of bizarre experiences that threaten to transform our very notion of reality and our place in it. Near-death experiences and the enormous amount of research conducted on this phenomena is a case in point.

The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences: The Ultimate Guide to What Happens When We Die (Hampton Roads Publishing) is a big book alright, and it is as much about the nature of the life as it may truly be than it is simply about the journey from life to death and back again. The author, P.M.H. Atwater, has many books to her credit on this theme, many of which draw upon the work of Edgar Cayce. Her Big Book is certainly encyclopedic and comprehensive. We learn in it more than about the enormous body of research that is providing important information about the nature of these experiences. We also learn how NCEs fit into the more general class of all transformative experiences. We learn that there is a general pattern to transformative experiences and that they are becoming more and more common. So common that together they are inspiring a new concept of what is afoot: “the translucent revolution,” meaning more and more people are becoming less egotistically dense and more transparent to the transpersonal light of creation, or God. Humanity is undergoing a transformation, and Atwater sees evidence of it in the children, what some call the Indigo children. As the veil between life and death disappears, it reveals a greater reality. Truly, this Big Book is as much about this larger reality than it is about simply the phenomenon of being dead for awhile and coming back to life. If it were the case that NDEs were the only phenomenon to transform lives, the only phenomenon in which alternate realities were visited, the only phenomenon in which spirit beings were encountered, the only phenomenon in which people experienced their inherent divinity, then NDEs would certainly be anomalous. But by placing NDEs within the larger context of other transformative experiences, Atwater is able to make a credible case for an emerging evolutionary force at work within and around us.

We are moving, slowly but surely, away from being “grounded” in the physical world and becoming more and more beings in the world of consciousness itself. It is as if the physical world could disappear someday, but we would continue living in a “virtual” world of consciousness. Whether or not we experience this coming change as rapture or rupture may depend upon the attitude with which we regard the death of life as we know it

The Purpose of Prophecy

2008-02-29T00:37:00.001-05:00

A Commentary by Henry Reed

Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. Those who ignore the future, however, may be condemned to relenquish it.

Does prophecy help us meet the future, avoid it, or is it self-fulfilling? The purpose of prophecy, according to the Hopi, is to give us a role as a co-creator of the future. Thus concludes Rudolf Kaiser in his new book The Voice of the Great Spirit: Prophecies of the Hopi Indians (published by Shambhala).

The Hopi prophecy has an honored place among other sources, such as the Book of Revelation, Nostradamus, and Edgar Cayce. What they share is a vision of global transformation, dramatic and systemic changes in the nature of life on the planet. Kaiser's scholarly book details the history and development of the Hopi prophecy and its relation to other prophecies, including the less well-known Mayan and Oglala Sioux visions of the future.

According to their creation myth, the Hopi were the first ones to inhabit this planet, actually being survivors from a previous age of people who were annihilated by flood. Ours is the fourth world or age. The others were previously destroyed when the population had progressed, as if on a regular cycle, from innocence to ego-centrism, materialism and greed, and finally to destruction. This fourth world is in its final stage, ready for destruction.

The first encounter with the Hopi's prophecy occurred when the Mormons attempted to convert them in the 1850s. It was then that they learned that the Hopis regarded the Mormons as the "Elder White Brothers," referred to in their prophecy as the returning savior. Some Hopi later changed their assessment of the Mormons and of the Europeans generally, for the white man was clearly not a savior. To this day, the Hopi argue the role of the European in fulfilling their prophecy of the "Elder White Brother," much as Christians argue whether a given influence is of the Christ or of the Anti-Christ.

The Hopi went more public with their prophecy in 1947, revealing the mention of a "gourd of ashes," which they interpreted to be the atomic bomb. Just as many Westerners believed that the atomic era put us on the edge of destruction, so the Hopi connected the bomb with the advance of their prophecy--especially in its apocalyptic aspects.

The Hopi prophecy has changed over the years. Kaiser traces these changes and explains them. According to myth, when the fourth world came into being, God created some writings on four stone tablets to give humankind a sense of its origins and destiny. The iconoglyphs on the stone tablets notwithstanding, the Hopi prophecy was an oral tradition, enabling the people to interact with it. Rather than making the prophecy invalid, this malleability makes it more alive to the Hopi. It lives within the people and grows with them. It is a means by which they find they can participate in the shaping of the future.

By living with the Hopi and interacting with them concerning their prophecy, Kaiser learned that it functions to remind them that they have choices and that those choices affect the future. Prophecy doesn't take away our free will, he learned from the Hopi, but gives us an opportunity to participate in the future by helping us envision the long-term consequences of our attitudes. Without prophecy, there is no future to contemplate; there is only fate. Humans who have no prophecy have thus surrendered their future to helplessness and unknowingness. To the Hopi, prophecy is God's way of giving us the opportunity to be team players in the future.

Jesus and UFOs: Riders of the New Wave of Imagination

2008-02-22T13:13:00.000-05:00

Jesus and UFOs:
Riders of the New Wave of Imagination

They can appear to us coming out of the sky, at the foot of the bed, or even inside our heads. They may seem subjective as a dream yet leave a physical trace of their visit. They may feel real to the touch yet abruptly dissolve through a wall. However they appear our lives are never the same. As momentous the encounter may be we hesitate to mention it to anyone less our credibility be questioned.

Jesus and UFOs have a lot in common. Their appearances in people's lives actually share similar traits with apparitions of Mary, and angels as well as demons. All such visions are occuring more frequently than before. There is a foreboding feeling that in this "age between gods," there is a hole in the ozone layer of the psyche leaving us vulnerable to alien thoughts and images which, like awesome asteroids from the far flung corners of mindspace, threaten to collide with our worldview.

There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. What if the idea is something that spells the end of the world as we've known it and the end of the future as we've imagined it? One definition of the millenium may be that it is the time in the crack between the worlds when all that is imaginable becomes real and all that was real becomes imaginary. Maybe "New Age" means the world is undergoing a visionary siege accompanying a near-death experience.

It is perhaps no coincidence then that it is Raymond Moody, author Life after Life, who writes the introduction to the new book by Gregory Scott Sparrow, Witness to his return: Personal encounters with Christ (A.R.E. press). Sparrow, who's previous work, Lucid Dreaming: Dawning of the Clear Light, is generally regarded as a contemporary classic, now brings us accounts of people who have had personal experiences of Jesus, face to face meetings with the Messiah returned. These stories of encounters with special beings of light who inspire awe, who perform physical healings, and who transform lives carries the same sort of potential impact as Dr. Moody's groundbreaking book about near-death experiences.

Sparrow's book should stimulate excitement and debate on many fronts. Think of Sophy Burham's surprising bestseller, A Book of Angels (Ballantine). It spawned an immediate sequel, Angel Letters, because there were so many more people who had had these encounters than the author had originally realized. Sparrow's book is so convincing that a sequel feels inevitable.

Was the encounter real or was the person just imagining it? This question may be the hallmark of the mentality of the rational age. By giving the first name, "Just" to imagination, the rational mind clearly puts the experience in its place, a spot inferior to "reality."

One of the paradoxes of these apparitions, however, is that they are challenging our views about the imagination and blurring the distinction between subjecive and objective, inner and outer. The rational age seems threatened with extinction. Nowhere is this threat more clear than in UFO sightings and abductions.

A new book, Angels and Aliens: UFOs and the Mythic Imagination is probably the most profound book on the UFO controversy yet to appear. That a respected academic press such as Addison Wesley published the book makes you take notice. The author, Keith Thompson, an independent scholar who, by first interviewing Robert Bly in New Age Journal, is credited with unleashing the Men's movement. Here Thompson chronicles the unfolding of the UFO story from flying saucer sightings in 1947 to the millenial mythologizing they've stimulated today. Rather than deciding whether UFOs are nuts-and-bolts flying machines or subjective, symbolic experiences, he allows that they are both and then some. Denizens of the mythic imagination, they are messengers from a deeper reality, he theorizes, who have come to help us let go of our old world and prepare for the new. Like Sparrow who writes that we tend to "create our identity by excluding aspects of ourselves rather than by embracing our wholeness," Thompson suggests that UFOs force us to grant reality status to the imagination, thus admiting into our world regions we've long excluded.

That it is the imagination indeed that is both the source and the target of what we call the "New Age," or millenium, is a subject treated with even broader historical perspective in another recent book, Reimagining the World: A critique of the New Age, Science and Popular culture (Bear and Company). A record of a public dialogue between two great metaphysical philosophers, David Spangler & William Irwin Thompson, it is an intellectual feast that provides a good context for digesting Sparrow's and Thompson's reports. The authors are both mystics who have "retired" from the "New Age." Spangler, once of Findhorn, and Irwin Thompson, once of Lindesfarne, identify the imagination as the creative spiritual force moving us into a completely new future. They condemn the "New Age," however, as vulgarized by the media serving our desire to "perpetuate the familiar in the guise of the new." Specific images of the New Age must die, THEY ARGUE, for the New Age to live. Worship no graven image. It's too easy to get stuck on a particular "image" of the future, they contend, rather than the force of imagination itself.

The new wave of the imagination sweeps upon our shores many travelers. What type of passport will help us discern the dark invaders from the bright avatars? The encounters Sparrow describes all have constructive side-effects--lives are changed for the better. There is no such consistent positive impact in the encounters Keith Thompson surveys, even when he places them in the politically correct context of shamanic initiations. This distinction readily suggests the ideal of "fruits of the spirit." God is love, Jesus is comforter. Yet if we assume we can always recognize the fruits, how do we know we might not exclude a new form of fruit never before encountered? Prepare to imagine the unimaginable.

To learn about Henry Reed’s upcoming School of the Prophets seminar on the future of consciousness, go to henryreed.com/futureconsciousness

The Shamanizing of Humanity

2008-02-21T13:48:00.000-05:00

I hope you’ve had a chance to read the summary of Kenneth Ring’s The Omega Project, prepared by Quentin Benson, and appearing in the latest issue of intuitive-connections.net. You can find it at http://www.intuitive-connections.net/2008/b00k-omegaproject.htm

There are at least three important books that outline “the shamanizing of humanity,” as described in this book. The other two are Passport to the Cosmos, by John Mack, and The Final Choice, by Michael Grosso. There could be others. Ring’s and Mack’s books are the result of enormous scientific research. They all point in the same direction, that being labeled “the shamanizing of humanity.”

Ring studied both UFO encounters and Near Death Experiences. From the summary: “Despite the obvious differences between the UFOE and NDE, Dr. Ring declares that at a deeper level, there is a common link between these extraordinary encounters—the archetypal structure of both experiences. As the UFOE takes the general form of the Hero's Journey, so does the NDE. The domains of the two experiences are quite different, yet both NDE and CE4s appear to represent the Initiatory Journey.”

“Both NDErs and UFOrs enter a non-ordinary reality where they undergo an initiatory ordeal after which they return to their "real" life, but in some way transformed by their experience. Both NDEs and CE4s have the same structure and contain the same factors. The personal changes that occur after NDEs and UFOEs are permanent in other words. In Dr. Ring's own words, ‘Extraordinary encounters appear to be the gateway to a radical, biologically based transformation of the human personality.’"

Ring’s book concludes by referencing the little known work on the “imagination” as a dimension of reality, a “supersensible” dimension known intuitively or psychically, rather than with the senses. He argues that the changes coming have to do with this dimension becoming more “real” in our lives. That idea echoes Terrance McKenna, who in his book, Archaic Revival, predicts, without any evidence from the research above, that we are moving into the realm of the imagination. What that might mean for life on our planet is a fascinating subject which I intend to explore more.

We have the books, Passport to the Cosmos scheduled for summarizing by Connie Livingston Dunn, and The Final Choice scheduled for summarizing by Andrea Rumpsza. I’m looking for someone to summarize McKenna’s Archaic Revival. There could be other books along this line, which I hope to find, and if you have any suggestions, let me know. The above books are very high quality, grounded material for such mind-blowing topics.

If you have any hopes of joining us at our School of the Prophets, September 14-20, please go register at http://tinyurl.com/ywzs7t

Henry

Mind Before Matter

2008-02-13T16:12:00.002-05:00

I just received an email about a conference being held in San Francisco, related to the book, Mind Before Matter: Visions of a New Science of Consciousness. The book’s authors include John Mack, Amit Goswami, and Dean Radin, all authors of books we have on our study list.

The theme is a basic one to what lies ahead. I was thinking the other day that the Course in Miracles may be viewed as founded on that core reality that consciousness precedes matter. The way I sometimes say it is that you could blow up the world into nothing—no more brains!—and consciousness would still exist. There is this trend in thought to reject the philosophy of materialism and replace it with one that makes consciousness the ultimate reality, one label Goswami gave for it was “monistic idealism.”

Another trend that is related is the increase in interest in “non-dual awareness.” It seems as it was first introduced to the West via Douglas Harding’s book, On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious. His is a startling “look” at non-dual awareness. It can be a shock, that “you” are really consciousness, and all is “one,” and the state quickly disappears, but you always remember it, and looking back, it is kind of obvious, but yet hard, for me at least, to let go into it for long periods of time. Interesting that over in the What is Enlightenment website, Andrew Cohen claims that he’s been with his students where they’ve enjoyed a shared sense of this experience lasting for hours. I can recall years ago being with a group where we were doing “Dream Theater” and we experienced it for a few moments. In any event, more people must have been having this experience as there are now many books out on the subject, including one on how psychotherapy for such individuals needs to be different—The Sacred Mirror is the title of that book, and Diane Evans, of our consciousness group, has prepared a summary of it, which I hope to get edited soon and posted on our webazine.

But meanwhile, while the philosophers are discussing the data from the work of Mack, Radin, and a bunch of others, while the Course in Miracles, the Hicks’ work, and other groups teach that philosophy, and provide guidance into how to move it from being a philosophy only and into a direct experience, and while another group of folks have been exploring non-dual awareness, at the same time there seem to be things afoot that are pushing us off our material base where we have to jump off the cliff into consciousness itself, like a bird discovering that it can fly. And this is where prophecy, earth changes, and consciousness evolution come together. There are events in progress that are creating chaos in our world and which are stimulating an evolutionary transition or “jump.” We can sense that one aspect of this shift has to do with the theme, to borrow a phrase, “Mind before Matter.” Interconnectedness is another, oneness, beyond boundaries—these are some other themes that express ways of looking at what’s happening.

Someone on our list emailed me and asked if I thought the trend might be toward a hive consciousness. I would say yes, and given time to elaborate, I would point to my work with the Sundance Experiment and the work relating to “extra-terrestial intelligence, of which one of my favorites is Jacques Vallee’s The Invisible College. Does anyone have a copy of that book? I’m sure there are other books exploring that theme.

Terrence McKenna predicted some time ago that the trend seemed to be that folks were living more and more in their imagination, until we shifted into a totally virtual reality. Even literally, as a recent news report indicated that a study had shown that less and less human hours are being spent in outdoor recreation, and more and more time with indoor electronic devices. There was less demand upon public parks but more demand for electronic gaming emporiums…. “going virtual.”

More later...

Video on the Mayan Calendar

2008-02-13T00:43:00.001-05:00

Google has its own videos, not limited to the ten minute span available on You Tube
Here's a link to a video on the Mayan Calendar
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8689261981090121097&hl=en

The Mayan with no Head

2008-01-26T09:12:00.001-05:00

I wrote the essay below some years ago. Today I see it as part of the key to my relationship to the 2012 mystery. I have found an interpretation of the galactic alignment as relating to the Mayan idea of having no head, as shown in some of their carvings. That image pertains to the ego self being eclipsed and the God consciousness shining through. Today, some call that "non-dual awareness." My work on the emerging crisis in boundaries and its effects suggests that as boundaries continue to dissolve, the psychic effect will be to create a tendency for non-dual awareness to erupt spontaneously in people, for some feeling like enlightenment, for others like depersonalization.

It's Hard to Be the Only One Who Knows

In a dream, as I gaze at my reflection in a mirror I am twice amazed. First, I see that I have no head. I am holding my severed head about chest high in my hands. Second, I am amazed that even without a head I can see quite well. I stare even more intently into the mirror, marvelling and attempting to understand this mystery.

I had this dream many years ago and have been spellbound by it ever since. I once read a book on Buddhism that suggested that the experience of enlightenment might be simulated by imaging seeing the world while having no head. The head restricts consciousness to within an enclosed identity. By replacing the restrictive head with the entire world, consciousness is liberated and de-localized. The exercise symbolizes opening the shell of the ego boundary to allow one to become one with all of life.

I encountered further understanding of my dream at the ballcourt of the Mayan ruin of Chichen Itza. On the wall of the stadium is the carved image of a decapitated ball player. Out of his neck portal gushes the world tree, which branches and flowers as seven kundalini serpents, pouring life out into the world. The image suggests that if we surrender ourselves to the game of life, sacrificing our own personal identity to the play itself, we can be channels of profound creativity.

These ponderous thoughts were but dim intuitions until I read the book The shaman's secret: The lost resurrection teachings of the ancient Maya (Bantam Books). The author, Douglas Gillette, a theologian, had written an earlier book, King, warrior, magician lover, exploring the archetypal symbols of the spiritual masculine. He now brings his well developed gifts of symbolic interpretation to the Mayan world. Much progress has been made in deciphering the Mayan heiroglyphs. Drawing upon both Jungian techniques and comparative religion, Gillette is able to reveal the meanings of these intriuging carvings and paintings in a manner not possible before. The result is a stunning revelation of a worldview of "terrible beauty."

We are prone to dismiss or reject the Maya as teachers because of their blood sacrifices. We learn in this book, however, that there are many exact correlations between the Mayan world and the worldview we associate with Edgar Cayce's esoteric vision of a mystical Christianity. We are also reminded of the extensive bloodletting symbolism and magical blood practices in the Christian myth. The Mayan world, however, includes a more candid embrace of the darker aspects--suffering, cruelty, and death--in a brave, and, according to Gillette, successful attempt to use these demons to liberate consciousness.

"In ancient Maya belief, we are all called upon by the gods to become one with them and live forever. In the simplest and the most dramatic happenings of our lives the Lords of the Otherworld are giving us opportunities to create resurrection events for ourselves. But, according to the Maya, we must engage our own hidden depths in order to succeed. Those hidden depths embrace a universe filled with terrible beauty and divine power, and one that is vitally, miraculously, and ecstatically alive."

The goal is to become a companion to the creator god. To be such a companion to the divine requires the heart-challenging task of being both transparent to the transpersonal and yet an individual who provides the knowledgeable and conscious reflection that companionship requires.

In my dream I remove my head and allow my mind to become transparet to the transpersonal. Yet still I have my personal awareness--I can see what is happening. Thus the event has me for a witness. In the Mayan world, this witnessing is an important aspect of their resposibility to to the Creator.

The Mayans believed that there were four worlds before them. Each was destroyed by Creator because the people could not say the prayers correctly. Only when the people correctly acknowledge in their awareness the presence of Creator does that Creator God fully exist in a conscious state of being. The Mayans realized that God is dependent upon the people for its conscious existence. The Creator God created the people for companionship to give God this special dimension of being.

It is hard to be the only one who knows. Sharing an experience with a companion relieves a burden of loneliness. A companion who relects our experience back to us births our experience outward into the world. It makes us seem more real to ourselves. We can relax and grant greater reality to the world itself. We want to return the favor.

According to the Mayans, the Creator God created the world through a process of self-sacrifice (symbolized by self decapitation). To become companions to God, we are asked to similarly perform this self-sacrifice in order to bring God into conscious existence in this God created world. Gillette describes in detail how this service to God was the Mayan's "ressurection machine," giving their souls immortal bodies that defeat the illusion of death. Our creative self-sacrifice bestows an immortality upon us, and resurrects us as co-creators of the world.

Are You Participating in the Translucent Revolution?

2008-01-18T15:24:00.000-05:00

I’m not sure if you are old enough to remember, but back in 1980, there was quite a fuss when Marilyn Ferguson came out with her book The Aquarian Conspiracy. It was an exciting event to find tangible evidence of something many of us suspected: we were not alone in our new way of thinking! The book surveyed the many recent developments in research, theories, education, therapies, and other domains of activity that were expressive of the “new paradigm.” Ferguson actually named the shift and helped us focus on what was happening. She called it the shift from separation to interconnectedness. I know that many folks on the A.R.E. community were thrilled with her analysis, for it echoed a fundamental principle in the Edgar Cayce material.
The choice of the word “conspiracy” was also of interest, as it suggested that something larger than any one individual was at work. It suggested the potential of creating a new culture, not simply a new way of thinking, but a new way of being together, working together, something that could replace the entrenched establishment, which certainly had the upper hand, as in the conspiratorial phrase, “the old boys’ network.” Her survey of the findings of “new science” in so many different fields of study seemed to provide the necessary credentials to make the new paradigm not merely wishful thinking but enlightened and rational. The only excuse for not being part of the conspiracy, it seemed from her encyclopedic documentation, was ignorance.
Now, some twenty five years later, there’s a new book out, written with the same kind of excitement, the same kind of suggestion that the tide is turning, the same kind of invitation to be a part of something big. It is The translucent revolution: How people just like you are waking up and changing the world (New World Library). The author, Arjuna Ardagh, is someone I had never heard of before (nor had I heard of Ferguson when her book was published). The book says he has practiced meditation and yoga since a teenager and has a large following through his “Living Essence Training,” which I hadn’t heard of either. Nevertheless the book is a credible analysis of his survey of hundreds of people who have gone beyond worshipping the new paradigm and are now living it and making a difference in the world as a result. The essential advance of this book over Ferguson’s is that while she was focused on the evidence substantiating a conspiracy to think in a new way, Ardagh’s book is about the effects of applying the awakening.
The book begins by giving some stories of ordinary people who have had some type of peak experience that exemplify what he means by “translucent.” It reflects a state of consciousness in which the ego no longer blocks the higher consciousness from shining through. Higher awareness is not always present in these folks; they don’t go around in a state of bliss, but the awareness of oneness has become enough of a reality that their egos are no longer the director of their lives, but a servant of practical spirituality. As your read his descriptions of such folk, you may very likely find yourself to be among them.
The author notes surprise that his survey revealed that it is not mainly in offshoots of Eastern religion that he has found the translucents (as it may have been years ago), but in various self-help groups, cchurches, various volunteer organizations, and in many schools and businesses.
What happens when people experience themselves as connected with others rather than separate? Doing for others becomes the same as doing for oneself. Altruism loses its meaning for these people, because they don’t see it as sacrificing of oneself for someone else, but simply as sharing the abundance. Volunteerism is common among these folk, not because they aim to “do good,” but because it feels good to share and it comes naturally. Patience comes easily because being in the “flow,” being in harmony with how things naturally unfold, feels better than trying to assert oneself against “what is.” Yet there is an active allegiance to being a servant of an emerging world of peace and love.
When people experience themselves more as eternal consciousness than as a mortal “thing,” there is less of a need to be in control of their lives and they accept change as the status quo. There is less emphasis upon belief systems—something that people often use to achieve a sense of mastery over the great mystery of life, and something that often divides people. Instead translucents are more interested in experiencing heart connections with others and enjoying empathizing with various points of view. There is an openness, an acceptance, even a humor, about being imperfect, not out of a religious conviction of human’s being a “fallen” species, but rather because it just doesn’t matter than much. What matters is what we can accomplish when we cooperate, a sentiment shared by many of us—a fact that supports the good news this book so well documents.

New Developments in the Future of Consciousness

2008-01-03T17:52:00.000-05:00

Hi folks!
As the year turns to its newing, I'm getting ready to renew our sharing on the topic of the future of consciousness. I've uncovered some new (to me) material that has allowed me to envision with greater clarity my own vision of what's coming, and how it relates to 2012. I'll be sharing those ideas here in the near future. I'll be reviewing what we've done and where I see this collaboration heading, and I'll have an update on the anthology that so many of you have contributed to and which continues to grow. More later. I'd like to hear from any of you regarding your thoughts on the topic and our collaboration.
Sending you wishes for a Happy New Year!
Henry

A guide to books on the end of the world

2007-11-29T22:44:00.000-05:00

I found this "guide" while browsing Amazon.com (I give tinyurl because the actual link is LONG!)
http://tinyurl.com/27j3so

The Global Intelligencer

2007-11-28T13:19:00.000-05:00

The Global Intelligencer (http://www.theglobalintelligencer.com/) explores individual, social, and global transformation.
There are many topics, articles, and news feeds of interest to those monitoring current events in consciousness.

Human Species to Divide into two types?

2007-11-28T10:58:00.000-05:00

The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist.

100,000 years into the future, sexual selection could mean that two distinct breeds of human will have developed.

The alarming prediction comes from evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry from the London School of Economics, who says that the human race will have reached its physical peak by the year 3000.

The report claims that after they reach their peak around the year 3000 humans will begin to regress

These humans will be between 6ft and 7ft tall and they will live up to 120 years.

"Physical features will be driven by indicators of health, youth and fertility that men and women have evolved to look for in potential mates," says the report, which suggests that advances in cosmetic surgery and other body modifying techniques will effectively homogenise our appearance.

Men will have symmetrical facial features, deeper voices and bigger penises, according to Curry in a report commissioned for men's satellite TV channel Bravo.

Women will all have glossy hair, smooth hairless skin, large eyes and pert breasts, according to Curry.

Racial differences will be a thing of the past as interbreeding produces a single coffee-coloured skin tone.

The future for our descendants isn't all long life, perfect bodies and chiselled features, however.

While humans will reach their peak in 1000 years' time, 10,000 years later our reliance on technology will have begun to dramatically change our appearance.

Medicine will weaken our immune system and we will begin to appear more child-like.

Dr Curry said: "The report suggests that the future of man will be a story of the good, the bad and the ugly.

H G Wells' Science Fiction novel The Time Machine (which was later adapted into two films - this picture is from the 2002 version) the human race has evolved into two species, the highly intelligent and wealthy Eloi...

"While science and technology have the potential to create an ideal habitat for humanity over the next millennium, there is the possibility of a monumental genetic hangover over the subsequent millennia due to an over-reliance on technology reducing our natural capacity to resist disease, or our evolved ability to get along with each other.

"After that, things could get ugly, with the possible emergence of genetic 'haves' and 'have-nots'."

Dr Curry's theory may strike a chord with readers who have read H G Wells' classic novel The Time Machine, in particular his descriptions of the Eloi and the Morlock races.

In the 1895 book, the human race has evolved into two distinct species, the highly intelligent and wealthy Eloi and the frightening, animalistic Morlock who are destined to work underground to keep the Eloi happy.

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=489653&in_page_id=1965

2012 Forecasts

2007-11-26T23:54:00.000-05:00

I'm continuing to orchestrate research into 2012. Our next gathering will be this coming September.
Here's a report on a book of that title.

December 21, 2012 is the End of a Cycle
Henry Reed
What is the meaning of the Mayan’s calendar ending on December 21, 2012? Prophecies surrounding that date have been causing much speculation. Separating the objective information from the mythical is not always easy. One book that stands out because of its exclusive emphasis upon examining the scientific data relevant to that date is Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization’s End (Morgan Road Books), by Lawrence E. Joseph. It is a “just the facts” type of book. The author is a science writer for the New York Times. With no agenda to push except for a father’s concern for the future of his children, Joseph set out to discover just what we really do know about the circumstances of the planet as that notorious date approaches.
It is an earth cycle that provides the Mayan end date. The earth tilts on its axis, and as the earth revolves around the sun on its annual cycle, that tilt creates the seasons of the year. Furthermore, the earth’s axis wobbles slowly, so that the tilt’s direction shifts with the wobble, making its own predictable, cyclical journey that takes 26,000 years for it to complete. That is one, long cycle. To mark the beginning and end of that cycle, the Mayans chose a particular point of reference, based upon their tools of observation. One’s line of sight aimed toward the sun as it rises over the horizon on the winter solstice projects beyond the sun into the Milky Way galaxy, in which our solar system is embedded. The Mayans, and other ancient people, noted that at each winter solstice’s observation, the line of sight to the rising sun points to a slightly different spot in the Milky Way. The Mayan end date was set for when the line of sight was projected to aim at, or to be aligned with, exactly the center of the Milky Way. How they determined where the center was, or why they chose the center as their point, he doesn’t explore. He does point out that scientists believe that the center is the site of a black hole. What might be the impact of the sun blocking earth’s view of that black hole once every 26,000 years is uncertain. Nevertheless, that alignment, coming up on December 21, 2012, is the basis for the Mayan’s marking point of an end of an age, and the start of a new one.
The author explores many other geophysical phenomena that coincide with this timing. He finds a disturbing number of potentially hazardous phenomena, many of them cyclical and reaching their maximum potential harm to earth around the time of 2012. The aggregate effect is an objectively stark picture of the possible fate awaiting the planet, as if the Mayans may have had other reasons for choosing to link their calendar to this event.
The earth’s magnetic field, for example, has a long cycle of strengthening and weakening, and is in a weakening phase now. A pole shift is preceded by such weakening, so perhaps a polar shift is coming due. In any event, the protection the magnetic field provides, by shielding us from the effects of harmful solar radiation, is weakening. At the same time, the ozone layer, also a protective sheath, is dissolving. The earth’s path around the sun varies, so that sometimes the earth is closer and sometimes farther away from the sun. As the end date approaches, that eccentric cycle will bring earth its closest to the sun. Moreover, sun spot activity, which has enormous influence on events on earth, and follows an eleven year cycle, will be reaching its maximum activity at the same time. Thus, as our vulnerability increases to disruptive, even deadly, solar radiation, earth will be approaching its closest point to the sun just as the sun is having the worst days of its cyclical upheavals. There are other heavenly events that seem to be reaching maximum danger around the same time, but we will stop here.
The author maintains his purpose is not to scare, but to lay out the facts. Completing a cycle is simply a fact. But facts can have emotional, symbolic overtones. Our New Year’s holiday, birthdays, and seasons, to mention a few common cycles, have a deeply embedded meaning in our psyche that an end of a cycle fosters an end to some life circumstances as well, and an opportunity to start anew. Even though humanity has lived through this 26,000 year cycle before, it’s still natural to imagine that as the earth completes the cycle this time, coinciding with many other projected ominous events, some kind of enormous ending in circumstances on earth will occur, while some great new opportunities will appear to allow us to “start fresh.” The author’s concluding sentence is the only hint he gives that he’s in accord with the consensus among the metaphysically minded that wonderful possibilities for humanity’s evolution lie within the coming challenge: “If we can find it in our hearts to look forward to it all, we’ll also find a way to rise above the threat.”

Message from PMH Atwater

2007-07-14T12:35:00.001-04:00

TIMES OF CHANGE IN THE HUMAN FAMILY

by P. M. H. Atwater, L.H.D.

It began around 1982 - the "flood," that is - literally a flood of children being born worldwide that would challenge parents and educators as never before; children who would defy the standards of generational typing. I call them the "new kids" because they are new; there has never been a generation like them in recorded history.

Toss all the labels of indigo, crystal, crystalline, starseed, cosmic, transitional, or psychic, then combine into one big package the characteristics said to define each type, and you'll have a profile of the new kids: where we're headed as a species. Labels are useless. Forget trying to interpret aura colors. These kids are evolving and changing faster than most of us can keep up with, which is why parents and educators are so puzzled.

Our newest citizens are proving themselves to be "off-the-charts" geniuses, violent anarchists, compassionate volunteers, extraordinary intuitives, wise healers, and bored drop-outs - almost simultaneously. Edgar Cayce is oft quoted as saying: Great numbers of children will be born who understand electronics and atomic power as well as other forms of energy. They will grow into scientists and engineers of a new age which has the power to destroy civilization unless we learn to live by spiritual laws.

What might have Cayce meant by "great numbers"? I believe science can answer that. Bruce Lahn and his University of Chicago colleagues are the authors of a study published 9-9-05 in the journal Science. This study rocked the evolutionary theorists when it was revealed that the two gene mutations responsible for building a better brain (both have been around for awhile), have suddenly skyrocketed in the world's population: 70% of the human family now shows evidence of one of them, 30% both. This matches what was found about eight years ago with those countries using standard IQ texts: 30% of the scores overall, especially those for genius, had taken an unprecedented leap of 24 to 26 points - a rise so sharp genetics cannot account for it, neither can education - because - the jump was in nonverbal intelligence! which is "creative problem solving" (in essence, intuitive knowing). This 70/30 split is popping up everywhere, and with millions upon millions of children worldwide: 70% are smarter than family members, 30% are geniuses.

And we're not just talking here about how smart or intuitive or knowing today's children are. There's more to it than that. My 30 years spent researching near-death states in adults and children, a decade previous to that studying altered states of consciousness and mysticism, plus a lifelong quest of exploring the earthplane and how things change, dying three times, raising three kids, learning as a youngster how to "merge and morph" in Idaho's canyons and deserts - from this background of inquiry and experience - I can say, that the fabled quantum leap in human evolution predicted by lore masters of old is here now!

Esoteric tradition and ancient prophecies put this situation into perspective by telling us that the Fifth Root Race is entering the earthplane at this time in history, and with this entry come changes in body type. The term, "root races," has been used in esoteric traditions to indicate "the foundational gene pool" of the human family, not a given classification of racial typing. Many great psychics and visionaries for the last several hundred years have spoken of root races, and that there are seven of them, forming a "master plan" for the development of human consciousness until humankind will have had enough time and opportunity to perfect itself as a species. If you go back to ancient folk tales, legends, and the oral histories of various peoples, root races were referred to then as "life streams" or "life waves" indicating new "bearers of light" who heralded the arrival and spread of large evolutionary cycles or "worlds" (usually seven in number) that purportedly advanced a higher purpose for Creation and all created things.

The chart, "Esoteric Teachings of Soul Evolution through the Awakening of the Human Mind," included with this article, is a summary I made from these esoteric and ancient sources of revelation that identify each grouping or root race according to its predominant frequency of vibrational energy via its colors. The Fifth Root Race, that Edgar Cayce said is arriving about now, is identifiable through its blue vibration. . . but I submit to you this is no ordinary color of blue.

This blue, in relation specifically to the Fifth Root Race, embodies such aspects as communication, education, science, creativity, invention, technology, progress, higher forms of intuition, spirituality, and knowing - in essence Fifth Chakra issues, which revolve around the question of will power: power over, or, power to. What to do about the responsibility wielding such power demands is the greatest challenge of the Fifth Root Race, the Fifth Chakra, "the Fifth World." The evolutionary cycle we are entering, as described by the Mayan Calendar and by other historical time keepers from native peoples across the globe, is indeed that of the Fifth World - said to be the timeframe when the Turning of the Great Cosmic Wheel occurs (a 25,920-year cycle).

But is the Fifth Root Race or Blues really that new?

I don't think so.

You can find evidence of Fifth Root Race types back in the times when Jesus walked the earth, not many, but some. In every renaissance the world has ever known, they crowded in - more between the years of 1870 to 1921 - then again in the sixties and seventies. The floodtide, though, that massive global push of advanced souls entering human bodies I submit to you began in the eighties, and especially from the year 1982 on. That means you or your grandpa could be "new kids," or your parents, or relatives tracing back hundreds of years. What distinguishes the "new" pattern that is unfolding in the third millennium is the inescapable sign of acceleration, of energy suddenly leapfrogging to dizzying heights as if the entire human race were cramming to know more and be more - ascending - too far too fast.

As the Fifth World advances, the Fifth Root Race moves into "Ascension" (higher stages of energy acceleration). That's what's exciting now: not that the Fifth Root Race is here, but that it is spreading in numbers, strength, and power so rapidly that what I believe we are really witnessing is an entire root race entering its final phases of existence, with the goal of completing or fulfilling itself, wrapping up its "run," so to speak. A couple hundred years from now, maybe longer, we'll see true Indigos or the Sixth Root Race initiate their big "splash in" - as earthplane energy deepens further into the realms of spiritual insight and individuation. A few are coming in now, but not as many as per popular books claim. The real action as esoteric tradition and ancient prophecies made plain is with the Fifth Root Race, the Blues, as they stretch the range and purpose of power - theirs, society's, religion's, God's.

Am I too abstract for you? Well, let me get more specific.

The new kids are the smartest children we've ever produced (even if they're flunking in school and can't spell). They are music oriented, clever innovators and inventors, highly creative, psychic, and intuitive, most can remember past lives, and otherworldly realms are real to them. They abstract at young ages, are excellent with math, are natural-born healers and entrepreneurs, and are both spiritual and irreverent at the same time - with an undercurrent of anger bubbling near the surface. They have strong spatial abilities (both sexes), are creative problem solvers, volunteer-minded, are drawn to humanitarian projects (size makes no difference), and have little regard for taboos - sexual or otherwise. They are impatient, group-oriented, easily frustrated, and expect things to come to them. And they are unusually sensitive to drugs, sprayed and processed foods, and electromagnetic fields. Boundaries, copyrights, degrees, or the work ethic of their parents, confound them, since they prefer instead the limitlessness of astral and synthetic worlds, virtual realities, photonics, and gadgetry.

The new children are multi-sensory people who multi-channel and live in a multi-verse. Theirs is the first generation ever to be born and grow up in a global village of ideas and opportunity.

How does this translate? Fact: 80% of the new kids are spatial learners, while 80% of the school curriculums they must learn from were designed for verbal learners. We're losing these children faster than we can educate them. They're bored. Please read Dr. Linda Silverman's Upside-Down Brilliance: The Visual-Spatial Learner (Deleon Publishing, Denver, CO, 2002), then get a copy for your school principal and school administrators. This situation isn't a "someday" thing. It's right-now. So are the learning disorders they exhibit; mostly the boys. If you ask the kids about this, they'll answer: "We're reordered, not disordered." Still, take a good look at their diet and what they're exposed to in the environment. Pharmaceuticals won't turn this around. It will take people trained in natural and complementary health measures to stem the tide. Another surprise - what often passes for wisdom with these youngsters is really their awesome ability to abstract (not just think "outside the box" - but beyond the existence of any kind of box to begin with).

This is their number one talent - the ability to abstract.

Their number one weakness, though, is their tendency towards anger.

I haven't said that much about their anger, so I will now, for it is a peculiar kind of anger. That which is exaggerated or inauthentic quickly frustrates them. They have a keen ear and eye for falsehood, and can go into fits of rage if their environment doesn't match their expectations. Remember, most of these children are smarter than their parents and their educators, and they are not easily fooled. Yet they can be manipulated - by emotional repetition and clever games (videos) that emphasize obedience over reasoned thought and questioning. Thus, their innate compassion, keen sense of justice and fair play, their moral standards and
judgments, can be side-tracked.

Anger can be a positive if it fosters truth-telling and the courage and energy it takes to get a job done. Or, it can harm or kill. The hinge between the positive or the negative components of anger, in consideration of evolutionary sweeps of consciousness transformations, is the perception of safety. . . like what a mother feels when carrying her child, and what is present in the environment during the child's early growing years.

Refer to the book, The Biology of Transcendence, by Joseph Chilton Pearce (Park Street Press, Rochester, VT, 2002) for an excellent trestise on this subject. According to Pearce, what we are talking about here are the pre-frontal lobes of the brain. Often referred to as "the wings of the brain," the pre-frontals represent the highest advancement in brain development. The womb experience plus the first three years of life are the most crucial, puberty the second most, when it comes to whether the reptilian brain predominates (necessary for survival), or the pre-frontals develop (the "flowering" of social concerns and ethical behavior).

Take note of those areas around where you live or throughout the world where there is the greatest crime, suicides, and murders. Check on what the people there were exposed to while still in the womb or as young children. Then take a look at countries such as Iraq and Pakistan. They have become spawning grounds for the next generation of jihadists. Consider also that over half of the population in each of the Arabic countries is under the age of 25. The young ones, researchers tell us, are more strident than their elders and tend more to be conservative. The only anomaly is Iran. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, women were urged to have a lot of children. Incentives were legislated to ensure that they would. The program ended in 1990, resulting in a birth-bulge of unusually loved, wanted, and well-cared-for children who account for today's young adults in Iranian society - people who do not "buy" the agenda of their elders. These "new" ones are the true hope of compromise throughout Asia Minor and with century's old religious conflicts.

The perception of safety, of being wanted and loved, is the single hinge that determines whether or not the new children anywhere in the world can "spread their wings" and redirect their impatience in healthy, constructive ways.

Every mystical, spiritual, and just-plain-healthy-living group on earth are uniquely positioned to make a difference here. The good news is. . . irrespective of the womb experience and what follows in the raising of our children and what they are exposed to, any damage done, any setbacks, can, for the most part, be turned around and healed by the introduction and the application of spiritual principles.

The new children presently flooding into the earthplane are already primed for pre-frontal development in the brain, and they exhibit proof of this right from infancy - irrespective of where in the world they are located. Whether or not you're a parent, listen to what these kids have to say and consider implementing their ideas. They're here to test us, aggravate us, and inspire us as they set about to redesign society itself and the way we live our lives. . . in step with Mother Nature's resculpting of our planet at this, the coming of the Fifth World.

P. M. H. Atwater, L.H.D. is one of the original researchers in the field of near-death studies, having begun her work in 1978. In working with child experiencers of near-death states, she noticed that they matched the characteristics of the new children. After additional research, she wrote The New Children and Near-Death Experiences and Beyond the Indigo Children: The New Children and the Coming of the Fifth World. The addendum to the second book, which keeps it updated, is "Beyond the Indigo Children EXTRAS" - located at www.pmhatwater.com

Jungian View on Changes in Consciousness

2007-06-26T11:44:00.000-04:00

Navigating a Breakpoint in History
William Van Dusen Wishard

Introduction

Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate're you may believe.
There is an inmost center in us all,
Where truth abides in fullness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perception – which is truth.
A battling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and, to KNOW,
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape,
Than in effecting an entry for a light
Supposed to be without…

'Tis time
New hopes should animate the world, new light
Should dawn from new revealings…

From "Paracelsus"
Robert Browning

Robert Browning's words describe a process that has repeated itself
numerous times throughout the ages. This essay will suggest that once
again, the world is in the midst of a similar unfolding.

Such a development is at the heart of much of the public anxiety in
America today; a concern caused by our inability to understand the
seismic upheaval the world is experiencing. The media daily pummels
us with the effects of multiple tectonic plate shifts taking place:
from a relatively slow pace of technical change, to an exponential
rate; from ultimate destructive power held only by states, to such
power held by individuals; from economic development solely a national
endeavor, to such development as part of a global system; from the
masculine/patriarchal epoch, to the feminine instinct playing an
increasing role in shaping collective attitudes.

Those who have even a minimal acquaintance with Analytical Psychology
and the life of C.G. Jung, however, are privileged to have a broader
context within which to understand the inherent meaning of these
shifts. For one of Jung's great gifts to the world was the
development of understanding how the collective soul expresses its
worldview, as well as how the psyche develops and matures over time.
History has seen several such shifts in orientation, periods of a
broadening out of the collective soul. Such psychological
reorientations have been times of uncertainty and upheaval, times when
the psychological subsoil out of which emerges all value and meaning
is ploughed up, ultimately leading to the emergence of a completely
new historical epoch. We are in the midst of another such
reorientation—a heightened activation of the Self (the regulating
center f the psyche), which brings with it a new worldview, a
broadening out of the human personality. It is a time, as Walter
Truett Anderson has written, "of rebuilding all the foundations of
civilization." One of Jung's most succinct encapsulations of this
process at work in our time was offered in 1956 when he noted that
there is "a mood of universal destruction and renewal that has set its
mark on our age. This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically,
socially, and philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks
called the kairos—the right moment—for a 'metamorphosis of the gods,'
of the fundamental principles and symbols."

This essay will consider three aspects of the contemporary
"psychological reorientation"—globalization, the human-technology
interface, and the worldwide spiritual upheaval. But first, a brief
glance at earlier periods of reorientation, which offer perspective on
the contemporary process.

Breakpoints of History

When we look back over past millennia, distinctly different
worldviews, expressions of the soul, stand out. These worldviews were
considerably different than ours today. The Mythic Age (circa 1200
BCE), for example, clearly exhibited a pre-conscious mind.
Consciousness as we know it had not yet evolved. Indeed, as Thomas
Cahill has written, the story of the Hebrew Bible is "the story of an
evolving consciousness, a consciousness that went through many states
of development." One thinks of Moses experiencing "a flame of fire
coming from the bush," his "staff becoming a serpent," Yahweh as a
"pillar of fire," the "waters of Egypt turning into blood," and the
"parting of the Red Sea." Such symbolic descriptions are expressions
of an elemental psychology in an earlier stage of development, and
still bound to a certain extent by its identification with its
environment and surroundings.

At roughly the same time, the battle of Troy (12th century BCE) when,
as Homer described four centuries later, Greek gods roamed the
battlefield instructing Achilles, Hector or Odysseus to take this or
that particular action. That was not a literary construct to enliven
Homer's Iliad; it was the way the Greek psyche viewed reality. Again,
an earlier psyche somewhat identified with its surroundings, and which
saw gods as "living presences."

Several centuries of psychic reorientation and maturation brought
forth the Axial Age (700-400 BCE). The defining characteristic of the
Axial Age, according to the German philosopher Karl Jaspers who coined
the term "Axial Age," was the move out of the Mythic Age, into an era
when "man becomes conscious of Being as a whole, of himself and his
limitations." Consciousness, Jaspers wrote, became "conscious of
itself." This was the age of the birth of Buddhism, Taoism, and
Zoroasterism. The great symbolic Hebrew stories and traditions of
earlier centuries were collected together in the Pentateuch.
Confucius became the first person to articulate the Golden Rule as a
social ethic. Science, philosophy, astronomy, cosmology were born, as
were the very concepts of nature, truth, opinion, mind and
consciousness. History's first scientific questions were asked,
questions such as, what are the basic elements of existence? Water?
Fire? No one had ever before asked such questions. Pythagoras
articulated the concept of "opposites," an expression of the prime
attribute of a developed consciousness—the power of discernment and
discrimination. By the end of the Axial Age, a new orientation had
emerged.

Several centuries later a further reorientation brought a disruptive
shift when the multiple Greco-Roman gods, which had provided meaning
for the Greco-Roman world for a millennium, lost their hold on the
imagination and soul of the Greco-Roman world, and, eventually,
monotheistic Christianity became the official religion. More on this
in a moment.

Closer to our own time came another shift in worldview—the
psychological shift from the Middle Ages of Dante and the building of
Chartres and the great cathedrals of Europe, to the worldview of
Petrarch and the Renaissance. It was a monumental shift from emphasis
on the vertical perspective—man's relation to a God in heaven—to a
horizontal perspective—man's relationship to the natural phenomena of
Earth. The historian Will Durant summarized this shift saying, the
Renaissance "replaced the supernatural with the natural as the focus
of human concern…" Edward F. Edinger noted that the God-image (Self)
was withdrawn from metaphysical projection, and became available for
direct conscious experience. As Jung saw it, "Consciousness ceased to
grow upward, and grew instead in breadth of view," both
philosophically and geographically. The age of exploration—both of
earth and of the human body—began. "Meaning" was found less through
spirit, as a metaphysics of matter and material causation grew in
authority. It is perhaps symptomatic of this shift that this was when
the Faust legend—representing an enantiodromia—was born in the Western
psyche. Jung described this whole period as "an unexampled revolution
in man's outlook."

These shifts in orientation are offered simply as examples of what
we're experiencing today. The contemporary psychological
reorientation is perhaps divided into two overlapping phases. On the
one hand, disintegration, psychic rupture, and destruction have become
not only cultural motifs, but an inherent and essential part of the
process a culture and civilization must experience if the birth of a
new worldview is to take place. This is in keeping with the
progression of the four symbolic phases of the Apocalypse archetype,
which manifests itself in the Revelation of new truth about life's
origin, development and potential; Judgment of existing beliefs and
institutions against the background of the new truth; Destruction of
existing beliefs and institutions that are no longer functionally an
expression of the new truth; and Rebirth of belief, culture and
civilized order in accord with the archetypal expression of the new
truth. This sequence is a process embedded in the nature of the
archetypal psyche.

Such disintegration is simultaneous with a new and greater integration
seeking expression. Humanity is seeking a more common and complete
manifestation of our relationship to our individual self, to each
other, to the planet, and to the universe. In essence, the embryonic
form of something approaching a global consciousness is evolving. As
Lewis Mumford wrote in 1956, "Nothing less than a concept of the whole
man—and of man achieving a consciousness of the cosmic and historic
whole—is capable of doing justice to every type of personality, every
mode of culture, and every human potential." Mumford was talking of
"the creation of unified personalities, at home with every part of
themselves, and so equally at home with the whole family of man, in
all its magnificent diversity." Such a perspective is at the very
core of the new orientation seeking birth.

Globalization

In the 1940s, Sir Fred Hoyle, the eminent British astronomer, noted:
"Once a photograph of Earth, taken from the outside, is available, a
new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose."
Increasingly, the defining reality of our time has been learning how
to cope with this "new idea"—the awareness of the human community as a
single entity. As Brian Swimme has written, we are incorporating the
planetary dimensions of life into the fabric of our economics,
politics, culture and international relations. For the first time in
human history, we are forging an awareness of our existence that
embraces humanity as a whole. What is emerging is "a new context for
discussion of value, meaning, purpose or ultimacy of any sort." The
shorthand for this process is "globalization."

Mention globalization and we immediately think of global economic and
financial integration, currency valuations, job displacement/creation,
intellectual property rights, and much more. Such acronyms as IMF,
NAFTA, WTO, as well as the World Bank come to mind. The economic
dimension of globalization is what most occupies the attention of
business leaders and government policy-makers.

But the essence of globalization—its very core—is the Self's
intensified activation, which is expressed in an expansion of
individual awareness of other peoples, cultures and religions, greatly
facilitated by technological advances in communications and easy
travel. This process began very slowly in the 16th century when, as
noted in Jung's comment above, consciousness ceased to grow upward,
and grew in breadth of view, thus increasing the energy available to
the individual ego. This led to European exploration and
colonialization of Africa, South America and Asia. In the nineteenth
century this process was accelerated with the technical shift from
wind to steam driven trans-Atlantic ships, as well as with the
invention of the telegraph and telephone, the first components of what
is now the world's electronic information communication system.
Clearly, in the 20th century globalization moved at an exponential
pace. Across the globe, as people become more familiar with other
modes of thought and belief, and with other cultures and religions,
their allegiance to earlier forms of identity begins evolving into an
appreciation for, and identity with, a larger cultural and political
realm.

This process of a widening identity is not new to Americans. Before
1776, Americans didn't find their identity in relationship to the
United States (there was no United States), but in relationship to the
state in which they lived—Virginia, Massachusetts or Georgia. After
the establishment of the United States, people slowly grounded their
identity in a wider context, a new entity called the United States of
America. This widening process took time. Indeed, the historian
Daniel Borstin tells us it wasn't until nearly ninety years later, at
the end of the Civil War that a distinctly American identity emerged.
Even today, sectionalism still vies with a sense of national identity,
which is fragmenting under the pressures of information technology.

In essence, all people are going through this same process, albeit on
a far wider and more diverse dimension. The pace of this process
varies depending on numerous factors such as depth of culture and
tradition, the degree of technological development, linkages with the
rest of the world, etc. But it is happening to all peoples, if for no
other reason than a nation can no longer develop economically on its
own; economic development requires a nation to be linked to the
globalized economic and financial system.

For many in the Muslim world, globalization, and the modernization it
brings with it, confronts them with an excruciating choice. On the
one hand, they want the economic and technological—even some of the
social and cultural—benefits globalization brings. On the other hand,
they are asking themselves, "Will globalization, based on the Western,
rationalistic, consumerist, hedonistic ethos, ultimately mean the end
of Islam? Yet, how can we modernize without globalization?" Such
unknowns form a significant part of the psychological dynamic fueling
terrorism.

Globalization means that, whether we're Parisian or New York
sophisticate, African Bushmen or Alaskan Inuit, we are all being
forced into the same global, technological, postmodern, digitalized
context of life. Some African chiefs jump a century of telephonic
development dependent on wire, as they advance from drum or messenger,
to the cell phone. The tribal leader in Papua stands with his shield
and spear in a TV store bewildered as he stares at a scene from
"Baywatch" projecting images of he knows not what. Time, place and
historic contexts of life are disappearing as the instruments of
globalization force us into some unfamiliar frame of reference.

It's not only the Papuan or African whose identity and context of life
are being jumbled by globalization. Profound questions arise for all
people as globalization collapses the national, racial and religious
barriers that heretofore protected—and even defined—identity. "Who am
I? Who is my group? Do I even have a group any more? Is national
allegiance still primary in a globalized era? What does 'race' mean
in a world where people of all shades of skin color are increasingly
inter-marrying? What is my sense of who I am when computerized global
information systems merge all religions, philosophies, social theories
and cultures into a 'pick-and-mix' smorgasbord of identity?" The
whole human race—whether pre-modern, modern, or postmodern—is involved
in a vast learning process.

Over time, many people find their own sense of identity widening as
they travel to other nations, meet people of unfamiliar cultures, and
daily scan the world on the Internet. As cultures and religions
interpenetrate, the "broadening out process" enlarges people's
horizons. Yet an inherent part of any archetypal expression of this
maturing process is psychic reaction, in this case expressed in what
can only be called a "national fundamentalism." As David Ignatius of
The Washington Post notes, in some ways the current reassertion of
nationalism is "a kind of geopolitical fundamentalism—in which people
cleave to old identities as a way of coping with the new stresses of
globalization."

The Human-Technological Interface

At least since Francis Bacon in the seventeenth century we have viewed
the purpose of science and technology as being to improve the human
condition. As Bacon put it, the "true and lawful end of the sciences
is that human life be enriched by new discoveries and powers." Four
centuries later, Einstein echoed Bacon in a speech at Cal Tech:
"Concern for man himself and his fate must form the chief interest of
all technical endeavors."

Human life has indeed been enriched. Take America. During the last
century, the real GDP, in constant dollars, increased by $48 trillion,
much of this wealth built on the marvels of technology.

But along with technological wonders, uncertainties arise. The
question today is whether we're creating certain technologies not to
improve the human condition, but for purposes that appear to be to
replace human meaning and significance altogether. Consider the
following comments from some of the world's leading scientists and
technologists.

Ray Kurzweil, recipient of ten honorary Doctorates, honors from three
U.S. presidents, and is one of the world's foremost authorities on
artificial intelligence, predicts that by mid-century you may be
talking to someone who is of biological origin, but whose mental
processes are a hybrid of the person's biological thinking process and
the electronic process embedded in their brain—the two processes
working intimately together. Adds Kurzweil, "When machines are
derived from human intelligence but are a million times more capable,
there won't be a clear distinction between human and machine
intelligence—there's going to be a merger." After that, he says, we
will enhance our own intelligence by putting small computers in our
brains and introducing calculating machines into the blood
stream…nanobots will go to the brain and interact with biological
neurons.

In Kurzweil's view, what we are dealing with is not a "constant" rate
of technological change, but an "exponential" rate, the acceleration
of acceleration. The rate of technological change doubles every
decade. At today's rate, Kurzweil says, the world will experience one
thousand times more technological change in the 21st century than took
place in the 20th century.

Computer speeds will be increased millions of times in the next three
decades, Kurzweil predicts, thus taking us to a point where everything
is ratcheted up so fast that the totality of life changes, and some
new context of existence emerges that we can't even begin to imagine
at this point. This will bring the world, he says, to "a rupture in
the fabric of history," to what he terms the "Omega Point."

Kurzweil's use of "Omega Point" emits familiar echoes of Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin, who coined the term well over half a century ago.
For Teilhard, the "Omega Point" is that point in the future when
time, space and energy converge. It's a time of super connectivity,
organization and complexity when a new context of existence for man
will emerge. For Teilhard, however, the "Omega Point" would introduce
an era of the "spiritualization of matter" as well as the "creative
union" of all humanity.

Whatever the differences between Kurzweil's and Teilhard's use of the
term "Omega Point," it's fair to ask whether both men have been
influenced by an archetype of transcendence. Indeed, is the entire
"post human" movement (see following commentary) a projection of what
Edinger called "the transformation fantasy"?

Kurzweil is by no means alone in his pursuit of the "post human"
future. Marvin Minsky, co-founder of MIT's Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory, writes, "Suppose that the robot had all the virtues of
people and was smarter and understood things better. Then why would
we want to prefer those grubby, old people? I don't see anything
wrong with human life being devalued if we have something better."

Gregory Stock, Director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and
Society at UCLA School of Medicine; his latest book: Redesigning
Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future, suggests, "Within a few years,
traditional reproduction may begin to seem antiquated, if not
downright irresponsible." Stock sees a time soon emerging "when
humans no longer exist . . . Progressive self-transformation could
change our descendents into something sufficiently different from our
present selves to not be human in the sense we use the term now."

British Telecom's Ian Pearson predicts that the completed human genome
project will enable "a combination of man and computer search to
identify the genes needed to produce a people of any chosen
characteristics." Someone, somewhere, Pearson says, "will produce an
elite race of people, smart, agile and disease resistant." Pearson
calls such an optimized human "Homo Optimus."

MIT's Sherry Turkel sees the "reconfiguration of machines as
psychological objects and the reconfiguration of people as living
machines." James Hughes sees the "right to a custom made child" as
merely the "natural extension of our current discourse of productive
rights." Hughes contends that women "should be allowed the right to
choose the characteristics [of their child] from a catalog.

Perhaps Jaron Lanier, the person who coined the term "virtual reality"
and founder of the world's first virtual reality company, best
assesses what's happening when he says, "Medical science,
neuroscience, computer science, genetics, biology—separately and
together, seem to be on the verge of abandoning the human realm
altogether . . . it grows harder to imagine human beings remaining at
the center of the process of science. Instead, science appears to be
in charge of its own process, probing and changing people in order to
further its own course, independent of human agency."

Concludes Kevin Kelly, former editor of Wired magazine and author of
Out of Control, "In the great vacuum of meaning, in the silence of
unspoken values, in the vacancy of something large to stand for,
something bigger than oneself, technology—for better or worse—will
shape our society. Because values and meaning are scarce today,
technology will make our decisions for us."

Thus arrives what some scientific intellectuals call the "Post-human Age."
If this scenario materializes, it won't happen in the next decade; it
is something being developed for our grandchildren's time.

A few voices are being raised regarding the dangers of an uncontrolled
rush to technological bliss. Writes Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun
Microsystems and who The Economist magazine describes as the "Edison
of the Internet," "I think it no exaggeration to say we are on the
cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose
possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction
bequeathed to the nation-states." Ray Kurzweil himself suggests we
only have "a better than even chance of making it through" the
technological changes he sees coming.

Sir Martin Rees, England's Astronomer Royal, a Professor at Cambridge
University and one of the world's foremost theoretical physicists,
surveys current scientific experiments and writes, "The 'downside'
from twenty-first century technology could be graver and more
intractable than the threat of nuclear devastation that we have faced
for decades…I think the odds are no better than fifty-fifty that our
present civilization on Earth will survive to the end of the present
century." Such risks, Rees contends, are the price that must be paid
for "personal freedoms and the pursuit of scientific knowledge."

While a full discussion of technology is beyond the scope of any one
essay, it is worth commenting on the world's first global electronic
information system. Electronic information systems have a fragmenting
effect, thus shattering the cohesion of national myths, political
philosophies, social theories, cultural styles, as well as religious
beliefs. It's this fragmenting effect that has helped create the
whole dissonance of our postmodern world in all its forms. One result
is that we no longer collectively agree what truths are
"self-evident," or even what constitutes "truth." Thus we can no
longer define the world in terms of what we "are," but only in terms
of what we have ceased to be—"postindustrial," "post-Enlightenment,"
"post-ideological," "postnational" or "postmodern."

Yet still we must try to understand what has happened to humanity that
we stand at the point of potential self-annihilation. Vaclav Havel
suggests an imbalance in our underlying concept of a technological
society. Writes Havel: "Science as the basis of the modern
conception of the world is missing something…It fails to connect with
the most intrinsic nature of reality, and with natural human
experience. It is now more a source of disintegration and doubt than
a source of integration and meaning. It produces what amounts to a
state of schizophrenia: Man as an observer is becoming completely
alienated from himself as a being…The abyss between the rational and
the spiritual, the external and the internal, the objective and the
subjective, the technical and the moral, the universal and the unique
constantly grows deeper…There appear to be no integrating forces, no
unified meaning, no true inner understanding of phenomena in our
experience of the world"

Or, as Houston Smith writes, technology, and its scientific source,
are honored for what they can tell us about nature, but as that is not
all that exists, science and technology cannot provide us with a valid
worldview. "The most it can show us is half of the world, the half
where normative and intrinsic values, existential and ultimate
meanings, teleologies, qualities, immaterial realities, and beings
that are superior to us do not appear. Where, then, do we now turn
for an inclusive worldview?"

Richard Tarnas, professor of psychology and philosophy at the
California Institute of Integral Studies, and author of the highly
acclaimed The Passion of the Western Mind and the soon-to-be-released
Cosmos and Psyche, suggests that as scientists and technologists
pursue their vision of technological transcendence, "unconscious
factors are ignored. It's just these unconscious factors that will
eventually disrupt the developmental trajectory so confidently
predicted by technologists." Tarnas then offers a thoughtful comment
about the psychology behind the quest for technological transcendence:
"Purveyors of such future scenarios are blissfully--and often
manically--unaware of the deeper psychological impulses driving their
quest, the shadow side of their aspirations, and the superficiality of
their understanding of either evolution or consciousness. When one is
unconscious of so much, one can be certain that one's plans will not
go according to schedule. A deeper knowledge of history would tell
them that, but historical myopia is a self-affirming attribute. This
does not mean that their visions are harmless, only that they are
distorted and, in that sense, likely to be highly inaccurate--though
not without consequences."

What Tarnas suggests is illustrated in the career of Steven Shafer,
formerly a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. According to The
Washington Post, Microsoft hired Shafer as a researcher. It seems
that Professor Shafer was unhappy at Carnegie Mellon, as he complained
that "teaching steals from research time." At Microsoft, however,
Shafer appears happier. "To me," he confided to the Post, "this
corporation is my power tool. It's the tool I wield to allow my ideas
to shape the world." My power tool. What better example of the
inflated power drive. It brings to mind one of Jung's most profound
insights; that the opposite of love is not hate, but power. "Where
love stops," he wrote in 1957, "power begins, and violence and
horror." Thus the archetype may not be so much a "love-hate" as a
"love-power" archetype.

Freeman Dyson, one of America's foremost theoretical physicists, and
present at the first test of a nuclear bomb, gives a graphic example
of how power can inflate the ego. Speaking in the documentary film
The Day After Trinity, Dyson said, "The glitter of nuclear weapons.
It's irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it's
there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to
let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift up
millions of tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives
people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways,
responsible for all our troubles—this, what you might call technical
arrogance that overcomes people when they see what they can do with
their minds."

One effect of the computer and Internet, says Stephen Talbott, editor
of the online NetFuture, is that it represents a "disembodied
rationality, which "tends to be abstracted form with little depth of
humanly felt content." In this sense, he says, the computer is not
"neutral." It expresses primarily one side of the human character.
It tends to express "surface," but not "interior."

Is it possible that Kurzweil and the scientists/technologists quoted
above have developed a theory, a belief system based on what they are
skilled at doing, and what captures their minds? This then becomes a
kind of "technological determinism," which, at best, is only a partial
view of reality, and which may turn out to be even more misleading
than Marx's "economic determinism."

Jung, of course, was always leery of the proliferation of technology
and what harm it might eventually cause. In the abstract, he saw
technology as "neither good nor bad, neither harmful nor harmless."
The danger, Jung wrote, "lies not in technology but in the
possibilities awaiting discovery." Those possibilities are now here
and are leading to what some scientists term the "Post-human era."

While Jung didn't live to see "the possibilities awaiting discovery,"
Edward Edinger, who died in 1998, did. On the one hand, Edinger saw
the World Wide Web as "a material reflection of the growing collective
individuation in the world that is taking place. There is a worldwide
impetus to a new individuation. All the cultures will eventually be
assimilated into this new individuation." Edinger knew, however, that
"eventually" could be an extremely long time.

On the other hand, he thought "man has decided to subordinate himself
to his machine. He has abdicated his own center of being, and he's
handed it over to his machine." Edinger felt the modern ego is
"infatuated with its tools. We're totally preoccupied with 'means,'
and 'ends' has been completely lost. It's the ego dissociated from
any transpersonal dimension." As to the "Post-human" impetus, Edinger
had a clear view: "The impulse to succeed ourselves through technology
reflects the collective unconscious' goal of destruction." Thus
Edinger believed the vital question for everyone is "Do I have a
relationship with that life-giving source in my unconscious?"

In the long sweep of time, we must ask whether we've created a
scientific culture that is an immense complex of technique and
specialization devoid of any guiding ethical framework. The highest
standard appears to be efficiency; the defining ethic, "If it can be
done, it will be done." It is as Kevin Kelly suggests: "We have
become as gods, and we might as well get good at it."

What does it mean to be a "god"?

In the Introduction to the Penguin Classic edition of the Iliad,
Bernard Knox offers a description of what being a god entails: "To be
a god is to be totally absorbed in the exercise of one's own power,
the fulfillment of one's own nature, unchecked by any thought of
others except as obstacles to be overcome; it is to be incapable of
self-questioning or self-criticism. But there are human beings who are
like this. Pre-eminent in their particular sphere of power, they
impose their will on others with the confidence, the unquestioning
certainty of their own right and worth that is characteristic of
gods."

Is this a description of that miniscule percentage of the human race,
the scientists and technologists, who accelerate the pace and
character of change for everyone else on earth, and who are altering
the basics of human existence, while pursuing the "technological
imperative" regardless of the human cost?

It's not as if we haven't been warned—including by some of our most
prophetic voices—about the consequences of overreaching. In a
prescient comment, Herman Kahn and Anthony Weiner concluded their 1967
magnum opus by observing that in the final decades of the twentieth
century, "we shall have the technological and economic power to change
the world radically, but probably not get very much ability to
restrain our strivings, let alone understand or control the results of
the changes we will be making." Alvin Toffler noted in 1970 that by
"blindly stepping up the rate of change, the level of novelty, and the
extent of choice, we are thoughtlessly tampering with the
environmental preconditions of rationality." (Emphases added.)

Centuries earlier, however, everything in human myth and religion
warned about trying to become as the gods. (See Icarus and
Frankenstein.) These myths and stories caution that there are limits
to both human knowledge and endeavor; that to go beyond those limits
is self-destructive. No one knows exactly where such limits might be.
But if they don't include the effort to create some technical/human
life form supposedly superior to human beings, if they don't include
the capacity to genetically reconfigure human nature, if they don't
include the attempt to introduce a "post-human" civilization, then
it's hard to imagine where such limits would be drawn.

Myths emanate from the deepest realm of the psyche, that level which
connects us to transcendent wisdom. The record of five thousand years
of human experience suggests that at the heart of life is a great
mystery that does not yield to rational interpretation. This eternal
mystery induces a sense of wonder out of which all that humanity has
of religion, art and science is born. The mystery is the giver of
these gifts, and we only lose the gifts when we grasp at the mystery
itself. Nature may not permit man to defy that mystery, that
transcendent wisdom. In the words of Francis Bacon, "God forbid that
we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the
world…The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the
subtlety of the [human] senses and understanding."

The Spiritual Reorientation

The third issue at the heart of the psychological reorientation
mentioned at the outset is the spiritual turbulence taking place
worldwide, albeit at differing rates of speed.

At the center of this turbulence is a staggering reality that's
difficult to grasp: We are living through nothing less than a
redefinition of the human relationship to God. Such a redefinition
has happened several times before in history, and it's always been a
disruptive and disorienting period.

Such a thought—a change in the human relationship to God—or to be more
precise, to the God-image—is by no means original with this essay.
Throughout the twentieth century, thoughtful people—Thomas Hardy, W.B.
Yeats, Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee, C.G. Jung, Adlai Stevenson,
Rollo May, Peter Drucker, Joseph Campbell to name just a few—have, in
one way or another, raised this possibility.

Most of the above-mentioned people spoke of this prospect in terms of
Christianity and Western civilization. However, Joseph Campbell, who
was possibly the world's foremost authority on the psychological and
symbolic meaning of myths, clearly believed this spiritual
reorientation, this change in the God-image, is a worldwide phenomena.
In a 1962 New York speech, he observed, "The world is passing through
perhaps the greatest spiritual metamorphosis in the history of the
human race." Campbell referred to the change he saw taking place in
the spiritual attitudes of the Moslem, Hindu, Jewish and Christian
students he had been teaching at Sara Lawrence College over some four
decades. Jung clearly shared Campbell's views, and Jung's seminal
book, Answer to Job, is probably the most authoritative exposition of
the psychological phenomena underlying such a shift.

But as the spiritual/psychological reorientation we're considering is
clearly most pronounced in the Christian world, it is from that
experience examples are drawn that may offer helpful perspective. If
a change in the human relationship to the God-image is in fact taking
place, it is by no means the first time such a change has occurred.
Jung suggests we are, in fact, experiencing the sixth major change in
the Western God-image.

A change in the God-image is a cataclysmic development. The God-image
is the primary expression by which humans orient themselves to the
basic questions and mysteries of life—Why am I here? What happens to
me when I die? Does life have any meaning, and if so, how do I find
it? How should I live my life? In this sense, the God-image should
not be confused with the word "God." They are totally different
phenomena, and are not interchangeable. When the God-image changes,
it brings with it a cultural transformation in worldview. For many
people it literally is the end of their world as they have interpreted
it.

Part of the last such shift was evident when the Greco-Roman multiple
gods of antiquity ceased to resonate in the depths of the Greco-Roman
soul. This was a time of prolonged disintegration and disorientation.
The cry, "Great Pan is dead" was heard throughout the Greco-Roman
world. The Roman poet Lucretius observed that "in every home doubts
arose which the mind was powerless to assuage." There was a loss of
collective meaning; a disappearance of what had represented life's
highest value. The God-image that had informed the inner life and
culture of the Greco-Roman world for a thousand years lost its
compelling force, especially for the leadership class. This led to a
breakdown of the historic psychic structures that had been the source
and container of Greco-Roman morals and beliefs. A collapse of the
ethical and social guidelines underlying civilized order took place.

This breakdown was followed by the collapse of life's physical
structures—the Roman roads, aqueducts, farms, and even the Roman army,
which required "mercenaries" to maintain the Roman military machine.
Numerous cults, philosophies and religions vied for supremacy. Over
time, "spirit" and "matter" were torn apart from the psychological
unity they had enjoyed in both the Old Testament and in Greek
mythology, and Christianity became all "spirit." Finally, three
centuries after Jesus, Emperor Constantine proclaimed Christianity the
official religion of the Roman Empire. Even so, it was another five
or six centuries before "Christendom" reigned throughout Europe. From
Ireland to Italy, Europe underwent a wrenching transformation of basic
symbols and meaning.

When this reorientation took place, the process was confined to a
relatively small proportion of Earth's population, basically to
Europe, including Russia. If a similar process is in fact happening
today, it's taking place on a worldwide basis, and all the world's
major religions are affected.

One reason for suggesting that the terms "God" and the "God-image"
are different phenomena is that even the Catholic Church has suggested
that God is beyond the capacity of human comprehension. In 1215, at
the Lateran Council in Rome, the Catholic Church stated that God is
"ineffable and unknowable." A few decades later, Thomas Aquinas was
writing his magnum opus, Summa Theologica. Aquinas never finished
Summa Theologica. He simply quit writing. He stopped, he said,
because "One can know God only when one knows that God far surpasses
anything that can be said or thought about God." (Italics added.) In
Aquinas' view, God is beyond all thought, even beyond all categories
of thought. In other words, he's saying the word "God" is a metaphor
for the Mystery of Eternal Being, for that Unknowable Divine Immensity
that created all life.

Jung's views about God are clear. In a 1955 interview with the
London Daily Mail, he said, "All that I have learned has led me step
by step to an unshakable conviction of the existence of God." In a
1959 BBC interview, Jung was asked whether he believes in God. He
replied, "I know, I don't need to believe. I know." He subsequently
outlined the psychological experiences, the soul experiences, on which
that understanding was based. For Jung, it was not a matter of faith,
but of experience.

If in fact God is "unknowable" in the cognitive sense, what is it
we're referring to when we talk about God? The Book of Genesis gives
a clue when it says man is created in "the image of God." The "image
of God"—the God-image. It's this God-image in the collective psyche
that is the cohesive force of every religion, and it's this God-image,
in all it's varying expressions, that has been changing. Jung's
research suggests such a change is not only a cultural process, but is
also an evolutionary process that includes both biological and
psychological developments.

As to what is responsible for a change in the God-image, Edward
Edinger suggests two factors: first, the God-image contains a "latent
dynamic tendency" to evolve and develop; second, such development
partially results from "the feedback it receives from conscious egos."
Thus Edinger posits that while the Self, the pivotal archetype of
orientation and significance, is always manifested to one degree or
another, there are times in the history of a cultural worldview when
the Self becomes activated to a greater degree than normal. Such
times represent the great spiritual/psychological transition points of
history.

Historically, religion has been the central, life-forming, cohesive
force of all great civilizations. It constituted the formative
dynamic and informing source of all our institutions and moral
precepts. Every culture has originally been the outward expression of
some inner spiritual conviction. So it is not surprising that when a
particular spiritual dispensation atrophies, the culture and
institutions, as well as the moral conventions derived from that
religious impulse, lose their cohesion and authority. This is an
archetypal process that has played itself out several times in human
history. This archetypal process is again working itself out as is
suggested by the "hollowing out" of at least five of the foundational
areas of Western civilization, i.e., religion, culture, the family,
education and self-government.

A Different Context

To help gain perspective on why a change in the God-image has been
taking place, consider what life was like for the average person
between two and three thousand years ago, when our religions came into
being. The average person never traveled more than perhaps thirty
miles from their home in their lifetime; they thought the earth was
flat; they lived in an agricultural society, which means they had an
organic relationship to earth and natural phenomena; their only source
of education or intellectual stimulation was the priest; there were no
books, newspapers or "news of the day"; they had no idea of what was
going on in the rest of the world—indeed they didn't even know there
was a "rest of the world;" the population of the entire world was
smaller than today's U.S. population, so there were none of the
"population pressures" we experience; they knew nothing about the
universe or the beginnings of life on earth; and on and on one could
go.

Contrast that with the context within which we live today. We can see
billions of miles into space, and in so doing, we've made contact with
radiation left over from the "big bang" some 14 billion years ago;
religions which were born and flourished in total isolation from each
other are now intermingling, thus offering everyone sort of a
"do-it-yourself" potpourri of religious mix; anyone with a computer
has access to all knowledge, philosophies, religions, political
theories, and cultural expressions; we have become as "gods" ourselves
with the power to destroy the earth, and perhaps even knock the solar
system out of balance; we shall soon have the capability to create
"designer babies," and perhaps eventually eliminate the requirement
for the male sperm in the creation of human life; and television, the
Internet, the cell phone and easy plane travel have virtually
eliminated time and space, giving us all an instantaneous electronic
global reach. One could go on, but the point is clear.

We live in an age that in every way is totally different than those
times when our spiritual expressions were given us. Our psychological
orientation is vastly different. We possess abilities and face
circumstances that were simply unimaginable even five hundred years
ago, to say nothing of two thousand or more years ago. So it would be
unnatural if there were not some change taking place in how man
relates to the God-image, and to Transcendent Reality. As Joseph
Campbell put it, "Nothing really means anything because the images of
all our religions refer to millennia past." Everyone on earth—from
the indigenous people of the Amazon basin, to the "sophisticates" of
Paris and New York, are being forced into a new global, electronic,
instant information, technological context of life, which bears no
relationship to that context of life when our religions evolved.

Thus the religious life across the world is in turmoil. In India, the
passive belief that one must accept the circumstances of this
incarnation of life in order to find greater peace and happiness in
the next incarnation, this belief is giving way to the realization
that one can indeed change one's circumstances in "this life." Thus
the age-old pattern of adapting to one's "proper role," as defined by
dharma, need no longer apply. And so Bangalore is crammed with young
"techies"—making salaries their parents could only dream of—providing
"back room" services for American companies via computer. In Israel,
secularism and Judaic fundamentalism vie for political supremacy,
while Islam could eventually become Israel's major religion if
Israel's Arab population continues its present growth rate. In China,
where Confucianism and ancestor worship have been such a significant
underpinning of culture and spiritual heritage, the whole structure of
family, family authority, and the moral discipline of Confucianism, as
well as acceptance of the wisdom of one's elders, has been atrophying
under the influence of, first Communism, and more recently,
modernization, affluence and globalization. And while the Tao (or the
"Way") tickles the spiritual fancy of many Westerners, the influence
of the Tao has long been waning in China as people search for some
more "modern" meaning to life as the country ascends to the peaks of
world economic and military power.

In Europe, "secular fundamentalism" reigns, and a major concern of the
Catholic Church is whether Islam will ultimately become Europe's
dominant religion. In sub-Sahara Africa, they long ago lost their
instinctual native ways of relating to the "Divine Unknown" as
Europeans imposed Christianity and Western rationalized modes of
administration and education on a people who instinctively operated on
a more non-rational decision-making basis. Right now, Christianity is
growing rapidly in Africa, but it remains to be seen how deeply this
"foreign" religion becomes embedded in the African psyche. And in
virtually every Muslim country, significant debate of Islam,
democracy, modernity and globalization is under way.

A Copernican Revolution

But Jung has pointed to something even deeper going on. The evidence
indicates we are in the midst of a Copernican revolution of the
psyche/soul, and it's generating the same disorientation, bewilderment
and conflict that followed the original Copernican revolution in the
sixteenth century.

At its deepest level, religion is the language of the soul, the center
of which is the Self, the archetype that functions as the God-image.
What the world is confronted with in the so-called "clash of
civilizations" is, at a deeper level, the conflict of different
God-images, or, in psychological terms, different expressions of the
Self. That is the heart of every religious conflict. It is a split
in humanity's God-image.

At the center of this split is the psychological reality that, as one
analyst puts it, what we perceive as "God-phenomena" are in point of
fact "Self-phenomena." Behind such a statement is a totally new fact
of history: for the first time, as a result of Jung's discoveries, we
have come to understand some of the psychological reality of the human
interpretation of the Divinity; a reality based not on the actual
existence of the Divine Unknowable Creator of the universe, but on our
perception of that Unknowable. That perception, by definition, is not
the Unknowable Creator itself, but is the God-image as rendered by the
Self. The split in the God-image is, psychologically, a split in
humanity's collective Self. Historically, this split has been caused
by many factors, including geography and environment, varying human
characteristics, cultural and religious development, as well as the
nature of evolution and emergence. But over the past two or three
centuries, the split has been intensified by activation of the
Apocalypse archetype mentioned earlier.

What we may be facing now is the effort of this split Self, this
divided God-image, to seek a greater degree of unity and wholeness,
even while the destructive phase of the Apocalypse archetype
continues. Given the unfolding of some sort of global stage in human
affairs which has been emerging over the past several centuries, such
a move towards a greater unity in the Self, in the God-image, would
not only be natural, but is essential if humanity is successfully to
realize the vital new life this unfolding offers. This does not
necessarily mean any particular God-image must be lost; rather that as
cultures and individuals, we must move to a higher level of
consciousness at the same time as the differing God-images mature and
are reinterpreted to express themselves in a broader, deeper and more
organic unity. In this sense, a God-image need not be static; it is
responsive to the demands of evolution of the human condition, new
circumstances, and the evolving needs of the human soul.

Part of the maturation of the God-image is the need for
reinterpretation of spiritual scripture. Scripture is the expression
of an earlier consciousness just as it emerged from the mists of the
Mythic Age. In this sense, besides its spiritual significance that is
an expression of the transcendent dimension, scripture is as well a
psychological manifestation. As was said above, religion is the
language of the soul, and as the soul (psyche) seeks a greater
maturity of expression, traditional scripture must be reinterpreted in
terms that resonate in the depths of the contemporary human spirit.
This reinterpretation is far more than a matter of language, of just
re-writing the scripture in modern language. It involves taking the
original scriptural expressions, breaking them out of the archaic,
pre-modern context in which they are embedded, and expressing them in
terms that resonate with the contemporary psyche.

Edward Edinger has in fact done this to a certain extent, and his
collected works on this subject mark a historic beginning of a
monumental task. Take, for example, Edinger's reinterpretation of the
biblical passage we know of as the Lord's Prayer. He notes that it is
divided into seven petitions, and is "a formula for maintaining a
connection between the ego and the Self." He suggests that the phrase
"Hallowed be thy name," means I must remember the transpersonal sacred
dimension of life. "That is what the ego is reminding itself—to
remember that life is not just secular, it has a transpersonal
dimension," writes Edinger. The phrase, "Thy kingdom come," suggests
that the ego is announcing that it recognizes that the rule of the
Self should prevail. "Forgive us our trespasses," emphasizes the
nature of the ego's sin against the Self.

We began this essay with a glance at earlier seminal shifts in human
perception and orientation that involved a heightened constellation of
the Self. We are once again experiencing an accelerated activation of
the Self that is seen in a broadening out of the human personality,
and in a widening individual identity. Given that religion is the
language of the soul, the psyche, one is hard pressed to remember any
time in the past half century when there has been as much public
discussion in the world about religion as there is today. From a
psychological standpoint, what we're witnessing is the Self searching
for a greater maturation and wholeness.

The Fundamentalist Phenomenon

An inherent aspect of any archetypal expression of the maturing
process is reaction, in this case expressed in the more rigid
manifestation of religious fundamentalism's resistance to such a new
maturation. Various people are inclined to equate fundamentalism with
radicalism, even terrorism. This is a distinction that can be both
false and harmful. For many people, fundamentalism simply means
adhering to the fundamentals, the basics, of a given religious
expression, whether Hindu, Muslim, Jewish or Christian.

Whether moderate or fanatical, however, fundamentalism poses different
reactions to the psychological reorientation under way. This is due
to the numinous nature of the archetypal experience, which yields a
variety of expressions. If the numinous experience is consciously
integrated, then individuation takes place, strengthening the
"ego-Self axis." If, however, one's ego identifies with the
numinosity of the experience, then inflation takes place and the
chance for individuation is minimized. The ego then expresses itself
in a certain dogmatic rigidity. It identifies with a psychologically
archaic belief system residing in the collective unconscious, rather
than moving forward and engaging individuation and its process of
increasing consciousness. The individual then feels he has assumed
the spiritual "high ground." Thus, all fundamentalisms tend to divide
the world between "us" and "them," between the "saved" and "damned,"
between "those who are with us" and "those who are against us." For
inflation has diminished the room for acceptance of the "other."

One characteristic of fundamentalism is the literal interpretation of
scripture, whether the Bible, the Koran, or Bhagavad-Gita, rather than
a symbolic interpretation, which, for example, is how St. Augustine
interpreted scripture such as the book of Revelation and its
description of the Apocalypse. This is a critical distinction, as
many people are inclined to interpret the book of Revelation
literally. This difference between literalism and symbolism is one
element at the core of the difference between fundamentalists and
"traditionalists."

A basic psychological law says every psychic condition exists
simultaneously with its opposite. So the maturation and broadening
out, the evolution towards a more whole and complete God-image taking
place in the collective psyche, brings with it a regressive movement
towards an archaic reaching back for a more familiar expression of the
God-image. Essentially, religious fundamentalism reaches back for
thought-patterns that originated at least two thousand years ago, that
were expressed in a manner relevant to the psychological need and
development of that time, but which fail to resonate with much of
contemporary society—especially in the "creative minority" which sets
the tone and culture of any society. Indeed, the present-day psyche
is actually seeking to reformulate such thought-patterns as it seeks
maturation and a higher state of consciousness.

But the more energy acquired by the embodiment of the "new," the more
fiercely its opposite clutches to the safer and more familiar "old."
In other words, the maturation to a new and more complete God-image,
and the fundamentalist reaction are two sides of the same coin. As he
desperately strives to keep the old faith, the fundamentalist clings
to the certainty of the very spiritual symbols that have lost their
collective numinosity and are thus in need of reinterpretation.

That the whole world should be experiencing this
spiritual/psychological reorientation simultaneously—even if at
differing rates—is not surprising, as Analytical Psychology suggests
that the structure of the psyche is the same for all people
everywhere, even though the psyche has manifested itself in different
cultural and spiritual inflections over the millennia. In this sense,
the psyche is comparable to the human body, which has evolved into
different sizes, features and colors, but in its essential attributes
is basically the same everywhere.

The Terrorism/Religion Relationship

Part of the contemporary psychological reorientation is the question
of why there appear to be two completely different ways in which
Muslims react to their perception of America, globalization and
Western civilization? All Muslims, generally speaking, appear to
share a similar assessment of what they perceive to be the
materialism, secularism and general spiritual disintegration of Europe
and the United States. One section of Muslim society—a
minority—reacts to this perception by being prepared to sacrifice
their lives in order to kill as many of the "infidel" as possible.
These are the so-called "terrorists." Another section of Muslim
society, which perhaps could be described as "traditionalists," and
which shares the same assessments of the West as held by the
terrorists, responds by diplomacy, cultural interchange, political
action, editorial commentary, and dialogue. Why this completely
different response to shared or similar assessments? Are we asking
this question, and do we evaluate the significance it implies?

One hypothesis in answer to this question could be that the terrorist
processes his reaction to perceived ills directly from the unconscious
portion of his psyche. It is an instinctual reaction. Analytical
Psychology has helped us realize that the unconscious is raw nature,
and as such, it has no moral structure. The traditionalist, on the
other hand, processes his reaction through his consciousness, and
consciousness does contain a moral structure. As is pointed out in
Edinger's book, Archetype of the Apocalypse, "The psychological root
of terrorism is a fanatical resentment – a quasi-psychotic hatred
originating in the depths of the archetypal psyche and therefore
carried by religious (archetypal) energies…. Articulate terrorists
generally express themselves in religious (archetypal) terminology.
The enemy is seen as the Principle of Objective Evil (Devil) and the
terrorist perceives himself as the 'heroic' agent of divine or
Objective Justice (God). This is an archetypal inflation of demonic
proportions, which temporarily grants the individual almost superhuman
energy and effectiveness." (For a graphic example of this, see Time
magazine, "Inside the Mind of an Iraqi Suicide Bomber." July 4, 2005)

Edinger then goes on to say, "We need a new category to understand
this new phenomenon. These individuals are not criminals and are not
madmen although they have some qualities of both. Let's call them
zealots. Zealots are possessed by transpersonal, archetypal dynamisms
deriving from the collective unconscious. Their goal is a collective
one, not a personal one. The criminal seeks his own personal gain;
not so the zealot. In the name of a transpersonal, collective value –
a religion, an ethnic or national identity, a 'patriotic' vision, etc.
– they sacrifice their personal life in the service of their 'god.'
Although idiosyncratic and perverse, this is fundamentally a religious
phenomenon that derives from the archetypal, collective unconscious."

What Edinger is highlighting applies to more than terrorism in the
Middle East. It plays a part in many of the "religious" conflicts in
the world today—Chechen Muslims v. Orthodox Russians, Jews v. Muslims
in Palestine, Orthodox Serbians v. Muslims in the Balkans, Hindus v.
Muslims in Kashmir. In all of these conflicts, there is at least a
significant element of what Edinger describes as "transpersonal,
archetypal dynamisms deriving from the collective unconscious." No
assessment of the terrorist phenomenon is complete without including
Edinger's general analysis.

Shadow Projection

Critical to understanding the role the unconscious plays in all we've
discussed is to study our "shadow", both in its individual and
collective expressions. One analyst suggested that if we want to know
what our personal shadow looks like, just draw up a list of the
characteristics we least like in other people. That list will
represent our shadow, the repressed qualities our ego-defense
mechanism denies in ourselves, and thus projects onto other people or
nations. The psychiatrist Anthony Stevens writes that the shadow
"underlies all kinds of prejudice against those belonging to
identifiable groups other than our own, and is at the bottom of all
massacres, pogroms and wars." In this way, he says, "we deny our own
'badness' and project it on to others…" (Emphasis added)

The most heinous example of collective "shadow projection" in our time
was Hitler's ability to induce a sizable portion of the German people
to project its shadow onto the Jewish people. On a considerably less
catastrophic basis, shadow projection was more recently represented by
Iran's use of the term "Great Satan" in describing the U.S., and the
U.S. retort of "Axis of evil," both of which locates the evil "out
there" somewhere, and relieves Iran and the U.S. of considering their
own evil. Stevens suggests that what makes phrases such as these so
devastating is that they can "activate the archetype of evil" which
then gets "projected onto the 'enemy' in addition to the projection of
our personal shadow."

The question arises as to whether we Americans are capable of or are
willing to confront our own "shadow" in an objective manner, with no
value judgment reinforced by any emotional attachment. Seeing the
"American shadow," while not difficult, takes moral courage, as it
means confronting the source of malevolence in ourselves, which is
uncomfortable, to say the least. Just as the shadow is integral to
individual existence, so it's part of a nation's collective
personality. Examples abound: the brutality of Native American
genocide, of slavery and modern day racism; the arrogance of the "Ugly
American" abroad; an excessive "power-lust" for knowledge and the
domination of nature—expressed in the amorality of the sciences, and
in the unreflecting exploitation of technology by business; the
selfishness of our maximization of growth and progress regardless of
the cost; our unbalanced way of thinking reflected in environmental
degradation; the greed and disregard of consequences that lead to our
oil addiction; and the absence of love for our children that tolerates
our daily TV menu of violence, sex and death, to offer but a few
examples. These are all individual and shared shadow aspects that, in
our collective denial, we refuse to confront—at our and the world's
peril. As Marie-Louise von Franz put it, "I think that if more people
do not make the effort to reflect and take back their [shadow]
projections, and take the opposites within themselves, there will be a
total destruction."

Edinger gives helpful insight on understanding one's shadow. "We must
ask ourselves," he writes, "Whom do I hate? Which groups or factions
do I fight against? Whoever or whatever they are, they are a part of
me. I am bound to that which I hate, as surely as I am bound to that
which I love. Psychologically, the important thing is where one's
libido is lodged, not whether one is for or against a given thing."
(Italics added)

Marie-Louise von Franz comments on Jung's reaction to the accumulation
of collective shadow projection: "Jung saw this present-day
culmination of evil as typical of the historic catastrophes that tend
to accompany the great transitions from one age to another… Jung also
did not have a simple answer, but he was convinced that every
individual who undertook to come to terms with the evil in himself
would make a more effective contribution toward the salvation of the
world than idealistic external machinations would. Here we are
talking about more than just insight into one's personal shadow; we
are speaking also of a struggle with the dark side of God, which the
human being cannot face but must, as Job did." Perhaps Jung's most
succinct prescription for confronting the shadow was, "One does not
become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the
darkness [the shadow] conscious." That is the heart of
"individuation," Jung's term for achieving the most complete
development of individual personality. That is certainly a task any
individual can undertake.

Summing Up

To sum up, as we look towards the coming decades, we cannot escape the
fact that some great phase of the human experience is dying, while
some new stage seeks to take shape. We daily watch and experience the
trauma of this historic shift expressing itself in cascading world
events, in our changing institutions and human relationships, and in
the ethos of destruction that has become such a cultural motif. At
the deepest level, what we're experiencing is a sign of humanity's
collective soul passing through the throes of a reorientation, a death
and rebirth. We shouldn't be surprised, as it's happened before in
history, albeit on a more limited geographical basis. But now the
whole human family is experiencing such a critical moment. And
although we have no map of the wider historical space into which the
world is moving, the process itself reflects some new hope, some new
context of life coming to birth. Like all births it's painful.

We all are living between two ages. There's a new epoch of broader
and deeper meaning struggling to take shape for all humankind. What
we're experiencing is a broadening out of the human personality to a
new orientation that brings with it a sense of the whole person, as
well as that person's relationship to the whole of humanity. It's an
enlargement of personality and perspective bringing with it a more
inclusive and complete transcendent expression. This is the expansion
of consciousness so urgently needed. It's a process of inner
transformation and rebirth. It's that larger and greater personality
maturing within us. With all our problems and possibilities, the
future depends on how we—each in his or her own unique way—tap into
the eternal renewing dynamic that dwells in the deepest reaches of the
human soul.

Such a moment of intense possibility is, as well, a moment of grave
danger. The question that hangs over humanity is whether we shall
wake to this process and engage it in time, or continue blindly down
the road of past orientations and perspectives. It is unrealistic to
expect what we've been discussing to come to fruition in the lifetime
of anyone reading this essay, for history suggests changes in
worldview and consciousness take time to grow and mature. But if
enough people—especially in America and Europe—realize what's
happening, and internalize the symbolic meaning of the new
orientation, then perhaps we might avoid the worst, and contribute to
the new level of consciousness and moral maturity a new epoch of
history is demanding.

(c) William Van Dusen Wishard 2005. All rights reserved.

WorldTrends Research: www.worldtrendsresearch.com

Themes in Books

2007-06-11T13:11:00.000-04:00

I’ve been wanting to write to you folks for some time now, and finally have arranged some time to do so.
I’m copying the titles of the books that folks have agreed to summarize. Some drafts are already arriving. I wanted to share with you some of the excitement as the patterns are beginning to emerge. I’d also like to invite those of you who are not doing book summaries to join us in our collaborative effort. Soon this discussion will shift over to the smaller list of those who are working on book summaries. This larger list will become mainly a place to announce additions to the henryreed.com/indiana website (Indiana is not capitalized in this web address regardless of what Microsoft Word wants to do with it).
With regards to updates to the website, there are two more links added:
The first one is an essay I wrote some time ago about a very interesting book called “Reality isn’t what it used to be.”
The second is compliments of one of our list members, an essay from Psychology Today on the loss of the private self.
Both are interesting reading.
Now onto what I’ve been wanting to share with you. Some patterns in the books being summarized. First, here is the current list of books being worked on. There are a few others, done from the past, which will be included, also.
2012 Adrian
T. de Chardin, Future of Man
Return of the Goddess
Mayan Calandar and Transformation of consciousness
Mayan Code
Primary perception
Possible Human by J Houston
Lucid Waking
New Earth by Tolle
Unanswered Questions
love w/o end
Otherwhere
Pinchbeck 2012
Radical Knowing
Cosmos and Psyche
Mack: Passport to Cosmos
Values for a New Millenium
Sacred Mirror

Here’s something of what I’m seeing. First of all, de Chardin was one of the first to speculate about the future of consciousness, hypothesizing the “noosphere,” a dimension surrounding the planet where all our thoughts would reside. This idea is of course taken up in the idea of the internet and the development of virtual reality. Both de Chardin and Terrance McKenna foresaw us living with a reversed focus, less on the physical, more on consciousness itself. The other day in the news it was reported that women in Iraq are tired of not being able to watch TV because of all the atrocities shown on the screen. So they formed together to see to it that an alternate channel be broadcast, with positive things. They say that although they know it is largely false, they prefer to stay at home and watch this new channel and pretend that all is OK. Is this a foreshadowing of a time when the earth would not be inhabitable, but we’d be in bubbles living an imaginary life? Another theme is that there is an end coming to the awareness of duality. For example, we distinguish our thoughts from real things. That will end as thoughts become real and things become mere thoughts. As part of this breakdown in boundaries between real and imaginary, the world of consciousness will no longer be shrouded in a veil. There are several books on life in the mind, as in out of body travel, for example (“Otherwhere” is a book about that, and “Unanswered Questions” also delves into what is it like in the world of consciousness? The closest we have to a book on the psychedelic answer is the 2012 book by Pinchbeck, that discusses psychedelic research. We have both Jung to describe the denizens of the unconscious, and then the psychedelic research goes beyond the boundaries of Jung to describe “entities,” both friendly and not. Mack’s “Passport to the Cosmos,” about alien contacts comes up with a similar notion of there being “beings out there” who are aiding in our development, preparing us for the times ahead. The times ahead have a fork in the road. On the one hand, we see material that projects from current consciousness forward, as in a steady evolution, and then there are those who speak of “an event” that will divide the population into those who survive and those who don’t, or as David Birr called it, “the survival of the wisest.” This first theme seems to have a lot to do with the reversal, from physical to the imaginal. Some of the 2012 writings speak about this. Hand Clow’s Mayan Code also gives details about what is going on with us as this change comes about. A related book, on astrology, Cosmos and Psyche presents a new paradigm for astrology and also looks at the cycles of history and what lies ahead.
Another major theme has to do with the “be here now” philosophy, which also ties into the “non dual awareness” theme, because what you find in the here and now is the non-dual background of being. Tolle’s New Earth and Sacred Mirror are two books related to this theme. Non dual awareness has been around a long time, but seems to be on the upswing. I read in Sacred Mirror how Ken Wilber explained non-dual awareness as the pinnacle of self-realilzation, the highest you can get, so it would be rare, but now in recent years, there have appeared many books by folks who have experienced it enough to write about it, and there is a web site devoted to it. Behind the door of “be here now,” lies an amazing experience in the reality of awareness. I’ve experienced it myself in bits and pieces and we’ll try at our Indiana get together many ways of putting ourselves in the path of this realization.
There’s another theme, and that has to do with, on the one hand, the psychic, our increasing telepathy, but also about the interconnectedness of the mind, and thus to the possibility of multi-individual consciousness. I’ve experienced this mainly in dreamwork in groups, and have taken it also into the realm of the imagination. It has to do with a topic being explored by many minds, and the new consciousness being that ability to experience something in a complex manner, as if integrating information, or awareness, from many sources, as if you could be aware of a hundred mind’s processing of that stimulus. Sometimes its called “diversity.” Sometimes it’s called “Christ Consciousness,” sometimes it’s called “crop circles” and sometimes its called “The Divine Matrix,” which is the title of a book by the author of the God Code, that could be added to our list. There is one book, “Radical Knowing,” that proposes something that I’ve explored experimentally, something that is very hard to get our minds around. It has to do with the idea that consciousness exists at the boundaries, that there is something about a relationship between two people that creates consciousness at the intersection. The “space in between” two people’s being aware of each other is a place that is creative and full of potential. There are several ways of attempting to get our perception of consciousness to move, so that we perceive consciousness as “out there” and not something stuck inside our heads.
There are probably other ways to point out some common themes. I’ll continue to work on this project as I have more time to read each of the books and get more info from our book summarizers. I invite more of you to join our collaborative effort. There are many other good books out there that I’d like to see worked on:
Richard Moss, The Mandala of Being
Robert Moore, The Reinchantment of Everyday Life
Walter Anderson: The Future of the Self
Nathan Schwartz-Salant: The Mystery of Human Relationship (alchemy of consciousness)

Hope you all are well.

Henry

Learning from Alien Encounters

2007-06-01T12:12:00.000-04:00

First of all, thanks to David, Marge and Sylvia (hope I haven’t missed anyone) who sent me replies to my last email posting. I’ve put David’s and Marge’s on our 1REED blog, and will get Sylvia’s to you soon, as well as any other that comes in.

First, regarding updates to the website, www.henryreed.com/indiana
I’ve added a link to the 1REED blog, which is a record of these emails related to the Indiana conference and the future of consciousness. I’ve also added a link to a web page that provides many links to the topic of “heart awareness,” a state of consciousness that seems the focus of attempts to perceive “through the veil,” meaning inter-species communication as well as to non-material beings. Another link goes to a web site that is compiling information on “non-dual awareness.” The significance of non-dual will become more clear after you read the quotes below.

Now I’d like to share something with you. In doing so, I’m hoping that you’ll get a clearer picture about what we are aiming at. I’m also hoping that I might recruit a few more of you to join our inner circle of people who are volunteering to do book summaries. We keep becoming aware of not simply new titles (we can’t do all the titles) but new realms of thought, etc. regarding our topic.

I want to share with you some material from John Mack’s book, Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters. I wished that I had had this book on the list from the get go, I meant to. Fortunately, we’ve received a new list member who has volunteered to be on the book summary team, and so this book will be summarized and included in our manual.

I think it is a good example, and John Mack recognizes his work as an example, of an area that challenges consciousness and our view of reality and that has implications for our future direction of evolution. It also takes sides on the issue of whether or not we are coming to a fork in the road (more on that later). I scanned a few paragraphs from his concluding chapter, and I’ll insert a brief summary of some other passages from that chapter. I trust you’ll see the relevance.

First quote:
“The alien abduction phenomenon is one among a number of manifestations--including near-death experiences, intricate crop formations apparitions of many kinds, unexplained powers of healing, and parapsychology--that are forcing us to appreciate that cosmic realities exist heyond the three-dimensional universe that has bounded our earthly existence There seem to be as many names for these domains as there are methods of approaching them: the "implicate order," the “invisible world,” other dimensions," and "transpersonal" or “daimomc reality" are a few of them. Philosophers like Michael Zimmerman Michael Grosso posit a "third zone" of reality that is neither purely internal nor external but lies beyond, including or subsuming the familiar dualism of inner and outer worlds. Whatever words we may use to describe this realm, or realms, it appears ever more likely that we exist in a multidimensional cosmos or multiverse within which space and time appear to be constructs of the mind that order or simplify the chaos of energy and vibration in which we are immersed.
“In addition to the methods of hypothesis-building, experimentation and replication that have formed the basis of the physical sciences, penetrating this multidimensional universe or multiverse seems to require the full range of powers that human consciousness may possess, including intuition, contemplation, or what one of the experiencers has called “the heart’s mind.” The cosmos that is revealed by this opening of consciousness, far from being an empty place of dead matter and energy, appears to be filled with beings, creatures, spirits, intelligences, gods--the names vary according to the apparent worldview of the observer or function and behavior of the entity at hand--that have through the millennia been intimately involved with human existence. In some instances, it would appear, certain of these entities may even cross over the divide that we created in order to keep unseen realities and mysteries apart, ideologically speaking. from the material world.”

Note: In another place he uses the Jungian idea of “compensation” to explain the transformative process taking place. We have so extremely alienated the unseen world, creating a divide between materiality and spirit, that the spirit world is backlashing, creating an upset that will restore the balance between materiality and spirit. The Jungians use a word, “metanoia,” to refer to a total flip, transformation, of consciousness brought about as nature’s response to a too one-sided consciousness that is interfering with health. The message of the aliens seems similar, as if they were a “psychic factor,” or a dimension of the psyche that is asking to be reckoned with.
Also, with regard to the “third zone,” that is referred to, I’ve done a big study of how folks can perceive that third zone as something in which they are having unconscious participation. My study was done in the context of two people “imagining” being in psychic contact. Many of you on this discussion list have experienced this somewhat at one of my trainings. The huge article I published on it (“Close encounters in the Liminal Zone” is available at http://www.henryreed.com/reed/publications/close2you.php).
I should also note that in places within the book, he discusses how among Native Americans and indigenous peoples, the divide between the material and the spiritual is not so great. There is one chapter about a Native American who had abduction experiences and he says that most all the Natives are aware of the aliens and have always been aware. This relates to the theme that what is on the horizon is a return of something that has been lost, but not lost to indigenous folks. That may be why there is some idea in the Native tradition that white folks would be returning to them to learn from them. It also suggests that the future, evolution, of consciousness may not consist entirely of new elements not previously experienced, but in some way a return of elements that had been suppressed. “The Return of the Repressed” on a cosmic theme, is something Mack considers.

Second quote:
“We still know very little about the forces that act together to bring about a fundamental change in worldview. But it seems clear that for particular individuals such a shift can occur only when some new information or experience, utterly incompatible with previously held beliefs, reaches them beyond the intellect so powerfully that the inadequacy of the worldview that they have hitherto used to explain or contend with reality becomes viscerally and intellectually inescapable. This is what has happened to the abductees who turn to look at their experiences. It is what happened to me in the course of experiencing and studying their stones. It is what is happening to increasing numbers of people who are being exposed to this phenomenon, especially when they meet or hear abduction experiencers tell what they feel quite certain happened to them.”

Note: Here is a very definite reference to forces, or sources, that are bringing about the transformation or evolution of consciousness. We’ve seen, and heard from you, about several alternatives, which are not incompatible: a gradual evolution, through education, social changes, etc. The 100th monkey idea, which could mean that after awhile, the majority of folks have changed; intervention by spiritual forces, aliens, angels, etc.; intervention by cosmic events, such as radiation bombarding the planet; intervention by earth changes, such as major catastrophe. One of the themes that emerges in the book is that the aliens are trying to create a new species, part human, part alien, who will be able to live on the planet after the big event happens, as though the planet, the aliens say, is dying, and soon will not be inhabitable, so they are trying to create a new being who can inhabit the earth afterwards.
I’m not trying to encourage a stand on this issue, but for example, if there is intervention from spiritual sources, then it would be a good idea to establish a relationship with those sources.

Between the above two quotes and the final quote, Mack summarizes some of the effects on experiencers. They read like someone who has had a near death experience:
Realizing that humans are not at the summit of evolutionary beings.
A heightened vibratory energy inside (kundalini?) which is continuing to remove blocks to awareness
Becoming aware of the great archetypes in life
Developing psychic abilities
A new connection with “The Source”
Experiencing a “heart opening”
A new sense of the sacred and a reverence for nature
Assuming responsibility and working at new project to save the planet

These are the kinds of changes that are seen in other consciousness altering experiences (psychedelics, near death, out of body). These could well be ear marks of what’s ahead.

Final quote:

“In the end, the abduction phenomenon seems to me to be a part of the shift in consciousness that is collapsing duality and enabling us to see that we are connected beyond the Earth at a cosmic level. No common enemy will unite us, but the realization of a common Source might. Our notions of the Divine, like everything else, seem to grow along with the evolution of our consciousness. We no longer expect an Old Testament God/bully that will part the seas and bring us where we need to go. Nor is it likely that a messiah/savior will lead us into the Divine Light. For that light, we are learning from phenomena like the one in this book, and from near-death and other out-of-body experiences, is an eternal part of ourselves and the essence of all creation. The creative principle is within us, not without—-thus it cannot befall us. As Bernardo Peixoto discovered in a shattering realization, it is nowhere and everywhere.”

So, Mack’s comments seem right in keeping with the theme of our work together.

I’d like to hear your comments, suggestions for additional topics, and I hope I can recruit more of you to join our smaller group of folks working on book summaries. It is exciting to be able to synthesize so much information and I look forward to what the folks at Indiana will do with this information when we put it into our intuition hopper.

Henry

History of the End of the World

2007-05-30T12:04:00.001-04:00

How Do You Think the World Ends?
Shifting one’s perception, from seeing the glass as half empty to seeing it as half full, creates a minor miracle. It changes an impoverished world into one of opportunity. Does that count also as an actual change in the real world? Some say yes, some say no. Could this difference in understanding be fueling today’s culture wars?
In his book, A history of the end of the world: How the most controversial book in the Bible changed the course of western civilization (HarperSanFrancisco), Jonathan Kirsch presents the history of the book of Revelation, from the time of conception through it’s impact upon current events. Revelation’s basic theme is that history is something God planned in advance. There are good guys and there are bad guys, both with support from divine sources. The end is preceded by a major battle between Good and Evil. Good finally triumphs and Earth is restored to its rightful condition of peace and harmony. We all know that story.
Revelation has some thematic elements so common to human nature that it seems to justify, if not invite, certain human predilections. Apocalyptic (the Greek equivalent of the Roman term for “what will be revealed”) books, authored through divine intervention, was common at the time Revelation came into being. One Jewish source mentions over seventy other “future histories,” or divinely channeled accounts of the end of the world, which were held in sacred regard. Apocalypses were found among the Dead Sea scrolls. End of the world prophecies existed in most other cultures, each having an equivalent thematic form.
Kirsch places the first apocalypses around the time of Zoraster in Persia. He suggests that the Hebrew versions began after Alexander the Great invaded Judea, when Jewish culture was under threat of the foreign, and much more liberal, culture of Greece. The Hebrew apocalypses thus emerged to combat the cultural invasion by casting anything Greek as part of the “evil empire,” while divisions among the Jewish people began to reflect this difference in values. Thus the apocalypses became a tool in what we now call the “culture wars.” Kirsch describes a pattern, manifesting from Biblical times on up to our modern era, where those who perceive they are suffering because of the behaviors of other groups of people, who have heinous values, and look forward to the day when Good will triumph over the Evil ones to create a New Age of Peace. Thus Revelation seems to be a timeless archetype of political struggle powered by religious fervor.
From the earliest time, however, the theme that the “end of the world is at hand” proved to be an unfulfilled claim. To bolster the power of the apocalypses, therefore, it became useful to view these texts as symbolic, leading to various interpretations of their meanings. Augustine (354-430, A.D.), for example, an influential theologian of the early Christian church, argued that Revelation shouldn’t be taken literally, but as an allegory of the “moral conflicts within each person.” Kirsch traces the history of Revelation as it continues into the New World, firing the imagination of the Pilgrims. It played a role in Joseph Smith’s founding of the Mormans. It plays a role today in the thinking of the current United States administration. It continues to fit the way people experience their struggles.
One interpretation, however, that Kirsch never mentions, is the one that two influential symbolists independently envisioned. Edgar Cayce, operating from a deep intuition, and Carl Jung, a psychiatrist who studied comparative religion and mythology, both saw Revelation as a blueprint for a radical shift in consciousness. In this interpretation, Revelation is a process of enlightenment that changes the person’s perception of reality, especially that of the human-God relationship. Cayce identified the experience as coming to know oneself as an individual yet one with God. Carl Jung interpreted the Christ symbol as a portent of a transformation of consciousness similar to Cayce’s description. After such an experience, the person lives in a totally different world.
If Revelation is symbolic of an inner process, can it tell us anything about the future of the world? Suppose many people were to experience enlightenment. Would the world “out there” become different because so many people are experiencing reality in a new and different way? Edgar Cayce speaks of the return of Christ as an inner event that more and more people will come to experience. Jung predicted an increase in this transformation as reflecting the coming “Aquarian Age.” Both men saw consequences for world history arising from the collective effect of the transformation of individual lives. However, whether ridding the world of evil requires an external extermination or an internal transformation seems to be a question that plagues us today. A reconciliation of these two viewpoints is probably in order.

Themes in the Future of Consciousness

2007-05-29T18:22:00.000-04:00

Hi Folks:
Are you still enjoying getting updates on consciousness? I’ve got a moment’s break from my required writing routine to flash out this bit of musing to you, something I’ve been pondering for awhile and I’d appreciate your input. As I get more volunteers to do book summaries, the more new book topics arise that seem to need attention. Given my nature, I like to keep focus on the target, yet not be blinded by assumptions. I was wondering, what shall be included?
One in our community wanted to deal with near-death experiences. Another mentioned non-dual awareness. I was familiar with both areas, and it got me thinking.
Take near-death experiences. Do we learn about the future of consciousness from these studies, or mainly that life goes on after death? It profoundly changes the experiential perspective of those who’ve had the NDE, but does our second hand knowledge of it have any bearing on the future of consciousness? Life has always existed after death, so maybe there’s no news here, thus nothing regarding the future of consciousness.
Non-dual awareness is the new term for the old notion of satori, enlightenment, pure awareness, unconditioned awareness, etc. etc. I’ve had enough tiny moments of it to know they are talking about something real, that consciousness itself, or awareness itself, exists in its own right, and is the supreme “being” we’ve all confused with ourselves. Anyway, that truth, even though it is being discovered by more and more people and gaining its own western psychology, is something that has always been true, so it is no news.
On the other hand, might we not consider that the type of psychology, the quality of consciousness, of humanity’s most evolved beings, and the kind of consciousness, or mentality developed by some of us, as a result of therapy, vision questing, volunteer service, a life of spirituality, or whatever—might these observed trends in humans who are creatively growing be signposts to the future of consciousness? Can we predict the future of consciousness by looking at the trends in those people who evolve themselves in their lifetimes? If so, then many of the various spiritual development schemes (Course in Miracles, NeoJungian psychology, Transpersonal, Holotropia, etc. etc.), each with their own descriptions of the kinds of improved functioning, shifts in awareness, etc. that can be obtained, these assertions could be clues to the direction of evolving consciousness.
What about other factors, having little to do with humans working it out? Can spiritual forces play a role? If so, what kind of role and to what effect? What books are best to describe that possibility? What about cosmic events? Might a natural disaster, like the comet researchers today said may have wiped out the Neanderthals, wipe out all but a few humans, those left initiating a new trend in consciousness? Could there be a “singularity” in our future, something that only certain folks survive, folks who share a certain attribute? If so, could such a culling result in a “transformation of consciousness”? I’m asking.
While we are together at the Indiana conference, we’ll employ a variety of intuition technologies to “channel” information about the future of consciousness. And we’ll use intuitive methods as well as intellectual ones to discover the common patterns in the various theories we’ll be able to review, and we’ll experience their various methodologies and their impact upon our consciousness. In preparing for these events, it is helpful to develop some kind of preview, or overview of the territory, to help focus the questions we want to explore.
As I’ve mentioned, my own research has focused on one challenge that is in our future that has profound implications on consciousness—that of our dissolving boundaries in almost every aspect of earthly life—and one quality in the transformation of consciousness (it has many names, “to know yourself to be yourself and one with All,” universal heart awareness, Christ Consciousness, Universal matrix, Self, etc. etc.). When I combine those two studies, what emerges is a crossroads, a “Rapture or Rupture” in the experience of humans. Rupture comes for those overwhelmed by the psychic resonance with millions of others who have repressed hurt, anger and other destructive emotions. Rapture comes to those who have surrendered to an “empty self,” who witnesses experiences to flow by. Influenced by science fiction themes that have attempted to envision a schism in the future, I have envisioned a group of people who, when physical life is temporarily unviable, join psychic hands in going into an out of body limbo, helping one another keep focus until the crisis is past, then re-incarnating in uninhabited physical bodies whose previous owners had died of fright. I’m sure I’m having some cryptomnesia, and this fantasy is reflective of some science fiction novel I’ve encountered. However, bizarre sounding that fantasy is, one theme is certainly emerging in the news: some folks are getting by better than others and the divide is widening. That “divide” could cut many ways, depending upon the nature of the pressure on the population. The devastating Tsunami divided those natives who “sensed” danger and evacuated in time, and those immigrants who hadn’t a clue. Different pressures will divide us differently, but challenges that elicit the “survival of the fittest” seems to be inevitable.

near death studies

2007-05-29T12:38:00.000-04:00

Altered States
Scientists analyse the near-death experience
Lee Graves
Rocky collected money for the Mafia. A typical bagman, he was immersed
in the material world of fast cars, quick cash and getting ahead by
butting heads
One day, he was shot in the chest and left for dead on the street.
He survived, though, and lived to tell of an experience that changed his life.

"He described a blissful, typical near-death experience—seeing the
light, communicating with a deity and seeing deceased relatives," says
Bruce Greyson, a U.Va.-trained psychiatrist who interviewed Rocky
after the shooting.
"He came back with typical near-death aftereffects. He felt that
cooperation and love were the important things, and that competition
and material goods were irrelevant."
That change in attitude didn't sit well with Rocky's Mafia friends,
but they let him leave the family circle. It was his girlfriend who
screamed bloody murder when he changed careers and started helping
delinquent children and victims of spousal abuse.
"She was just disgusted with him because, as she put it, he no longer
cared for things of substance, meaning money and jewelry and fast
cars. She couldn't believe what happened to this guy," Greyson says.
So it is with hundreds and hundreds of people, those who have had
near-death experiences and those who have been close to them. For 30
years, they have been the subjects of research that has taken Greyson
and other scholars in U.Va.'s Division of Perceptual Studies deeper
into a field where the raw material of spirituality, the fundamentals
of consciousness, the ethereal realm of the afterlife and the scrutiny
of science intersect.
Over those three decades, Greyson, who directs the Division of
Perceptual Studies, has witnessed an evolution in our knowledge about
near-death experiences. "Back in the early 1980s, when we would
present information about these experiences at medical conferences,
after the conference was over doctors would come to us individually
and say, 'I had one of these experiences. Let me tell you about it.'"
Several factors made them reluctant to speak publicly. The experiences
are intensely private, and people had yet to learn how common they
were. In addition, the field of study had yet to gain wide acceptance.
As knowledge has grown, reticence has waned. "Now they're more willing
to say that during the conference in front of an audience," Greyson
says.
About one person in 20 has reported having a near-death experience,
according to one study. The International Association for Near-Death
Studies estimates that 12 percent of people who have had a close brush
with death will later report having a near-death experience. The
elements of that phenomenon are so consistent that Greyson developed a
systematic scale of 16 items to gauge the depth of the event.

A classic example would begin with a person in an accident or medical
emergency having a sense of physical death accompanied by an
out-of-body experience—feeling like he is floating, possibly seeing
his own body and surroundings. The sensation is not alarming and
generally is peaceful. Some senses, such as hearing, become
heightened.
A period of transition, many times described as moving swiftly through
a tunnel, follows. The individual enters a realm of indescribable
radiance, where he is met by deceased relatives and friends. A central
being of light, often interpreted as a deity, emanates profound joy
and unconditional love. The individual then undergoes a life review,
where the actions of a lifetime unfold in a vision. He is told or
decides that it is not time to die and returns to his body, not always
willingly.
The power of the experience often is life-altering. Fear of death
vanishes. Love of life blossoms. Spirituality strengthens. Compassion
and connectedness become central principles.
"[Experiencers] feel they're part of something greater than
themselves. They feel that they're all part of this universal whatever
you want to call it—nature, the godhead," Greyson says.
Though the research is modern, the phenomenon is ancient. The
afterlife has fascinated mankind since he was wrapped in the swaddling
clothes of civilization. Egyptian lore and spiritual texts such as The
Tibetan Book of the Dead abound with accounts and descriptions of the
passage from life to death. In the Bible, St. Paul describes a
mystical experience "whether in the body or out of the body I do not
know."
One ancient text in particular piqued the interest of Raymond Moody
while he was a student at U.Va. Plato's Republic ends with the story
of Er, a warrior who "dies" in battle only to be revived after 10
days. He describes, among other things, a towering band of
otherworldly light that serves as a passageway for souls.
Moody, whose studies at U.Va. led to a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1969,
initially found little practical connection between classical text and
contemporary experience. In 1965, however, a colleague related details
of his own near death. When Moody later taught at East Carolina
University, a student who had been severely injured in an accident
stopped him one day after class.
"I'll never forget it. He said, 'Dr. Moody, I wish we could talk about
life after death in this philosophy class.'
"I said, 'Why do you want to talk about that?'
"He said, 'About a year ago, I was in an accident, and my doctors said
I died. I had an experience that has totally changed my life, and I
haven't had anybody to talk about it with,'" Moody relates.

The student's story not only paralleled that of Moody's
Charlottesville colleague, but also had echoes of Plato. "At that
point, I realized there had to be more of them," he says. Moody began
conducting interviews and in 1975, while doing his medical residency
as a psychiatrist at U.Va., published Life After Life.
It proved a seminal work. Moody coined the term "near-death
experience" and outlined aspects common to the phenomenon. The book
generated a tidal wave of interest, and Moody was inundated with mail,
far more than he could manage given the demands of his residency.
In 1975, Greyson was an assistant professor of psychiatry at
U.Va. Moody showed him a box overflowing with one week's worth of
letters and asked him if he wanted to follow up. "Of course I couldn't
put them down," Greyson says.
So began a life's work of methodical inquiry into an area little
explored by Western science. Moody's book, coupled with the writings
of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross on the death experience, sparked interest
that now blazes among a host of individuals, groups and interests.
There now is a scientific Journal of Near-Death Studies (Greyson is
editor) and the International Association for Near-Death Studies. The
phenomenon has been mainstreamed to the point that readers can now
turn to reference books such as The Complete Idiot's Guide to the
Near-Death Experience.
Popular acceptance, however, is no substitute for empirical analysis
in the scientific community. Greyson is a skeptic; he believes only
conclusions supported by data. "Science is my game. I can understand
that there are philosophical or theological ways of approaching this,
but that's not my interest," he explains. "My interest is in the
scientific understanding of it."
The cumulative weight of personal stories certainly counts in this
regard, but Greyson employs a number of different studies to test for
veracity. To analyze whether accounts are embellished over time,
Greyson asked 72 patients who had completed the 16-item scale in the
1980s to complete the scale again without referring to their original
responses, then compared the results for variations. To gauge how a
near-death experience affected one's ability to cope with stress,
another researcher studied 18 participants of support groups sponsored
by the International Association of Near-Death Studies, then set up a
control group of 25 people from the same support groups who had not
had a near-death experience.
Greyson's studies, combined with research by others in the field, have
methodically addressed questions such as: Do people of different
cultures report similar phenomena? Do people tend to embellish or
elaborate on their experiences over time? Are reports recorded before
Moody's influential 1975 book consistent with those afterward? Can't
near-death experiences be attributed to other causes—medication,
mental illness, religious preconceptions, wish fulfillment,
hallucinations?
And finally: How can the mind continue to operate—record perceptions,
senses and thoughts—and be conscious if the brain is dysfunctional?
Researchers have concluded that people of different cultures report
similar phenomena but interpret them differently (the being of light
may be God or Christ to a Christian, Allah to a Muslim). Reports
studied over two decades showed no embellishment, underscoring the
reliability of experiencers' accounts. Reports recorded before Moody's
book are consistent with those afterward, indicating that people did
not alter their accounts to conform to his model.
The effects of medication, mental illness, wish fulfillment and other
psychological models are significantly different from near-death
experiences and there is no scientific evidence connecting them,
according to Greyson.

The mind-brain question is particularly absorbing to Greyson and
fellow faculty in the Division of Perceptual Studies. He, Edward F.
Kelly and Emily Williams Kelly (Grad '86) co-authored Irreducible
Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, published in December
2006.
Emily Kelly writes about F.W.H. Myers, a 19th-century psychologist
whose work supports the view that the mind is not generated by the
brain but is constrained by it. She and Greyson examine how near-death
experiences and other phenomena contravene conventional wisdom that
the brain has to be functioning properly for consciousness to exist.
Current models of mind-brain interaction need to be re-examined,
Greyson argues. Even Newton's laws of physics break down at the
extremes. "I think it's the same with mind-brain," he says. "Our
mind-brain identity model works fine for everyday walking and talking,
but when you're looking at times when the brain is not functioning and
the mind seems to function quite well, you get into that extreme area
where we need to look at some other models."
Such inquiry has profound implications for consciousness and its
relation to the physical body, but it lacks the immediacy or
life-saving potential of research into cancer and heart disease. That
kind of medical research has priority when it comes to funding, always
a concern for scientists in a university setting.
The Division of Perceptual Studies receives virtually no state or
federal money. Founded in 1968 by the late Ian Stevenson as a research
unit of U.Va.'s Department of Psychiatric Medicine, it is housed in a
modest former residence blocks away from the bustle and construction
swirling around the U.Va. Health System. The late Chester F. Carlson,
inventor of xerography who late in life studied Buddhism, was the
division's first and main benefactor, and other private bequests have
fueled the research.
As with other medical advances, lives sometimes do hang in the
balance. Greyson works extensively with patients who have attempted
suicide, and his investigations of near-death experiences inform their
treatment.
Experiencers generally lose their fear of death. Logic dictates that
this would lower inhibitions about suicide, but the opposite has
proved true. "It makes people much less suicidal. It's as if, if
you're no longer afraid of death, you're no longer afraid of living
life to the fullest," Greyson says. People look at their problems
differently, and it's that change in attitude that leverages coping
skills.
Not all near-death experiences are uplifting, however. For some, the
initial aspects—sensing death, floating out of the body—are
terrifying. A few report experiences that conform to traditional views
of hell: fire, brimstone, demons and tortured souls. One researcher
even says that near-death experiences are the work of Satan.
Negative characteristics constitute 1 to 2 percent of recorded
near-death experiences. More may be out there, Greyson says, but
people might not be as eager to share such trauma. Research also has
shown that these accounts do not have the consistency that marks other
reports.
More common are negative consequences among friends and family.
Experiencers are transformed by the light and love they encounter, and
by the review of their actions. They often change attitudes, jobs and
behavior, not always to the approval of those close to them.
Though he is one step removed, Greyson has not been untouched by the
cumulative impact of story after story of transcendent experience. His
scientific objectivity remains unwavering, but his outlook has shifted
subtly. "I don't think I was uncompassionate before this," he says.
"But before I started in this field, I saw things like the Golden Rule
as things we were supposed to try to live up to. People come back from
near-death experiences and say, 'It's not a guideline for you. This is
the way the universe works. We're all in this together. If I hurt you,
I'm hurting myself. There's no distinction between you and me.'
"That sense tends to rub off after you hear it week after week, year
after year, that we are all in this together. … It becomes not a
matter of following a rule, but living your life according to these
principles."
Advances in science—genetic research, magnetic resonance imaging—give
new tools for a field that Greyson believes will inform broader
applications in psychiatry and elsewhere. Acceptance in the scientific
community has come almost begrudgingly, but the landscape is far
different from three decades ago.
"It has been said that science progresses funeral by funeral. I think
we're seeing that as time goes on," Greyson says. "More and more
people are growing up with knowledge about the near-death experience
and accepting it as part of the human legacy."

http://www.uvamagazine.org/site/c.esJNK1PIJrH/b.2704235/k.8958/Altered_States.htm

future of intelligence

2007-05-29T11:38:00.001-04:00

Note in this story: internet-facilitated populist journalism will mean
that stories will circulate regardless of their factual nature....
i.e. the imagination will rule!

Revolution, flashmobs, and brain chips. A grim vision of the future
Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday April 9, 2007
Guardian
Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse
weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role
of Marx's proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East
increasing by 132%, while Europe's drops as fertility falls.
"Flashmobs" - groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or terrorists
groups.
This is the world in 30 years' time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence
team responsible for painting a picture of the "future strategic
context" likely to face Britain's armed forces. It includes an
"analysis of the key risks and shocks". Rear Admiral Chris Parry, head
of the MoD's Development, Concepts & Doctrine Centre which drew up the
report, describes the assessments as "probability-based, rather than
predictive".
The 90-page report comments on widely discussed issues such as the
growing economic importance of India and China, the militarisation of
space, and even what it calls "declining news quality" with the rise
of "internet-enabled, citizen-journalists" and pressure to release
stories "at the expense of facts". It includes other, some
frightening, some reassuring, potential developments that are not so
often discussed.
New weapons
An electromagnetic pulse will probably become operational by 2035 able
to destroy all communications systems in a selected area or be used
against a "world city" such as an international business service hub.
The development of neutron weapons which destroy living organs but not
buildings "might make a weapon of choice for extreme ethnic cleansing
in an increasingly populated world". The use of unmanned weapons
platforms would enable the "application of lethal force without human
intervention, raising consequential legal and ethical issues". The
"explicit use" of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear
weapons and devices delivered by unmanned vehicles or missiles.
Technology
By 2035, an implantable "information chip" could be wired directly to
the brain. A growing pervasiveness of information communications
technology will enable states, terrorists or criminals, to mobilise
"flashmobs", challenging security forces to match this potential
agility coupled with an ability to concentrate forces quickly in a
small area.
Marxism
"The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the
role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx," says the report. The
thesis is based on a growing gap between the middle classes and the
super-rich on one hand and an urban under-class threatening social
order: "The world's middle classes might unite, using access to
knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in
their own class interest". Marxism could also be revived, it says,
because of global inequality. An increased trend towards moral
relativism and pragmatic values will encourage people to seek the
"sanctuary provided by more rigid belief systems, including religious
orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and
Marxism".
Pressures leading to social unrest
By 2010 more than 50% of the world's population will be living in
urban rather than rural environments, leading to social deprivation
and "new instability risks", and the growth of shanty towns. By 2035,
that figure will rise to 60%. Migration will increase. Globalisation
may lead to levels of international integration that effectively bring
inter-state warfare to an end. But it may lead to "inter-communal
conflict" - communities with shared interests transcending national
boundaries and resorting to the use of violence.
Population and Resources
The global population is likely to grow to 8.5bn in 2035, with less
developed countries accounting for 98% of that. Some 87% of people
under the age of 25 live in the developing world. Demographic trends,
which will exacerbate economic and social tensions, have serious
implications for the environment - including the provision of clean
water and other resources - and for international relations. The
population of sub-Saharan Africa will increase over the period by 81%,
and that of Middle Eastern countries by 132%.
The Middle East
The massive population growth will mean the Middle East, and to a
lesser extent north Africa, will remain highly unstable, says the
report. It singles out Saudi Arabia, the most lucrative market for
British arms, with unemployment levels of 20% and a "youth bulge" in a
state whose population has risen from 7 million to 27 million since
1980. "The expectations of growing numbers of young people [in the
whole region] many of whom will be confronted by the prospect of
endemic unemployment ... are unlikely to be met," says the report.
Islamic militancy
Resentment among young people in the face of unrepresentative regimes
"will find outlets in political militancy, including radical political
Islam whose concept of Umma, the global Islamic community, and
resistance to capitalism may lie uneasily in an international system
based on nation-states and global market forces", the report warns.
The effects of such resentment will be expressed through the migration
of youth populations and global communications, encouraging contacts
between diaspora communities and their countries of origin.
Tension between the Islamic world and the west will remain, and may
increasingly be targeted at China "whose new-found materialism,
economic vibrancy, and institutionalised atheism, will be an anathema
to orthodox Islam".
Iran
Iran will steadily grow in economic and demographic strength and its
energy reserves and geographic location will give it substantial
strategic leverage. However, its government could be transformed.
"From the middle of the period," says the report, "the country,
especially its high proportion of younger people, will want to benefit
from increased access to globalisation and diversity, and it may be
that Iran progressively, but unevenly, transforms...into a vibrant
democracy."
Terrorism
Casualties and the amount of damage inflicted by terrorism will stay
low compared to other forms of coercion and conflict. But acts of
extreme violence, supported by elements within Islamist states, with
media exploitation to maximise the impact of the "theatre of violence"
will persist. A "terrorist coalition", the report says, including a
wide range of reactionary and revolutionary rejectionists such as
ultra-nationalists, religious groupings and even extreme
environmentalists, might conduct a global campaign of greater
intensity".
Climate change
There is "compelling evidence" to indicate that climate change is
occurring and that the atmosphere will continue to warm at an
unprecedented rate throughout the 21st century. It could lead to a
reduction in north Atlantic salinity by increasing the freshwater
runoff from the Arctic. This could affect the natural circulation of
the north Atlantic by diminishing the warming effect of ocean currents
on western Europe. "The drop in temperature might exceed that of the
miniature ice age of the 17th and 18th centuries."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2053020,00.html

The future of sensation

2007-05-29T11:28:00.001-04:00

Mixed Feelings
See with your tongue. Navigate with your skin. Fly by the seat of your
pants (literally). How researchers can tap the plasticity of the brain
to hack our 5 senses — and build a few new ones.
By Sunny Bains

For six weird weeks in the fall of 2004, Udo Wächter had an unerring
sense of direction. Every morning after he got out of the shower,
Wächter, a sysadmin at the University of Osnabrück in Germany, put on
a wide beige belt lined with 13 vibrating pads — the same
weight-and-gear modules that make a cell phone judder. On the outside
of the belt were a power supply and a sensor that detected Earth's
magnetic field. Whichever buzzer was pointing north would go off.
Constantly.
"It was slightly strange at first," Wächter says, "though on the bike,
it was great." He started to become more aware of the peregrinations
he had to make while trying to reach a destination. "I finally
understood just how much roads actually wind," he says. He learned to
deal with the stares he got in the library, his belt humming like a
distant chain saw. Deep into the experiment, Wächter says, "I suddenly
realized that my perception had shifted. I had some kind of internal
map of the city in my head. I could always find my way home.
Eventually, I felt I couldn't get lost, even in a completely new
place."
The effects of the "feelSpace belt" — as its inventor, Osnabrück
cognitive scientist Peter König, dubbed the device — became even more
profound over time. König says while he wore it he was "intuitively
aware of the direction of my home or my office. I'd be waiting in line
in the cafeteria and spontaneously think: I live over there." On a
visit to Hamburg, about 100 miles away, he noticed that he was
conscious of the direction of his hometown. Wächter felt the vibration
in his dreams, moving around his waist, just like when he was awake.
Direction isn't something humans can detect innately. Some birds can,
of course, and for them it's no less important than taste or smell are
for us. In fact, lots of animals have cool, "extra" senses. Sunfish
see polarized light. Loggerhead turtles feel Earth's magnetic field.
Bonnethead sharks detect subtle changes (less than a nanovolt) in
small electrical fields. And other critters have heightened versions
of familiar senses — bats hear frequencies outside our auditory range,
and some insects see ultraviolet light.
We humans get just the five. But why? Can our senses be modified?
Expanded? Given the right prosthetics, could we feel electromagnetic
fields or hear ultrasound? The answers to these questions, according
to researchers at a handful of labs around the world, appear to be
yes.
It turns out that the tricky bit isn't the sensing. The world is full
of gadgets that detect things humans cannot. The hard part is
processing the input. Neuroscientists don't know enough about how the
brain interprets data. The science of plugging things directly into
the brain — artificial retinas or cochlear implants — remains
primitive.
So here's the solution: Figure out how to change the sensory data you
want — the electromagnetic fields, the ultrasound, the infrared — into
something that the human brain is already wired to accept, like touch
or sight. The brain, it turns out, is dramatically more flexible than
anyone previously thought, as if we had unused sensory ports just
waiting for the right plug-ins. Now it's time to build them.
How do we sense the world around us? It seems like a simple question.
Eyes collect photons of certain wavelengths, transduce them into
electrical signals, and send them to the brain. Ears do the same thing
with vibrations in the air — sound waves. Touch receptors pick up
pressure, heat, cold, pain. Smell: chemicals contacting receptors
inside the nose. Taste: buds of cells on the tongue.
There's a reasonably well-accepted sixth sense (or fifth and a half,
at least) called proprioception. A network of nerves, in conjunction
with the inner ear, tells the brain where the body and all its parts
are and how they're oriented. This is how you know when you're upside
down, or how you can tell the car you're riding in is turning, even
with your eyes closed.
When computers sense the world, they do it in largely the same way we
do. They have some kind of peripheral sensor, built to pick up
radiation, let's say, or sound, or chemicals. The sensor is connected
to a transducer that can change analog data about the world into
electrons, bits, a digital form that computers can understand — like
recording live music onto a CD. The transducer then pipes the
converted data into the computer.
But before all that happens, programmers and engineers make decisions
about what data is important and what isn't. They know the bandwidth
and the data rate the transducer and computer are capable of, and they
constrain the sensor to provide only the most relevant information.
The computer can "see" only what it's been told to look for.
The brain, by contrast, has to integrate all kinds of information from
all five and a half senses all the time, and then generate a complete
picture of the world. So it's constantly making decisions about what
to pay attention to, what to generalize or approximate, and what to
ignore. In other words, it's flexible.
In February, for example, a team of German researchers confirmed that
the auditory cortex of macaques can process visual information.
Similarly, our visual cortex can accommodate all sorts of altered
data. More than 50 years ago, Austrian researcher Ivo Kohler gave
people goggles that severely distorted their vision: The lenses turned
the world upside down. After several weeks, subjects adjusted — their
vision was still tweaked, but their brains were processing the images
so they'd appear normal. In fact, when people took the glasses off at
the end of the trial, everything seemed to move and distort in the
opposite way.
Later, in the '60s and '70s, Harvard neuro biologists David Hubel and
Torsten Wiesel figured out that visual input at a certain critical age
helps animals develop a functioning visual cortex (the pair shared a
1981 Nobel Prize for their work). But it wasn't until the late '90s
that researchers realized the adult brain was just as changeable, that
it could redeploy neurons by forming new synapses, remapping itself.
That property is called neuroplasticity.
This is really good news for people building sensory prosthetics,
because it means that the brain can change how it interprets
information from a particular sense, or take information from one
sense and interpret it with another. In other words, you can use
whatever sensor you want, as long as you convert the data it collects
into a form the human brain can absorb.
Paul Bach-y-Rita built his first "tactile display" in the 1960s.
Inspired by the plasticity he saw in his father as the older man
recovered from a stroke, Bach-y-Rita wanted to prove that the brain
could assimilate disparate types of information. So he installed a
20-by-20 array of metal rods in the back of an old dentist chair. The
ends of the rods were the pixels — people sitting in the chairs could
identify, with great accuracy, "pictures" poked into their backs; they
could, in effect, see the images with their sense of touch.
By the 1980s, Bach-y-Rita's team of neuroscientists — now located at
the University of Wisconsin — were working on a much more
sophisticated version of the chair. Bach-y-Rita died last November,
but his lab and the company he cofounded, Wicab, are still using touch
to carry new sensory information. Having long ago abandoned the
vaguely Marathon Man like dentist chair, the team now uses a
mouthpiece studded with 144 tiny electrodes. It's attached by ribbon
cable to a pulse generator that induces electric current against the
tongue. (As a sensing organ, the tongue has a lot going for it: nerves
and touch receptors packed close together and bathed in a conducting
liquid, saliva.)
So what kind of information could they pipe in? Mitch Tyler, one of
Bach-y-Rita's closest research colleagues, literally stumbled upon the
answer in 2000, when he got an inner ear infection. If you've had one
of these (or a hangover), you know the feeling: Tyler's world was
spinning. His semicircular canals — where the inner ear senses
orientation in space — weren't working. "It was hell," he says. "I
could stay upright only by fixating on distant objects." Struggling
into work one day, he realized that the tongue display might be able
to help.
The team attached an accelerometer to the pulse generator, which they
programmed to produce a tiny square. Stay upright and you feel the
square in the center of your tongue; move to the right or left and the
square moves in that direction, too. In this setup, the accelerometer
is the sensor and the combination of mouthpiece and tongue is the
transducer, the doorway into the brain.
The researchers started testing the device on people with damaged
inner ears. Not only did it restore their balance (presumably by
giving them a data feed that was cleaner than the one coming from
their semi circular canals) but the effects lasted even after they'd
removed the mouthpiece — sometimes for hours or days.
The success of that balance therapy, now in clinical trials, led Wicab
researchers to start thinking about other kinds of data they could
pipe to the mouthpiece. During a long brainstorm session, they
wondered whether the tongue could actually augment sight for the
visually impaired. I tried the prototype; in a white-walled office
strewn with spare electronics parts, Wicab neuroscientist Aimee
Arnoldussen hung a plastic box the size of a brick around my neck and
gave me the mouthpiece. "Some people hold it still, and some keep it
moving like a lollipop," she said. "It's up to you."
Arnoldussen handed me a pair of blacked-out glasses with a tiny camera
attached to the bridge. The camera was cabled to a laptop that would
relay images to the mouthpiece. The look was pretty geeky, but the
folks at the lab were used to it.
She turned it on. Nothing happened.
"Those buttons on the box?" she said. "They're like the volume
controls for the image. You want to turn it up as high as you're
comfortable."
I cranked up the voltage of the electric shocks to my tongue. It
didn't feel bad, actually — like licking the leads on a really weak
9-volt battery. Arnoldussen handed me a long white foam cylinder and
spun my chair toward a large black rectangle painted on the wall.
"Move the foam against the black to see how it feels," she said.
I could see it. Feel it. Whatever — I could tell where the foam was.
With Arnold ussen behind me carrying the laptop, I walked around the
Wicab offices. I managed to avoid most walls and desks, scanning my
head from side to side slowly to give myself a wider field of view,
like radar. Thinking back on it, I don't remember the feeling of the
electrodes on my tongue at all during my walkabout. What I remember
are pictures: high-contrast images of cubicle walls and office doors,
as though I'd seen them with my eyes. Tyler's group hasn't done the
brain imaging studies to figure out why this is so — they don't know
whether my visual cortex was processing the information from my tongue
or whether some other region was doing the work.
I later tried another version of the technology meant for divers. It
displayed a set of directional glyphs on my tongue intended to tell
them which way to swim. A flashing triangle on the right would mean
"turn right," vertical bars moving right says "float right but keep
going straight," and so on. At the University of Wisconsin lab, Tyler
set me up with the prototype, a joystick, and a computer screen
depicting a rudimentary maze. After a minute of bumping against the
virtual walls, I asked Tyler to hide the maze window, closed my eyes,
and successfully navigated two courses in 15 minutes. It was like I
had something in my head magically telling me which way to go.
In the 1970s, the story goes, a Navy flight surgeon named Angus Rupert
went skydiving nude. And on his way down, in (very) free fall, he
realized that with his eyes closed, the only way he could tell he was
plummeting toward earth was from the feel of the wind against his skin
(well, that and the flopping). He couldn't sense gravity at all.
The experience gave Rupert the idea for the Tactical Situational
Awareness System, a suitably macho name for a vest loaded with
vibration elements, much like the feelSpace belt. But the TSAS doesn't
tell you which way is north; it tells you which way is down.
In an airplane, the human proprioceptive system gets easily confused.
A 1-g turn could set the plane perpendicular to the ground but still
feel like straight and level flight. On a clear day, visual cues let
the pilot's brain correct for errors. But in the dark, a pilot who
misreads the plane's instruments can end up in a death spiral. Between
1990 and 2004, 11 percent of US Air Force crashes — and almost a
quarter of crashes at night — resulted from spatial disorientation.
TSAS technology might fix that problem. At the University of Iowa's
Operator Performance Laboratory, actually a hangar at a little
airfield in Iowa City, director Tom Schnell showed me the
next-generation garment, the Spatial Orientation Enhancement System.
First we set a baseline. Schnell sat me down in front of OPL's
elaborate flight simulator and had me fly a couple of missions over
some virtual mountains, trying to follow a "path" in the sky. I was
awful — I kept oversteering. Eventually, I hit a mountain.
Then he brought out his SOES, a mesh of hard-shell plastic, elastic,
and Velcro that fit over my arms and torso, strung with vibrating
elements called tactile stimulators, or tactors. "The legs aren't
working," Schnell said, "but they never helped much anyway."
Flight became intuitive. When the plane tilted to the right, my right
wrist started to vibrate — then the elbow, and then the shoulder as
the bank sharpened. It was like my arm was getting deeper and deeper
into something. To level off, I just moved the joystick until the
buzzing stopped. I closed my eyes so I could ignore the screen.
Finally, Schnell set the simulator to put the plane into a dive. Even
with my eyes open, he said, the screen wouldn't help me because the
visual cues were poor. But with the vest, I never lost track of the
plane's orientation. I almost stopped noticing the buzzing on my arms
and chest; I simply knew where I was, how I was moving. I pulled the
plane out.
When the original feelSpace experiment ended, Wächter, the sysadmin
who started dreaming in north, says he felt lost; like the people
wearing the weird goggles in those Austrian experiments, his brain had
remapped in expectation of the new input. "Sometimes I would even get
a phantom buzzing." He bought himself a GPS unit, which today he
glances at obsessively. One woman was so dizzy and disoriented for her
first two post-feelSpace days that her colleagues wanted to send her
home from work. "My living space shrank quickly," says König. "The
world appeared smaller and more chaotic."
I wore a feelSpace belt for just a day or so, not long enough to have
my brain remapped. In fact, my biggest worry was that as a
dark-complexioned person wearing a wide belt bristling with wires and
batteries, I'd be mistaken for a suicide bomber in charming downtown
Osnabrück.
The puzzling reactions of the longtime feelSpace wearers are
characteristic of the problems researchers are bumping into as they
play in the brain's cross-modal spaces. Nobody has done the imaging
studies yet; the areas that integrate the senses are still unmapped.
Success is still a long way off. The current incarnations of sensory
prosthetics are bulky and low-resolution — largely impractical. What
the researchers working on this technology are looking for is
something transparent, something that users can (safely) forget
they're wearing. But sensor technology isn't the main problem. The
trick will be to finally understand more about how the brain processes
the information, even while seeing the world with many different kinds
of eyes.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp_pr.html

Autism

2007-05-23T17:29:00.000-04:00

Hello Henry, I want to make a few comments on the [Consciousness] [1REED] Shall We Live in our Imaginations?

First off I remember reading an article about the PINEAL. The article stated that in the most remote past and before our bodies became as dense as they are now, the PINEAL was located on the outside of the forehead. So in essence we spent more time in the dreamtime and less in the physical. Could we be returning to this state again? I wish I could remember where I read it but I can't so the source cannot be verified for authenticity. I thought it was Cayce that said it but I can't find it anywhere. The second thing I want to comment on is autistic children. My eleven year old great nephew has autism. His autism is not severe as some children but it took about four years from birth to detect the problem. Up until then the family thought he was just spoiled when he had his temper tantrums. When Jake was five my niece ask him what he would buy if they won the million dollar lottery. He was sitting at the coffee table playing with action toys when he looked up at her and said, "I HAVE ALL I NEED AND MORE." Another thing he does that can create a problem with others is that he appears to snitch. He cannot grasp the concept of not being honest. It is not his intent to be snitching; he honestly sees it as deviating from the rules or law. Sort of like it is his job to let others know about rules and he is there to help them understand. One last thing since as synchronicity will have it my daughter-in-law just called and interrupted this e-mail to tell me about a high school honors presentation that they added last night. It seems a senior was honored because of his genius for science. In his junior year he submitted a project that MIT sent back to the school thinking a young person could not have created this without help. In his senior year he created and built a new type of car. (SMALL) What absolute miracles our beautiful children are bringing to us. There was also another amazing story regarding a young lady. INDIGO and AUTISTIC children let us focus on both.
Carol Nemeth

Shall We Live in our Imaginations?

2007-05-22T15:36:00.000-04:00

Yesterday in the news was a piece about “virtual religion.” On the internet site, “second life” someone had set up a church for people to attend vicariously and virtually by having their “avatars” (or alter ego that exists in cyber-space) attend and participate in the online service. One man, whose avatar looked like Puss’n’Boots, commented that in the virtual church he felt accepted in a way more profound than in actual churches.
The piece reminded me that one of the trends that might have to do with what’s upcoming regarding the transformation of consciousness is that we come to live in our minds more than in our bodies. The future of consciousness, to put it bluntly, may lie in out of body awareness or lucid dreaming. In many ways, electronics have supported advances in virtual reality. Here’s one way virtual reality may relate to the future of consciousness, using the noboundaries paradigm of transformation: Both virtual reality, near-death studies, and mediumship dissolve the boundary of what is “real.” There are some other trends that seem to be pushing for us living in virtual reality.
Coming from another perspective entirely, Terrence McKenna, prime spokesperson for the implications of psychedelic reality, predicted years ago that the transformation of consciousness would involve a basic shift in perspective. Whereas now we take the data of our senses to provide us with our connection to reality—physical reality is what we recognize—while we relegate the imagination to a secondary, sub-standard reality. In the coming transformation, McKenna proposes, this situation will be reversed. We will come to live in our imagination, he says, while our physical bodies will be in the subliminal background. Lest we consider this proposition too wild, too “psychedelic,” consider this quote from Teilhard de Chardin, in The Future of Man:
“The more I think about this mystery [how the world will end], the more it appears to me, in my dreams, as a ‘turning about’ of consciousness—as an eruption of interior life—as an ecstasy. There is no need to track our brains to understand how the material vastness of the universe will ever be able to disappear. Spirit has only to be reversed, to move into a different zone, for the whole shape of the world immediately to be changed.”
I’m gathering other tidbits from writers that echo this surprising theme. It could be a part of a doomsday scenario, when the planet’s surface would be uninhabitable, so everyone is below ground on life support, living their lives in their imagination. Stephan Hawkins shows how productive such a life can be. The other fantasy, not involving doomsday so much as simply advances on the planet that remove most of our physical challenges, putting us in a spot where we experience all through a form of dreaming rather than physical participation.
I’m gathering up book titles to present to the many folks who have volunteered to create book summaries to form our manual for our consciousness conference. Even if you are not volunteering to create a book summary, I’d still like to hear from you regarding suggestions for books to summarize. To be a good book for summary, the book should
1) be on topic. For example, a book on near death experiences could be useful if the author draws inferences from the experiences regarding the direction of the evolution of consciousness. A book on near death that simply attempts to show us that there is life after death doesn’t seem that related to our theme.
2) Be by a reputable author. Reputable doesn’t necessarily mean academic/scholarly. Though scholarly books have the advantage of the author having searched the past for relevant material so as not to re-invent the wheel, intuitional or channeled books can provide genuine inspiration. It’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, especially when it comes to “channeled” material. One measure I use is how popular is the channel, has that channel inspired others to take up related investigations. Cayce, Seth, Hand Clow, Course in Miracles, Steiner, and others I can’t think of right now.

I would appreciate your suggestions. The book list I’m compiling for those who have volunteered include Pinchbeck’s 2012, Fred Wolf on the new consciousness, a Jungian book on The Return of the Goddess, Tarnas on Cosmos and Psyche, Goswami on the Self-Aware Universe. One challenge in selecting these books is to make a decision as to whether the book is primarily bringing up new evidence for an ancient view (Goswami’s thesis that consciousness is primary to matter is an old idea) is whether or not the book makes arguments for why our consciousness may be trending toward having that ancient view be in full conscious, lived awareness, rather than remaining as a background fact available only to the mystically inclined.

Another interesting issue has to do with what I would call fore-runners. For example, I think that the “co-dependent” syndrome is part of a forward action by a group of people who are struggling with something we may all have to struggle with later: How do you distinguish your own thoughts, feelings and needs from those of people around you? It would seem that these folks are anticipating our loss of psychic boundaries. As another example, there is the question of childhood autism. While we may recognize the work on “Indigo children” as relevant to our topic, suggesting that the evolution has already begun and new consciousness is entering via the children, what about autistic children? There has been some suggestions here and there that autism may have some hints about what is coming down the road regarding shifts in consciousness. I’ve found that the challenge in pursuing this with those who claim to be autistic is that they may have trouble putting into words their ideas on this question in a way that will speak to us. I’m hoping to get some good, useable information on this aspect of the trends in consciousness.

I’ve added to the website, www.henryreed.com/indiana some new links, related to book summaries and essays already in hand that could be relevant to our theme.
I look forward to any of your suggestions.

Sincerely,
Henry Reed

Boundaries in Consciousness

2007-05-18T23:00:00.000-04:00

One of my starting points, years ago, was to imagine what it would be like for people to experience oneness. That led me to realize that many boundaries we used to take for granted were dissolving. And, I noticed, our response to the dissolving of a boundary has been upsetness and attempts to reinstate it somehow rather than learning how to exist without that boundary. Examples: pollution that crosses national boundaries, computer viruses, terrorism, AIDS, digital information, immigration, world economy, near-death experiences. As the world becomes more inter-dependent, we can expect greater interaction among us at the psychic level. The boundary between minds is also dissolving. I've posted on our conference website, www.henryreed.com/indiana, two links to articles I've written on that subject, one on the coming "crisis in boundaries" and one on the future of consciousness, "rapture or rupture?"
Also new on the web site is a link to a beautiful, wonderful, inspiring six minute video, a guided meditation on universal consciousness, thanks to someone on our list who sent the link to me to share.
I am grafeful to all of you who have emailed me volunteering to do a book summary to contribute to our conference manual. I'll be in touch soon with a book list and a process by which you can all get the books you want.
And, the next time I update the conference website with some new links or information, I'll be getting back to you all.
Sincerely,
Henry