The Interspiritual Revolution

by Rory McEntee and Adam Bucko -

“We must all achieve our identity on the basis of a radical authenticity… [for] it is only in the real world of the person – neither singular nor plural – that the crucial factors influencing the course of the universe are at work.”  – Raimundo Panikkar, “The Silence of God,” Introduction p. xviii

RE-ENVISIONING SPIRITUALITY

There can be little doubt that traditional religious frameworks are no longer speaking to new generations as they have in the past, especially in the West. 

In a recent article in the LA Times, Philip Clayton, Dean of Faculty at Claremont School of Theology, writes that the fastest growing religious group in the United States is “spiritual but not religious,” containing a shocking 75 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29.

Clayton argues that young people are not necessarily rejecting a sense of God, rather they feel that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in the structures of the political status quo.

This is why the Interspiritual Revolution is so important. 

In a recent book of magnificent scope, “The Coming Interspiritual Age” (Namaste Publishing 2013), Dr. Kurt Johnson, a former Anglican monk and evolutionary biologist, together with David Robert Ord, trace the history of the interspiritual movement from no less than the Big Bang. 

They explore this unfolding extensively from an integral and evolutionary perspective, bringing together the world’s religious traditions, developmental history and current scientific understandings of anthropology, human cognitive development, brain/mind and scientific consciousness studies.

They make a powerful argument for seeing the history of the world’s spiritual and religious traditions as one movement, all contributing to the maturation of our species.

Mystical Spirituality

Brother Wayne Teasdale, a lay Catholic monk who was ordained as a Christian sannyassi (a monk in the Hindu tradition), coined the term interspirituality in his book “The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions” (New World Library, 1999). In it, Brother Wayne said:

"The religion of humankind can be said to be spirituality itself, because mystical spirituality is the origin of all the religions. If this is so, and I believe it is, we might say that interspirituality — the sharing of ultimate experiences across traditions — is the religion of the third millennium. Interspirituality is the foundation that can prepare the way for a planet-wide enlightened culture..."

We believe this understanding of Interspirituality, as a reciprocal sharing of realizations and contemplative gifts, in which each person’s insights help to affirm, deepen, and direct the other’s journey, is a framework that can be embraced by a new generation of spiritually hungry youth, while also allowing for inter-generational bridges to be built between elders, wisdom traditions and the youth. 

We call this process spiritual democracy, putting aside our egos and relating to each other in a way in which we can be surprised by the Divine, through which wisdom can come through everyone participating and God emerges as the “between” between friends. 

Interspirituality leads us to the God that is emerging among us, while naturally allowing us to touch the God within and beyond.

Willing to Quest

The truth is there is a revolution happening among us. People are waking up to the emptiness of their consumer-driven and materialistic worlds, and are beginning to re-evaluate what matters. 

The Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, the recent protests in India over the rape and treatment of women – these are but early manifestations of something deeper emerging in our collective Soul. 

Young people are no longer interested in living in a world that doesn’t feel like their soul’s home, and they are willing to question the way things have been done in the past.

It is to this questioning, this questing, that we believe Interspirituality has so much to offer, and can speak to the younger generation in a way that nothing else can.

In order for interspirituality to play this potent role, however, we must be careful in how we come to understand it, what it means and what it has to offer. There is a subtle danger in allowing interspirituality to be defined by an amorphous “oneness.” 

An overemphasis on this can lead to an assumption that the varying experiences of “oneness” are the same (leaving aside for now the sticky question of whether or not this is actually the case), while at the same time implying, perhaps even unconsciously, that an experience of “oneness” is needed for a seat at the Interspiritual table. 

While the unity of the human race must be championed tirelessly by Interspirituality, we must also leave ample room for the messy complexity, the blood and marrow, that diversity demands. 

We explore the deeper contemplative dimension of this interspiritual movement in our manifesto, “New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Life in the 21st Century,” as well as the sacred activist side in “Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation” (forthcoming, North Atlantic Books, Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox).

We must also acknowledge different ways of being interspiritual. 

One may have a solid grounding in one tradition, and from this foundational point reach out to experience and understand the wisdom of other traditions.

This has been the way of many of the founders of the Interspiritual movement, such as Father Bede Griffiths and Brother Wayne Teasdale. One may also go the way of “multiple belonging” by fully immersing oneself in multiple traditions, such as Lex Hixon, also known as Shaykh Nur al-Jerrahi, did. 

This way is eloquently described by Matthew Wright, an Episcopal priest and practicing dervish, in “Reshaping Religion: Interspirituality and Multiple Religious Belonging.” 

There is yet a third way, in which one’s primary path is one’s inner guidance, what George Fox, founder of the Quakers, called one’s “inner teacher,” and what Christians have often referred to as the “guidance of the Holy Spirit.” 

Its emphasis lies on the relationship aspect of the Ultimate Mystery. 

This way may not lead to being embedded in a particular wisdom tradition (without eliminating this possibility), but instead to taking on, in a mature and disciplined way, differing teachers, practices and service roles throughout one’s lifetime, under the guidance of the Spirit.

Following One's Own Inner Light

Too often this third way has been described as being selfish, flaky, a spiritual “Esperanto,” or arising out of an inability to commit. In fact of matter, it is all about commitment. 

It is about fidelity to one’s own path, to the inner impulse that arises within us, and the courage to commit to it with all of one’s being, allowing ourselves the freedom of movement that it demands. 

It shifts us from a reliance on gurus, dogmas and institutions to following one’s own inner light.

It is not freedom for the sake of freedom, it has a purpose. 

It is the newest and yet most ancient way, as it is the origin of all the world’s wisdom traditions.

Our traditions and elders must come to recognize this impulse in the youth, not as a selfish reliance on one’s “self,” but as nothing less than the breath of the Holy Spirit, opening up possibilities for new structures and understandings to emerge. 

To fail to do so we fear is to relegate themselves to the dustbin of history, making the human race poorer from the failure to pass on the very real wisdom their traditions have safeguarded and passed down for centuries.

Yet, it is unequivocal that a purely subjective guidance tends to be dangerous, as all authentic traditions have attested to. 

This is why we need communities where we can help each other to discern what is authentic and facilitate the immersion into spirit. 

This is why we need our spiritual elders and we need our wisdom traditions to give us guidance, but we also need a new way to pass down their accumulated wisdom.

Entering into Interspirituality

Interspirituality is about entering into a divine milieu, where... 

“things are transfigured… but in this incandescence they retain – this is not strong enough, they exalt – all that is most specific in their attributes” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu).

It is about the uniqueness of the human race itself, and for this to ultimately be discovered in full it needs each of our individual experiences of Life at its lived depths and revelations. It is then through the sharing of these gifts that a new fullness, a new understanding, can emerge. 

What is true for us individually is true for our religious traditions as well. Each religion, we believe, offers a unique way into the Ultimate Mystery and unique fruits, as does each individual journey. 

We are ready to move into a unity that is full, that welcomes all textures, where the Buddha’s equanimity complements Christ’s radical love in action, and where the Hebrew prophetic outrage can be merged with the incarnate spirituality of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and the timeless revelations of the Hindu sages.

For it is here, among us, that the Kingdom of Heaven which Jesus spoke of so intimately lies, waiting to be discovered through our intimacy with one another. 

It is here that our unity as a human race lies, and Interspirituality is dedicated to its discovery. 

This movement will lead to new structures, new narratives and new forms that live in communities which are cells of a new world; cells connected in networks of friendships, and one day this emerging web of contemplative being and acting will become a center for all of life, not because someone imposes it or lobbies for it, but because Life attracts more life.

This is the revolution, the Interspiritual Revolution. Come, join us…

To explore the Interspiritual Movement please see the extensive Interspiritual Ezine

Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation

Interspiritual Ezine

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The Entanglements of Physics and Mysticism

by Brendan D. Murphy -

Quantum Entanglement:

While pre-quantum/Newtonian physics is typically a good approximation for objects much larger than molecules, we know that this worldview is fatally flawed.

To illustrate the point, where initially it was supposed that nonlocal entanglement could not be evinced by anything other than quanta in specially controlled circumstances, we now know it is a fundamental aspect of reality.

The entanglement of holmium atoms in a tiny chip of magnetic salt has been unexpectedly observed in the laboratory, showing that “big” things like atoms, and not just photons and electrons (individual quanta), can be entangled.[i]

More recently (2011), it was announced by a group of physicists that two diamonds approximately 3 mm in size and separated by about 6 inches were successfully entangled at room temperature.[ii]

Previously, it was believed that once things got to the level of atoms and molecules, the universe started acting strictly deterministically again, according to predictable Newtonian laws. This is no longer a scientifically viable view.

A review of developments on entanglement research in March 2004 by New Scientist writer Michael Brooks concluded that 

“Physicists now believe that entanglement between particles exists everywhere, all the time.”[iii]

Widescale or “nonspecific entanglement” has been experimentally validated in many ways.

For example, around 1956 Pavel Naumov conducted animal biocommunication studies between a submerged Soviet Navy submarine and a shore research station.

These tests involved a mother rabbit and her newborn litter. According to Naumov, scientists put the baby rabbits on board the submarine, but kept the mother rabbit in a laboratory on shore where they implanted electrodes in her brain.

When the submarine was submerged, assistants killed the babies one by one. At each precise moment of death, the mother’s brain produced detectable and recordable reactions.[iv]

Many examples can be found in Soviet literature dealing with dogs, bears, birds, insects and fish in conjunction with basic psychotronic (psi) research.

The Pavlov Institute in Moscow may have been involved in animal telepathy until 1970.[v] Researchers such as David Wilcock and Richard Hoagland posit that these nonlocal interactions are facilitated by the hyperdimensional torsion/spin waves of the unified field/aether (or gravity, as Wilcock emphasizes in The Source Field Investigations) we are all immersed in. We will look further at torsion and nonlocality between sentient beings soon.

Once, the esteemed physicist Eugene Wigner remarked to Karl Pribram, a board-certified neurosurgeon and professor of psychiatry and psychology, that in quantum physics we no longer have observables (invariants) but only observations.

Tongue in cheek, Pribram asked whether that meant that quantum physics is really psychology, at which Wigner beamed and replied, “yes, yes, that’s exactly correct.” 

“If indeed one wants to take the reductive path, one ends up with psychology, not particles,” says Pribram. “In fact, it is a psychological process, mathematics, that describes the relationships that organize matter. In a non-trivial sense current physics is rooted in both matter and mind.”[vi]

Indeed, one of the main points R.A. Wilson made in Quantum Psychology was that “the laws of the subatomic world and the laws of the human ‘mind’ parallel each other precisely, exquisitely and elegantly, down to minute details.”[vii]

Wigner, as a physicist, had said that

“it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness…[I]t will remain remarkable in whatever way our future concepts develop, that the very study of the external world led to the conclusion that the content of the consciousness is an ultimate reality.”[viii] 

Sir Arthur Eddington said that the lesson from physics and especially from quantum mechanics is that insofar as we can describe the world at all we are necessarily describing the structure of our own minds.

By collating various forms of scientific thought generated over time, “we obtain the structure known as the physical universe.”[ix]

Wilson further said: 

“We have found a strange foot-print on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the foot-print. And Lo! It is our own.”[x] 

Similarly, Goswami has puzzled that according to the new physics, the particle tracks left in cloud chambers are simply extensions of ourselves.

The objectified, absolute, Newtonian linear-mechanistic view of the universe is dead. Quantum physics — as per ancient mystical perspectives — simply does not allow the luxury of the concept of the separate observer, because it is meaningless to conceive of the scientist as being separate from his equipment, or anything else.

Wheeler has wondered:

“May the universe in some sense be brought into being by the participation of those who participate?”[xi]

We are no longer dealing with interactions between two dissimilar entities — “mind” and “matter” — but with a single unified, conscious, holographic entity.

Mind is “physical” too if you can rotate into phase with its contents/energies. “From science then, if it must be so,” wrote Paramahansa Yogananda, “let man learn the philosophic truth that there is no material universe; its warp and woof is maya, illusion.”[xii]

Consider what it tells us that a hard science like physics, which set out to investigate the so-called physical world, ended up running headlong into the nonphysical — consciousness.

The mystics already knew why this would be so: consciousness is the ultimate reality and the foundation of all existence. It is the sine qua non of the cosmos.

It is curious that some “scientifically-minded” types become irate at the mere suggestion that a mystic or occultist could have known something before the venerable institution of science found it out.

They seem to forget that scientific research is an implicit acknowledgment of ignorance.

If scientists already knew all the answers, scientific research would not exist, because science is, fundamentally, an inquiry; it is not an a priori presumption of omniscience.

Science builds models of reality based on what little knowledge of reality it possesses — it does not build reality itself. We need to remember again not to confuse the map with the territory.

A scientific theory of something is not the same as the tangible or experiential reality it attempts to describe.

In an interview about his theory of monistic idealism, the interviewer commented to Amit Goswami that

“science’s current findings seem to be parallel to the essence of the perennial spiritual teaching.” 

Goswami responded succinctly:

“It is the spiritual teaching. It is not just parallel.”[xiii] 

Renee Weber, a philosopher at Rutgers University, actually raised the possibility that mysticism may, in a sense, be more committed to the spirit of scientific exploration than science itself.[xiv] 

In fact, mystics have been described as “the most thoroughgoing empiricists in the history of philosophy.”[xv]

What identifies a mystic then? 

The true mystic is not a believer or a disbeliever — he or she knows the existential fundamentals and in getting to the point of knowing, has discarded belief altogether. 

The mystic has direct insight into the nature of things, as opposed to having to rely on laboratory equipment, equations, theories, speculation, or educated guesses. 

For the mystic, as far as the fundamental nature of consciousness goes, there is no mystery. For millennia, mystics have known via direct cognition what Bell’s theorem has only fairly recently revealed to the world of science. 

The mystic experiences the nonlocal, interconnected/entangled nature of consciousness and reality directly, and in doing so, understands it (in a holistic, existential sense).

The mystic knows that human consciousness and our infinitely complex and elegant self-organizing universe did not come into existence through the random interactions of inert matter. This idea has been likened by Stanislav Grof to a tornado blowing through a junkyard and accidentally assembling a 747 jet.[xvi] 

Noted occultist J.J. van der Leeuw pre-empted Grof almost a century ago, commenting that we might as well believe a heap of bricks could randomly form themselves into a building, if we are going to believe that the blind chance of “natural selection” is responsible for biological life and consciousness.[xvii] It is a ludicrous proposition, in other words. 

Writing in the 1980s, Francis Crick, the co-(re)discoverer of the DNA molecule, showed the total mathematical implausibility of even a single protein emerging by chance.[xviii] 

Van der Leeuw added that the data of science are not in any way incompatible with the belief in a creative Intelligence, directing and guiding evolution from within (as opposed to the external “man behind the curtain” scenario advocated by creationists). 

More than 90 years later this is overwhelmingly the case, as, for example, Yurth’s Self-Organizing Criticality model shows.

Cosmic Consciousness

A growing point of view among physicists is that there must be a cosmic consciousness pervading the universe.

Objects seem to spring into being when measurements are made, and measurements are made by conscious beings.

Hence, there must be cosmic consciousness that pervades the universe determining which state we are in.

Some, like Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner, have argued that this proves the existence of “God” or some cosmic consciousness. Wigner not surprisingly expressed an interest in the Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism, in which the universe is pervaded by an all-embracing consciousness.[xix]

This type of sentiment is becoming increasingly widely held by physicists who are realizing the implications of what quantum mechanics and other fields of research such as parapsychology are telling us.

In order to truly understand what mysticism is and the spirit of it, one has to have encountered a drastically expanded sense of perception or awareness that completely transcends the ordinary waking state of mind and its associated perceptual limitations.

If one steps beyond the bounds of permitted thoughts allowed by the materialistic paradigm, one learns an awful lot about just how limited and myopic this reductionist view of life actually is, and how much fact it must ignore and deny in order to maintain its own survival.

Please note: I used to be something of a materialist myself (philosophically). The problem is that this belief structure can only survive within very narrow experiential and investigative parameters that not every human life can (or will) facilitate.

If it could, everyone in the so-called developed world would be a materialist or would have been, were it not for the advent of quantum mechanics.

So, is any talk of or related to mysticism “pseudo-science” by definition? Categorically, no.

Grof (for one) agrees, stating that the “pedestrian consciousness and world-view” have simply not caught up with mysticism or modern physics.[xx]

Another common misconception is that mysticism is analogous or related to Western conceptions of religion or religious zeal and/or faith.

But the mystical experience is not a moment of intense faith; it is a moment of intensely deep experience beyond this ordinary world and/or its normal sense impressions.

Do you have faith in the existence of the chair you are sitting on? No, you simply observe and sense that the chair exists, otherwise you would have landed rather sharply on the floor!

By your experience you know it exists and can leave it at that. In contrast, simply believing in the chair would probably not be enough to hold you up off the floor, no matter how lovely and detailed a 2D schematic of it you might have drawn up!

Thus, mysticism is based first and foremost on direct and lucid experience of expanded and altered states of awareness/consciousness and thus asks no blind faith.

(A mystic also knows not to confuse the map with the territory.)

In this sense, we can see that mysticism does not consist in believing in some abstract faith-based dogma.

Donald DeGracia is a biochemical researcher in the field of cerebral ischemia and reperfusion. In his excellent book Beyond the Physical, he wrote:

Mysticism is the true spiritual approach, it is the true way to religion, [which] in the West [today] is but a watered-down, overly rigid, dogmatic and institutionalized vestige of ancient expressions of the mystical experience. The true mystical experience defies the mind at all of its levels…and brings into direct comprehension the…living unity of all existence.[xxi]

Mysticism expands consciousness, deepens awareness, and develops wisdom, whereas organized religion — having been “de-mysticized” — has a tendency towards often (though not always) achieving the complete opposite effect, especially in its literalistic fundamentalist and extremist forms.

This applies much less to its more progressive streams, which appear to be moving in a more experiential and enlightened direction, such as is the way in mysticism and true occultism.

In other words, even that most intellectually rigid and stagnant of institutions, mainstream religion, is very gradually creating new models of “God” and reality. It still has not really realized its mystical roots though, still suffering institutionalized amnesia.

Science’s childish attitude towards what it conceives to be mysticism has in many ways been as bad as religion’s attitude towards it.

To both institutions, mysticism has traditionally been “the devil… Yet the mocking presumptuousness of modern science and philosophy towards occultism and mysticism is only an admission of their ignorance and insecurity in the light of knowledge and wisdom that neither possesses.”[xxii]

In the late 1970s, Fritjof Capra said this, in simplifying and reconciling the different approaches taken by mystics and scientists:

“Mystics understand the roots but not the branches, scientists understand the branches but not the roots.”[xxiii] 

Evelyn Underhill put it this way:

“even the report of the greatest contemplative saint is much like that of the wise shepherd, who can tell us much about the weather, but nothing about meteorology.”[xxiv] 

What mystics understand the roots of is this: the fundamental nature of reality itself and the fundamental nature of consciousness (same thing).

Mystics are actually much more inclined towards understanding areas of inquiry such as quantum physics than many otherwise intelligent people are. They have an experiential advantage with nonlocality, for a start. There is nothing airy-fairy or flaky about a mystic.

It is an awareness characterized by deep insight and clarity of thought, not a lack of it. In fact, Capra wrote an entire book on the similarities between mysticism and physics.

In The Tao of Physics he explained that, while the mystic begins his exploration from the inner realm and the physicist begins from the outer, they both ultimately reach the same destination: awareness of the fundamental unity between all things and events.[xxv]

Modern science tells us that the world of supposedly solid matter, as presented to us by the standard five senses, is an illusion.

This is, of course, the view taken by mystics ever since there was such a thing as a mystic.

How else is it that the deeper we attempt to peer into supposedly solid matter, the more empty space we find?

Seemingly inert matter proves, upon closer inspection, to be very much alive and in constant motion; Larson’s proposition — and he was not alone — was that the only thing that really exists in our space-time is motion. Apparent solidity is merely a function of a particular mode of perception, not an absolute truth.

The mystic’s outlook encompasses the materialist’s perspective and extends beyond, much as metaphysics both includes and transcends physics.

As Taimni said in The Science of Yoga, the higher viewpoint includes and enhances the lower, while placing the lower in its proper perspective.

“Expansion of consciousness means inclusion of more and more and exclusion of nothing.”[xxvi] 

Thus, the mystic’s sense of reality places the world of appearances in its proper context, giving one the awareness of the difference between illusion and reality/truth.

References:

• [i] See Brooks. McTaggart details these and related experiments extensively in The Intention Experiment.
• [ii] Schoch, Time, Entanglement & Consciousness, New Dawn Special Issue 6(4).
• [iii] Brooks.
• [iv] Ostrander & Schroeder, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, 33–4.
• [v] Defence Intelligence Agency, Soviet and Czchechoslovakian Parapsychology Research, September 1975.
• [vi] Pribram, Consciousness Reassessed.
• [vii] Wilson, Quantum Psychology, 43.
• [viii] www.projects.science.uu.nl/igg/jos/foundQM/wigner.pdf
• [ix] Wilson, Cosmic Trigger, vol. 1.
• [x] Ibid.
• [xi] Pinchbeck, 49.
• [xii] Yogananda, 228.
• [xiii] Hamilton, Scientific Proof of the Existence of God.
• [xiv] Radin, The Conscious Universe, 305.
• [xv] LeShan, 62.
• [xvi] Grof, The Holotropic Mind, 5.
• [xvii] See van der Leeuw, Ch. 5.
• [xviii] Narby, 75–6.
• [xix] Kaku, Physics of the Impossible, 243.
• [xx] Grof, LSD Psychotherapy, 128.
• [xxi] DeGracia, Beyond the Physical, 16.
• [xxii] Ibid., 17.
• [xxiii] See Capra, The Tao of Physics, 339.
• [xxiv] Underhill, 31.
• [xxv] Capra, 338.
• [xxvi] Taimni, 167–8.

 

About Author: Critically acclaimed author and co-founder of Global Freedom Movement, Brendan D. Murphy is a leading expositor of the new paradigm of integrated science and spirituality/sovereignty. He is a passionate advocate of accelerated conscious evolution through sound-based DNA/kundalini activation and intentional harnessing of the life-supporting (negentropic) aetheric forces of consciousness, while also having experience in psychoenergetic and belief change modalities. Understanding that the outer world always holographically reflects the inner, Brendan believes idle research and information absorption is not enough — we must embody our ideals now and transmute knowledge into wisdom through willful and gutsy application.

“It’s time to rediscover sovereignty, infinite consciousness and our multi-dimensional selves. Evolution is calling. Will we answer?”

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Accelerating Our Collective Emergence into a New Paradigm

by Paul Lenda -

While a few hundred years ago there were a handful of luminaries shining their light on the waters of human conscious awareness, today there are thousands upon thousands.

I remember 7 years ago I had to practically go on a wild goose chase to “find the others” and now I see so many awakened intentional evolutionaries that it’s truly inspiring and hope-inducing.

Global Consciousness

The continuing emergence of a global consciousness — zeroed in on balance, harmony, and coherence with all living systems (which includes each other, nature and beyond) — within an increasingly-growing number of people is almost surreal.

The shift has/is happening so fast, perhaps in order to match the unparalleled destruction that has been happening to the one habitable home we have, and to the physical/mental/emotional/spiritual well-being of humanity.

These points of positive emergence should bring us great hope about the future and inspire us to help anchor in the new paradigm because we are all in this thing called Life together, without exception!

Sure, we can focus on all the terrifying and devastating things that are still happening on the planet and in society but if we’re perpetually locked in on those things we will develop a tunnel-like awareness where we only see the state of the world as getting worse and worse, turning us into cynical and depressed clouds of negativity.

Ignoring either the constructive or destructive things occurring is unhelpful in creating a bright future for humanity. Our individual actions collectively decide our fate.

Are we going to leave the fate of humanity in the hands of a few narcissistic and maladjusted manipulators or will we say enough is enough and put things back in alignment with the environment, reason and unity?

Let’s help promote the realization that Earth is everyone’s home, a place which we can make into a paradise instead of letting it become a hellscape because of actions that completely disregard the fine mesh and web of all life – plant, animal and otherwise.

Current control systems keep us tired, disinterested and shallow-minded for the most part.

Some say that there is a war on expanded and liberated consciousness while others state that culture is a fabricated illusion we are drawn into in order to keep us away from ever becoming truly egalitarian and free to enjoy the full liberation and richness life has to offer.

What is apparent as the daytime sun is that various individuals and groups hold beliefs that they wish to instill on individuals and on society as a whole which will only work to keep us in the stone age of consciousness if those beliefs are not in alignment with Truth.

How can we figure out what truth is? 

• Truth never creates or perpetuates problems. It only solves, dissolves, and removes problems. 
• The truth has always existed but we haven’t always been aware of it, as history shows time and time again. 
• The truth is still the truth even if it’s rejected or not understood. 
• The real truth is what it is despite our opinions and beliefs about it.

A great deal of people who have gone with the sands of time believed very strongly that the sun revolved around the earth yet this was not the truth.

Just because the majority of people believed in it didn’t make the sun start revolving around the earth.

We can take this and apply it to all the various things in society that are out of alignment with Truth…sometimes applying to things we don’t even consciously realize are falsehoods because the grooves of those illusions have been dug so deep for so long.

Now that we are past the infamous shift date of 21st December 2012, we have to look no further than right now in order to usher and anchor in a new paradigm that has as its foundation the fundamental understanding of interconnectedness being the nature of everything in existence.

A New Way of Living

Through this understanding we can build up a new way of living and experiencing this world of ours that isn’t new at all yet since we’ve become so disconnected from the wider horizon of Reality it might as well be a new beginning.

Let’s reclaim what it means to be human. Let’s rediscover and intimately experience the multi-dimensionality of being. The only barrier to entry is our belief that we can’t create an upgraded reality for ourselves.


Let’s immerse ourselves in the sea of possibility and become intentional evolutionaries. 

Today is the first day of the rest of your life… let it be the beginning of a life with more compassion, reason, understanding and love.

About Author: Paul is a conscious evolution guide, author of “The Creation of a Consciousness Shift“,  intentional evolutionary and co-founder of SHIFT, a social community focused on anchoring in the new energetic paradigm and assisting the positive transformation of humanity. With the motivation to see and experience the wider horizon of Reality, Paul has an extensive background in the spiritual and transformative elements of life; one that is both knowledge and experienced-based.

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What Is Conscious Evolution?

by Gregory Ellison -

Mankind is on the verge of an evolutionary leap in consciousness, to a whole new way of thinking and being that will put us as far above our present concept of "man" as modern man is above our stone age ancestors.

Until roughly the present time, the forces of evolution have been external to mankind. Whether we think of these forces as essentially physical/biological, or essentially spiritual, in either case we have not consciously directed the course of our own evolution. This is simply where the journey has brought us.

But no more. From this point forward we will consciously participate in the direction of our own evolution. We will become what we choose to become.

Why now?

There are many things that point to this moment in history as a time of major transformation. Religious and spiritual prophecy from many different traditions point to this period as the "end times" where the old world falls away and the new millennium arises. 

Astrology recognizes this as the dawning of the "age of Aquarius," a transformation to spiritual awareness, peace and brotherhood.

But we need not rely on myth or revelation to know that we now chart our own destiny: science and technology too inform us that we will soon have the capacity to alter our own genetic code, extend our life expectancy, and expand our capabilities far beyond those nature has bestowed on us. 

Already we do not need wings to fly above the mountaintops, nor gills to swim the depths of the sea. We can throw our voices around the world at the speed of light, transmute matter to energy in nuclear reactors (and bombs), stroll on the surface of the moon.

We have superseded natural selection. Where once we were at the mercy of our environment, now our environment is at our mercy.

And therein lies the rub: we have become powerful enough to make ourselves extinct, and we stand shuddering at the doorway to this brave new world because we are scared silly that we might do just that!

What will we become?

We have grown in knowledge and power beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors, but our wisdom has not kept pace. In fact, it might be argued that human wisdom has taken giant steps backward since the astrological, shamanistic and mystical traditions that flowered thousands of years ago!

Our politics today are still based on the model of domination-oriented city-states that characterized the ancient Sumerian empire, our economics are still based on the same model of amassing personal wealth, our interpersonal relationships are still based on possessiveness and ego gratification.

The day of reckoning has come: unparalleled power without the wisdom to balance it is a mortal danger to all life. 

Unless our collective wisdom makes a quantum leap to match our Godlike power, we can look forward only to global warfare, totalitarian domination, and predatory consumption and waste-production, culminating in ecological suicide. What will we become?

A New Way of Thinking

The good news is, we are now at a turning point. Mankind is now in the process of shifting our normal state of awareness from an individual/ego point of view to a global/spiritual point of view, and our basic choice is to cooperate with that process and help it along, or to resist it. 

We can usher in a world transformed by Love and spirit, or see our world mired in the dark extremes of the unbalanced direction we have been heading. We get to choose.

The system of thought that has structured our collective reality until now is hierarchical organization:

This is the familiar "top down" model of organization that we use to structure nearly everything we think about. As you can see, it looks like a corporate organization chart among other things, with the CEO at the top and the workers at the bottom.

This is how we think about everything. It is how we organize scientific knowledge, how we classify library books, and how we organize our sports tournaments! 

It is also how we structure society, with kings, dictators and presidents at the top, bureacrats and the wealthy "upper class" in the middle, and the "unwashed masses (peasants) at the bottom. It is a "pecking order" view of reality.

There is nothing wrong with hierarchy - it is a mental tool that has served us well in many ways, making scientific progress possible and enabling our rational mastery of many challenges of the material world. But, like the once-useful notions of a flat earth in the center of the universe, it has outlived its usefulness as a model of reality.

The Universe as we are coming to understand it now is not a competition for position in a pecking order, but a harmonious unfolding of creative potential as separate "parts" merge into greater "wholes." 

The new consciousness sees the world through holistic eyes, as a holarchy rather than a hierarchy. In a holarchy, every element is in direct communication with every other element, but none are "above" or "below" each other. 

The relationships are not among superiors and subordinates, but rather among essentially equal "parts" and the "whole" that emerges from them.

In a hierarchy, order is imposed from the top down. In a holarchy, order emerges from the bottom up. When a studio producer hires musicians, assigns them parts to play, and hands out musical scores, that's hierarchy. When several musicians get together to jam and they gradually develop a "groove" together, that's holarchy.

Parts and Wholes

Every part is a whole, and every whole is a part. Anything you can think of - a toaster, a galaxy, a supermarket, or your next door neighbor - is a "whole" made up of "parts." 

At the same time, it is also part of a larger whole, or perhaps many larger wholes. Your next door neighbor, for example, is a part of the human race (or so we hope!) What's more, every whole is similar to every other whole in some respects.

For example, atoms are composed of many sub-atomic particles such as protons and electrons. In turn, each "whole" atom is itself a "part" of a larger whole, such as a molecule. 

Going up the scale, the molecule is part of a cell, the cell is part of an animal, the animal is part of the living planet, and the planet is part of the solar system. And oddly enough, the electrons circling the nucleus of the atom bear a strange resemblance to the planets circling the Sun!

Every part is a whole and every whole is a part.

The Global Mind

Conscious Evolution is the evolution of consciousness to the next stage of awareness - the "awakening" of the parts to their awareness as a whole. Simply put, we are now living through the birth pains of the planetary mind!

Of course, this is not a new concept - the idea that "we are all ONE" is the fundamental notion of all mystical thought. But until now it has often been seen as a threatening idea, because it implies that we will lose our individual identities while being absorbed into a mystical one-ness with all life. 

We are afraid to take this leap for the same reason we are afraid to die, even though we "believe" in eternal life. The ego has been all-powerful for a long time, and it likes it that way!

But the new consciousness is showing us that this is an unfounded fear ... wholes emerge from their parts, they do not replace them! A single cell of my body is a living "creature" in itself, but when it joins with other cells to create a "higher" organism (me!) it doesn't lose anything of itself. 

It still has its own "identity" - its own boundaries, and its own limited consciousness - but to that is added the newly emergent properties of a human being, including my greater range of conscious awareness.

When the transcendant global mind emerges from our individual consciousnesses, we will not "lose" ourselves - instead, we will gain a perspective that puts an end to all war and hatred and the thousand-and-one faces of man's inhumanity to man. 

Can you imagine the cells of your right hand going to war against the cells of your left hand? Of course not! Nor will I harm my brother when I know in the very core of my being that to harm him is to harm myself.

Having taken the leap of Conscious Evolution, we still look out on the world through the same eyes in the same familiar body. 

But we know that the "I" who looks out through these eyes is the same "I" who looks out through all eyes. We identify ourselves as something much larger than our individual bodies and egos ... and that makes all the difference!

The mission of the Conscious Evolution website is to support this transition, both intellectually and through concrete activities and spiritual practices that aid the emergence of the new consciousness. The features, articles, and discussions you will find here support this mission in an eclectic way, through traditional approaches like astrology and other spiritual paths, as well as state-of-the art insights drawn from general systems theory, cybernetics and quantum physics. There are many paths up the mountain, but the view from the summit is all the same. Call it cosmic consciousness, enlightenment, union with God ... or call it Love.

consciousevolution.com

New Earth Paradigms and Culture Minds

by Brendan D. Murphy -

"In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists." —Eric Hoffer

Kuhn states in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that the actualization of a scientific paradigm is achieved by increasing the extent of the match between its facts and its predictions, and by further articulation of the paradigm itself: “mop-up work.” 

Kuhn’s candor is enlightening as he explains that such work occupies most scientists right through their careers; it is “normal science,” an enterprise attempting to force-fit nature into the preformed conceptual boxes supplied by the already existing paradigm (the Big Bang theory comes to mind). 

New sorts of phenomena are not sought and those phenomena that won’t be squeezed into pre-existing boxes tend to not even be seen at all. Scientists generally don’t seek to invent new theories, and they don’t always tolerate the theories of other scientists.[i]

Psychologically speaking, it makes sense that scientists imprinted by the culturally dominant paradigm they are born into will expend most of their energy attempting to understand it better and elaborate on it. 

Practically speaking, this has to be done because of the chasms that exist between science’s theoretical understandings of the cosmos (from the Greek Kosmos, meaning “ordered whole”) and what the cosmos actually has to offer—and every answer yields another ten questions. 

The average scientist is busy enough trying to test and validate aspects of the preformed paradigmatic box he or she has inherited without having to worry about various anomalies that challenge the basic parameters, theoretical underpinnings, or first principles of that box. 

Hence, anomalous data, such as that which we will deliberately focus on in this book, is typically unfavorable to those scientists imprinted by a theory or model of the universe that posits that such phenomena should not even exist. 

The presumption seemingly made by many scientists—like the child who naïvely sees his parents as being god-like in their knowledge and authority—is obviously that the paradigm must be right and that there’s no point actually checking, or else why would it be the dominant paradigm? 

This, of course, creates unscientific institutionalized blind spots that do not harmonize with people whose conscious experience is not congruent with what the popular theory says they should or shouldn’t be experiencing. 

If the facts of your waking experience are not encapsulated by the theory and your experiences are being shared by millions of other people, then perhaps the theory needs some revision.

Importantly, Kuhn also stated that a paradigm defines what constitutes a valid scientific problem. 

Any pursuits venturing away from the confines of the paradigm therefore define themselves as being “unscientific” (and therefore the findings must be untrue) by default and—to conventional thinking—this is where most of the information contained in this book lies: the scientific wilderness or no man’s land. 

This briefly outlined “scientific” approach, needless to say, can institutionalize myopic and dogmatic gate-keeping activities that prevent novel research from occurring (or being published), ironically in the name of science if not the form, leading to a stagnation in the advancement of science to the extent that such activities succeed and prevail. 

However, history shows that such circumstances break down in the end, in line with the ultimate law of the world of form and relativity: the only constant is change.

The individuals who catalyze such breakdowns and revolutions of thought and encourage them to unfold towards what will ultimately be a state of greater order and understanding (whether they facilitate this consciously or otherwise) are what Rudhyar called civilizers (and what historian Arthur Toynbee referred to as creative minorities). 

Culture Minds

These (relatively) independent and forward-thinking minds possess a differing vision from the majority of culturally conditioned minds, aptly designated as culture minds. For clarity, culture is defined by anthropologists as a collection of learned survival strategies passed on to our young through teaching and modeling.[ii] 

The culture mind, which is essentially a reflection of the collective or group mind, is the one that imprints on and inherits a pre-existing paradigm, refines it, champions it, and, maybe above all, defends it against “attack” from unfamiliar and unexpected data—supposedly for the benefit of humankind but in truth simply as a coping mechanism, perhaps a perversion of a biological survival drive. 

Such was the role of those who decried the invention of the light bulb, the radio, the telescope, and almost every other novel and important invention through our history.

Joseph C. Pearce refers to culture as “the collective embodiment of our survival ideation,” and “a circular stalemate,”[iii] and in this sense our narrow cultural tendencies are holding us back from transcending ourselves. 

Civilizer Minds

The civilizer mind, on the other hand, is the lonely soul or minority of souls brave or silly enough to bring forth such unexpected and “ridiculous” creations as light bulbs, radios, quantum mechanics, or parapsychology, and pose the uncomfortable questions stemming from them that the culture mind’s paradigm had failed to anticipate.

What if this new phenomenon is real? What if the universe doesn’t work the precise way our paradigms led us to believe? What if more is possible? 

The civilizer will pursue a new line of inquiry in spite of its being politically incorrect or taboo, if he or she perceives that such a pursuit could benefit mankind in the long run. This will of course be done to the chagrin of the tribally oriented culture mind who perceives, however dimly, such investigation as a threat to his status and identity—his models of self and the universe. 

Eventually, when the civilizer has succeeded in gaining acceptance for his new concept or invention and it has become familiar and even commonplace, a new breed of culture mind will grow up taking this once dangerous heresy for granted as self-evident and obvious.

New Paradigms

Thus, the genius civilizer and Hermeticist Isaac Newton’s profound scientific output led to the formulation of new and unforeseen paradigms which would ultimately be inherited by culture mind minions who would dogmatically insist that those materialistic and reductionistic paradigms essentially described the Universe as it was and must necessarily be, refusing to acknowledge the validity of legitimate information that did not conform to the expectations induced by those (incomplete) paradigms. 

New data or refinements were permissible only insofar as they did not challenge the fundamental precepts of the Newtonian outlook, and thus the religion of Funda-Materialism (Fundamentalist Materialism) was born (which is ironic, since, as Newton matured he moved from a mechanistic view to an essentially “magical” one, being deeply involved in alchemical research, as well as being a Freemason and student of Biblical prophesy[iv]).

The culture mind is typically bent on maintaining the status quo at any cost, for it lacks imagination and vision enough to see a potentially better way of operating and more importantly, its identity is intimately tied to said status quo, so challenging the latter threatens the former by default. 

It might reluctantly agree to consider making some small changes, however, if a “credible” and familiar cultural authority figure can induce it into perceiving some kind of self-benefit for such an action. 

As Joseph Chilton Pearce observes, 

“Culture is the fundamental deviancy of intellect from intelligence, and because of its massively unnatural and arbitrary, and illogical nature, it requires an equally massive energy to sustain it.”[v]

Inspection reveals that for the most part—within the context of paranormal research—that energy is the emotion known as fear, and it is usually repressed/subliminal, lurking in the background, tacitly guiding our processes of logic (and sabotaging our capacity to learn). 

Culture, as Pearce points out, feeds the ancient survival modes of our brain and keeps us locked into them.[vi] This means that information challenging the culture mind’s paradigm and sense of self evokes a fight-or-flight biological sort of response—about the lowest level of intelligence available to us. 

Having only those two ways of responding to “threatening” data is profoundly limiting to intelligence. 

It leaves one with only the option of perpetually debunking (“fighting”) information through a pseudo-intellectual veneer, or simply fleeing from the most challenging facts altogether. More intelligent responses could be forthcoming if our sense of self was not based on such flimsy ground and so easily “undermined”—expanded on, in truth—by the “unexplainable.”

Self-interest is a strong motive for the biospherically oriented culture mind, while the civilizer’s motive is typically something more transpersonal, something vaster and more far-reaching. 

The civilizer seeks to drag the possible future into the manifest present. In Rudhyar’s estimation, the steps to preparing for the role as a civilizer include “having a deep-seated dissatisfaction with the forms and institutions that the culture has built…and the development of a mind able to relentlessly question the intellectual and/or moral validity of the essential premises (paradigms) constituting the framework of the collective mentality of a society having already passed its maturity.”[vii]

Gautama the Buddha, Pythagoras, Newton, Bacon, Tesla and many researchers, mystics and occultists who will be mentioned in the following pages have been cast in the mold of the civilizer mind, pioneers and trailblazers that they are (or were). 

The consciousness of these individuals no longer imbues the familiar cultural beliefs, assumptions, values, behavioral patterns and concepts, with the importance and/or meaning they have for the average human being/culture mind. 

In some cases, Rudhyar observed, these people have actually “transferred the center of their consciousness and therefore their sense of identity from the biopsychic level to a spiritual-mental level.”[viii] 

This is exactly what we seek to facilitate here.

Creative Minds

What the creative minds are able to communicate to others in their culture “becomes a mutating ideologic seed that, sooner or later, will germinate and affect other minds.”[ix] Thus, culture is the carrier wave, as Rudhyar termed it, of civilization. The process of civilization cannot occur without cultures and culture minds to evolve and transform, to “civilize.”

 “Culture forms. Civilization transforms.”[x]

The process of transformation implies a sort of crisis (from a Greek root, meaning “to decide”), and it is indeed a crisis/decision point that humanity currently finds itself at. 

This is especially so for our dominant scientific paradigms, placed under siege and laid waste by inconvenient facts that have been swept under the proverbial rug for so long now that the rug looks as if it’s hiding a jittery woolly mammoth. 

This hulking mass now appears ready to topple over into collective awareness with an almighty crash. Our cherished materialistic-reductionist paradigms of life and consciousness are crumbling under the weight of their own obfuscations and omissions. 

Such is the saturation of inconvenient facts that perceptive scientists such as Radin can legitimately state that we are indeed making the step from Phase 1 of outright institutional denial to Phase 2 of reluctant acceptance and further, more mainstream investigation. 

This very fact signifies a philosophical crisis occurring in the hallowed halls of science, as the growing realization dawns on more and more minds that our dominant politically correct scientifically induced (and scientistically preserved) metaphysical assumptions about our existence are simply unable to cope with the questions being asked of them.

New paradigms are in the making—culture is being civilized (transformed) in a way that few generations on this Earth have ever had the opportunity to witness. 

With the capability to “nuke” or simply pollute and contaminate ourselves out of existence, there has probably not been a better time in our recorded history to embrace the dynamic of civilization and choose to consciously transform ourselves and our cultures (and by that I don’t mean throwing in with a totalitarian World Government agenda run by psychopathic unelected financial oligarchs). 

The creations of civilizer minds, as opposed to culture minds, induce sociocultural transformation rather than fulfilment or what we might often refer to as the preservation of the status quo. 

Such humans are transpersonal beings, according to Rudhyar. “Space, life, God, act through them, even if they are not aware of this fact.”[xi] 

The civilization process pertains to the activity of “spirit” as spirit acts through the mind. While spirit creates, culture merely reproduces.[xii] Finally, Rudhyar tells us: “The way of transformation is what occultists call ‘The Path.’ The real civilizer is the man of relationship. He relates the as-yet-unknown to the known, the greater to the lesser.”[xiii]

This book, as the reader has no doubt gathered by now, is the kind of dangerous and subversive text that can potentially play a civilizing or transformative role—as long as one’s mind is receptive, curious, and open. 

The time is ripe for such outlandish material to be circulated en masse, because perhaps never in our known history have the masses of mankind been so beaten down, worn out, and disillusioned with the status quo (just look at the “Occupy” movement!). 

More to the point is the fact that never before have we known the collective mind to be undertaking the kind of mass awakening that now appears to be happening and gathering pace, even as I type these words.

What makes this book dangerous to the conditioned culture mind is the author’s refusal to allow his perceptions to be utterly dictated and shaped by his own culture’s customs, taboos, and metaphysical assumptions. 

This book challenges dogma, culturally ingrained assumptions and beliefs, rather than arbitrarily selecting one particular “culturized” viewpoint (say, materialism, Freudianism, or Christian fundamentalism) and espousing it at the expense of all other viewpoints merely out of fear or pride. 

Culture seizes the new ideas civilization creates and erects them into systems and truths endowed with permanent value, leading to tradition and also dogmatism. 

The civilizer “plays with” ideas and his mind “sees,” while the culture-man’s mind cogitates and endlessly argues pros and cons.[xiv] The purpose of this book is not to merely argue pros and cons but to expand one’s vision: to civilize/transform.

It is interesting to note that one cannot spell culture without cult. What is a cult best at? Rigidly and fiercely maintaining its own cognitive status quo, its ontology, in spite of any and all evidence to the contrary—indefinitely. 

Extreme data filtration and streamlining. Model fanaticism courtesy of what I dub “paradigmatic fanatics.” No cult member ever really realizes the depths of stupidity he or she, as a believer, sinks to until they leave the cult, dis-identify with its models of reality and the world, and stand on the outside looking in. 

We want to transcend the culture mind. A change in perspective (data reception and meaning creation) is a powerful thing. 

The product of any profound and positive change in perspective is transformation/civilization. At this point in our history, can we aim for anything less?

Endnotes: 

[i] See Kuhn. 

[ii] Pearce, The Biology of Transcendence, 2. 

[iii] Ibid., 3. 

[iv] See my article The Newton You Never Knew (www.globalfreedommovement.net).[v] Pearce, 125. 

[vi] Ibid., 171. 

[vii] Rudhyar, 107. 

[viii] Ibid., 34. 

[ix] Ibid., 44. 

[x] Ibid., 26.

[xi] Ibid., 66–7. 

[xii] Ibid., 180. 

[xiii] Ibid., 129. 

[xiv] Ibid., 194.

 excerpt from Chapter 1 of The Grand Illusion: A Synthesis of Science and Spirituality  

“What a wonderful job of collating and integrating you have done! Every person in the field of ‘paranormal’ psychology or related topics should have this book as a major reference.” –Dr. Buryl Payne 

“A masterpiece…The Grand Illusion is mind-blowing.” –Sol Luckman, author of Potentiate Your DNA. 

“You’ve written the best synthesis of modern science and esoteric science that I’ve seen in 40 years of study in that area. Brilliant!”  –Michael K. Wade

About Author: Brendan Murphy – Co founder of the Global Freedom Movement and host of GFM Radio, a leading Australian author, researcher, activist and musician. His acclaimed non-fiction epic The Grand Illusion: A Synthesis of Science and Spirituality – Book 1 is out now! 

brendandmurphy.net 

globalfreedommovement.org 

wakingtimes.com

corespirit.co.uk