AWAKENING EARTH E-Book

2 Awakening Earth Exploring the Evolution of Human Culture and Consciousness Duane Elgin Originally published by William Morrow and Company. © Duane Elgin, 1993 ISBN 0-688-11621-3 Creative Commons License 4.0 Awakening Earth by Duane Elgin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 3 Table of Contents Introduction: The Challenge of Planetary Civilization Part I: Stages of Development First Stage: Contracted Consciousness and the Arachic Era Second Stage: Surface Consciousness and the Era of Awakening Hunter-Gatherers Third Stage: Depth Consciousness and the Era of Agrarian-Based Civilizations Fourth Stage: Dynamic Consciousness and the Scientific-Industrial Era Fifth Stage: Reflective Consciousness and the Era of Communication and Reconciliation Sixth Stage: Oceanic Consciousness and the Bonding and Building Era Seventh Stage: Flow Consciousness and the Surpassing Era Eighth Stage: Integral Awreness and the Intial Maturity of Planetary Civilization The Changing Dynamics of Human Evolution Part II: Dimensional Cosmology The Perennial Wisdom and Human Evolution Continuous Creation of the Cosmos Co-Evolution and the Meta-Universe Sacred Geometry and Stages of Growth Part III: Appendices Appendix I: Correlations with Psychological Theories and Spiritual Traditions Appendix II: Meditative Origins of Dimensional Cosmology Dedication and Acknowledgments Footnotes Selected Bibliography 4 Introduction: THE CHALLENGE OF PLANETARY CIVILIZATION Introduction The Earth’s biosphere is being severely wounded, even crippled, by humanity. Yet through humanity, the Earth is awakening as a conscious global organism. These two facts are intimately related: pushed by the harsh reality of an injured Earth, the human family is being challenged to realize to a new level of identity, responsibility, and purpose. The human family confronts a future of great opportunity and great peril. On the one hand, a communications revolution is sweeping the planet, providing humanity with the tools needed to achieve a dramatic new level of understanding and reconciliation that, in turn, can support a future of sustainable global development. On the other hand, powerful countervailing trends are also at work—climate change, overpopulation, dwindling reserves of oil, the ruin of rainforests, soil erosion, ozone depletion, and many more. In the next few decades these driving trends will either devastate or transform the economic, cultural, and political fabric of the planet. It is bewildering to see how quickly economic progress has turned into ecological devastation. Yet, with a deteriorating biosphere already stretched past the limits of its ability to carry the burden of humanity, the views and values that have served us so well in the past must now be reconsidered. If the Earth is to awaken in good health, then we need to stand back, look at the larger sweep of human evolution, and ask ourselves basic questions: Who are we? What are we doing here? What is the nature and purpose of human evolution? Where do we go from here as a species? Are we destined to wander blindly into the future, or are there major stages along the way that we can anticipate? Is the universe coldly 5 indifferent to our struggles, sufferings, and joys—or is it compassionately non- interfering? Although answers to these questions must be conjectural, there is a story of human evolution emerging from the enduring wisdom of the world’s spiritual traditions as well as from new insights in science that suggests we are involved in a highly purposeful process of development. Just as there are recognizable stages in the movement of an individual from infancy to early adulthood, so, too, do there seem to be stages of learning that describe our maturation as a species. As told in this book, humanity’s story has seven distinct chapters that describe our evolution from awakening hunter-gatherers to our initial maturity as a planetary-scale civilization. In my view humanity is roughly halfway through seven stages of development that must be realized if we are to become a planetary civilization that is able both to maintain itself and to surpass itself into the distant future. Describing these stages of development, and the cosmology that underlies them, are the two major objectives of this book. Discovering the story of our evolutionary journey is vital. Confronted with a global crisis and lacking a vision of a sustainable future, we can lose confidence in ourselves, our leaders, and our institutions. A disoriented world civilization faced with dwindling resources, mounting pollution, and growing population is a recipe for ecological collapse, social anarchy, religious fanaticism, and authoritarian domination. We need to get our bearings for the journey ahead if we are to move swiftly towards our early adulthood as a planetary civilization. Sustainability—and Beyond To be sustainable, a civilization must maintain the integrity of the physical, social and spiritual foundations upon which it is established. To seek only to survive—to do no more than simply exist—is not a sufficient foundation for long-term sustainability. An insight from Simone de Beauvoir clarifies our challenge: “Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.” If we do no more than work for a sustainable future, then we are in 6 danger of creating a world in which living is little more than “only not dying.” To engage our enthusiasm for evolution, we must look beyond sheer survival—we need a compelling sense of purpose and potential for living together as a world civilization. If industrial societies are to turn away from materialism and commercialism as organizing values, then other values and purposes are needed that are at least as compelling. The survival and integrity of our biosphere, the quality of life for our children and friends, and the coevolution of culture and consciousness—these are life purposes that offer a powerful alternative to those of the industrial era. There is growing evidence that a substantial majority of the human family would support this shift in life orientation. For example, a Gallup poll for the first “Earth Summit” in 1992 surveyed people in twenty-two diverse nations around the planet and found that in all but three, a majority is “increasingly worried about the global environment and gives its protection priority over economic growth.”1 For a majority of humans, representing a wide range of income levels, to place the well being of the Earth ahead of their personal economic concerns shows that a dramatic shift in values and priorities is taking place around the world. Although humanity is expressing growing concern for protecting the Earth’s environment, we do not yet have a shared vision of how to build an advanced, global civilization while simultaneously restoring the health of the biosphere. We do not have a vision of the future that is sufficiently realistic, comprehensive, and compelling to be able to coalesce the enthusiasm of the human family into a process of sustainable and surpassing development. We have economic forecasts, but these are bloodless projections that do not inspire civilizations to reach new heights. We have projections for single issues—the prospects for the rainforests, AIDS, education, health care, and so on—but we don’t have comprehensive visions of the whole planetary system that portray how humanity can live together successfully. We have technological forecasts— trends for computers, cars, air travel, nuclear technology, and so forth—but we have few integrative views that combine technology, psychology, spirituality and sociology into persuasive scenarios of a diverse, creative and sustainable future. 7 When we can collectively envision a sustainable and satisfying pathway into the future, then can we begin to construct that future consciously. We need to draw upon our collective wisdom and discover images of the future that awaken our enthusiasm for evolution and mobilize our social energies. By drawing upon the world’s growing body of wisdom—in biology, anthropology, history, physics, systems theory, comparative religions, and so on—we can begin to discern the overall direction of human evolution that leads toward our maturity as a planetary civilization. With a clear vision of a positive future, we can proceed with confidence on our evolutionary journey. If humanity is successful in building an enduring civilization on the Earth, then it will come from the synergy of the collective experience and wisdom of the entire human family—the entire species. The world has become so interdependent that we must make it together, transcending differences of race, ethnicity, geography, religion, politics and gender. It is the human species that is devastating the planet and it is the entire species that must learn to live together as a civilized and mutually supportive community. To focus on the development of civility among the human species is not to unduly to inflate the importance of humanity within the ecosystem of life on Earth; rather, it is to recognize how dangerous humanity is to the viability of the Earth’s ecosystem. Humanity must begin consciously to develop a planetary-scale, species- civilization that is able to live in a harmonious relationship with the rest of the web of life. A New Paradigm for Evolution Two views of evolution—materialism and transcendentalism—are dominant in the world today; but a third view is emerging that integrates

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