“In these years ahead it will be to our benefit if we try to develop a consciousness that is both open to spiritual impulses whilst simultaneously aware and attentive to the needs of our communities and cultures.” K L Dennis
Recent decades have seen a great rise in ecological awareness and the perspective of living systems. Many of us are now relating on a personal and conscious level to the interconnectedness and interaction between humans, nature, and environment. However, this new paradigm of thought should not be restricted only to a material level of connectivity but also needs to embrace the nonmaterial levels of the human psyche and consciousness.
The world of the inner self is increasingly opening up and being explored through transpersonal sciences, self-realization, and individual self-actualization. Through our various cultures we are developing the language, the skills, and the perceptions to sense and articulate our personal, revelatory experiences. The once shamanic realm of extra-sensory contact is becoming more normalized as we deal with a physical reality more accustomed to shifting perceptual paradigms. For example, our new scientific discoveries are explaining and validating nonlocal realities of connection and energetic entanglement. We are now learning that extended fields of conscious information and communication exist between individuals and groups as a medium of coherence that may further entangle humanity into a collective ‘grand family’.
From infancy, to adolescence, and to adulthood, the distinction between inside and outside, objective and subjective, has always been a transient, undefined boundary. Our cultural parameters – our social conditioning – has sought to crystallize these fluctuating borders. However, today there are increasing numbers of people who are beginning to perceive the presence of subtle energy fields, whether around their bodies, around the bodies of others, or in the environment. The interest in metaphysical subjects these days has exploded, with a new language and mind-set emerging to deal with these increasingly common phenomena. It is now becoming acceptable to speak in terms of reiki, chi, pranic energy, and even in terms of quantum energy. Not only are many cultures and societies learning to deal with a new wave of technological social networks – with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – but also with an increase in energetic awareness of human connections and an extended mind.
In a sense, humanity is learning how to be a more interactive collective family. Never before in our known history of the species have we come to a point where we are sailing in the same ship, afflicted by the same concerns, and affected similarly by a range of global impacts. When a poor harvest affects the growing areas in China, Australia and the US, for example, the world food distribution networks reverberate across all nations. When a virus pandemic spreads out from a crowded poultry market somewhere in South Asia, it affects all nations without reserve, grinding transport hubs to a slow crawl. This realization is now dawning on the peoples of the world: that we are already a part of the field fabric of a collective family.
This realization is being keenly felt, too, by the younger generations: generations that are growing up accustomed to having a network of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of virtual friends across the globe; sharing intimacy and empathy with an international social group of like-minded people. This younger generation is manifesting, whether conscious of it or not, non-local (i.e., field effect) relationships. These types of relationships support the individual whilst at the same time strengthening networks that form part of a unified – yet diversified – whole. It is a form that mimics the quantum state of the particle and the wave: each person is clearly isolated from another by physical space, yet at the same time is entangled in a conscious space of connectivity and communication. In other words, each is participating in a field-view of reality; a reality that creates an extended set of responsibilities as one’s thoughts and actions can reverberate much further afield.
The human individual has the capacity to be consciously aware of the effect of thoughts and actions upon others: to consider their reactions, to reflect upon their thoughts, and to decide whether to behave differently. In other words, each person has the ability to develop consciously, and with awareness, from each interaction with both external and internal impacts and experiences. Sociologists have, up until now, been mainly focused on human identity as characterized by individualization.
This is especially so in ‘modern/postmodern’ society, where each person is categorized as acting with autonomy; with a self-promoting ‘service-to-self’ attitude. Yet this is a myopic vision on two counts: on one hand it neglects that humans are social animals and instinctively seek groupings and attachments; and on the other it fails to recognize that the nature of human consciousness also undergoes change along with socio-cultural revolutions. It may be very likely that a form of consciousness will emerge, at first on the periphery, perhaps with the younger generations, that will then seep into the core of all our future societies.
Social scientist Duane Elgin considers the following to represent the shifting states of human consciousness over historical epochs:
1 Contracted consciousness (early humans)
2 Sensing consciousness (hunter-gatherers)
3 Feeling consciousness (agrarian era)
4 Thinking consciousness (scientific-industrial era)
5 Observing consciousness (communications era)
6 Compassionate consciousness (bonding era)
7 Flow consciousness (surpassing era)
Using this scale it would appear that global humanity is now shifting from the communications era (observing consciousness) into the bonding era (compassionate consciousness). We could perhaps shift the emphasis of the bonding era from ‘compassionate consciousness’ to ‘empathic consciousness’. This transition from exhibiting an observing consciousness towards manifesting a compassionate/empathic consciousness represents the move from the ‘old-mind’ energies that brought us to the current state of a globalized world, toward the ‘new-mind’ energies that will bond our diverse world together in coherence and balance.
Likewise, the surpassing era could be renamed as the planetary era and represent not only the rise of non-local field awareness but also the scientific understanding of the subtle forces of the universe. This era of ‘flow consciousness’ would fit well with the next stage in the evolution of human consciousness that appears to be displaying elements of a transpersonal-integral nature.
None of these states, however, are completely separate from each other; rather, they overlap and merge as one era fades and converges into the next. Usually, the new era, or paradigm, emerges initially at the periphery until it reaches a tipping point where it becomes the new accepted paradigm. Already, flow consciousness is slowly percolating into our human perceptions as more and more people embrace and instinctively trust non-material information.
The dominant materialist worldview is under increased scrutiny as more people awaken to the possibility that their intuitive glimpses – dreams, visions, premonitions, etc. – are trusted sources of information that originate from alternative senses. Through seeking practices that were once considered metaphysical (or even strange) – such as spiritual practices, yoga, meditation, psychotherapy, transpersonal therapy, bio-feedback, altered states of consciousness, and more – people are now accessing a once-hidden, or rather neglected, realm of senses and self-knowing.
As more people realize that the subtle realm of extrasensory information is not a figment of fantasy or delusion, but in fact has a scientific foundation, these states of consciousness will become more widely accepted, credible, and sought. Also, we may find that our orthodox social institutions will begin to incorporate them into the status quo of consensus reality and experience. Whilst the transition may not appear to unfold suddenly to us, within evolutionary terms it will be a revolution. And participating in this unfolding consciousness revolution will be both a personal growth imperative as well as a collective human responsibility. Continue reading . . .