The Future of the Future
A Conscious Guide to Personal and Planetary Shift
By Laurence De Rusha
Institute for Higher Spiritual Learning
B
oulder,
Colorado
The Future of the Future
Laurence De Rusha
Copyright © 2011 by Laurence De Rusha
Published by Laurence De Rusha at Smashwords
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Copy editing and text design: Angela Renkoski
Imagine that you have come to the Earth from the far reaches of the universe, out beyond the beyond. Because of the travel, you have forgotten your reasons for coming to this planet and you have become human, assumed the physical appearance of Earth’s creatures, and adapted to its ways of life.
Eventually, you suffer. Events and upheavals cause pain and suffering. You long for something that calls you from the other side of the stars. You ask questions about this reality, where it began and the source. The mysteries of life seem so beautiful yet strange. Suddenly, after years of searching, you remember your previous existence and you are awakened to your cosmic self and your oneness with the universe.
(paraphrased from Sufi master Inayat Khan)
Foreword
It is a remarkable paradox that, at the pinnacle of human material and technical achievement, we find ourselves anxiety-ridden, prone to depression, worried about how others see us, unsure of our friendships, driven to consume and with little or no community life. Lacking the relaxed social contact and emotional satisfaction we all need, we seek comfort in over-eating, obsessive shopping and spending, or become prey to excessive alcohol, psychoactive medicines and illegal drugs. (Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett; 2010)
Apprehension about the future is also widespread these days. Bob Dylan’s lyric, “The times they are a-changin’,” fits this remarkable period we are living into. Everywhere in the national media we see economic, political, and ecological firestorms. Fueled by unlimited consumption, consumerism, competi-tion, colonization, and tribalism, these wildfires are burning out of control. Yet these are the outer symptoms of something much deeper. Beneath all of this unrest, instability, and suffering is the deep disconnection of humanity from its spiritual essence.
Other books explore in depth all the ingredients contributing to our global crises, and still others give theories on how they developed. (You can find some of these books in the Suggested Reading section.)
Although this book does describe, in brief, the crisis-driven revolution of an old worldview, my purpose is learning to reconnect and participate in a positive personal and global shift. Our new outer world will be built on our inner awakening and a realization of our universal interconnectedness.
Now that you have read this far, you likely relate to what I have said and feel something profound is happening on our planet and wish to do something about it. And, like me, you might question, “What can I do? I am only one person.” If you and others use this old excuse, nothing will happen. But if each of us does the work, we start the global shift.
To fully participate in facilitating such a powerful and positive change that is needed, you must go beyond superficial optimism.
Making a shift in your worldview, healing any disconnections, and positively seeding consciousness ultimately lead to shifts in the way you act, and this impacts the outer world. In other words, as you begin to shift yourself, the old materialist worldview will give way to a new worldview. Multiplied by millions, your part equals global shift!
New Interconnected Worldview
The new worldview I am suggesting is actually a return to the values of many early indigenous and spiritual cultures, but it is supported by modern science. There is a deep understanding in these cultures of the interdependence of everything. Any separation between us and nature is a mirage manufactured by our ego. According to the 5,000-year-old Hindu sacred texts (vedas), we are all interconnected, like cells in the body.
Before we go further, let’s define some of our terms.
Ego: the sense that I exist as a separate being. When the body breathes, the mind says, “I am breathing.” Ego likes labels and likes having a name—Larry, Marigene, etc. Whereas mind is very daring, ego is very much afraid.
Mind: a tool of consciousness and our individual use of the Universal Mind.
Universal Mind: the collective unconscious in contrast to a personal unconscious. Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious defines it as universal and impersonal in nature and identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is preexisting in all and existent in all things. It is a compendium of all knowledge, but it is nonlocal, encoded in a nonphysical plane of existence.
Our worldview can be colored by our ego, the mind, and even Universal Mind. But if we look for evidence we will find that spirituality and new science are intersecting at the point of quantum theory, which suggests all particles are made of the same material—a fabric similar, again, to the contention of the Hindu vedas that say all is vibration. Both suggest an interconnection and interdependence of all things on a fundamental level. In fact, string theory is about vibrational patterns that underlie matter.
Dark matter and dark energy might sound ominous, but they are recent discoveries in astrophysics that further hint at a basic “fabric” of the universe. The science community is unsure, however, of the exact nature of the dark matter or dark energy that permeates the 96 percent of the universe we cannot see.
We cannot “see” this fabric, but Western science is so entrenched in the need for evidence of such interconnection in the material world, perhaps string theory, dark matter, and dark energy, will someday unlock this new interconnected worldview and make it more palatable to the modern Western mind.
Sri Nisargaddatta Maharaj, a Hindu mystic, connected these two worldviews when he said, “There is the material world and the spiritual. Between lies the universal mind and universal heart. It is wise love that makes the two one.”
He is suggesting another way of looking at it, that even the two worldviews are one. Universal mind is our externally focused view, and universal heart is the interconnected view that is internally focused.
Let’s continue by exploring some of this new worldview’s dominant themes:
Intuition balanced with rational thinking: trusting one’s deeper intuition as a guide for making decisions (along with reason).
Natural versus normal: Normal is the accepted values and behaviors in a group. It is an outside-in learning. Natural comes from a “nature” perspective, which means it is an inside-out learning. The latter knows without thinking about it that we are dependent on the Earth. As many Native Americans have said, living in a cooperative, sustainable relationship with nature is critical. We must stop exploiting it for material gain.
Compassion: an awareness of the suffering of other human beings subjected to poverty, disease, and inhumane living conditions, regardless of who they are or where they live, and expressed as a desire to help.
Empathy: akin to compassion in its awareness of connection with others. Khen Lampert (2005) defined it: “[Empathy] is what happens to us when we leave our own bodies ... and find ourselves either momentarily or for a longer period of time in the mind of the other. We observe reality through her eyes, feel her emotions, share in her pain.”
Simplicity: having the intention to leave a lighter footprint on the earth and a respect for being present. Living mindfully, or “in the Now,” is given value equal to left-brained analysis and the demand to predict and control the future.
Unconditional Acceptance: the highest values of unconditional love and forgiveness in our relations with others. If we are all one, then to harm another person is to harm ourselves. The operative question in all situations of interpersonal conflict reduces to “What is the most loving thing to do?”
Dominant Theme
In the interconnected worldview life is about connections—the connection between your conscious life, your inner Self, other people, the planet, and all else. When you are connected, you have a sense of well-being, and you feel as if everything is OK now and is going to be OK.
The 3,000-year-old Buddhist Avatamsaka Sutra text teaches that everything is interconnected and inter-dependent. Reading this sutra, we are reminded that the world is like a jeweled lattice of the Hindu god Indra’s web. This sparkling, mirrorlike jewel reflects and thus contains all. The point at which we become one is the moment at which we merge into the infinite. Until then we are not one; rather we are interrelated and interconnected.
Again we come to the intersection of science and spirituality. This ancient view of the sutra agrees with the “quantum entanglement” theory summarized by Dean Radin in his book Entangled Minds, which suggests a holistic thread that when tugged on ripples the fabric of the universe.
Our ego mind has difficulty with these concepts and spends most of its time in materialism and a reductionist process that focuses on the parts of the whole losing sight of the whole. In order for us to understand things, we have learned to take things apart. When we identify with the part and forget the whole, we will feel separate.
We lose the greater perspective this way. A turbine fan blade of a jet doesn’t tell much about the plane engine that it fits in and less about the plane itself. And it tells you absolutely nothing about air traffic, passengers, air controllers, etc. This viewpoint sees fragments only and fails to perceive the whole picture. When all you know is the fan blade of the engine, you will not be able to effectively design a safe jet.
So it is with life itself. Being solely identified with any one part inevitability leads to a sense of deep separation: me and you, mind and body, nation and other nations, ad infinitum.
As Carl Jung pointed out, the resolution of this dichotomy does not take place in the rational mind. It happens on the higher levels of consciousness beyond the ego mind. It is here you rediscover your true Self (the spiritual you) and recognize the spiritual essence of oneness, wholeness. The higher levels of consciousness are where you experience the interconnectedness or oneness.
Evidence of Disconnection
To experience oneness is the Holy Grail─the quest of many sacred traditions. Yet the experience of oneness defies words and symbols. It defies description precisely because it is not an intellectual concept but an awareness and experience. For that reason, this can lead to chasing after ever-narrowing false paths.
One false path is the 400-year-old reductionist- materialist worldview we have been discussing. This path is fraught with a limited perspective and sees a person as a part, like our engine fan blade. If you travel further on this path, you will begin feeling separate and lonely, precisely because you don’t know there is more, the whole. A few steps more and you will suffer abandonment and loss. At this juncture you also lose compassion and empathy for yourself and others, and, at its extreme, you treat everything and everyone as objects.
Sadly, most of our modern societal systems, such as the financial and political systems, are based on this type of disconnected worldview. Quite likely, this viewpoint was spun by brain structures linked to our inherited ancestral reptilian brain whose primary function is survival.
The triune brain model hypothesized by Paul D. Maclean, a neuroscientist, says the brain evolved over millions of years, creating three layers. The earliest is the reptilian layer, which is overlaid by the limbic system; layered over and encircling the other two is the neocortex.
The main characteristics of the reptilian layer are related to survival or the fight-or-flight process. More obscure offshoots of it are competition, greed, anger, tribalism, suspicion, and violence. In contrast, the characteristics of the modern layer, the neocortex, are more advanced and include connection, collaboration, equality, and trust.
Our world is dangerously polarized by these opposing neuronal characteristics. Evidence of disconnection is clear:
• a complete imbalance of wealth and power
• crumbling economic systems
• starkly divided political systems
• a complete disregard of ecological damage
Let’s take a brief look at each of these points.
Wealth imbalance: The greed of the powerful was on blatant display for the world to see in the Wall Street crash of 2008-’09. It brought to the forefront the gap of 1 billion people consuming more than 70 percent of the material goods, wealth, food, land, and water while 5 billion people live on the rest. One recent study from the Pew Charitable Trust shows that Americans in the top 1 percent of the population now command nearly 20 percent of the nation’s income. That’s more than twice the share that group received three decades ago.
The wealth imbalance surfaced most prominently when our economic systems suffered a meltdown and the salary and bonuses of Wall Street executives and hedge fund operators came to the forefront.
Further evidence of the imbalance is that cyber terrorism on financial institutions is increasing. Author and cybercrime expert Misha Glenny estimates the total cost (computer hacking, identity theft, major bank network break-ins) to the global economy at $1 trillion a year—almost 1.75 percent of global Gross Domestic Product.
Economic-financial crises: Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Japan, Iceland, and others have suffered from predatory financial colonialism and uncontrolled consumerism, putting the euro monetary unit in jeopardy of dissolving.