Is the impulse to evolve a clue—and a cue—for us to open our minds to radical new possibilities for human existence? Explore these and other questions about consciousness, evolution and human destiny with visionary futurist Peter Russell.
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Tag Archive: PETER RUSSELL
Peter Russell looks at the parallels between Buddha’s spiritual journey and our own. He describes how the Buddhist term dukkha, often translated as “suffering”, is better described as discontent, and stems from resistance to our experience of the present moment.
Peter Russell speaks at the FeelGood Speakers Series, a free offering to the public that provides an opportunity to converse with some of the world’s leading thinkers, writers and activists who are working to create a positive tipping point in humanity’s future: One that is just, thriving and sustainable. Recorded April 20, 2011.
FeelGood is a national youth movement of changemakers working to end global hunger and poverty.
Overview
The first part of the book, “The Quickening,” sets the scene. It opens with the increasing pace of life we are all experiencing today. I show how this trend is not limited to modern times, but can be traced back through history all the way to the beginning of creation. What we are experiencing today is the culmination of billions of years of ever-accelerating development.
Why does evolution accelerate? The answer lies in the fact that new evolutionary breakthroughs often facilitate future advances. Multicellular organisms, sexual reproduction, and the emergence of nervous systems have each done their part to hasten the pace of evolutionary change. Now, with the emergence of human beings, two new features are speeding development yet further. Speech allows us to share our experiences and understandings with each other, giving us the ability to accumulate a collective body of knowledge. While our hands, one the most versatile organs Nature has evolved, have given us the ability to take the clay of Mother Earth and reshape it to our own ends. Combining these two evolutionary breakthroughs has made us the most creative species this planet has ever known. And the more we apply that creativity, the faster things change.
The second part, “The Crisis” focuses on the less welcome consequences of humanity’s rapid development, and the devastation we are bringing to the rest of the planet. How is it, we ask, that a species that is in some ways so intelligent can in other ways be so short-sighted? Where have we gone wrong?
These questions lead on to an exploration of our inner needs and the way our societies have seduced us – in effect hypnotized us – into a set of false assumptions about what it is we really want, and how to go about achieving it. Amplified by the might of our technologies, these errors of thinking are now having global ramifications. We see that the global crisis is, at its root, a crisis of consciousness.
If we are to navigate ourselves safely through this critical moment of history we must make a break with the past, and look at ourselves and our world with fresh eyes. This will entail a fundamental shift in thinking and perception – a shift in consciousness more profound and far-reaching than any in our history. It will mean awakening to the wisdom that lies within us all, of which the great sages have always spoken. This is our next step in evolution, not an outer step, but an inner step.
The third part, “The Awakening” is more spiritual in tone. It asks: How can we wake up? How can we liberate our minds from outdated habits of thinking and make the inner changes that are being demanded of us? The answer involves learning to be more in the present moment, less caught up in our judgments of the past and our attachments to future outcomes. One of the most important areas of practice is our personal relationships. It is here that we frequently meet the various patterns that we need to let go of, and here that we have the most opportunity to learn new ways of thinking and perceiving. As we do, we rediscover the true meaning of love.
The final part, “The Future ,” looks at where we may be headed. It considers some of the many prophecies that seem to foretell these turbulent times. And it looks behind their literal interpretations to deeper meanings, suggesting that they are metaphors for inner transformation and awakening.
Will we wake up in time, and avoid catastrophe? That is still an open question. If we do not, evolution on this planet could be set back to a new Dark Age perhaps; or worse, back to the primeval soup. On the other hand, if we do come to our senses, then it seems very likely that our rate of development – particularly our rate of inner development – will continue to grow faster and faster. What will happen if change is compressed from decades to years to months . . . ? We could be approaching a time of unimaginably rapid personal and social transformation – an evolutionary climax more profound than most of us have ever dared imagine?
Finally, we ask whether there could, after all, be a purpose to evolution? Recent work in cosmology suggests the answer may be “Yes.” The Universe seems to be set up so that conscious creatures like us can evolve, capable of knowing Creation in all its dimensions. Could we be on the brink of completing this process of cosmic self-discovery here on planet Earth? The answer to that is up to us.
WAKING UP IN TIME
Contents
PREFACE
THE QUICKENING
Acceleration - The Quickening Pace
Feedback - The Evolutionary Accelerator
Language - The Dawn of Thought
Hands - Levers for the Mind
Information - The Currency of Culture
Creativity - From Genes to Ideas
Today - Foundation for Tomorrow
THE CRISIS
Crisis - Sounding the Alarm
Crossroads - Choosing our Way
Malady - A Planetary Cancer
Self-Interest - Misdirected Needs
Happiness - The Mind’s Bottom Line
Materialism - An Addictive Meme
Fear - The Voice in Our Heads
Stress - The Wages of Fear
THE AWAKENING
Dehypnosis - Breaking the Trance
Presence - The Timeless Moment
Enlightenment - A New Way of Seeing
Relationships - The Yoga of the West
Love - The Gift of Peace
Meditation - The Art of Letting Go
Maturity - Coming of Age
Freedom - The Emancipation from Matter
THE FUTURE
Challenge - Crises as Opportunity
Apocalypse - Premonitions of Transformation
Setbacks - Constructive Extinctions
Compression - The Collapse of Time
Singularities - The Shape of the Future
Omega - A White Hole in Time
Purpose - A Design to Creation?
Knowing - A Conscious Universe
The End - Or the Beginning?
Peter Russell ‘The Great Awakening’ Interview by Iain McNay
Peter Russell ‘The Great Awakening’ Interview by Iain McNay
The full-length original version of Peter Russell’s popular video in which he proposes that we stand on the threshold of a major leap in evolution, as significant as the emergence of life itself, and the essence of this leap is inner spiritual development. Moreover, he maintains that it is only through such a shift in consciousness that we will be able to manage successfully the global crises now facing us. (Made in the 1990s while the World Trade Center still stood.)
Within this micro-second of cosmic history something fascinating is happening – and it is happening faster and faster. Evolution of biological information processing, from DNA to the global brain The psychological roots of global crisis. Our attachments to how things should be separate us lies begind so many of today’s problems, spoils our personal lives and separates us from the “now”. Our crisis is a crisis of consciousness. The next great leap in evolution is in the human mind. Continued acceleration is heading us towards and evolutionary singularity, and the nest step in evolution – the awakening of consciousness – will happen very rapidly indeed.
Samsara means “to wander on endlessly”. Peter Russell discusses how we wandering on through life seeking one transient satisfaction after another, not realizing that that which we seek is our true nature. Nirvana means “to extinguish” as in blowing out a flame. Knowing our true nature blows out the flame of desire that drives the endless wandering on.
In The Global Brain Peter Russell shows that humanity has reached a crossroads in its evolutionary path. The Internet is linking humanity into one, worldwide community – a “global brain”. This, combined with a rapidly growing spiritual awakening, is creating a collective consciousness that is humanity’s only hope of saving itself from itself. However, Russell warns if we continue on our current path of greed and destruction, humanity will become a planetary cancer.
Selling more than 100,000 copies and translated into ten languages, his seminal work, The Global Brain, won acclaim from forward thinkers worldwide. It was regarded by many as years ahead of its time, and its original predictions about the impact of computer networks and changing social values are now being realized.
Peter Russell, who holds advanced degrees in theoretical physics, experimental psychology and computer science, makes no apologies for presenting what may seem like a Utopian theory. He advises, “The image a society has of itself can play a crucial role in the shaping of its future. A positive vision is like the light at the end of the tunnel, which, even though dimly glimpsed, encourages us to step in that direction”.
Excerpt from The Global Brain:
Viewed as a system, human society today would appear to be in a state of comparatively low synergy. [...] As much as we might want increased synergy in society, it will not come about simply through desire, intellectual decision, argument, or coercion. The amount of synergy in a society is a reflection of the way in which we perceive ourselves in relation to the world around us. In order to increase synergy, then, we will need to change some fundamental assumptions that lie at the core of our thinking and behavior. This will mean evolving inwardly as much as we have done outwardly. The spearhead of evolution is now self-reflective consciousness. If evolution is indeed to push on to yet higher levels of integration, the most crucial changes will take place in the realm of human consciousness. In effect the evolution process has now become internalized within each of us.
Contents
Invitation (Preface to 1st Edition)
Preface to the 3rd Edition
Foreword by Marylin Ferguson
The Gaia Hypothesis (Chap 2)
Towards a Global Brain (Chap 8)
Synergy (Chap 10)
Review of The Global Brain
Cassandra Vieten: Peter Russell is not only a visionary but also a Cambridge University—trained mathematician, theoretical physicist, and experimental psychologist. A workshop leader and an author, Peter is here to talk about some of his most recent thinking on the state of the world and the science of awakening.
Peter, what is the most interesting thing you’ve thought about in the last twenty-four hours?
Peter Russell: I’m fascinated by how much denial there is around the distressing state of the world. That’s been occupying my attention a lot. Seeing this parallels what happens when we have to face our own mortality or the mortality of others we know. Often, our first reaction is denial; people don’t want to go there. In the same way, it’s as though people’s reactions to the world are that if we just stop polluting so much, everything will be okay. But all the news is truly depressing. I think it’s very, very hard for us to face this.
As we know in psychology, when we deny something, we allow it to run us. I know in my own life that when I avoid something—pushing it to the edge of my consciousness because I think I’ll be happier that way, whether it’s the state of the world or some anger, resentment, or depression within me—when I force it out to the edge of my consciousness, it controls me. What I’ve also found is that by allowing stuff in and really looking at what’s there, facing it is actually healing and freeing. So, I wonder to what extent we’re actually keeping ourselves possessed and upset by the state of the world when we’re unwilling to really look at it.
Vieten: What you’re pointing to is what Carl Jung would have called a collective shadow. In denying our collective situation, we’re giving it more power over our future than our collective conscious intention could have.
Russell: Yes, by keeping it in the background, it actually holds us more.
Vieten: What specifically are some of the things you find that people aren’t looking at?
Russell: First and foremost would be avoiding runaway climate change.
Vieten: What else?
Russell: The horrifying state of the oceans, which is partly related to climate change. There’s the steady decline in fish stocks and how that affects the ocean’s food chain. There’s also the loss of coral reefs. All life depends upon life in the ocean, so the state of our oceans concerns me a lot.
Vieten: What is your response to people who would say you are engaging in catastrophic thinking—you know, “the sky is falling”? And what do you say about those who feel such an overwhelming sense of powerlessness and despair that they find it hard to conceive of anything they can do about such huge problems?
Russell: Well, I think the first thing we have to do is really open up and acknowledge the conditions we don’t want to look at. I was recently talking to someone about this, and he said, “Doesn’t all this make you feel pessimistic?” But it doesn’t, because I’m eternally optimistic about what human beings can become and do in the face of crisis. As many people have pointed out, crises are the drivers that move us to the next level of evolution, and that’s where I see the hope for us to become the truly magnificent beings we can become. We’re going to need to do so to navigate our way through the crises, to find solutions, and to care for each other. It’s clear that things are not going to suddenly and smoothly resolve themselves. Difficult times are ahead, and caring is important.
Vieten: What do you think are some of the keys to unlocking our potential to evolve as individuals, as communities, and as a culture?
Russell: One of them is a deep understanding of ourselves, of our mind and consciousness. I know IONS has been exploring this, but for science as a whole, consciousness has been left on the sidelines. It’s absolutely critical that we understand why we get caught in mind-sets, why we believe what we believe, why we hold the attitudes and values we have. I think these are crucial issues. We need to have a much deeper understanding of how our psyche works.
Those who have explored this in the past belong to the spiritual traditions. Some people back away from this, associating spirituality with religion, but I see a clear difference between the two. I think the spiritual traditions are where we find people who have gone deep into the nature of the human psyche to understand the mind and how we get trapped by it. Time and time again, what they find is that when we release the mind from the grip of ego attachments, or a materialist mind-set—there are different terms for identifying this mind-set—then we experience a greater inner freedom that allows us to respond more appropriately to any situation at hand.
Ultimately, I think the issue is how we foster that spiritual awakening, which has been rediscovered many times throughout history in almost every culture. It is the awakening that comes when we let go of our dysfunctional belief systems and touch the truth of who we really are. It has already begun to happen; there are more and more teachers, movements, and techniques around today than there were twenty years ago—and many more than there were forty years ago when I first became interested in all this. However, in many areas, this knowledge is still regarded as slightly fringe. So, how can we make this wisdom mainstream and reach those who would run from anything remotely spiritual? How can we actually bring this wisdom in contemporary terms to the world at large?
Vieten: At IONS, our research and educational programs rest on the premise that consciousness matters. From your perspective, why does consciousness matter?
Russell: In all the crises we’re facing—from global warming to pollution, overpopulation, rainforest destruction, economics, and the rest—the key factors are human thinking and values. They’re either the reason for a crisis or the reason we’re not solving a crisis. What we tend to do with a crisis is look at how we can address its symptoms rather than looking at its core, which is human consciousness.
I think one of the good things about the economic meltdown is that it’s made human greed very clear. However, all that has been done as a result is an attempt to restrain greed a bit by passing some laws to dictate how much people can earn. Of course people can easily find ways around such laws. What we need to address is what’s behind the greed. Is it an innate? I don’t believe it is. I think it’s something we get caught in, but there’s no serious attempt to understand why the human mind gets caught up in wanting power, status, and money.
It’s a bit like going to the doctor with a pain in your stomach, but the doctor only gives you some medicine to alleviate the pain. A good doctor will seek out the cause. Is it something you’ve eaten, a virus, stress? I think the limited and dysfunctional mode of consciousness we operate in at the moment is the root cause of all that is going wrong on the planet. If we don’t look to the root cause, then all we’re doing is patching up the symptoms, and the same problems are going to come back again and again. We may have patched up the symptoms of the economic meltdown, but as many people are aware, something could easily shake the system into another meltdown tomorrow. We’re not dealing with the core issue, and the core issue is the half-awakened state of consciousness that we’re in.
Vieten: What do you suggest people do right now to help move humanity into a more awake state?
Russell: I think there are two basic aspects to this. The first is to engage in the process of awakening within ourselves. Our own lives actually become better when we do so. So many paths of awakening are available, and we all have some sense of what our own path is. It’s also important that we see it not as an indulgence or something we do only for ourselves but because our awakening plays an important part in the world’s awakening. We say the world needs to become more conscious; well, the world is each of us. Each of us is responsible for that process. So, it’s important to value that responsibility and to make it a priority. Also, sometimes we can get caught up in “this is my path” and risk missing other things that may come along that can help us as well. It’s good to be open.
The second piece is to understand our sphere of influence in the world. It’s very easy to say that “they must change”—meaning the politicians, corporate bosses, and the like—and conclude that “I don’t have access to a lot of people.” But we all have a sphere of influence. So, how can we bring the new paradigm to our sphere of influence? It asks for the courage to express our own truth. This is where the work can be tangible and practical—there is something we can do rather than something we just wish would happen in the world at large.
Vieten: That’s a wonderful point. People do tend to think something like “I’ve got to get out of this everyday job I’m in so that I can travel the world and make real change,” when we can make change at our job, or with the PTA, or in the grocery store. In our studies of people who transform their consciousness, we’ve seen that this distinction between the “sacred part of my life” and the “mundane part of my life” disappears; instead, the realms blend. I like your idea of bringing our awakening into whatever realm of influence is ours.
Russell: If we all do that, then collectively we’ll have a huge effect on the world. Sometimes I think of it as deciding we’re on the team that is bringing constructive change into the world. How do we play our part on that team?
Vieten: What do you say to people who have become aware—are on a spiritual path and are not in denial—but still encounter pitfalls? Despite our best intentions, it can still be a struggle to integrate awakening into our everyday lives. What kinds of pitfalls do you see, and what are some of the ways you see people get through them? How have you gotten through struggles on your own path?
Russell: That’s a good question. I find with myself that I can be full of good intentions about my practice and what I want to do, but then if I’m not careful, I get sort of sucked back into the general social milieu of materialism and doing-doing-doing, with endless to-do lists in my mind. We all lead pretty busy lives these days, much busier than before, and it’s going to get busier because change will continue to accelerate.
Becoming aware of that pattern and breaking it are very important. I have several ways to do this. One is starting the day with time for myself—and I know that for many people this isn’t always possible. I like starting my day with quiet time, whether reading or meditating. Quiet time starts my day in the right mode. I also observe what I call the principle of the Sabbath, which doesn’t mean strictly taking Sundays or Saturdays off but rather having time to do nothing. That might be five minutes, an hour, or two days; it doesn’t really matter. The principle is to stop for a given amount of time.
I live on a boat in Sausalito, so when I stop, I might go outside to sit and watch the water and the birds. I’ve got something on my website that people can tune into: it brings up a random bell at random times to remind us to stop, to pause, and to connect to the body, our being, our sense of presence. I find these little breaks are really valuable; otherwise, I get carried away by the day and before I know it, it’s time to go to bed. Where did the day go? I also add notes to myself in my to-do lists that say “stop.”
Vieten: Little reminders seem simple, but I think they’re powerful.
Russell: Also, I find I have to change them because after a while, I become habituated and don’t notice them anymore.
Vieten: Your book, From Science to God, was just released on Kindle. Tell us about it.
Russell: It partly speaks to my own journey as a scientist, a mathematician, a physicist, and then as someone whose interest became spirituality and the whole nature of consciousness. Over the years I also found that science didn’t understand it and couldn’t explain it, even though science requires consciousness for its thinking, theorizing, and modelling. I found that the people who knew the most about consciousness were not sitting in labs studying the brain but the spiritual adepts, mystics, and yogis who studied the mind from the inside. So, From Science to God is partly about my journey, but it’s also about the question of the nature of consciousness.
What is consciousness? My focus isn’t so much on how the universe creates consciousness but on seeing consciousness in terms of the ability to have an experience. Consciousness is there in everything. It’s always been there. It’s highly developed in human beings but not unique to human beings. My book’s examination of consciousness ties into the mystical perception and how what the spiritual adepts have been talking about is what science is on the edge of understanding. Science and religion have been at loggerheads because they think they’re talking about different worldviews, particularly when it comes to the creation of the universe and how it operates.
I’ve come to the conclusion that what spirituality is talking about is not the creation of the physical cosmos but how consciousness manifests in the mind—how our experience is created, what goes on inside us. That’s something science hasn’t looked at. Scientists delve into and explore the ultimate nature of matter, while mystics delve into their own experience to know the ultimate nature of mind. In this sense, science and spirituality are complementary rather than competitive views of the cosmos.
Vieten: From your perspective, is consciousness primary? Does it permeate what we perceive as inanimate as well as what we perceive as living?
Russell: If you draw a line, you immediately come up with problems. Drawing a line is like saying, “Below this line, in evolutionary terms, there is no awareness (objective experience), and above this line, there is.” As soon as you draw a line, you have to explain how something unconscious, insentient matter, at a certain stage suddenly gave rise to inner experience. That is what’s often called “the hard problem” in philosophy.
I think the answer is that everything has an inner aspect you could call awareness, or sentience, or experience. That’s not to say that an amoeba or a bacterium thinks or feels the way we do but that it has a very, very, very faint glimmer of awareness. It may be just a very vague sort of chemical sense (something aligned to what we know as taste) but so vague that we would hardly notice it. It’s not that consciousness itself suddenly appears, but what appears in consciousness can evolve. So, as life developed senses and nervous systems, the richness of the experience kept growing and growing until today with our minds we possess an extraordinarily rich and complex experience.
By the same token, if you can’t draw a line anywhere, you can’t draw a line between a bacterium and DNA or between DNA and a molecule. I think the capacity for experience is there in potential all the way down. But, as I said, it’s not to say that everything is conscious in the way that we know consciousness but that the capacity to experience is in everything. It means that consciousness is a fundamental quality of the whole cosmos.
Dr. Vieten is Director of Research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and presenter.
2012 marks the end of the Mayan calendar’s 5125-year cycle, leading many to prophecy this as a time of great change—for some the end of Western civilization, for others a time of transformation and renewal. Whatever may or may not happen in 2012, it is clear that we are living through a critical period of human history, and the need for a widespread shift in human thinking and values is becoming increasingly apparent. From this perspective, 2012 is a symbol of the times we are passing through. It represents the temporal epi-center of a cultural earthquake, whose reverberations are getting stronger day by day.
What do we need to adapt to these challenging times? Peter Russell teaches that we need to rebuild our inner resources. On The 2012 MindShift, he guides you through five simple meditations designed to help you stay grounded, nurture your resilience and remain composed—no matter what the tides of change may bring.
* Presence: Finding peace in the moment
* Befriending discomfort: Working with difficult feelings and rigid attitudes
* Inner wisdom: Tapping the guidance that awaits within you
* Loving kindness: Developing greater compassion and community
* Clarifying purpose: Strengthen your life’s vision
Each meditation segment is preceded by a 5-10 minute introduction explaining the meditation and its value in helping you successfully navigate your way through these turbulent times.
Listen to Introduction
to the CD (10 mins):
Each of us would rather experience peace than suffering. One reason we do not experience as much peace as we would like is the result of how we see things, the interpretations we put on our experience. If we see things through the eyes of fear and anxiety, caught in judgement or frustration, wishing things were different, clinging to some idea of what we want to happen, then we create discontent and discomfort – the root of so much suffering.
Yet this is the way our everyday self, the ego mind, tends to see things. It grasps onto what it thinks will make us happy, rejecting what it thinks will bring us pain. It may, from time to time, bring us temporary happiness, but it seldom finds real peace in what it sees.
If we are not at peace, then it just may be that it is our way of seeing that is the culprit. We may not realize that we have become stuck in our perception. We may not realize there is another way of looking at things. But deep down we know. Our innate wisdom, the quiet inner voice of the unconditioned self, knows. We have only to open to it, with an attitude of innocent curiosity, and ask: Could there perhaps be an other way of seeing this?
In doing so we are praying to our inner self for guidance. We are praying for peace. But we are not praying to be given peace. We are praying to be shown the way to peace.
