There was another awesome realization which struck some of the early astronauts. Looking back at the Earth, it seemed that maybe the whole planet is a single living organism.
All the living organisms on the planet together function as one huge self-regulating system.
We are, as we have seen, a product of this long evolutionary journey: through the evolution of matter and the stars, through the evolution of life and simple organisms, to the stage where, now, with us, evolution has reached the crucial stage of complexity whereby it can look back on the universe. Whether we are studying a stone, a leaf, or looking out into the heavens, we are the universe’s way of beginning to explore itself. We are a star’s way of exploring the stars. And the same could be said of our inner reflections. When we turn our attention inwards and begin to explore our own minds and discover deeper levels within ourselves, we are the universe beginning to investigate its inner dimensions.
One of the dominant trends of evolution has been a progressive linking of smaller units into larger and larger units. This suggests that the next stage might involve human beings themselves linking together in some way.
This tendency of people coming together into larger units is also happening at a much higher level. We can see it in the union of the states in the USA and the USSR, and the coming together of the EEC in Europe. This is the natural drift of evolution, and its end result would seem to be the whole of humanity beginning to function as one single community.
As a result of the information explosion, telecommunications, and the birth of computer networks, we are beginning to exchange information with each other wherever we may be. We are beginning to share our thinking. We are beginning to connect up mentally. We are beginning to link mind to mind. And as we begin to understand each other, an even deeper level of linking is occurring: a linking of soul to soul. We are beginning to appreciate our sensual unity and oneness. So the next stage of evolution could be humanity beginning to link together—physically and mentally, beginning to work and function on many different levels as an integrated system.
We might, then, think of humanity as some sort of huge global brain: a brain in which we are the cells, linked together by our growing information networks.
Many of the ways in which we mistreat and abuse the environment stem from our seeing the world as separate from ourselves. We may take fairly good care of what is inside the skin, but we don’t care nearly so well for what is outside the skin.
The most important task is to be in a new way: to experience, to be conscious, in a new way. We need to make the shift from this, the skin-encapsulated model of the self, to this, what some have referred to as “leaky margins.” The boundaries are still there, but they are much less solid. In addition, we now experience a greater oneness with the world outside.
Energy led to matter, matter led to life, and now life has led to consciousness. Thus, the spearhead of evolution is now the human mind. We have moved beyond biological evolution into mental evolution. Thus it is not changes in our bodies which will now determine the future so much as changes in our thinking, changes in our perception, changes in our attitudes. The evolutionary phase which we have now entered is the evolution of human consciousness. Inner development is now the key. In short: evolution has become internalized.
From an evolutionary perspective, crises are a sign that something has gone wrong. The patterns of the past are no longer working. Crises are thus a challenge: the challenge to adapt. They are the challenge to let go of the old ways of thinking and move on to a new way of seeing. Thus, humanity’s current crisis may not, at its root, be an economic crisis or an environmental crisis, it may well be a crisis of consciousness: a crisis in how we see ourselves and the world around.
