I just came across this article, excerpted from a talk by the systems theorist Ervin Laszlo, in the March 2007 issue of Auroville's monthly news magazine 'Auroville Today'. It struck a powerful resonance with me, so I decided to type it here for SCIY's readers.  ~ ron

Extracts from a talk by Ervin Laszlo, former member of the Auroville International Advisory Council

“The problem humanity is facing today stems from the fact that the West has forgotten that it is part of the larger ecological system which sustains all life on Earth. Humanity has come to believe that the environment is separate, less important than the economy, and that it can do what it likes with it. This is an evolutionary mistake.

This tendency began 10,000 years ago when Homo sapiens began manipulating the environment and domesticating animals, but it has only become critical in the last 200 years with the advent of mass-production and high-energy technology.

The consequence is that today we are out of synch with the natural world, and this has many adverse impacts. For example, there is no longer any doubt that global warming is due to human impact. If the rise in temperatures continues, it is predicted that the 21st century will be the warmest century for the past one million years. The monsoon may not come  to India or other countries that depend on it, Europe may become either very dry or very cold, and there is real doubt if the planet will be able to feed 6.5 billion or more people living on it. In fact, James Lovelock, [the proponent of the Gaia theory] estimates that the world will only be able to support about 200 million people if the present trends of consumption continue.

Do we have enough time to avert such a catastrophe? Some scientists, like Lovelock, believe it is already too late — that we have already reached a ‘tipping-point’ beyond which everything will go quickly downhill. Others, like myself, are more optimistic. But there is very little time.

Positive feedback systems and cross-impacts mean that everything is happening faster than predicted a few years ago: temperatures are rising, the ice is melting, and the greenhouse gases like CO2 and methane are being released into the atmosphere faster than ever before. We are now in a race to save humanity. The planet will survive, but humanity, like 99% of all complex species which have ever existed, may not. And this would be a loss, for in us nature and the cosmos have started to become self-aware.

To understand where we stand today it is necessary to understand how complex systems evolve. Complex systems do not evolve bit by bit. They evolve until they reach a ‘chaos point’. At that moment, there is a collapse of the old system and a new dynamic comes into play. Then anything can happen, except it’s impossible to maintain the status quo, and it’s impossible to revert to a former state of being.

Today, we are facing two crises, one in the biosphere and the other in human consciousness. If we are going to cope with the challenges facing the biosphere, there must be a new human consciousness. It must recognize we are as much part of this planet as the birds and trees, and evolve in response to that. Once we feel this, we will automatically try to preserve our planet.

Another way to reach this is that we must sense our unity, we must feel connected, both to each other and to the biosphere. But we are already connected. This is something spiritual leaders have said for millennia, and it’s something that the human race has lived and experienced for millennia — otherwise it would never have survived for so long. But now it helps to know that we have scientific evidence for this.

For example, it is known that at the quantum level of reality there is no such thing as separation. If a particle is broken apart and the two parts sent in opposite directions, if the spin of one part is changed, the spin of the other changes instantaneously — at several magnitudes the speed of light — even though the parts may be separated by thousands of miles. It is a phenomenon known as ‘non-locality’.

There is also the phenomenon of ‘teleportation’, where two atoms are allowed to interact with each other, and the resulting change in state is immediately picked up and mirrored by a third atom which has no obvious contact with the original two. This is akin to energy transmission by a guru or healer which may be picked up thousands of miles away by somebody in a receptive state.

Brain research reinforces this phenomenon. Normally, the two hemispheres of the brain operate almost independently — and their respective brain waves are quite different. However, in deep sleep or meditation they become harmonized. More interestingly, when several people who already know each other meditate at the same time, and one of them receives some kind of stimulation, the brain waves of the others pick it up immediately and show the change. What happens in the brain of one is immediately reflected in the brain of the others.

How to explain all this? If connections exist between objects which are separated in space and time, one either has to accept they are mysteriously connected — which puts one outside the realm of science — or accept they are connected by something which is not visible or perceivable but which is real. What could this be?

In science, this is called the ‘field’. Science knows about four universal fields — the electromagnetic, gravitational and the two nuclear fields (strong and weak) — and some strange quantum fields. However, few scientists have dared to suggest there is yet another kind of field, a field that carries information without conventional means of energy, which can penetrate any barrier, and which transcends space and time. Quantum physicist David Bohm performed experiments and showed that there is an effect like this which he terms ‘in-formation’.

How does it work? Everything in the world emits energy. If one’s energy field radiates outwards and encounters another object or person, it gets reflected back from that object or person’s field. The two wave-fields, the source and the reflection, interact. If they are on the same frequency there is a field conjugation (union) or what is called an ‘adaptive resonance consonance’. At that point, an exchange happens and information gets transferred from one to the other. So if you enter into communication with another person who has assumed a similar mind-set and consciousness to yours, you can exchange information instantly.

We all have this capability, but now we need to develop it very fast so there can be a new union between cultures and between humans and nature. And it is happening. To my mind, there is an almost miraculous acceleration of this new consciousness, which I sometimes refer to as planetary consciousness. Even in biological terms, I’m sure that the genetic code of the children born today is different from ours. As living systems are open, as there is always an energy interchange between them and their environment, the new generation’s DNA must have been modified by the crisis we are living through, perhaps making them more able to adapt and survive.

But still we need to buy time; to delay the coming of the ‘chaos point’ regarding the biosphere until this new consciousness has fully established itself. If the crisis happened today, we would be as unprepared for it as we were for the tsunami.

This is where places like Auroville can play a vital role. For as this new consciousness spreads by what the scientists term ‘adaptive resonance', wherever you have a higher concentration of people who sense and act upon their unity, it can be picked up by receptive people anywhere. This is why those who are engaged in living and developing this planetary consciousness bear a tremendous responsibility for the evolution of all humanity.”