Almost with
one voice, EHEers
and EHE researchers [often they themselves are EHEers or
certainly
EHE
Empaths]
have expressed the same idea
given here:
On a worldwide scale, we are moving into a new era, and more to the
point, into
a new
consciousness
beyond what
Humanity has
ever experienced
before, now becoming our new birthright.
This knowledge is surfacing in us, finding root in us,
usually through some sort of exceptional [paranormal or
spiritual or ..] experience that, if we are truly
fortunate, transforms us to this ever-growing, mutual realization as a knowing.
As Elisabeth Kubler-Ross has said, "They can hang you
by your toenails and still you will know." We
speak in terms of a "new consciousness" because
we are slowly discovering a plentitude of similarly aware
people all over the world who share this same
experience-based understanding.
One of the scientists who was instrumental in bringing
the internet to the world, Jacques
F. Vallee,
has said,
Thought, consciousness, science itself: those are only big names thrown around by high priests trying to impress common citizenry. They are mere labels stuck on the tiny emerging portion of a giant octopus which goes on swimming, undetected, unrecognized by our great thinkers. I have dived below the surface. I have glimpsed the eyes of the
octopus.
Our
"octopus" is beginning to be recognized by
growing numbers of us in a kind of second generational
way, as well. Since Drs. Raymond
Moody,
Elisabeth
Kübler Ross, Margot
Grey
and Kenneth
Ring
published their first books along these lines [1975-85],
society has been integrating the ever-more widely
recognized and accepted reality of these exceptional or
paranormal events. Now when people have such
experiences, many if not most people are familiar with the
concepts enough to realize what they have been
through. And if this is not at first the case, very likely, before long, they will discover
something -- a book, a program or published article -- or
someone will bring this to their attention. They
then at least immediately know what they have experienced
is common to people all over the world. For them it
is much easier to accept and acclimate to this
transformational "invitation" than it was before
this kind of thing became widely accepted. There's
even a whole literature I've hardly had the chance to dive
into yet, starting with that of PMH Atwater [Children
of the New Millennium and related books by same and
other authors] who say more and more, our children are coming
into this world with intact awareness and abilities
characteristic of the EHE
aftereffects.
All to say, Surprising
numbers of people, if you look at this as the global
phenomenon it is, are Shifting
as a result of these EHEs
/ exceptional human experiences,
and the apparent natural consequence is they are more
socially and environmentally conscious, more inclusively spiritual in
orientation, and more altruistic [see Aftereffects].
But many are "shifting" as a
conscious choice without such interventions; they're
choosing it on the basis of their personal ethics or
because it just "feels" so obvious, so right. You could say
there is a secular as well as an overtly spiritual
expression of this, like two wings of the same bird in
flight, Such
As ...
PMH Atwater, among others, speaks of it as "a revolution."
There's a sense of irony here, given her gentle view of
this as the genuine "beginnings of holism," all
the more so, perhaps, since she endured three quite
dramatic near-death experiences. "Maybe it is not a new species that is being
birthed but a whole one, ... a type of human willing and able
to encompass and to utilize all the divisions of the
brain, all the possibilities of faculty, all the potential
of mind. Maybe, at last, humanity is becoming whole!"
Grounded in years of survival research, PMH asks us to
consider,
How
many people have shifted their consciousness?
More
than you could ever imagine!
It
hasn't made front-page headlines because there is no hype involved, no
big dollars or sleek sell. It is more a quiet undercurrent, a
distant thunder. But it is a revolution. Make no mistake
about that.
It
is a revolution of consciousness.
AND
IT IS TRULY GLOBAL.
Millions
are choosing it. Millions more are being flung into it, ready or
not, like the near-death survivor. It is happening with or without
anyone's permission.
Except for the list I'm about to
give you, only a few names of those who have
expressed their take on this in secular terms will be
mentioned in this article, but there are many, each in
their own language of experience and expertise. This
is exciting, because it demonstrates just how pervasive
the conception is across so many recognized disciplines
and interests. For a wealth of examples, take a
spin through the "Books and.." suggested reading
list. Just to get you started, included among these
more secular-terminology-inclined folks are . ..
|
Amit
Goswami
|
|
quantum
physics |
|
Arnold
Mindell |
|
psychology
|
|
Bruce Lipton |
|
biology
|
|
Christian
de Quincey |
|
biology
|
|
Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson
|
|
social
sciences, psychology
|
|
William
Tiller |
|
physicist
|
|
John
Upledger |
|
alternative
medicine
|
|
John
Mack |
|
psychiatry
|
|
Fred
Alan Wolf |
|
psychology
|
|
Peter
Senge, Betty Sue Flowers, Joseph Jaworski,
and Otto Scharmer
|
|
business,
economics, leadership |
|
Robert
Monroe |
|
out-of-body
experiencer / researcher
|
|
Raymond Moody |
|
psychiatry,
medicine
|
|
Jill
Bolte Taylor |
|
neuroanatomy,
medicine
|
|
Elisabeth
Kübler-Ross
|
|
psychiatry |
|
David
Bohm |
|
physicists
|
|
David
F. Peat |
|
physicist
|
|
Kenneth
Ring and Evelyn
Elsaesser-Valarino
|
|
survival
researchers |
|
William
Isaacs |
|
leadership,
communications, business and economics
|
How
has this come to be?
In
part this consciousness-raising development may be the result of the fact that, in the mid-90s [I'm not sure what year it peaked], and taking into
consideration the entire world, the greatest number of
people ever were enjoying a middle-class lifestyle, a lot
of them for the first time in many generations. I
should say '-plus', since this upgrade definitely went all
the way up the scale to a great new wealth resulting from
the explosive creation of new technologies of all kinds,
and including the internet that was officially born in
1993. Given far
less stress on merely surviving, more whole and healthy
adults have been raising more whole and healthy children who naturally take to
this EHEerly perspective, even though they may not think
of it in this context at all. Worldwide, this raised
consciousness is far more in evidence than it was even 20
years ago. Even though it feels to me, at least,
we've taken three giant steps forward in consciousness,
and since 911, two back [doesn't it?], we are as a whole
more aware and actively protective of our Earth and each
other. There is a stupendous activist and advocacy
movement, global in scope, which again *naturally*
reflects the
transformed consciousness associated with EHEs.
During
this high-tide time, more
people were traveling for pleasure, and more extensively, and there was much more
cross-cultural mingling. More fully than ever, we
were together discovering, regardless of what makes us
unique, in the heart of being, we are same-same. And
both the differences and the revelatory same-same were
being acknowledged and celebrated.
So this was not explicitly a "spiritual"
development, nor was the wide world particularly aware of
EHEs and their likely impact. It was developing in
many ways because of a complexity of amicable
circumstances. Paul
H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson
wrote an outstanding, in-depth examination of all this in
their book, The Cultural Creatives: How 50
Million People Are Changing the World. They are
social and environmental scientists who studied this as a
secular phenomenon, but they also mention that two
characteristics that set what they called the "Core
Cultural Creatives"
apart from a second group [they were roughly 50/50],
referred to as "Green Cultural Creatives," was
that the Core group was far and away more
precedent-setting and committed as activists, activism of
all kinds being the key thing they had in common with the
Greens, and a
great majority of the Core CCs were self-described as
"spiritual," not a noticeable trait of the
Greens. Note, too, that these Core markers are also
definitive of EHE Aftereffects. So, there it is again:
Core and Green: Spiritual and secular, two complimentary halves of the same movement.
Regarding what
William James called "the
MORE" that it means to be Human, Rhea A. White
would say he was referring to these exceptional
human[izing] experiences / EHEs. Notice the type of
terminology each of them uses. Although they both
refer to or infer spiritual or religious sometimes, they
each emphasize the importance of using secular languaging,
so that we are better able to talk openly about these
things with each other without pushing anyone's buttons.
On the other hand, tolerance, or more to the point,
acceptance of each person on their own
terms is always going to be appreciated. Generally,
the more profoundly affecting, the more likely the
Experiencer will view it unambiguously as a spiritual
experience. Maybe the best advice is simply to be
understanding and kind, and hope that others will return
the favor!
in any case, White remarks:
... James ... describes the essence of
religious experience without resorting to the imagery of
any specific religion. One could say his is a secular
definition of the religious impulse, but one that
nonetheless captures the core of the experience of the
sacred. James proposes that the mystical impulse at the
base of all religious teachings has two aspects. The
first he calls an "uneasiness" about our
lives, a sense that as we naturally stand "there is
something wrong about us" ... The second part
is the solution to this problem, which is to be saved
from our unease, or in some cases--disease, by
connecting with our higher self. My interpretation
of this first aspect of the mystical process would be
that at base it is a feeling of incompleteness--a sense
that we are missing something in our lives--that by
rights they should be fuller, richer, more exciting,
more meaningful, more connected.
James theorizes that what happens in the second or
salvation/solution stage is the person contacts a higher
part of him- or herself and identifies with it. This
happens when the person "becomes conscious that
this higher part is [in harmony or at one] with a MORE
of the same quality, which [becomes apparent in their
everyday living experience]. [T]he person [also]
discovers that he or she can keep in touch with and
enter into a relationship with this other, greater self,
which is both inside and outside. For me, these lines
sum up the promise of exceptional human experiences and
their relevance to the problems of the world today,
almost all of which have been created by our species. I
think James points to a way out of the mess we have made
of the earth and ourselves ....
Here
is my main point for including this: Rhea
says,
I
believe James's words can be further secularized, and I
think this is necessary, for people today must be shown
how they can contact the sacred right where they are, in
their daily lives, without resorting to any particular
religious imagery. Instead of referring to
a "higher part," which implies judgment, I
would like to use the phrase "more
connected part."
In essence, I believe as we climb up over the edge of the
abyss beyond a fractious and easily frightened or
threatened preoccupation with mere survival and all the
attendant vulnerabilities and lack of larger perspective,
we are able to live more out of who we truly are, which is
*naturally* more in touch with this "more connected
part," regardless of the terminology or values system
[religious or otherwise] we may ascribe to it.
I also daresay this more connected
part is actively finding its own inroads to our everyday
consciousness, even as we may choose to aspire to connect
from this more limited Earth-anchored self. There's
a Hindu saying to the effect, as we take a step toward G*d
/ G*ddess / "the more connected self", G*d / G*ddess
/ "the more connected self" takes a 100 steps
toward us. I mentioned that we could think of these
in-tandem secular and spiritual movements as two wings of
the same bird. Perhaps the bird is consciousness
itself, and regardless of how we label it, we will
ultimately all end up in the same place, a transformed
"new world" consciousness and experience.
