Themes in the Future of Consciousness

Hi Folks:
Are you still enjoying getting updates on consciousness? I’ve got a moment’s break from my required writing routine to flash out this bit of musing to you, something I’ve been pondering for awhile and I’d appreciate your input. As I get more volunteers to do book summaries, the more new book topics arise that seem to need attention. Given my nature, I like to keep focus on the target, yet not be blinded by assumptions. I was wondering, what shall be included?
One in our community wanted to deal with near-death experiences. Another mentioned non-dual awareness. I was familiar with both areas, and it got me thinking.
Take near-death experiences. Do we learn about the future of consciousness from these studies, or mainly that life goes on after death? It profoundly changes the experiential perspective of those who’ve had the NDE, but does our second hand knowledge of it have any bearing on the future of consciousness? Life has always existed after death, so maybe there’s no news here, thus nothing regarding the future of consciousness.
Non-dual awareness is the new term for the old notion of satori, enlightenment, pure awareness, unconditioned awareness, etc. etc. I’ve had enough tiny moments of it to know they are talking about something real, that consciousness itself, or awareness itself, exists in its own right, and is the supreme “being” we’ve all confused with ourselves. Anyway, that truth, even though it is being discovered by more and more people and gaining its own western psychology, is something that has always been true, so it is no news.
On the other hand, might we not consider that the type of psychology, the quality of consciousness, of humanity’s most evolved beings, and the kind of consciousness, or mentality developed by some of us, as a result of therapy, vision questing, volunteer service, a life of spirituality, or whatever—might these observed trends in humans who are creatively growing be signposts to the future of consciousness? Can we predict the future of consciousness by looking at the trends in those people who evolve themselves in their lifetimes? If so, then many of the various spiritual development schemes (Course in Miracles, NeoJungian psychology, Transpersonal, Holotropia, etc. etc.), each with their own descriptions of the kinds of improved functioning, shifts in awareness, etc. that can be obtained, these assertions could be clues to the direction of evolving consciousness.
What about other factors, having little to do with humans working it out? Can spiritual forces play a role? If so, what kind of role and to what effect? What books are best to describe that possibility? What about cosmic events? Might a natural disaster, like the comet researchers today said may have wiped out the Neanderthals, wipe out all but a few humans, those left initiating a new trend in consciousness? Could there be a “singularity” in our future, something that only certain folks survive, folks who share a certain attribute? If so, could such a culling result in a “transformation of consciousness”? I’m asking.
While we are together at the Indiana conference, we’ll employ a variety of intuition technologies to “channel” information about the future of consciousness. And we’ll use intuitive methods as well as intellectual ones to discover the common patterns in the various theories we’ll be able to review, and we’ll experience their various methodologies and their impact upon our consciousness. In preparing for these events, it is helpful to develop some kind of preview, or overview of the territory, to help focus the questions we want to explore.
As I’ve mentioned, my own research has focused on one challenge that is in our future that has profound implications on consciousness—that of our dissolving boundaries in almost every aspect of earthly life—and one quality in the transformation of consciousness (it has many names, “to know yourself to be yourself and one with All,” universal heart awareness, Christ Consciousness, Universal matrix, Self, etc. etc.). When I combine those two studies, what emerges is a crossroads, a “Rapture or Rupture” in the experience of humans. Rupture comes for those overwhelmed by the psychic resonance with millions of others who have repressed hurt, anger and other destructive emotions. Rapture comes to those who have surrendered to an “empty self,” who witnesses experiences to flow by. Influenced by science fiction themes that have attempted to envision a schism in the future, I have envisioned a group of people who, when physical life is temporarily unviable, join psychic hands in going into an out of body limbo, helping one another keep focus until the crisis is past, then re-incarnating in uninhabited physical bodies whose previous owners had died of fright. I’m sure I’m having some cryptomnesia, and this fantasy is reflective of some science fiction novel I’ve encountered. However, bizarre sounding that fantasy is, one theme is certainly emerging in the news: some folks are getting by better than others and the divide is widening. That “divide” could cut many ways, depending upon the nature of the pressure on the population. The devastating Tsunami divided those natives who “sensed” danger and evacuated in time, and those immigrants who hadn’t a clue. Different pressures will divide us differently, but challenges that elicit the “survival of the fittest” seems to be inevitable.