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Peter Russell: Widespread Awakening

Tami Simon: This week I speak with Peter Russell, prolific author and revolutionary futurist.
We discuss the current planetary crisis and the seeds of potential contained within it. According to Russell, our current crisis could lead to the widespread awakening of humanity, or it could lead to a global breakdown. Listen in to find out what we can do to shift the tide toward awakening during this period of accelerating change.

Tami Simon: In your work, Peter, I know you talk about 2012 symbolically more than literally, and first of all, I’m wondering what you think the difference is in people who are relating to 2012 in a literal way versus a symbolic way.

Peter Russell: Yes, I would have to say what is common to both of them is seeing that we’re moving into a time of crisis and also transformation and renewal. The people who see it in a literal way think something is going to happen on that particular year, and some even think it’s going to happen on the particular date, December the 21st, which is the day the calendar runs out. I don’t see anything in the prophecies that say that year is important, the ending of the Mayan calendar’s important as a time of shift, but it’s like the ending to be considered as a day or year or period of years. I’m seeing this as much more really symbolizing this period of time that we’re passing through. And so for me, 2012 is like a symbolic center or even perhaps the beginning of a time of major change. And that means that it’s not something that’s coming, it’s something we’re already in and it’s been growing for a long time, and there’s been many aspects of the crisis -we’ve had oil crisis before, we’re beginning to see the crisis of climate change, right now we’re seeing an economic crisis, we’re all aware of the environmental crisis.

So we’re already moving into it and already the signs of people beginning to shift, signs about transformation and renewal beginning to happen. So for me, seeing it as a period of history means we’re more active, we’re more proactive in it, because there’s things we can be doing right now, allies about this period as opposed to waiting for this time to happen, to come upon us. My feeling is, I don’t think the year 2012 will be any different from the years around it, not that it’s going to be fine, but it is not going to be significantly that different. That’s just my feeling.

Tami Simon: Do you think there are any dangers or challenges in people taking it literally?

Peter Russell: Yes, I think several things. Firstly, we’ve been through this before. There’ve been many prophecies about things going to happen, the end of the world is going to come on a certain date and it doesn’t happen and we just continue moving on. One thing I discovered the other day, I looked up the actual time of the solstice on December the 21st and would you believe it’s 11:11 in the morning. I think this is going to give a lot of people when they realize this, all the people who love 11:11 and the mystique around that are going to be actually focused on that moment. But I don’t think anything major’s going to happen. And so… I think there’s two dangers. One is we almost allow ourselves to become not so much victims but passive participants in the process. Waiting for something to happen rather than seeing, in our boredom perspective, these are times when we’re actively engaged in change.

Tami Simon: I think most people, Peter, know you for your work with The Global Brain.I’m wondering if you can summarize for us what you discovered in that book and how that relates to 2012.

Peter Russell: Yes. That book I wrote- well, it was published in ’82, and I was really writing it in the late seventies. It came from the confluence of several things in my own thinking. I’d had a background in computer science, and my early work in computer science was on the very first networking of computers, and I could see that was where the future of computers was going. This before the Internet actually existed. And at the same time, Jim Lovelock had just come out with his theory of Gaia, and the question I thought of asking is well what is humanity doing here on the planet, if every part of the planet is functioning as an organ in this much larger organism, which he called Gaia, the whole bio-system of the earth. You can consider the rain forest a bit like the lungs of the planet, and the oceans are like the circulatory system. I thought I’d ask him, “Well, what are human beings doing here?” And clearly what human beings are particularly good at is processing information, and that led me to see where the growing connectivity of computers would be taking us. It would be towards the development of a planetary nervous system. We’d be linking our minds together through the Internet, as it’s now called. Though like many many people back then, 25 years ago, none of us saw how it would really look. We were just sensing the potentials of what could happen.

And also at that time I’d become interested in Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit priest who was also a paleontologist, who was interested in the origins of humanity but also where humanity was going, and he saw the future evolution was moving towards a point of global spiritual awakening. Which he called the omega point, but which he put off as years in the future and I saw that maybe the Internet was bringing this into our own lifetimes- that we could actually be not just coming together, in a global brain, but through that coming together, beginning to foster the awakening of humanity.

So those were the three impulses that really were behind the writing of the book. And even at that time I was seeing that acceleration was moving faster and faster and faster, and taking us towards a point where then maybe change would be so fast we couldn’t imagine it now. And that’s one thing that some people see as 2012, this very rapid change. But also that the increasing rate of change was producing a crisis on the planet. And it was through crisis that we’d be forced to start making these changes- if we just leave people alone, happily in their comfort zone, we don’t make changes. It’s when we’re pushed to the edge that we begin to make changes, and I saw that throughout evolution, crisis had played a critical role- it’s when things got stretched that major shifts happened. And so I was seeing that it was going to take crisis to push us through and into a different way of being, And I think that’s really what 2012 represents in many people’s thinking. And in many other prophecies, by the way, it’s not just 2012, we see it in things like the Hopi prophecy- many prophecies- this idea that we are moving into a time of breakdown, and through that is going to come an awakening.

Tami Simon: I would like to talk more about the omega point. Is the idea here, that at the omega point, all of humanity will be, will be what? All however-many gajillion of us will be spiritually awake, quote-unquote, and what would that mean? All of us? Everyone? All at the same time?

Peter Russell: I’m not sure. If we look at Teilhard de Chardin’s vision, he was Christian and he talked about it as sort of the birth of the Christosphere, where we would all be in Christ consciousness. Which I think is probably a Christian way of saying awakened, enlightened, liberated, in touch with who we really are. Whether that needs to happen to everyone of the planet, I don’t know. My feeling is if a significant proportion of the population, maybe a majority, but definitely a significant proportion of the population, let go of the old ways- the old self-centered limited thinking that sort of puts me first and grabbing what I can in order to satisfy my own need. If a significant proportion of the population can let go of that, we would move into a wise awakened society. It would be a very different way of operating the world. So I’m not sure it has to happen to everybody, and it would be hard to see how that could be the case.

Tami Simon: Seems a little mythic to think that.

Peter Russell: Yeah. But I do think that awakening can happen very fast- there have been so many cases of individuals, whether it’s Paul on the road to Damascus or Eckhart Tolle even, or other people we know who, when something happens in their life and there’s that letting go, and there’s a release and we start touching into our truth, and that because it can happen to individuals like that. There’s just this release and there’s a moment of transformation, I see it’s possible that we could start having a mass shift like that, of letting go. I don’t know what would trigger it, it might be some sort of crisis or something media… If we had somebody who was really able to shine that wisdom through the media in a way it could catalyze that awakening. So, I think that’s the other side- it could be a lot easier for this to happen than we think.

Tami Simon: Now you mentioned that it might not be every single person in the population, but maybe a simple majority, or something.

Peter Russell: It could be, yes.

Tami Simon: I’ve heard some people say that even if it was only one percent of the world population… You know these are radically different numbers, and what kinds of numbers or studies can we look to here? Are there any mathematics of the omega point?

Peter Russell: The one percent thing came basically I think from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was the person who brought Transcendental Meditation to the west. He used to talk about one percent of the population and I’m not sure quite where he got that figure from. A bit later he talked about the square root of one percent, which was based upon some physics in terms of coherence with laser light. When you get all the photons in a light beam lined up, as in a laser, then the way in which the power of the laser increased has to do with the square of the number of elements in it. And so he was seeing that a very small number of people could actually have a very dominating effect on a population, by using this analogy of physics, so there is some mathematics there- whether it applies to human consciousness, who knows? But that’s where the idea came from. I know many people have said similar things over time. I think it’s certainly true that people who are more, we like to use the word awake, do have an effect obviously upon others. They have a calming influence, when you’re around them, maybe their wisdom rubs off on others. So I think the principle that the more awake people are, the more that awakens or has an effect on the rest of society. I think that principle is true, I don’t know about the numbers, to be honest. Let’s wait and see.

Tami Simon: You mentioned that Teilhard de Chardin talked about the omega point being far out in time, meaning hundreds of years, potentially thousand of years. But that through the power of the worldwide web, perhaps this is coming closer into time. What do you think about that? Do you believe that human society may enter something like an omega point in the nearer rather than further future? What kind of time horizon are you looking at?

Peter Russell: I’m looking at something like fifty years. I say that because I think if we don’t do something like it in fifty years, we probably will have extinguished ourselves or made things very very difficult. I think we- we’ve got to come through this crisis with a lot more wisdom and sanity than we’re putting into it. And just the rate at which things are going faster and faster and faster, I think that sort of -let’s call it widespread awakening rather than truly collective awakening- but widespread awakening is possible in that sort of timeframe. Teilhard de Chardin, when he was initially thinking about this, when he was thinking thousands of years in the future, wasn’t thinking in terms of accelerating time- he was thinking about linear time. And he himself said that television would bring this forward. Then when he saw computers coming along he saw that that would hasten it. He didn’t see the Internet, but I think what we’re seeing now is with the Internet, we’re moving into a period of collective thinking. Which, say, twenty-five years ago, none of who were looking at this saw the social networks, the collective thinking that’s beginning to happen through these systems. It’s sometimes called “wethink” in that we’re beginning to work together.

And my feeling is that, firstly, we’re going to need that sort of collective thinking to tackle the huge problems we’ve got. But also I see the possibility of us really feeding back into each other’s spiritual journey, spiritual awakening, helping each other on that journey. And I feel the Internet is going to play a role there, in ways which we probably don’t see now, just as years ago, fifteen years ago when the web started we couldn’t see where it was going. I suspect we’ll look back in ten years’ time and be amazed at where we’ve got to in terms of shifting human consciousness and what an important role the web played in that, even though we can’t really see what that is now.

Tami Simon: You know, of course we can see the power of the web to help make available wisdom teachings from many different traditions and help connect people. But as we know it’s also being used for porn sites, and for criminal activities, and for all kinds of things. So it seems it’s a rather neutral tool and that it’s amplifying, at many levels.

Peter Russell: Yes, I think that’s very true. You could say the same of books. I mean, books have been around for a long time and they’ve been used for pornography, they’ve been used just for very materialistic concerns, for very superficial entertainment, but also books have had an incredible value in the past, in terms of spreading wisdom, helping people in their inner growth. So I don’t think the fact that it can be used for other purposes negates the higher purpose it can also be used for.

Tami Simon: What do you mean? Couldn’t somebody make the case here, oh great, now we’re amplifying everything that’s harmful to others as well as amplifying the wisdom in the world, what makes us think this is going to lead to a more awake world? This tool is being used by all kinds of consciousness.

Peter Russell: I think there’s an inherent attraction in awakening which feeds upon itself. Take pornography, there have always been people interested in porn, it might be an element of everybody, so many people have that sort of fascination. But just making it more available -I don’t think feeds that basic impulse that’s already there, it just satisfies it. Whereas I think with spiritual awakening there’s something more that we are all looking for and it’s realizing that we’re not finding it in the society that’s being presented to us, and so we’re looking for other ways to lead our lives, other sources of contentment. And because that’s that deep-seeking there, I think as more and more people tap into that and make that available to each other, I think that begins to start spreading out through society because it’s beginning to help people satisfy this deeper seeking.

Tami Simon: I hope you’re right.

Peter Russell: I think so. I really feel that porn and all that stuff- the overconcern with just shopping and all – that will happen- and that will keep on happening, that’s not going to go away. But I think the other side will rise out of that, will rise through that.

Tami Simon: When we’re talking about this proliferation of spiritual awakening, I’d like to get more clear- what do you really mean by that term? What do you think that means?

Peter Russell: Spiritual awakening.

Tami Simon: Yeah.

Peter Russell: For me it means a freeing of the mind. A liberation, freeing ourselves from a set of attitudes that actually keep us trapped in our lives, that keep us feeling discontent and keep us chasing things looking to ease that discontent. I feel that the mind in its natural state, before it gets churned up with worry and anxiety and hoping and fantasy and chasing things, the mind in its natural state is at ease. And we disturb that ease through feeling there’s something missing, feeling there’s something we have to have, worrying about something, grieving over something that happened in the past, we continually disturb that natural state of ease.

And spiritual awakening for me is- two aspects. One: understanding that realizing that and that then the more important part is living that through letting go of, releasing the mental patterns that hold us into that way of functioning. So it’s about finding the freedom to actually be able to be at ease, to be at peace, in ourselves, whatever we’re going through. It doesn’t mean to say we don’t have emotions or feel angry or that there aren’t many many things in the world we feel focussed on, that we need to change. It’s not about just saying everything is okay, I’m happy with everything. It’s more just being able to be at ease with your experience, even if your experience is that it’s disgusting, I really must deal with this. But instead of getting screwed up around things and just creating more inner anguish and discontent, we can be in an inner state of balance with how things are.

I must say, when you ask me what’s it meant for me, I notice that if you’d asked me five years ago I’d have said something different, and if you ask me five years hence I’ll say something different. What I find fascinating is that it’s something that’s always shifting and changing as my own experience changes. I may refine it or see that was very naïve what I was thinking ten years ago. So I think there’s a continual process in me of refining that understanding, that’s how I put it at this moment.

Tami Simon: The term awakening makes it sound like there was period of time in which someone was not awake and then they became awake, as in some definitive line. And I’m curious if that’s true in your experience, or if it’s more a sort of dawning of a new way of being.

Peter Russell: I think- the truth is we are all awake. Most of the waking day, you can even say we are awake in terms of being conscious during our sleep. One way of looking at it is becoming awake to our own beingness, our own inner wakefulness, you could say it’s like becoming awake to our own consciousness, our own beingness. So it’s not where we were asleep before and now we’re awake. But it’s like a deeper clarity, a level of awakening that’s happened.

Tami Simon: I know when you have talked about 2012 -the symbolic time of 2012- you’ve talked about three different important factors to consider. The deepening crisis that we’re in, global crisis, and I think most people can relate to that, and we’ve talked some about this global movement towards spiritual awakening. And then the third factor is this acceleration of technology that you often talk about. And I’m curious where you see our technological capacities going in the next ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years?

Peter Russell: I think it’s almost impossible to look out more than about ten to fifteen years today. Just as in the past, we’ve proved ourselves incapable of looking into the future. I mean just a couple of examples: Nobody, back in the fifties, when computers were coming on stream all the science fiction stories were talking about megalithic computers, huge computers. Nobody, nobody saw the miniaturization of computing and the way that would lead. We just have a blind spot of things, and there’s many examples where we just completely missed what was going to happen. And because things are moving faster and faster, when we think now, when we look ahead now where things are going, all we can do is extend our current understanding of technology, but we don’t know what new inventions, breakthroughs, innovations are going to happen. But I think one trend is we know computing –or we suspect, have every reason to believe- the power and the speed of computing is going to get faster and faster and faster and faster. And all the estimates are that around about the year 2025- sometime in the middle of that decade- we will have such computers- the average laptop will be as smart as the human brain. It’s very hard to predict what’s going to happen then. Ray Kurtzweil calls that the singularity, the point at which the old patterns of history break down, and it may be we start having some symbiotic relationship with computers, some people think computers will take over. I don’t know, I think we could use that incredible computing power for our own benefit as well.

Tami Simon: But now, let’s just talk about this a little bit-a computer that’s as smart as a human person. Of course, I’ve met people that I can imagine that computers would be quite smarter. But there’s no human soul, creativity, divine inspiration, I mean none of that’s going to come through with computers.

Peter Russell: Right. Well, here people fall into two camps here. Most of the technological people seem to have this idea that computers will then became conscious.

Tami Simon: Hold on, what does that mean? Help me there.

Peter Russell: I think people who say that are usually basing that on the idea that human consciousness somehow comes out of the complexity of the human brain. That somehow, the dead unconscious matter of the human brain somehow produces what we have called consciousness, experience, and they assume that’s going to happen to computers. I don’t think it’s like that. I think we would have smart computers. But they would not have awareness- I don’t see them having feelings. They might be able to imitate feelings, but I don’t imagine they’d actually have emotions like we have them. So I don’t think- they’re not going to be conscious, they’re just going to be very very good at processing.things, solving problems, working things out. The one area we’re so much better than computers at the moment is pattern recognition, that we can look at a room, and we can pick out a cup sitting on a shelf. A computer finds that almost impossible at the moment, except under certain perfect conditions. So there’s areas where computers are far behind, and pattern recognition is one of them.

Tami Simon: How will this capacity, this technological capacity for computers to process information this well, how will this change the way we function, do you imagine?

Peter Russell: Do I imagine?

Tami Simon: You’re a futurist, Peter, I’m allowed to ask you this kind of questions.

Peter Russell: I don’t think any of us really have an idea where the future is – I really don’t know – I hesitate to even offer any predictions. I know whatever I say is probably going to be so wide off the mark when we get there. And all my thinking is so much in terms of now, here we are in 2008, in this reality. I think things are going to be so different 15 years on.

Tami Simon: Many people describe 2012 as a time of potential breakdown or breakthrough, or both. And I’m curious how you weigh in on this breakdown side. I mean we’ve talked about the era of breakdown that we’re in, but we’ve been talking a lot in this discussion about potential breakthroughs. And then, what do you think individuals can do in their own lives to tip the balance?

Peter Russell: I think the fact we’re heading toward breakdown is so clear to most people, although many people may be in denial about it. A lot of people are in denial about the coming economic meltdown that we’re now experiencing, although it was obvious somehow this was going to happen, sooner or later. So I think clearly there’s a period of major breakdown. Systems are under such strain- especially environmental systems and some social systems. There’s going to be a falling apart of the old, I think that’s inevitable. The transformation, I think, comes from the realization that we in a way responsible. It’s interesting most of the crises in the past we’ve been able to sort of, separate ourselves from it. That it wasn’t our fault, it just happened to us. What is interesting about what happened with the economic meltdown was people started seeing this was because of human greed. And in a way we are all guilty of that. I mean, there are very few of us I think who can stand up and say I don’t have moments of greed myself or moments of wanting to be in control of things. I don’t get power-hungry myself. I think all that’s wrong with humanity, when we look at the world out there, we have the seeds for that in ourselves. So the real work of transformation is us beginning to look at ourselves and say okay, where am I greedy? Where am I self-centered? Where do I, perhaps, abuse other people in some way or another? Where do I lack compassion? And I am the only person I really have responsibility for in that. So the more than I can begin to shift my own inner being, the more than I can release myself from some of those patterns, I think the better member of society I’m going to be. And I trust that there are millions and millions of people in their own way working on the same challenges. And that’s what gives me hope.

Tami Simon: Many people, I think, respond to periods of breakdown, the current economic crisis you’re referring to, with a feeling of fear and contraction. What do you have to say to that and to those people, and to those experiences?

Peter Russell: I think that’s a very normal reaction. And that’s really a reflection of the old mode of thinking that most of us are caught in. I think most fear comes from the fact that we start looking into the future and start thinking things are not going to be the way I think they should be, for me to feel okay. I feel I’m out of control of my world, and I’m not going to like the way things are. That’s the basis of why we get into a fear response. If for example, we suddenly saw -and this is just hypothetical- that it’s leading to a situation where we’re going to feel better, we wouldn’t feel fear. But that’s the general pattern with fear, and it is not only when there’s a major breakdown, the same can happen stuck in a traffic jam. You start fearing- I’m going to be late home, what’s going to happen- we move into fear. As soon as we stop projecting into a future, and feeling that future isn’t going to be the way I feel it should be, for me to feel okay, we trigger fear.

I think part of the journey of awakening, part of the process of awakening, is recognizing the belief system under that. There’s this belief system that says I need to have things to be a certain way in order to feel okay. There’s a growing recognition that comes to people, I can actually feel okay, genuinely feel okay, in a multiplicity of situations, I don’t have to have things be a certain way. Feeling okay is more about an inner attitude rather than have it depend upon circumstances. And as we begin to develop that more in ourselves, then we begin to find we’re less triggered by circumstances. We’re less likely to fall into fear when we meet a situation where things are really different in the future.

That doesn’t mean to say that we escape fear altogether, not at all, but it means we begin to free ourselves from that pattern, so that we’re less likely to be triggered by it. So that if we find ourselves in a traffic jam, for example, or standing in line at a store, we don’t have to fall into the anxiety mode. We can actually sit back and say, hey, how can I look at this differently? Maybe there’s an opportunity here, maybe I could just experience what it’s like just to pause for thirty seconds. So that’s sort of the seed of the shift in consciousness .I think the more we practice that the more we can bring that into a greater variety of situations. And gradually be able to take it into perhaps, what would have been quite hard situations before.

Tami Simon: Now, Peter, I know that you teach mediation, with the idea that it can be a tool that can help us in this cultivation of what you’re calling this shift. So what’s the connection between learning to meditate and learning to make the kinds of shifts you’re talking about?

Peter Russell: When I’m teaching meditation, I’m really teaching people about letting go. It’s about letting go of the grip the mind has on the way things should be. And some of the stuff, like relaxing, if we can let the mind relax. And it’s really about letting the mind relax, I don’t think we can do relaxation, you can’t make a muscle relax but we can actually bring an awareness to a tense muscle, feeling what’s it’s like- very often then the relaxation can happen. We can allow it to release. And I say it’s the same with the mind. Our attention gets focussed, it gets hooked up on things, especially the way we think things should be or should not be. And meditation for me is the practice of recognizing how it feels to just let your attention relax, When you do that- it doesn’t mean to say the mind has to become still. People think of meditation like that- and there are many meditations aimed at making the mind still or helping the mind become still. The meditation I teach is more about how to allow ourselves to be at ease with what is. To let ourselves relax inside. And when you do that you’re no longer fueling those repetitious thoughts that keep the mind active. And so gradually as a result, the mind will begin to settle down and become quiet. There was a second part to the question…

Tami Simon: The relationship between learning meditation and being able to make the kinds of shifts that you think are necessary in this 2012 transformative time.

Peter Russell: I think if we can learn how to be at ease in ourselves, in a variety of situations, in situations which previously we would have found very distressing or uncomfortable, then two things happen. One: I think we’re more stable. In the world that’s coming- 2012, the changes that are coming, not just 2012 but in the coming years- if every time there’s a major upset, the stock market crashes or weather systems change or whatever it is, the house prices go down again, whatever it is, if we have that inner stability, that inner sense of okay-ness, then we’re not going to be so kicked around by the world. We’re not going to be like a leaf blown around by the wind every which way the wind blows. We have that stability. It’s like a tree in a storm- if it’s got strong roots it’s not going to blow over.
But the other thing a tree needs is flexibility- and I think that’s what having that inner sense of okay-ness also gives us- the flexibility. We’re not so attached to the thought of how we think things should be, or what the solution is. We can let go of the past.

I think that’s going to be really important, because in the challenges that are coming, we need to be much more creative, not just do things the way we always have done. We need to be free inside to let go of our assumptions that this is the way we do things, or this is the way we did things in the past, so this is how we’ve got to do them now. We’ve got to be freer and creative, and I think the people who will deal best with the changes still to come are those who are the most flexible, creative, can look at the situation with fresh eyes, and not hold on to the past.

Tami Simon: Just one final question, Peter. You’ve talked a lot about how our sense of time is accelerating. In the last hundreds of years, this sense that things are happening faster and faster and faster. And at some point, time will just be happening so fast, that what? Do you know what I mean? It’s kind of mind-bending in a way. Is there any end to this sense of acceleration?

Peter Russell: I think there’s two possible scenarios here. One is that the change becomes so fast that we cannot take it, we break down, we become so stressed by it we crack up.

Tami Simon: Okay, what does that mean exactly? I mean, I have some ideas about that, but what do you mean by crack up?

Peter Russell: Well, I mean, we see this with individuals sometimes when the stress gets too much we sort of burn out and collapse and go into maybe some sort of breakdown in our life where our health cracks up and we just have to step back. Or we can’t take it anymore and we move into depression or some withdraw- we pull back from life, as an individual. But also that could mean it just increases the chances of breakdown at a social level, environmental level. As things move faster, if we keep on as we are at the moment- burning more and more fossil fuels, putting out more and more pollution faster and faster, the environment’s going to start cracking up. I mean the environment is under stress at the moment. And if we go through some sort of breakdown like that, it’ll push evolution back. Whether it pushes us back – if we had a major setback we could be back to the middle ages or further. But, once we recover, then I think inevitably we’re on that same accelerating path again. And it may be each time we reach this point of real extreme change that there’s breakdown, there’s a crackup.

But the other alternative is that maybe we can move into that, and that- I think what’s going to happen there is that it’s not going to be just technology that’s changing. Every arena of change has its limits. And it’s like, population has been exploding- that’s now leveling off, it’s found its limit, thankfully. You could say there is industrial technologies like the steam engine. That went through its exponential growth, and then it tapered off as other forms of transportation came along. I think we see the same thing with technology generally, that will reach its own limits of how fast that can change. What I see the potential is here, is for inner change. I think inner change –changes in ourselves- could happen much much faster. And that wouldn’t be a change that would stress us out. It would actually be the opposite, it would be a change that would free us up from the things that cause us so much stress. So I see that potential for very fast change- to shift from where we see it now, which is in technology, to move into the inner world of human consciousness And if that were to happen, then that’s why I see that there could be that widespread awakening of consciousness.

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