The Living Universe - Duane Elgin [54]
Approximately 10,000 years ago, the last great Ice Age came to a close and we made a gradual transition into the agrarian era with its settled existence and small village way of life. A farming-based society with a food surplus and a feeling consciousness established the foundations for the rise of city-state civilizations. In this era we developed astronomy, writing, the priesthood, kings, warfare, and mathematics. It was also a time of widespread illiteracy, superstition, and the oppression of women. Most individuals were impoverished peasants who had no hope of material progress.
Then, approximately three hundred years ago, advances in science and a thinking consciousness enabled humans to achieve unprecedented control of nature, and to bring unprecedented dynamism into the world. In this stage, people strongly identify with their intellect and grow in their uniqueness. A new sense of personal autonomy and freedom fosters greater citizenship in government, entrepreneurship in economics, and self-authority in spiritual matters. Empowered humans have been so successful in this stage that we are now devastating the biosphere and undermining our future. This is producing a planetary-scale, whole-systems crisis as the entire human family is pressed to come to terms with a new condition of the Earth.
The agricultural and industrial revolutions have produced the most differentiated, individuated, and separated beings that the world has ever known. While our journey has taken us as far from the Mother Universe as we will ever go, it has also taken us to the greatest degree of ego development—empowering us with strong identities as sensing, feeling, and thinking individuals. Because we are still far from completing the evolutionary project of soulful self-possession, the industrial era mindset can leave us feeling disconnected from the living universe (thinking of it as non-living), disconnected from one another (thinking we are existentially separate), and disconnected from our soulful vitality (thinking the soul does not exist). Our imagined separation is a source of profound suffering—and a powerful motivation to continue our journey of awakening to become whole with ourselves and the universe.
Because the culture and consciousness of the industrial era are so far removed from intimate connection with nature and the subtle life force, it may seem that this stage of development has been an evolutionary detour instead of actual progress. Despite the alienation and anxiety of journeying so far from the nurturing life force of a living universe, I believe we have been on a highly purposeful path of development. In the industrial era, we acquired our most distinct and empowered sense of self as material beings. Feelings of existential separation from nature and the universe were essential for us to realize our current degree of differentiation and development. Instead of an evolutionary detour, our progressive separation from nature has been integral to our learning and maturation as a species. However, our learning is only half complete. We are moving into our supreme test, which challenges us to change direction and reconnect with the living universe and the enduring aliveness within ourselves.
Our Supreme Test and Time of Initiation
Evolution moves forward on a bending curve and there is no going back. The starting gun of history has gone off, and humanity is moving rapidly into a new world. We humans have always been tested by adversity. However, our current times are unique in one crucial respect—and this makes all the difference. The circle has closed and there is no escape. Now the entire Earth and whole human community is at risk. Now the entire human species must deal with the reality of climate disruption (with resulting crop failures and famine), the dwindling supply of cheap energy, an enormous global population with most people living on the edge of subsistence, a massive wave of extinction of plants and animals, the spread of weapons of mass