International Conference on Science and Jain Philosophy
Winner of 'American Book Award for Science', The Pathfinder Award, Einstein Award. Dr. Gary Zukav is a Harvard graduate, with a degree in International Relations, one of the bestselling authors, a co-founder of the Seat of the Soul Institute, and a member of the Club of Budapest, World Business Academy, the Chair of the Government and Politics Strategy Group for the Campaign for the Earth.
I am honored to be invited to participate in your joint exploration of science, philosophy, and spirituality. My Life is dedicated to contributing the best that I can to a new human consciousness that is emerging and the new world that it can create. Here is a way of Looking at our current circumstance:
We stand in two worlds. One is the world of a dying consciousness. The other is the world of an emerging consciousness. If we try to solve problems with the dying consciousness, we will fail because all the problems we face were created by the dying consciousness. This dying consciousness tells us there is a prime source which activates unbreakable causal chains, and that source is action. From actions come consequences. To change consequences, we must change our actions. The emerging consciousness tells us that the prime source of all causal chains is intention. To change consequences, we must change our intentions.
Intentions direct every deed and word, such as intentions to reverse climate change, protect the Earth, and reduce income inequality. When intentions conflict, the result is a power struggle. From the perspective of the dying consciousness, power is the ability to manipulate and control. This is external power. It is inseparable from the dying consciousness, and it now produces only violence and destruction. The West and ISIS are in a struggle for external power, as are the United States and Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran, India and Pakistan, etc. So also are Exxon-Mobil and environmentalists, Monsanto and the organic movement, etc. Every aspect of the dying consciousness pursues external power - nations, cultures, religions, corporations, friends, and neighbors.
The emerging consciousness is perception beyond the five senses, intuition, and the understanding of power as the alignment of the personality with its immortal part - the part that intends harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for Life. This is authentic power. It is inseparable from the emerging consciousness, and it is now required for our evolution. It is impossible to struggle for authentic power. Authentic power cannot be lost or found, stolen or inherited. We must create it in ourselves. We cannot change the world until we recognize that a new emerging consciousness is replacing a dying consciousness, multisensory perception is replacing five-sensory perception, and authentic power is replacing external power. That is because the world we have inherited/ created is made of external power, and pursuing external power adds only more to it.
We need to be aware of this as we create our responses to each of our challenges, such as ISIS. The dying consciousness casts the issue of ISIS as good vs. evil and savage vs. civilized. The emerging consciousness sees it as a matter of love and fear. The pursuit of external power originates in fear. The creation of authentic power originates in love. Fear excludes, judges, and attacks. Love includes, accepts, and reveres.
In the emerging consciousness, love and fear are the fundamental intentions that determine the consequences of all other intentions. For example, if our ISIS strategy is containment, military action used wisely, reaching out to mainstream Islam, opening our homes and borders to refugees, etc. - it will create constructive consequences only when the intention behind it is love. The same strategy will create destructive consequences when the intention behind it is fear. Fear separates, shatters intimacy, and prevents healing. Love heals everything.
If we see ISIS as a "cancer that must be cut out" and "systemic rot in the collective consciousness" we become like ISIS. They see us the same way. Their attacks in Paris targeted symbols of Western culture - a sporting event, a rock concert, and people simply dining out - which they see as "cancer that must be cut out" and "systemic rot in the collective consciousness."
In order to change the world, we must ask ourselves continually, "Am I doing this from love or from fear?" To be specific, changing the world requires me to ask myself continually, "Am I doing this from love or from fear?" independently of others. It requires you to ask yourself continually, "Am I doing this from love or from fear?" independently of others. We can support one another in creating authentic power, but we cannot create authentic power for one another. Creating authentic power is not a mass movement or even a small movement.
The emerging consciousness understands that world transformation begins with self transformation. The dying consciousness dismisses self transformation as irrelevant to global change, which requires participation of millions. This is the biggest chasm between the emerging consciousness and the dying consciousness, and our evolution requires me to change myself in order to cross it. It requires you to change yourself in order to cross it. If we attempt to find strength in numbers, validation in numbers, we miss the point. My creation of authentic power makes me the authority in my life. Your creation of authentic power makes you the authority in your life. Creating authentic power is an intensely personal, heroic journey. It cannot be crowd-sourced.
Like many of you, I have traveled a long way to reach where I now stand. I earned a degree in International Relations from Harvard; I attended the lectures of Henry Kissinger; I was a Green Beret officer in Vietnam; I wrote an Award-winning book on quantum physics. I did even more, but none of these things prepared me at the time to say, unequivocally as I do now, that recognizing all our adversaries, including our ISIS brothers and sisters, as our teachers and learning to respond to them with love instead of react to them with fear creates authentic power, and there is now no other way to change the world.
I am looking forward to cocreating a new, healthy, and joyful world with you.
