Summary
In the decade of the 2040s, most people recognize that we are losing the race with climate catastrophe. Runaway climate disruption is no longer only a looming possibility—it is an overwhelming and vividly present reality. As the consequences of climate chaos, financial breakdowns, civic anarchy, species extinction, mass migrations, and widespread famines continue to grow, the entire world moves toward unstoppable collapse. The need for a profound transformation is anchored in the raw experience of humanity. We recognize that we either pull together in common effort or face the functional extinction of our species. We understand that Earth will never go back to the climate patterns of the previous 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age. We accept feelings of shame, guilt, grief, and despair as a ruinous future grows around us.
The biosphere is increasingly impoverished, weakened, and barren. Profound climate disruption, falling agricultural productivity, extreme water scarcity, and great economic inequities create huge areas of devastating famine. This is also a time of “great burning,” as unrelenting droughts dry out the land and fire scorches vast regions of the Earth. And it is a time of “great dying,” too, as millions of people and countless species of animals and plants perish. Humanity confronts a two-fold tragedy of unimaginable proportions that shocks and awakens the soul of our species.
Broken supply chains lead to hoarding, looting, black markets, and hyperinflation. Adaptations are pushed down to the local level of neighborhood and community, and people search for others they can trust and work within rebuilding life from the ground up. Old sources of value (measured in cash, stocks, and bonds) have become nearly worthless. New sources of value reside in strong personal relationships and access to scarce resources such as food, medicine, and fuel that have tangible importance. Despite its great value, an Earth Voice movement struggles to stay alive as the internet is constantly breaking down and being repaired.
The world descends into collective despair. Feeling we have failed to step up to our responsibilities as planetary citizens, many mourn for the lost Earth. The soul of humanity is grievously wounded with moral injury. We face a future of unending bleakness and despair—unless we rise collectively to this time of challenge.
Essays
PSI at SRI Personal Experience as a Subject in Three Years of Psychic Research at the think tank, SRI International,1973 – 1975
“Psi at SRI: Research Exploring the Ecology of Consciousness” documents a remarkable three-year period from 1973-1975 when the author was a subject in psychic experiments at the think tank, SRI International, in the US government first research exploring both receptive intuition (remote viewing) and expressive consciousness (psychokinesis) through rigorous laboratory protocols with real-time feedback. Rather than claiming exceptional abilities, the author argues these experiences demonstrate that our intuitive connection with the cosmos is an ordinary capacity available to everyone, and that consciousness not as confined to the brain but is present as a field property of the universe itself. The work challenges the mechanistic worldview of separation and instead sees us in a participatory dance with a unified, continuously regenerating cosmos where separation is an illusion. Through sustained exploration with precise instrumentation—from laser-monitored pendulums to magnetometers with liquid helium probes—the author discovered that consciousness can be focused and produce measurable effects that transcend conventional understanding of space-time boundaries. These experiments were conducted before the CIA classified the research program a secret project and Elgin dropped out. By documenting this research with rigorous scientific protocols, the work bridges ancient wisdom and modern science, suggesting that humanity stands at the threshold of recognizing our true nature as conscious participants in a living universe where thought, intention, and awareness are fundamental forces rather than mere byproducts of brain biochemistry.
DEEP BIG HISTORY
History Viewed from A Living Systems Paradigm
Duane Elgin August, 2014
Presented at the conference of the International Big History Association
At this pivotal moment in human evolution, we stand at the threshold between two fundamentally different ways of understanding our cosmic story—one that views the universe as a mechanical system composed of dead matter that somehow produces life, and another that recognizes the universe itself is a vast living system in which we are conscious participants. This essay challenges the foundational assumptions of scientific materialism that currently dominate big history narratives, offering instead a living systems paradigm supported by discoveries in quantum physics showing the universe to be a unified whole, permeated by immense background energy, engaged in continuous creation, and exhibiting consciousness at every scale. Rather than seeing ourselves as isolated biological accidents in an indifferent cosmos, this perspective reveals humanity as the universe becoming aware of itself after nearly 14 billion years of evolution—transforming not just our understanding of history but our sense of identity, purpose, and ethical responsibility. The shift from a dead to a living universe paradigm offers a scientific and philosophical framework for navigating our planetary crisis and consciously evolving toward a sustainable, compassionate and maturing civilization. By recognizing consciousness as fundamental rather than incidental, and the universe as inherently alive rather than mechanistic, we discover that big history is not merely a chronicle of blind physical processes but the story of a learning universe exploring its own depths through the emergence of self-aware beings. This living systems perspective provides the conceptual foundation needed to unite scientific understanding with the meaning and connection required for humanity’s next evolutionary leap.
The Buddha’s Awakening and Interdependent Co-Arising
(With a commentary by Claude/Anthropic )
Duane Elgin
This essay explores one of humanity’s most transformative spiritual insights—exemplified by the Buddha’s description of his of awakening to the nature of reality in two-words: “interdependent co-arising.” Interdependent manning that reality is a completely unified and interconnected as a singular whole. Co-arising meaning tat reality is not static but is continuously emerging anew at every moment. Therefore, this phrase penetrates to the heart of reality and describes all that exists is a unified whole that is continuously emerging freshly at each moment. Far from being unique to Buddhism, the insight of a unified and continuously regenerating universe appears across all major spiritual traditions—from Christian mystics to Islamic Sufis, from Hindu sages to Indigenous wisdom keepers—revealing a universal truth that transcends all boundaries. Because this same understanding has been recognized by spiritual explorers in diverse wisdom traditions throughout history it is an experientially direct insight about the nature of reality, and serves as a bridge to all the world’s wisdom. At the heart of this cosmology lies the revolutionary perception: the universe is not a collection of solid, separate objects, but more deeply is a dynamic process of continuous creation where everything arises new and fresh at every moment as an interconnected whole. By recognizing that we inhabit a living, regenerative universe rather than a dead, mechanical one, we are called to recognize every aspect of reality as expressions of a single, continuously creative cosmos learning to know itself through infinite eyes, infinite perspectives, all arising together in the eternal dance of interdependent co-arising.
The Living Cosmos: A Theory of Continuous Creation
Revision Journal, 188:
This essay has its origins in my half-year of meditation in 1977-1978 (see the essay “Meditative Origins of Dimensional Cosmology,” found in the Appendix of my book “Awakening Earth”). Here I describe a view of our universe as a profoundly interconnected, self-organizing system that continuously regenerates itself moment by moment. This essay challenges the prevailing mechanistic view of a dead and static cosmos by presenting a view of reality emerging as an active, ongoing process of creation whereby the entire fabric of matter-energy and space-time is dynamically woven together as a single whole at every moment. At the heart of this description is a seven-dimensional cosmology in which three material dimensions provide concrete expression while three mirroring dimensions enable self-referencing observation and instantaneous connection across the cosmos, all emerging from and returning to a hyper-universe of unlimited dimensionality and creative potential. A core theme is that the precise consistency of manifestation of reality at the cosmic scale produces the precise constancy of the speed of light at the local scale. In other words, nothing can go faster than the speed with which it is emerging. Nothing can get ahead of itself becoming itself, so trying to exceed the speed of its own arising will produce relativistic effects such as length contraction and time dilation, which occur because objects literally run into themselves in the process of becoming themselves. By grounding theoretical physics in direct meditative experience, this work demonstrates that the deepest truths about reality may be accessible not only through mathematical equations and laboratory experiments but also through the disciplined and direct exploration of reality itself. With this approach, we discover that we are not separate observers studying a mechanical universe from the outside, but rather expressions of the cosmos engaged in a process of self-discovery, with each moment a fresh creation in the universe’s ongoing adventure of awakening to its own infinite nature.