Daniel Pinchbeck

"Right now, we are being forced to witness the shadow of the psyche projected into material form through systemic misuse of technology, biospheric destruction, and corrupt geopolitics based on entrenched egotism and greed.  As predicted by McKenna, Arguelles, and Calleman, time itself seems to be changing form, accelerating and intensifying, as events follow each other at breakneck pace.  A cynical or nihilistic perspective on the imminent fate of our species is, of course, plausible, but unproductive.  In fact, if consciousness is intertwined with physical reality, then a nihilistic perspective actively helps to bring a nihilistic result into manifestation.  The alternate hypothesis of this book sees the destruction of the biosphere and the development of technology as by-products, nondual and integral aspects, of our psycho-spiritual evolution.  If the shadows appear to be growing darker, it is because the light that casts them is getting brighter."

"It is my thesis that the rapid development of technology and the destruction of the biosphere are material by-products of a psycho-spiritual process taking place on a planetary scale.  We have created this crisis to force our own accelerated transformation -- on an unconscious level, we have willed it into being.  Human consciousness, the sentient element of the Earth, is in the process of self-organizing to a more intensified state of being and knowing -- what the Russian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff called a "higher octave."  When the Hopi talk of a Fifth World, or the Aztecs anticipate a Sixth Sun, when St. John foresees the descent of the Heavenly City or New Jerusalem, they are describing the same thing:  a shift in the nature of consciousness."     

In relation to Gebser's notion of "time freedom" as humanity's next evolutionary breakthrough, Pinchbeck writes:


"[O]ne can only wonder how the seemingly subtle process of transforming the inner sphere of consciousness -- no longer squandering 'free time,' but using it to attain 'time freedom' -- could provide any defense from the catclysmic ravages and global meltdowns to be expected when our "superannuated spatial world" crashes and burns, "as everything that becomes lifeless and rigidified breaks apart," a collapse that appears to be approaching us at high speed.  Gebser's answer to this is similar to Sri Aurobindo's, Jung's, Goswami's, and Steiner's:  If "mind-stuff," rather than matter, is the fundamental ground of being, then a transformation of consciousness has, potentially, far-reaching effects -- not just in the psychic world, but in the one we perceive to be physical, as well."