by Hubert Winston
What’ s the world going to be like after the next big shift in planetary consciousness? Well, I don’t claim to know, but consider a few interesting parallels between now and the time around Columbus’s first voyage.
Before the voyage, two competing beliefs about the shape of the world were present in the European consciousness. The flat Earth viewpoint and the round Earth viewpoint were the filters through which life in medieval Europe was experienced. The majority flat Earth viewpoint was rigidly imposed by the church, the dominant hierarchy of the time. Given the threat of extreme punishments for unbelievers, the European masses either accepted that viewpoint or kept their doubts to themselves. The minority round Earth viewpoint was typically held by seagoing men and a few educated folk with access to ancient Greek learning.
After the voyage, with the flat Earth viewpoint discredited, the round earth viewpoint was widely accepted. Suddenly, where sea serpents and the abyss had been believed to exist, open seas and the New World were discovered. Although this revelation didn’t instantly transform most peoples’ day-to-day experience, Western civilization was no longer hindered by those limiting beliefs.
At the same time Columbus was making his voyage, the advent of the printing press fostered the rapid spread of Renaissance ideas out of Italy. That new thinking led to the decline and ultimate collapse of the the existing social and political order. Along with the collapse, ideas such as the divine right of kings, unquestioned clerical authority, serfdom, slavery, and the God-ordained servant status of women declined and fell into eventual disrepute.
Now, two views about the origins of consciousness are present in Western thought. The “matter came first” view and the “consciousness came first” view are starting points for competing theories about the nature of existence. Depending on which belief filter you take, the conclusion you reach and the possibilities for life’s experiences are quite different.
The majority “matter came first” viewpoint is the summation of centuries-long scientific study of how life developed on Earth. It proceeds from an assumption that all of existence began with the Big Bang, and that the Universal some-thing originated from a non-existent no-thing. From that viewpoint it’s logical to conclude that matter predates consciousness and that life is reducible to so many complex chemical reactions.
The minority “consciousness came first” viewpoint is similar to what’s believed by masses of people in the East. It typically results when someone senses that something’s not quite right with the matter-first viewpoint, when their awareness opens to a transcendent world of experiences. The influx of Eastern philosophy, meditation practices, visionary scientists, an increasing number of medical researchers, and many other influences including Avatar, are all contributing to an ongoing shift toward the consciousness-first viewpoint.
While the Western viewpoint about existence is shifting to be more like that held in the East, many aspects of the Eastern viewpoint about life are shifting to be more like that held in the West. In addition to whatever change results from this re-alignment of Eastern and Western beliefs, I’m convinced that a much more profound shift in planetary consciousness is well underway.
My model for this is the high school chemistry experiment wherein acidic or basic solutions containing a color indicator are titrated with their chemical opposites. The starting solution is colorless, and the titrated solution remains that way as more and more of the titrant are added. The fact that the titrated solution is colorless DOES NOT mean that nothing is happening; it indicates only that the shifting point hasn’t been reached. When the color shift does occur, it’s dramatic and obvious, and it signifies that conditions in the solution are very different that they were before the shift.
In my view, the end of the superpower nuclear arms race, dissolution of the Soviet Union, German unification, the freeing of South Africa, and negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians all indicate the lightening up of planetary consciousness. And every time anyone decides to live deliberately and be happy, planetary consciousness gets that much lighter. As consciousness continues to lighten, more conflicts will be resolved, new economic and social arrangements will evolve, advances in medical and healing technologies will be rapid, and the vast material differences between haves and have-nots will be lessened.
When the BIG shift occurs, my feeling is that mass consciousness will open to a realm of possibilities that’s as different from today as the New World was to Columbus. It won’t be a linear extrapolation of our present condition and looking back. Our descendants will marvel that we struggled in relative darkness for so long.Hubert Winston, Raleigh, NC.
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