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As explained in the home page, The Chrysalis Age is a book about spirituality and globalization. Specifically it is about how we can use the transformational energy of the former to guide the worldwide transformations of the latter. As I explain in the introduction, The Chrysalis Age is based on the structure of a spiral and is divided into five sections, or turns. The first turn deals with worldviews, or the different ways that we view reality as we develop as individual humans and collectively as societies and cultures. The turn relies on developmental psychology and various studies of sociocultural evolution to suggest that there are deeper ways of perceiving the world available to each of us. This turn also explores how we can shift from a world dominated by Traditional and Modern worldviews to one that openly expresses an Integral perspective, and ultimately, a Spiritual perspective. The second turn deals with ethics, or the system of morals that we use individually and collectively to make decisions. This turn examines how our ethics is informed and created by our worldview and how deeply our personal and collective ethics affect the transformation of the world. The last three turns are each about creating a vision of the future and how we can implement it. The third turn focuses on transforming the world in general, providing suggestions for change from an Integral perspective. The fourth turn then explores personal transformation, presenting a series of contemplations and meditations to facilitate personal development toward an Integral worldview. Finally, the fifth turn investigates spiritual transformation, again providing a compliment of meditations to promote the transcendence of our ordinary view of reality for one that sees and embraces the Divine in all things. The recurrent theme of this book is that we desperately need a new more encompassing worldview and an ethics that is based not in religious dogma or philosophical rationalizations, but a direct understanding of the interconnectedness of the world. Given these two prerequisites, of an ever-widening worldview and an ever-deepening ethics, the book then explores how we can begin to imagine a new vision of the world; one that is created in apprehension of its interconnectedness. Because the book is rather large (around 220,000 words) and covers a wide range of subjects, it would be difficult to place the whole manuscript online. Therefore, the excerpts that follow from the first parts of each turn. I suggest beginning with the preface, which describes how I came to write The Chrysalis Age, and the introduction, which explains the book in detail. Alternatively, if you would rather read the whole book instead of selections, you can download the entire manuscript of The Chrysalis Age as a PDF file. You will need Adobe Acrobat reader to read this file. Excerpts
from The Chrysalis Age
Download the complete manuscript of The Chrysalis Age. Unfortunately, The Chrysalis Age is not yet published, so this is the only way to read it. If you like the book and know of someone who would find it interesting, please pass this website along. I'd love to hear what you
think of the book or the excepts. In the future I'd like to add a page
of responses to the book. You can contact
me here. Please note that because of the amount of work to keep the website updated, the PDF version of the book is more up-to-date, and contains fewer errors and typos than then excerpts here on the website. |