Excerpts From:

The Chrysalis Age: A Handbook for Spiritual and Global Transformation in the New Millennium
 

Introduction: Of Birth, Butterflies, and Mapmaking

In its transformation from an Earth-bound leaf eater to a gossamer winged swallowtail, the caterpillar must first go through a transitionary, or chrysalis stage.  From the outside it would appear that this small creature, wrapped in its cocoon, is merely hibernating.  In truth this shape-shifting insect is undergoing an enormous transformation on both a structural and cellular level.  When it emerges from its protective envelope it will have changed from a multi-legged larva into a multicolored butterfly seemly as light as the air it floats upon. 

Our world is currently entering into its own chrysalis stage of transformation.  We are slowly shedding the tight fitting skin of modernity and the vestigial trappings of the traditional world that preceded it for a more integral and complete way of seeing and being in the universe.  As with the metamorphosis within the caterpillar’s cocoon, we can expect this transformation to be radical, extensive, and violent.  It will be a simultaneous transformation of ourselves and our world that will extend over much of the coming century, if not beyond it. 

The notion that the human species is experiencing a significant period of change that is affecting not only its various cultures and societies but also the very Earth we inhabit is not new. Many writers have compared this change to the one that swept through Western Europe in the fifteenth century.  Although the comparison between the Renaissance and the world we are rapidly creating is illuminating, it is not entirely accurate.  The Renaissance was truly a rebirth.  We are not rebirthing some world we have seen before.  We are producing something entirely different, but yet not separate from the world of our past.  The world we are constructing is a result of the world we have made over the last century and which we continue, largely blindly, to fashion each day.  Our world has always been integral, but we are adding layers of connections and levels of complexity to it at an unprecedented rate.  We are immersed in the initial phases of a new age:  a Chrysalis Age, a period of transformation that by the end of this century will leave much of our world unrecognizably different. Our success as a species in coping with this incredible transformation will depend largely upon our ability to recognize how our worldview, our way of understanding the universe, informs and directs the course of human affairs.  By understanding how we can transform our worldviews from the shallow ways of seeing that are indicative of the modern perspective to the deeper ways of knowing that are available to each of us, we will be able to transform the world in a consciously creative manner.  Though we are in a Chrysalis Age, there is no guarantee we will manage a metamorphosis into a global civilization resembling the metaphoric butterfly. Unlike the caterpillar, we cannot afford to rely upon nature’s hand to guide us toward the more perfect form.  Without conscious guidance, personally and collectively, we are just as likely to emerge from the chrysalis a deformed maggot-like creature as a brilliantly tinted monarch. ^[i]   

The Renaissance and the Enlightenment had as an ideal the Renaissance Man; an individual skilled in a number of fields and possessed of a broad base of knowledge.  Our Chrysalis Age requires something similar: an Integral Human.   We are in desperate need of women and men who can obtain a grasp, however loose, of the whole of human existence, from art and literature to science and technology, and from spirituality and psychology to politics and business.  We have allowed our minds to become segmented and compartmentalized so much that we can rarely see more than a glimpse of what is outside our particular box.  It has been suggested that Goethe was the last person to have a real grasp of the whole of his world. Where as Goethe studied and wrote about science, philosophy, art, and literature, in prose, poetry, and drama, we have allowed ourselves to become the necessary evil of our age; specialists.  As my favorite childhood science fiction writer, Robert Heinlein was fond of saying “specialization breeds extinction; diversification breeds success.” This is not to say that we do not need experts.  Experts are vitally important, but as their expertise becomes more and more specific, it often limits their ability to recognize how their specialized knowledge fits into the vast ocean of information that floods us from every corner.  However, if we can learn to emphasize multiple perspectives, and holding the widest viewpoint possible, we can begin to integrate this information into a coherent picture of the world we live in.  Together, as Integral Humans we can coalesce a complete apprehension of the world from the cacophony we are creating, turning it from a wall of noise into a symphony, and by doing so, guide ourselves safely forward into an unsure future.

The time when we could hope to understand the world simply by watching the evening news is long, long past, if it ever existed.  What has really changed about the world is not so much that we can’t understand it with minimal effort, because we never could, but that now a minimal understanding of the world is actively dangerous.  If we do not understand the economics of globalization, how can we hope to have a say in its implementation?  If we do not understand the social, cultural, and political causes of terrorism, how can we hope to defend ourselves from it?  If we don’t understand the science behind genetic engineering, how can we hope to understand the ethical considerations of cloning or stem cell research?  If there was ever a time when we could blindly lead our lives oblivious to the world at large and simply hope that everything would work out for the best, it is long gone.  This is all the more apparent in the wake of the hideous terrorist attacks of September 11^th and the subsequent events that have followed, from a war in Afghanistan to a figurative War on Terrorism hastily copied after the framework of the Cold War and the Drug War.  If we are to have any hope of a future that provides a safe and sustainable world for our great grandchildren, then we must actively engage the world we live in now.  We cannot afford to be ignorant or lazy.  The luxury of these attitudes is not open to us and the toleration or pursuit of them will only lead to our destruction.  This is why an investigation into the forces of collective and personal transformation is so important.  These forces are expressed most openly as globalization and spirituality.

Globalization is a single word that describes the world we are creating; a world of accelerating technology, freely flowing capital, reduced trade barriers, and shifting global power.  It is a word implying transformation of our physical, social, and cultural spheres.  Spirituality is also about transformation, but of the individual.  Specifically it is about transforming the way we perceive the world, shifting our view from one based solely on the self, and our sense of separation, to one that sees the inherent unity of all things.  This is not a New Age spirituality of self-help and ego massage.  While a healthy ego-self is important to mature transcendence, true spirituality is about a direct realization of the Divine, not an amplification of our natural tendency toward self-cherishing.  It is a personal realization in that we experience it individually, but it transcends the individual person by opening us up to the beauty, wonder, and importance of all persons and of the whole of the universe.  It is a spirituality based not in a craving to escape the world, but in a desire to see and be in the world more fully.  It is not based in some new fad or fashion but in the paths and practices that inform and support all of the world’s wisdom traditions.  Its heritage does not emerge out of the psychedelic experimentation of the 1960s, but stretches back more than 2,500 years.  It is a core of spiritual experience that finds its expression in the mystic writings and realizations of all the world’s religious traditions.  Moreover, it is a spirituality that is available to all of us regardless of social or cultural background.  This transformative way of perceiving the world is what we desperately need to counter the narcissistic, close-minded, and materialistic worldviews that dominate the sphere of human affairs today.  It is this vision, this deeper way of perceiving reality, which will help us guide the global transformations that we are engaged in.  Just as globalization transforms the physical structures of the world, real spirituality transforms the deeper structures of the self. 

Alchemy was the metallurgical and metaphysical art of transmutation finding its birth in the Middle Ages and its flowering in the Renaissance.  The physical goal of alchemy was to transform base metals, such as lead, into gold via the creation of the mythical Philosopher’s Stone.  As psychologist Carl Jung was first to point out, alchemy was a study of, and metaphor for, transformation of the self.  In their obscure and arcane texts, alchemists explored the deeper meanings of separation and union throughout the universe, from the dichotomy of the male and female, to the unity of nature and the Divine.  But as the scientific paradigm came to dominate our worldview the metaphysical investigation at the heart of alchemy was lost.  As Jung explained, “With the decline of alchemy the symbolical unity of spirit and matter fell apart, with the result that modern man finds himself uprooted and alienated in a de-souled world.”^[ii] In many ways this book is an effort to provide a new sort of alchemy for our Chrysalis Age.  Like those ancient alchemical texts, it attempts to provide a means of transforming the world and the self by exploring the illusion of separation between person, cosmos, and the Divine.  By providing an integral path toward the transformation of self and world a more complete understanding of both may arise.

It is a daunting task to attempt a deeper more complete understanding of the universe.  Nevertheless it is an endeavor that every single one of us must strive to accomplish if we are to have any prospect of creating a viable future for the generations that follow us.  We can only hope that our grandchildren’s grandchildren will have the pleasure of staring up into the night sky and sensing the magnanimity of the cosmos.  As astronomer Carl Sagan wrote, “I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a moat of dust in the morning sky.”^[iii]  Not only do we need to know the cosmos, we need to know it in all its depth and beauty.   The original Greek word for the universe is kosmos.  Unlike its English translation the original Greek word kosmos implies the whole of existence, at every level of the universe, including the spiritual as well as the physical domains.  It is only by attempting to see and understand the whole of the universe that we can begin to establish a kosmology that will help guide us as we live our lives in this increasingly beautiful and dangerous world.  The pages that follow endeavor to create an outline for just such a kosmology, drawing on the work of numerous philosophers, scientists, artists, and spiritual teachers, foremost among them, the work of integral philosopher Ken Wilber.  It is not complete, and never can be.  No map is the terrain itself, and no kosmoslogy will ever be able to present the full breadth and depth of the universe.  What it can do is provide us with a guide to the paths that will eventually allow us to experience directly for ourselves the fullness and creativity of this awesome kosmos, and ultimately help us design our own creations, social, cultural, and physical, in imitation of its grandeur and divinity. 

This journey in mapmaking begins with a metaphor to represent the terrain.  The Chrysalis Age is structured around the concept of a spiral, which is an ancient symbol implying transformation.  The turns of a spiral relate to the flow of both physical and spiritual energy, suggesting evolution, or physical transformation as the energy flows outward and involution, or spiritual transformation as the energy flows inward.   The spiral that is this book turns inward, signifying spiritual transformation by returning to the same fifteen core aspects of the world that it studies, each time from a different and deeper perspective.  These aspects of the world cover a wide variety of topics chosen to give the broadest possible assessment of the current state of our world as well as a glimpse at the possible directions it may take.  The first of these is the physical world, which explores the world of oceanic, geological, and meteorological forces that support life and our civilizations.  Next is the natural world of life and living things, followed by the human world of societies and cultures.  These are then followed by a look at the clash of cultures created by globalizing forces and the effects on modern society of communications technology in media and the mind.  We then explore the living conditions of humanity in their urban jumble.  After this comes an exploration of globalization in terms of corporate ecology, the global economy and world government.  Then we begin an examination of technology starting with progress vs. development, before looking at computers and robotics, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and the notion of an emerging global brain, or cybiont, from the mesh of interconnected communications that spans the globe.  Finally the fifteenth aspect ponders the notion of spiritual emergence and how it might affect our future.  Each one of these fifteen aspects is investigated from the dominant perspective of each of the five turns of the spiral that is the Chrysalis Age.   

 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 relying 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 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 one.  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.  This vision is in direct opposition to the world we are blindly fashioning in our ignorance.   Globalization is in serious need of guidance and spirituality is the single most important tool for shaping that transformation.  The pages that follow chart the need for conscious transformation of self and world, examining both from a number of depths and perspectives, suggesting the methods and providing the tools to turn this map into a reality. 

Before we can begin with the map itself, we first need to familiarize ourselves with the legend that defines the symbols used to represent the terrain.  In this simple analogy the legend is a brief survey of a number of fields that are inter-related, at least from a kosmological point of view.  These include globalization and spirituality as well as religion, the psychology of personal development, sociocultural stages of development, stages of transpersonal development, the perennial philosophy, paradigm shifts, complexity and systems theory, issues of epistemology, the Great Chain of Being, holons, the spheres of existence, and finally, Ken Wilber’s Four Quadrants of Being.  These subjects are the filters through which the fifteen layers of the world that are the heart of the map are explored.  Each of these topics is introduced before the aspect of the world that it is most related to, highlighting its importance.  For instance, in the first turn, complexity theory, or the study of complex networked systems such as ecologies, is discussed before the chapter on the global economy.   By viewing the global economy as a complex system similar to an ecosystem, we can gain a greater insight into the dynamics necessary to keep it functioning in an optimal manner that benefits all of the world’s citizens. 

Just as the clock altered our conception of time and the compass refined the cartography of the Renaissance, so too will the technology of the Chrysalis Age change and amend our apprehension of the world, improving our ability to represent it.  If we use this technology wisely it can aid us in transforming the way construct our individual and collective maps of reality.  This book is but one map of the kosmos and by no means definitive.  Because the ground to be mapped is expansive, its scale of representation is by necessity large as well.  The book covers a great deal of territory and unfortunately some of its subjects can only be sketched vaguely.   This should serve not to discourage the reader, but rather to encourage them toward their own investigation of the world and the deeper reaches of their inner self.  We are all mapmakers and this map is by its very nature a challenge to all travelers in this Chrysalis Age to create their own maps, shrinking the scale were they can and working together to provide a clearer picture of the ground we cover jointly.  From one mapmaker to another, I hope you enjoy the journey.