Introduction I'm Dick Sutphen and this tape is a studio-recorded, expanded version of a talk I delivered at the World Congress of Professional Hypnotists Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. Although the tape carries a copyright to protect it from unlawful duplication for sale by other companies, in this case, I invite individuals to make copies and give them to friends or anyone in a position to communicate this information. Although I've been interviewed about the subject on many local and regional radio and TV talk shows, large-scale mass communication appears to be blocked, since it could result in suspicion or investigation of the very media presenting it or the sponsors that support the media. Some government agencies do not want this information generally known. Nor do the Born-Again Christian movement, cults, and many human-potential trainings. Everything I will relate only exposes the surface of the problem. I don't know how the misuse of these techniques can be stopped. I don't think it is possible to legislate against that which often cannot be detected; and if those who legislate are using these techniques, there is little hope of affecting laws to govern usage. I do know that the first step to initiate change is to generate interest. In this case, that will probably only result from an underground effort. In talking about this subject, I am talking about my own business. I know it, and I know how effective it can be. I produce hypnosis and subliminal tapes and, in some of my seminars, I use conversion tactics to assist participants to become independent and self-sufficient. But, anytime I use these techniques, I point out that I am using them, and those attending have a choice to participate or not. They also know what the desired result of participation will be. So, to begin, I want to state the most basic of all facts about brainwashing: In the entire history of man, no one has ever been brainwashed and realized, or believed, that he had been brainwashed. Those who have been brainwashed will usually passionately defend their manipulators, claiming they have simply been "shown the light" ...or have been transformed in miraculous ways. For more on the book click here

For eons we've been taught that it's not good to be selfish and that the world is a better place when people are unselfish by being thoughtful, giving and civilized towards each other. Selfishness itself can be understood as an extreme focus on only one's limited self (body, mind, ego, senses) and all matters relating to and of interest or benefit only to one's self, instead of being focused on the unlimited Self (the whole world and all beyond it). As a result we all attempt to be unselfish and we all fool ourselves into believing that we are in fact unselfish to varying degrees. For the average person though, the issue of being unselfish is often just a passing concern, but for anyone genuinely on a path of spiritual growth, this issue is a matter of spiritual life or death. Those on the spiritual path striving to evolve and grow will often pursue various activities such as: * Meditation * Breathing exercises * Reciting or chanting of sacred prayers or mantras * Attending various spiritual retreats * Singing of religious songs * Various types of fasting * Various types of physical spiritual disciplines (hatha yoga, etc) * Visiting various religious figures or * Making pilgrimages to various places, etc, etc And as a result of pursuing these activities 'spiritual aspirants' often develop a very subtle yet real superiority complex, deeply believing that they are in fact better and more highly evolved people than those who do not pursue spiritual disciplines. For example, often you find people who have meditated for 10 or 20 years who feel they are really spiritually evolved and superior to those that do not meditate, and yet if you look at their life, you will find that without exception almost every decision they ever make is primarily centered around benefit only to themselves and their quality of life !! Unfortunately even on the spiritual path many being at heart mainly self centered individuals, get so attached to their meditation or any other spiritual discipline that they get completely caught up in..... * THEIR OWN liberation alone… * THEIR OWN enlightenment alone… * THEIR OWN salvation alone… * THEIR OWN progress alone .... As a result they almost completely forget the rest of the world around them including all the ordinary day to day human beings who are at the atomic level - at the very source substance level - in essence nothing but a bubble of consciousness within the indivisible Infinite ocean of consciousness Itself - which is the true Self of all including the self-centered spiritual aspirant. Because of this unhealthy self-preoccupation with the limited self (body, mind, ego, senses & matters related to the limited personality), so called spiritual aspirants are often not thoughtful for others, not giving to others and not civilized to others. Although they really believe that they are now less selfish due to their 'high minded' pursuits, they fail to see that their inherent selfishness is still there because they ignore the divinity within the rest of the world while they focus on only their own concerns. They are unaware that their ego has fooled them into thinking of only their limited body and personality as the self. Whereas the goal of all spiritual disciplines is to overcome this false illusion and to expand one's consciousness out of the body. The whole purpose of evolution is for our consciousness and awareness of the self to become broader and more inclusive, to ultimately include not only the body and whatever is within it, but more importantly everything outside the body too until the whole Cosmos is seen and felt as none other than one's own Self. It is the destiny of all for their consciousness to ultimately expand outwards and become all inclusive, and as preparation we go through the following patterns. First as children we feel we're the sole center of the universe, we only think of our needs and concerns and body as the self. Later as teens when we date, our romantic partner also becomes part of our feeling of our self, and as a result our perception of our 'self' expands. Later still we may marry and have children of our own to the point that now the self in addition to our body also includes our partner and children too. Through the guise of relationships, the Infinite guides our consciousness and awareness of Self to broader and broader levels. Our family though is provided only as practice, so that gradually and ultimately at some point we may broaden our consciousness to also consider our neighbors as part of our self, then perhaps even one's local community and it's concerns, maybe later the whole country and perhaps later still even the whole world and ultimately the whole Cosmos and all beyond it. The only difference between the average person and the saint is the depth and size of their awareness of their 'self.' For the average person usually they and their families alone are felt as an integral part of their self. However, for the Self realized saints who have seen and experienced that the whole Cosmos is in reality living within the body of one field of indivisible Infinite consciousness which is the real Self of all - for those mystics the whole Cosmos and all beyond it are felt intensely as part of their own Self. And this is why have such deep compassion for the whole world, and truly this is why they alone have the equal eye for all. The whole purpose of the spiritual path is for one's consciousness to move out into the world, to reach out, to expand, to worship the Infinite also through the form of some service in some manner to the world - which is the none other than the Infinite indivisible consciousness merely appearing as so many other forms. As far as spiritual progress, if one's consciousness remains contracted and fixated only on the small body and small circle around it, that is actually in reality nothing but spiritual regression. For genuine real spiritual growth, one's consciousness must move out and expand, until everything and everyone is seen as part of one's own indivisible Self. However in many cases those on the spiritual path often become so preoccupied with only their progress and liberation that their whole consciousness remains dogmatically fixated only upon themselves and perhaps a few family members and close friends, going in completely the opposite direction of true spiritual progress which is again all about expanding one's consciousness of the self. The harsh reality as a result is that their original selfishness is still there, only it's more subtle and therefore even more dangerous. The only difference between a spiritual devotee and the average person who are both not thoughtful, giving or civilized to the humanity around them is only that the so called spiritual have merely 'spiritualized' their selfishness. In truth this can also be considered as adolescent, immature and small minded spirituality - whereas only when the consciousness expands outwards into the world in some beneficial form can one truly be embodying adult, mature and high minded spirituality. The path of true spiritual growth and evolution leads one to replace preoccupation with the small and limited self (mind, body, ego, senses, small circle of relatives & friends) with a preoccupation and focus instead upon our unlimited Self which as that infinite ocean of indivisible consciousness includes the whole Cosmos and all forms within and beyond it. In reality then ...... 'SPIRITUALIZED' SELFISHNESS IS EVERY BIT AS SELFISH, PETTY AND SELF-DEFEATING AS THE REGULAR SELFISHNESS OF THE SO CALLED MATERIALISTIC WORLD The supreme reality is that the Infinite indivisible consciousness alone is all that exists as the one Self in all beings. In light of this it is the highest truth that to be thoughtful, giving and civilized to the whole world and all the people within it is in fact a form of worship of and service to the Infinite - which alone is one's own Self and the real Self of all (just as one ocean alone is the sole reality within and the true Self of all surface waves). As a result…. To not give to others is in truth to not be giving to one's own unlimited Self To not be thoughtful for others is in fact to not be thoughtful to one's own unlimited Self To not be civilized to others is in truth to not be civilized to one's own unlimited Self If this subtle yet supreme truth was grasped to the point that it lived within one's heart rather than the impermanent and ever-changing mind - who would not be giving, thoughtful and civilized to the best of their ability to their own Self ever-present in ALL people in the ordinary day to day world? Again, for spiritual progress, one's consciousness must move out, it must broaden and must expand and reach out and be of some benefit to the whole world in some manner until the whole of existence is seen and felt as none other than one's own Self. Again, due to the indivisibility of the Infinite ocean of consciousness (the Self), thoughtfulness, civility and a sense of giving to others is really a form of worship of and service to the Infinite - because the outside world is in truth nothing but the very same unlimited Infinite consciousness in so many other forms that are in truth always very much an interconnected part of our own unlimited Self. In the big picture and final analysis then… TO BE TRULY SPIRITUAL, TO TRULY EVOLVE - ONE MUST REACH OUT AND BE GOOD TO THE WORLD by P. Singh © Copyright Pardeep Singh 1998.

If you have an interest in Druidism, Con Connor who I met though various networks runs it, he is very real, very grounded and a man of integrity, I can honestly say I have never met anyone like him. I have much respect for the man and what he does Ireland's Druidschool

Gaelic Druidism is the oldest spiritual tradition of Pagan Celtic Ireland. It roots lie in the oldest temples in this island where Druids still honour the Sun and Moon cycles. Many temples predate the Gaels where they honoured the Old Gods. The Gaelic Druid tradition works with the Three Realms of Sky, Sea and Land - with Fire Ceremonies and Sweat Houses for transformation. Principles such as Truth, Integrity and Respect, are central to Druidism. Our Groves are when a gathering of like-minded people meet together in Circle to share and celebrate and heal. Our Pagan Festivals are the Eightfolds of the Sun Year and the Full and Dark Moons. Our temples are all the sacred sites, holy wells and ceremonial enclosures on this Island. Everything, every place and everyone is sacred because all is filled with the spirit of creation. Gaelic Druids seek to preserve and protect our unique Gaelic Culture and Celtic Heritage - our native language, music, song and dance, traditional story telling, crafts and skills, and to nurture interest in and respect for trees and animals in the natural world. We must love life, honour the gods, do no evil, practice bravery, seek wisdom and as a Gaelic Druid walking our path we must always have tolerance for others. Gaelic Druidism is Pagan Earth Based Spirituality and not a religion or church and Gaelic Druids are not priests. There is no worship or hierarchy or book of dogma in this ancient spiritual tradition of the Pagan Gaelic Druid. Men and Women practice equally and many teach and offer healing and guidance. Some Gaelic Druids hold ceremony to honour the 'rights of passage' with a simple blessing and an attendant air of dignity. Some are Solitaries. Celtic Druidism shows you how to make your own connection to the eternally creative consciousness of the God and Goddess. A Gaelic Druid walks beside a Celtic stream that joins the Galactic river that flows into the Great Ocean of the Cosmic Tradition. This path is the spiritual alchemy of self-transformation. Love, light and laughter. Con 10feb07

If you were to walk a path beside a stream that leads to a river that feeds a great ocean - then let that Path be Gaelic, let the stream be Celtic and let the river be Galactic and let the ocean be the Cosmic Tradition and may you enjoy every step of the dance of life. As you follow your chosen path keep your senses open to the other paths around you and where these other paths complement and enrich your own path use them too, but always maintaining clear sight of the path you have chosen. This world has become very small; we must preserve and protect our unique Gaelic Culture and Celtic Heritage as our rich inheritance. We must love life, honour the gods, do no evil, practice bravery, seek wisdom and as we walk our path we must always have tolerance for others. You must always remain vigilant, be prepared to face your demons and discover your own truth. When you do this: you uphold Truth in a world of dishonesty and trickery. There is a lot more to the Gaelic Path such as our language, music, song and dance, traditional story telling and crafts etc but the greatest beauty of it all is the individual essence that you can bring into flower as you openly express your freedom to be happy as a Gaelic Pagan.

Incipient: Of, relating to, or occurring at the start of something; beginning, inceptive, initial, initiatory, introductory, leadoff Posthuman: Persons of unprecedented physical, intellectual, and pyschological capacity, self-programming, self-constituting, potentially immortal individuals for more info see Incipient Posthuman

THE HOW AND WHY OF THE MAYAN END DATE IN 2012 A.D. by John Major Jenkins May 23rd, 1994 Originally published in the Dec-Jan '95 issue of Mountain Astrologer. Why did the ancient Mayan or pre-Maya choose December 21st, 2012 A.D., as the end of their Long Count calendar? This article will cover some recent research. Scholars have known for decades that the 13-baktun cycle of the Mayan "Long Count" system of timekeeping was set to end precisely on a winter solstice, and that this system was put in place some 2300 years ago. This amazing fact - that ancient Mesoameri- can skywatchers were able to pinpoint a winter solstice far off into the future - has not been dealt with by Mayanists. And why did they choose the year 2012? One immediately gets the impression that there is a very strange mystery to be confronted here. I will be building upon a clue to this mystery reported by epigrapher Linda Schele in Maya Cosmos (1994). This article is the natural culmination of the research relating to the Mayan Long Count and the precession of the equinoxes that I explored in my recent book Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies (Borderlands Science and Research Foundation, 1994). for more on this article click here

For more info and links from the text below click on Smart Mob - Wikipedia Smart mob From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The smart mob is a concept introduced by Howard Rheingold in his book Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. According to Rheingold, smart mobs are an indication of the evolving communication technologies that will empower the people. These growing technologies include the Internet, computer-mediated communication such as Internet Relay Chat, and wireless devices like mobile phones and personal digital assistants. Methodologies like peer to peer networks and pervasive computing are also changing the ways in which people organize and share information. A smart mob is a group that, contrary to the usual connotations of a mob, behaves intelligently or efficiently because of its exponentially increasing network links. This network enables people to connect to information and others, allowing a form of social coordination. Parallels are made to, for instance, slime moulds. One reason for the rise of smart mobs is the ever decreasing cost of increasingly powerful microprocessors which have allowed them to permeate throughout society—they’re embedded in everything from boxes to clothes. Depending on how the technology is used, smart mobs may be beneficial or detrimental to society. Rheingold warns of the use of the technology by some to create a society similar to the one seen in George Orwell's 1984 or by terrorists for their malicious purposes. Examples Essentially, the smart mob is a practical implementation of collective intelligence. According to Rheingold, examples of smart mobs are the street protests organized by the anti-globalization movement. Other examples include: * Smart mobs who arrange the meet up over the Internet and show up at a retailer at a specific time and use their number to negotiate a discount with the retailer.[1] * eBay — a collection of users who are empowered by the Internet and eBay to buy and sell and maintain the quality control over all transactions through the rating system. People can leave positive, negative or neutral feedback, depending on how they felt about their transaction with that seller. * Text messages that were sent in the Philippines, which are thought to be partly responsible for the demonstration that ousted former President Joseph Estrada. Examples of such a text message read "Wear black to mourn the death of democracy," "Expect there to be rumbles" and "Go to EDSA." * The 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks (11M), and the reaction from the people against the government in the Spanish elections of 14 March 2004. * The 2005 civil unrest in France exhibited smart mobs - the French national police spokesman, Patrick Hamon, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying that youths in individual neighborhoods were communicating by cellphone text messages, online blogs, and/or email — arranging meetings and warning each other about police operations. Smartmobs have begun to have an impact in current events, as mobile phones and text messages have empowered everyone from revolutionaries in Malaysia to individuals protesting the second Iraq war. Individuals who have divergent worldviews and methods have been able to coordinate short term goals thanks to these technologies. The comic book Global Frequency, written by Warren Ellis describes a covert, non-governmental intelligence organizat

An obscure Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, set down the philosophical framework for planetary, Net-based consciousness 50 years ago. By Jennifer Cobb Kreisberg He has inspired Al Gore and Mario Cuomo. Cyberbard John Perry Barlow finds him richly prescient. Nobel laureate Christian de Duve claims his vision helps us find meaning in the cosmos. Even Marshall McLuhan cited his "lyrical testimony" when formulating his emerging global-village vision. Whom is this eclectic group celebrating? An obscure Jesuit priest and paleontologist named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whose quirky philosophy points, oddly, right into cyberspace. Teilhard de Chardin finds allies among those searching for grains of spiritual truth in a secular universe. As Mario Cuomo put it, "Teilhard made negativism a sin. He taught us how the whole universe - even pain and imperfection - is sacred." Marshall McLuhan turned to Teilhard as a source of divine insight in The Gutenberg Galaxy, his classic analysis of Western culture's descent into a profane world. Al Gore, in his book Earth in the Balance, argues that Teilhard helps us understand the importance of faith in the future. "Armed with such faith," Gore writes, "we might find it possible to resanctify the earth, identify it as God's creation, and accept our responsibility to protect and defend it." From the '20s to the '50s, Teilhard de Chardin drafted a series of poetic works about evolution that has reemerged as a foundation for new evolutionary theories. In particular, Teilhard and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Vernadsky inspired the renegade Gaia hypothesis (later set forth by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis): the global ecosystem is a superorganism with a whole much greater than the sum of its parts. This vision is clearly theological - suddenly everything, from rocks to people, takes on a holistic importance. As a Jesuit, Teilhard felt this deeply, and a handful of cyberphilosophers are now mining this ideological source as they search for the deeper implications of the Net. As Barlow says, "Teilhard's work is about creating a consciousness so profound it will make good company for God itself." Teilhard imagined a stage of evolution characterized by a complex membrane of information enveloping the globe and fueled by human consciousness. It sounds a little off-the-wall, until you think about the Net, that vast electronic web encircling the Earth, running point to point through a nervelike constellation of wires. We live in an intertwined world of telephone lines, wireless satellite-based transmissions, and dedicated computer circuits that allow us to travel electronically from Des Moines to Delhi in the blink of an eye. Teilhard saw the Net coming more than half a century before it arrived. He believed this vast thinking membrane would ultimately coalesce into "the living unity of a single tissue" containing our collective thoughts and experiences. In his magnum opus, The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard wrote, "Is this not like some great body which is being born - with its limbs, its nervous system, its perceptive organs, its memory - the body in fact of that great living Thing which had to come to fulfill the ambitions aroused in the reflective being by the newly acquired consciousness?" "What Teilhard was saying here can easily be summed up in a few words," says John Perry Barlow. "The point of all evolution up to this stage is the creation of a collective organism of Mind." Teilhard's philosophy of evolution was born out of his duality as both a Jesuit father ordained in 1911 and a paleontologist whose career began in the early 1920s. While conducting research in the Egyptian desert, Teilhard was scratching around for the remains of ancient creatures when he turned over a stone, dusted it off, and suddenly realized that everything around him was beautifully connected in one vast, pulsating web of divine life. Teilhard soon developed a philosophy that married the science of the material world with the sacred forces of the Catholic Church. Neither the Catholic Church nor the scientific academy, however, agreed. Teilhard's premise, that rocks possessed a divine force, was seen as flaky by scientists and outright heretical by the church. Teilhard's writings were scorned by peers in both camps. Throughout the '40s and '50s, the Catholic Church was on the verge of excommunicating Teilhard. But the philosopher was committed to his perspective, refusing to stop writing or to leave the Church. As his problems with the Church escalated, Teilhard became something of a cause celebre within his small circle in Europe. The Church responded by forbidding him to publish and posting him to China, where he lived in a state of semi-exile, trekking through the Gobi desert and developing his philosophy in isolation. (His paleontological studies continued to circulate and was highly regarded.) The rest of his work was not published until after his death on Easter Sunday, 1955, when it caused a small stir in the theological world; it was read widely for only a short time. In the postmodern climate of today's theology, Teilhard is once again out of favor among theologists, evolutionary biologists, and scientists, who view his work with derision. "Teilhard de Chardin gets too little credit for the quality of his insights," says Ralph Abraham, one of the founders of chaos theory and co-author of The Web Empowerment Book, a World Wide Web primer. "He was successfully deprived of his influence by the popes." But what were the popes so afraid of? The answer's simple: evolution. The concept of evolution was a central pillar, both intellectual and spiritual, for Teilhard's life. During his early career, before science had strong evidence for the existence of DNA, the theory of evolution was not widely accepted. Yet, Teilhard gravitated toward it, sensing that the theory would bridge his love of rocks and of God. He would later describe evolution as the "general condition to which all other theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow." The meaning of evolution was as hotly debated in Teilhard's day as it is now. Some argued in the strictest Darwinian terms that evolution's primary mechanism is necessity - "survival of the fittest." Other evolutionists followed in the footsteps of Jacques Monod, the groundbreaking French biologist, who argued for a mixture of random chance and necessity. Teilhard took Monod one step further, saying that evolution was guided chance and necessity. In conclusion, this brought Teilhard to the heart of his dual heresy - if evolution is being led, what is doing the leading? And where is it going? By the '40s, the idea of species evolution was no longer controversial in scientific circles. But evolution was, and still is, a radical idea in religious spheres. Every Catholic schoolchild is taught that God is immutable. And every young science student knows how little God has to do with the emergence of humanity from the evolutionary ooze. Was Teilhard implying that God evolves? Not exactly. Teilhard's idea was more subtle, and useful for examining the implications of the fast, loose, out-of-control world we now call cyberspace. Teilhard felt that the spark of divine life he experienced in the Egyptian desert was a force present throughout the evolutionary process, guiding and shaping it every bit as much as the material forces described by physical science. Teilhard would later codify this force into two distinct, fundamental types of energy - "radial" and "tangential." Radial energy was the energy of Newtonian physics. This energy obeyed mechanistic laws, such as cause and effect, and could be quantified. Teilhard called radial energy the energy of "without." Tangential energy, on the other hand, was the energy of "within," in other words, the divine spark. Teilhard described three types of tangential energy. In inanimate objects, he called it "pre-life." In beings that are not self-reflective, he called it "life." And in humans, he called it "consciousness." As Teilhard began to observe the world described by science, he noticed that in certain things, such as rocks, the radial energy was dominant, while the tangential energy was barely visible. Rocks, therefore, are best described by the laws that rule radial energy - physics. But in animals, in which tangential energy, or life, is present, the laws of physics are only a partial explanation. Teilhard concluded that where radial energy was dominant, the evolutionary process would be characterized by the traditional scientific laws of necessity and chance. But in those organisms in which the tangential energy was significant, the forces of life and consciousness would lead the laws of chance and natural selection. Teilhard then moved this insight forward. As the balance of tangential energy in any given entity grew larger, he noticed that it developed naturally in the direction of consciousness. An increase in consciousness was accompanied by an increase in the overall complexity of the organism. Teilhard called this the "law of complexity consciousness," which stated that increasing complexity is accompanied by increased consciousness. Teilhard wrote, "The living world is constituted by consciousness clothed in flesh and bone." He argued that the primary vehicle for increasing complexity consciousness among living organisms was the nervous system. The informational wiring of a being, he argued - whether of neurons or electronics - gives birth to consciousness. As the diversification of nervous connections increases, evolution is led toward greater consciousness. As Abraham points out, Teilhard's complexity-consciousness law is the same as what we now think of as the neural net. "We now know from neural-net technology that when there are more connections between points in a system, and there is greater strength between these connections, there will be sudden leaps in intelligence, where intelligence is defined as success rate in performing a task." If one accepts this power of connections, then the planetary neural-network of the Internet is fertile soil for the emergence of a global intelligence. Teilhard went on to argue that there have been three major phases in the evolutionary process. The first significant phase started when life was born from the development of the biosphere. The second began at the end of the Tertiary period, when humans emerged along with self-reflective thinking. And once thinking humans began communicating around the world, along came the third phase. This was Teilhard's "thinking layer" of the biosphere, called the noosphere (from the Greek noo, for mind). Though small and scattered at first, the noosphere has continued to grow over time, particularly during the age of electronics. Teilhard described the noosphere on Earth as a crystallization: "A glow rippled outward from the first spark of conscious reflection. The point of ignition grows larger. The fire spreads in ever-widening circles, he wrote, "till finally the whole planet is covered with incandescence." His picture of the noosphere as a thinking membrane covering the planet was almost biological - it was a globe clothing itself with a brain. Teilhard wrote that the noosphere "results from the combined action of two curvatures - the roundness of the earth and the cosmic convergence of the mind." Marshall McLuhan was drawn to the concept of the noosphere. Teilhard's description of this electromagnetic phenomenon became a touchstone for McLuhan's theories of the global "electric culture." In The Gutenberg Galaxy, McLuhan quotes Teilhard: "What, in fact, do we see happening in the modern paroxysm? It has been stated over and over again. Through the discovery yesterday of the railway, the motor car and the aeroplane, the physical influence of each man, formerly restricted to a few miles, now extends to hundreds of leagues or more. Better still: thanks to the prodigious biological event represented by the discovery of electromagnetic waves, each individual finds himself henceforth (actively and passively) simultaneously present, over land and sea, in every corner of the earth." This simultaneous quality, McLuhan believed, "provides our lives again with a tribal base." But this time around, the tribe comes together on a global playing field. We stand today at the beginning of Teilhard's third phase of evolution, the moment at which the world is covered with the incandescent glow of consciousness. Teilhard characterized this as "evolution becoming conscious of itself." The Net, that great collectivizer of minds, is the primary tool for our emergence into the third phase. "With cyberspace, we are, in effect, hard-wiring the collective consciousness," says Barlow. In introducing the idea of tangential energy - the energy of consciousness - as a primary factor in evolution, Teilhard opened the door for a new level of meaning. The history of the world, he wrote, "would thus appear no longer as an interlocking succession of structural types replacing one another, but as an ascension of inner sap spreading out in a forest of consolidated instincts." This could very well be what the Net is doing - consolidating our instincts - so that consciousness can continue to develop. Artificial life fans take this idea one step further. They see virtual life - Teilhard's tangential energy - trying to break out of organic life into new forms. The founder of artificial life research, Chris Langton, told reporter Steven Levy that "there are these other forms of life, artificial ones, that want to come into existence. And they are using me as a vehicle for reproduction and for implementation." According to Teilhard, this invisible virtual life has been with us since the beginning. We now have a vehicle - the Net - that enables us to see virtual life for what it really is. It's not the 0s and the 1s - those are visible. Virtual life is, as Barlow argues, "the space between the 0s and the 1s. It's the pattern of information that is relevant. Invisible life is composed of those life forms emerging in the space between things. Cyberspace helps us see these forms by taking us past the mechanical barrier." The global mind may be more potential than actual in 1995. As de Duve points out, if the noosphere seems laughable now, imagine how today's technology would look to our predecessors. He writes, "A merger of minds into Teilhard's noosphere remains no more than a poetic image at the present time. But so would the notion of satellite television to Lucy [an early Australopithecus hominoid] if she had been capable of conceiving this possibility. Who can tell what the future has in store?" Teilhard warned that evolution is a slow process, beset with setbacks and reversals. We should not question the forces that are connecting our neurons, he argued; rather we should expand our own awareness and embrace our new complexity. Teilhard would readily see the Net as a necessary step along this path. At this point, the earth needs humanity to build the noosphere. As we become conscious of our group mind, a new relationship with the earth emerges. When that happens, Teilhard wrote, "we have the beginning of a new age. The earth 'gets a new skin.' Better still, it finds its soul." Jennifer Cobb Kreisberg (jkreisberg@igc.apc.org) has an MA in theology and studies the sacred dimension of technology. Copyright © 1995 Wired Ventures Ltd. Compilation copyright © 1995 HotWired Ventures LL

Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. It is a subject of much research in philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. Some philosophers divide consciousness into phenomenal consciousness, which is experience itself, and access consciousness, which is the processing of the things in experience [1] Phenomenal consciousness is the state of being conscious, such as when we say "I am conscious." Access consciousness is being conscious of something in relation to abstract concepts, such as when we say "I am conscious of these words." Various forms of access consciousness include awareness, self-awareness, conscience, stream of consciousness, Husserl's phenomenology, and intentionality. The concept of phenomenal consciousness is closely related to the concept of qualia. An understanding of necessary preconditions for consciousness in the human brain may allow us to address important ethical questions. For instance, to what extent are non-human animals conscious? At what point in fetal development does consciousness begin? Can machines achieve conscious states? [2] Are todays autonome and intelligent machines already conscious? These issues are of great interest to those concerned with the ethical treatment of other beings, be they animals, fetuses, or, in the future, machines. [3] In common parlance, consciousness denotes being awake and responsive to one's environment; this contrasts with being asleep or being in a coma. The term 'level of consciousness' denotes how consciousness seems to vary during anesthesia and during various states of mind, such as day dreaming, lucid dreaming, imagining, etc. Nonconsciousness exists when consciousness is not present. There is speculation, mostly among religious groups, that consciousness may exist after death or before birth. for more info to here is link to the wikipedia where there are lots of other links Consciousness - Wikipedia