Source: Schwartz, S. A. (2020). What would the world be like if the matrix of consciousness were recognized. The Journal of Science and Healing, 16(2), 81-84.
In almost all discussions of the future that I see, hear, or read, the central theme is the coming crisis of climate change, and, I think, that is appropriate. It is going to take a multi-national coordinated effort to preserve civilization. The only modern precedent I can think of is the allied coordination of World War II, although that scale is too small. There is no question that the planet and all the cultures on it are going to undergo dramatic unprecedented change. The only question is: what will that change be like?In this essay I want to envision what the future might become if the worldview of humanity changed. What could life be like if the 4000-year-old Middle Eastern worldview holding that humans have dominion over the earth was abandoned? It is such a deeply inculcated cultural artifact that it is still a factor in the third decade of the 21st century.
It was a view perfectly appropriate to a Middle Bronze Age Middle Eastern farming and small boat fishing culture where having dominion meant being recognized by your community for your husbandry or agriculture, or always catching more fish. Genesis 1:26 states it clearly, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
But this worldview is inappropriate and deadly today at a planetary level. So let us replace it with the worldview that is described by a growing body of research in disciplines from physics, biology, neuroscience, medicine, and parapsychology.
Let’s start by discarding the shibboleth that nonlocal consciousness is somehow impossible. This 16th century remnant of the Council of Trent, which split consciousness from science and produced the cultural affectation of materialism is literally killing us. Materialism is the source of climate change. It is a way of looking at the world based on willfull ignorance that has produced technologies that are literally killing us because they do not recognize the matrix.
Two psychologists, Arthur Reber and James Alcock each of whom has made a long career of denying even the possibility of consciousness being anything other than a psychophysiological manifestation of our body’s neuroanatomy stated it explicitly. As recently as June 2019, they published a paper in American Psychologist presenting the materialist view of nonlocal consciousness research and nonlocal consciousness.
They wrote, “There is no good reason to consider the data produced by parapsychologists to pose a challenge to the well-demonstrated principles of modern science, principles that rule out the existence of psi. It is all an elaborate illusion, an intellectual Potemkin Village… What we find particularly intriguing is that, despite the existential impossibility of psi phenomena and the nearly 150 years of efforts during which there has been, literally, no progress, there are still scientists who continue to embrace the pursuit.”1
That a paper of such astonishing willful ignorance and blatant bias could get through the review process of a major supposedly scientific journal is itself a demonstration of how powerful this ancient world view still is, flying as it does in the face of thousands of research studies published in dozens of journals, ranging from Nature, IEEE, to Explore, as well additional dozens of academic books. In the interest of full-disclosure I have written a number of these papers and book chapters, and books.2,3
Let us instead become Planckians, let us build on the Nobel Laureates who created modern physics, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger. Let us start with what Planck told us in 1931, “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”4
What would the world look like if consciousness became a fundamental consideration in every decision, individual and social? How would we structure our government if it were recognized that we do not have dominion over the earth? Instead, that we are one part of a matrix of consciousness that involves everything on the earth and the earth itself. That is a very different way of looking at the world and, also, on the basis of data, the most accurate view. Adding nonlocal consciousness essentially extends what James Lovelock was saying in The Gaia Hypothesis, which proposes “that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.”5
I wrote a book, The 8 Laws of Change, about social transformation and the function of government, all based on social outcome data, and my take away from that research was the Theorem of Wellbeing.6 The conclusion was inescapable: when governments and the cultures they serve make wellbeing the first priority, the results are more productive, more efficient, easier to implement, nicer to live under, and much cheaper. I cannot find an exception to the theorem. And the essential component to implementing the theorem is that fostering wellbeing must be the first priority. This is not about liberals or conservatives; it is not about political parties. It is neither for nor against capitalism. Like the founding of the United States itself this is about a change in how one views the world. From the perspective that all consciousness is interconnected, and interdependent, wellbeing is the most desirable social outcome. Simply put, the function of the state should be to foster wellbeing from the individual, to the family, the community, and the earth itself, and all the creatures on it, because as I said, it is more productive, more efficient, easier to implement, nicer to live under, and much cheaper. Let’s look at that world through that lense. I cannot cover everything in an essay, and I don’t think it requires covering everything anyway to see the pattern. I have chosen three examples: agriculture, carbon and genetic engineering…
