Gaia and the Evolution of Consciousness

Gaia theory has developed out of rigorous scientific research and provides an interdisciplinary, holistic approach to understanding the health and life of our planet. The study of Gaia theory raises crucial questions on the role of humans within the planetary ecosystem.

The course has developed out of a collaboration between holistic scientist, Stephan Harding, and philosopher/integral ecologist, Sean Kelly. The intention is to give participants the opportunity to gain a deep understanding of the science underlying Gaia theory and to set this within the context of the evolution of consciousness.

Weeks 1 and 2: Gaia Theory, Stephan Harding

The basis of Gaia theory - that interactions between living beings and their nonliving environment give rise to emergent self-regulation at the level of the Earth itself and that the health and well-being of individual organisms and entire ecosystems contribute to the health of the planet as a whole - involves a profoundly different way of understanding our world from the atomistic approach of most modern science. Stephan will introduce the science underlying Gaia theory using a combination of rational analysis and experiential work, enabling participants both to understand it in their heads and feel it in their hearts.

Weeks 1 and 2: Birth and Transformation of the Planetary Era, Sean Kelly

Sean will place this new way of understanding our earth within the wider context of humanity's shift into the Planetary Era, which began some five hundred years ago with the conquest of the Americas and the Copernican revolution in cosmology. How did the Planetary Era come about, and why was it initiated in the European West? What elements in the evolution of the Western worldview might contribute to the actualization of a sustainable planetary culture? Drawing from a wide range of panoptic or "big-picture" thinkers-from Hegel, Teilhard, Jaspers, and Campbell, to Ken Wilber, Richard Tarnas, and Edgar Morin, among others, Sean will explore such questions while presenting his own synthetic theory of the evolution of consciousness leading to the birth and transformation of the Planetary Era. Beginning with a consideration of the fundamental pattern of world history, he reveals the role of a "Great Code" and the turnings of a tightening spiral in the evolution of the last two thousand years of Western, and now increasingly planetary, consciousness. Along with a vision of the path that has lead to our vexed and complex present, he gives reason to hope that we are on the threshold of a new countercultural resurgence, a new planetary wisdom culture, that might signal the homecoming for which our troubled world so desperately longs.

These presentations and discussions will be complemented by some experiential exercises from the "work that reconnects" that have been developed during Sean's work with Joanna Macy in the last few years. He will also introduce the class to a simple but powerful kind of standing meditation/qigong, adapted from his taiji and yiquan practice, as a way of grounding in, and resonating with, the larger body-mind of Gaia.

Week 2: Science, Mind and Consciousness, Rupert Sheldrake

In the second week, Rupert Sheldrake will join the course on Tuesday and Wednesday to reflect on what new advances in science can tell us about our minds and the nature of the cosmos as a whole. The old idea that nature is nothing but inanimate mechanism is being superseded by the advances of science itself. The cosmos is no longer seen as an eternal machine slowly running out of steam, but is more like a developing organism, with the Big Bang resembling myths of the hatching of the cosmic egg. Rigid determinism has given way to indeterminism in quantum theory, and through chaos theory to the recognition of unpredictability in natural processes at all levels. Evolution has revealed creative processes not only in the realm of life, but in the development of the entire cosmos. The idea that the cosmos was totally knowable has given way to a recognition that the majority of nature, up to 90%, consists of dark matter and dark energy whose nature is completely unknown. It is as if science has recognised the cosmic unconscious.

Mechanistic theories of the mind have proved hopelessly inadequate in consciousness studies, which is now one of the most exciting areas of scientific exploration. Research on unexplained animal and human phenomena suggests that minds extend far beyond brains. And the old idea that nature is governed by eternal laws turns out to have no justification. Nature may well be driven by habits which evolve along with the universe itself. All these changes alter the frontiers of science and open up new possibilities for dialogues between science and spirituality, some of which will be explored during these two days.