THE NEXT STAGE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION

Peter Russell: The central piece is really that // we’re at an incredibly important time in history, probably the most important time that humanity has ever faced that, we’re in the middle of a huge crisis, huge planetary crisis with many different forms, and that really from an evolutionary perspective, this is a challenge to move on to a new level of organization. But we’ve reached the stage where the sort of individual way of acting is no longer appropriate. We’ve been acting as individual units on this planet, and that’s no longer appropriate. What we need to do is begin to come together as a cooperative society, as one single system, and that that is the next evolutionary step, that we think of evolution as people growing bigger brains or whatever, but the next evolutionary step on this planet is in fact society beginning to come together and work as a proper functioning system, and I think at the moment we’re in the transition phase to that happening.

If you look back over the whole span of evolution, you see that there seems to be a pattern which is put very simply, units coming together to form more complex wholes, those wholes coming together to form more complex systems still. So you see elementary particles, electrons, protons coming together from atoms, atoms come together to form molecules, molecules get more and more complex, things like DNA, then come together to form living cells which become more complex over time until you get multicellular organisms, simple ones like sponges in building all the way up to human beings. And so you see the whole pattern of evolution has been one of things coming together, forming more complex systems. And that’s a pattern which is held throughout evolution, and there’s no reason to suppose it’s going to stop now, which means the next logical stage in evolution would be human beings coming together to form a larger system. That doesn’t mean coming together biologically, doesn’t mean everybody standing on Manhattan as one sort of massive people. It means linking in terms of minds, coming together that way, because with human beings we have developed the ability to process and pass on information both in time through books, videos, etcetera. And across space, through telephones, we can communicate. So what I see happening on the planet is a linking together of humanity into a system. And I think there’s a lot of parallels between the way human beings are linking together in this planetary system, and the way individual cells come together to form organisms like the first multicellular organisms in the sea. There’s is a lot of parallels, and I think we’re going through a similar process, the cells started linking together, beginning to work together. So we’re seeing the same thing happening at the level of society.

Peter Russell: I think the purpose of the universe is really just to explore all the manifestations it can produce. It’s like the universe is having fun with itself and we’re part of that process. And its purpose is to just build more and more complex systems., and out of that emerges richer and richer qualities. First of all, out of putting energy together into complex systems, matter emerged. Then put matter together into complex systems, life emerged. We put living cells together, brain cells together, into a very complex system—the human brain and human consciousness, our particular form of consciousness emerged. I think the next stage is consciousness is coming together, minds coming together, and out of that play a new level of evolution is going to emerge something completely new to us, which will be something to do with the whole planet. That’s why I called the book The Global Brain. And it’s like the global brain of the planet is beginning to come together, and when that happens, there’s going to be something which the nearest we can talk about is some sort of global consciousness, it’s the consciousness of the whole of society, the single being will begin to emerge, and that’s like the next level of creation in this big play. 

There seems to be a pattern in evolution, that it takes a certain degree of complexity to get the next stage emerging. There’s a certain degree of complexity in atoms before life will emerge. You need about 10 billion atoms to get life. You need about 10 billion living cells to get a human brain. You need about 10 billion consciousness on the planet to get a planetary system going like we have. Turns out, there’s about 10 billion living planets in our galaxy and there’s about 10 billion galaxies in the universe. So it’s almost as if the stage is set up for this process to go on—from planetary being to galactic being, to universal being. And so you could say the evolution of life is just a middle stage in evolution. We’ve gone through the evolution of energy, the evolution of matter. We’ve had the evolution of life, which is what we normally talk about as evolution, it’s just a tiny section, that series. I think we’re now moving on to the evolution of planetary systems, evolution of consciousness, the evolution of planetary systems, so the next stage, if you like, we’re now talking about billions of years into the future, would be planets beginning to communicate. I think the whole thing about communication between extraterrestrials will not happen individual to individual. It will not be you or I communicating with green men who land in flying saucers. It’s gonna be planetary systems communicating with other planets. And this is already beginning to happen in a sense. If you look at what’s happened in the last 20 years, if you’ve been actually looking out in space watching our solar system, suppose you use some observer which is monitoring this solar system, what was happening, it’s been completely okay for millions of years, life seems to be involving, and suddenly you notice things start whirling out from this planet, spinning round it and other things start going off around the moon and coming back and they start going off to Venus and Mars. There’s all these things going out. There’s now about 12,000 bits of things out there which we put out there. Of which 1100 are communicating information back in. There’s 1100 nerve fibers if you like, sending information back into the planet. So I see the whole step into space is like our planet, (is) beginning to explore her immediate environment. And if humanity is the nervous system of the planet, this is like the first tendrils, the first nerves growing out into the environment. And what is important about this, it’s a planetary phenomenon. It is not happening to individuals. Now we’ve all seen recently beautiful photographs of Jupiter, Saturn—those photographs are the property of humanity. Nobody’s been out there to take them. No one individual saw it. In the past, experience has been one individual going out there, experiencing something, like going out exploring the desert, coming back and telling others what it was like. This is humanity on mass exploring. It takes a huge human effort to get out there. And I, you, a plumber in Paris a NASA technician are all equally privileged as observers. So it’s really, I see, this is the next stage already beginning. 

As the global brain comes together, it is sending out its first sensory fibers. So it’s like we are the planets sensors as she begins to look at her unique environment. And maybe for the next few thousand years, she’ll just be sensing the immediate environment of the solar system. But then she’ll start sensing further and further and start saying hello to other planetary beings out there who are doing the same thing and then we’ll see the same process of integration, connectivity beginning to happen at a galactic level. 
The book, The Global Brain, I had to write it. I didn’t want to write it. It took five years, and I wanted to throw it away on the fire because I was fed up with writing it and I knew I couldn’t stop—because I’d have to start again later. And now it’s finished, I can see what it was about. I’ve had a long background in science, that sort of training at Cambridge, and what that’s allowed me to do is actually present a vision which I think is deep within many people’s hearts. Almost everybody, I think, has a deep vision of how humanity could be, of how we should be functioning as a system, cooperatively, in peace and harmony with each other, constructively moving on. And what I seem to be able to do, I have the gift of putting that in a fairly reasonable way, which speaks to what people are feeling and gives them permission to move on and do it themselves. So that’s why I say probably a catalyzing role that, I see myself talking with us like this, or writing, or at a conference is to inspire and empower other people to take that vision which they have within them and move on with it. Because I think the most important thing at the present time is that we need to act upon that inner vision, which we know deep inside ourselves, but we don’t come out with this enough. And fascinating thing is, I spend a lot of my time working in corporations, and that’s how I sort of learned my living. And we have this sort of typical image of a businessman, you know, the sort of the capitalist pig who’s ruining the country, that sort of thing.

My experience is that is not the case at all. Maybe the corporations or there’s something wrong with the system. Buy you take individuals, I would say nine out of ten senior executives have very, very much the same concerns as me, you, anybody. And yet they’re trapped in a system where they can’t talk about it. After they got to know me for a couple of days, they realized that somebody here is a bit different from the average consultant, and they start sidling up to me over dinner at the bar, saying have you read a book by Marilyn Ferguson recently? (The Aquarian Conspiracy). Very interesting, isn’t it? I’ve been thinking about this for years, you know, but I don’t think it was right. I think what people like Marilyn are doing, myself are doing, is actually saying yes you are right, follow this through. There’s something here worth exploring. We may not have got the actual structure right, but in this vision, there’s something worth exploring—that we can do something about the state of the world and it’s up to all of us as individuals, and that it’s up to how we are. There’s a lot you can do out there, but since we have all the technology we need, we don’t need more technology to save the world. What we need is a shift in values, the shift in consciousness in the individuals to allow us to use the technology to the right ends and to give us the willingness and motivation to do it. 

You can almost have, in theory, a huge institution in which everybody is pro-life, like pro the planet. They’re very concerned, and yet they often end up selling themselves out for the institution, where that needs to go. Now to a certain extent, changing the people institution helps shape the direction of an institution, but that doesn’t seem to be enough always, and I think this is just my hypothesis, that it’s probably going to come from outside pressures on the institution. Institutions, corporations, etcetera, are like animals in themselves, in their own animal game. And as the cells in them change, there’s always gonna be the change from the outside as one institution meets another and meets another. Market pressures are gonna change. I think they’re going to be forced to take on different attitudes because it’s in their own interest. An institution functions out of its own interests. I think its own interest is going to shift. It’s gonna become no longer financially viable for a large institution to go on exploiting resources, say a large corporation. At the moment, it still is financially viable and even though all the individuals may not want to do it, you would have that situation—all the individuals don’t want to do it, but it’s still financially viable for the corporation, so it goes ahead. I think when it stops becoming financially viable and those pressures come on from the outside, and you’ve got the individuals already changed on the inside, then you can move on. 

We are in a state of crisis, and there’s no law which says you come through a crisis. A crisis is a challenge. If we don’t meet the challenge, we’ll probably go down the evolutionary pothole, be rejected as a blind alley which didn’t quite work. But if we do meet the challenge, and the challenge is to me adjusting our consciousness, beginning to work from a more planetary perspective, beginning to see ourselves as part of a larger system and function that way—we have to actually experience ourselves as part of a larger system rather than me just inside here inside my skin. If we can make that sort of shift in consciousness, then I think we have all the ingredients we need to move into a whole new level of evolution within the next 10-15 years. It may even be sooner. We have everything’s ready for it. All that’s needed, is we have to make the shift in our thinking and then we can move into it. So I think the potential is there and I really personally hope we do. 

It’s interesting, as I travel around the world, which I’m doing quite a lot at the moment, I find that underneath, a lot of people are thinking this way. There may be a few people who are standing out and talking about it, writing about it being on television, but underneath almost everybody is beginning to think this way and just more and more just discussing it in all groups. I mean, I have fantastic conversations with English rednecks in the local pub, about what they’re feeling underneath. They’re there with the same concerns. And they say, you know, what we have to do is begin to be more human, communicate with each other and we don’t need to go on shooting people. Fascinating changes are taking place. And what’s also going to happen is people are coming out of the closet. People who thought this way for a number of years have beginning—. This is to be empowered and come out and say what they feel. And I think this is the next stage. Another thing that’s happening more and more, and I think it is beginning to happen, is people suddenly saying I cannot go on feeling this way and not talking about it.

A lovely case recently he was 76-year-old lady I met in San Francisco—very beautiful lady who said, “for years I’ve been concerned about the planet, knowing we really have to do, make some very important changes and start really restructuring who we are.” And she said, “but I always thought it was other people who had to do it. And I suddenly realized that I am one of the other people.” We all have to do it. And I think this is what’s going to happen more and more, as obviously more and more people are doing, is coming out of the closet. So if people have something which they feel passionately inside. I think I just want to say to them, say that more to others, communicated to others, because in doing that you help others to come out with what they feel about inside. And I think this is the next stage of people standing up and saying what they really believe instead of going along with what society says you ought to say. And it’s that trap we’re in. And I think that’s what we have to now move through, is people coming out and saying this is important, whatever it is they feel—this is important and I’m not gonna take it anymore. It’s almost like going back to that film. What was it?

Interviewer: Network

Peter:  Like Network, where people say I’m, it’s crazy, I’m not gonna take it anymore. I don’t have to take what the press gives me. There’s another way of living. Let’s come out and say it. 

Peter Russell: What I would like to see is what I call an inner Manhattan Project. The original Manhattan Project, remember was the development of the atomic bomb, where basically we said we’ve got these little bombs, they’re not big enough, and we think somehow in the whole nuclear equation we can produce a much bigger bomb. And so they put all this money, energy, human resources, scientific resources in developing a bigger bomb. And they did it. I think the crisis we’re now up against is saying we need to work out how to shift consciousness, how to change the inner person. And when the similar situation—. We have the little bits about it. We’ve discovered various techniques, whether it’s meditation, biofeedback. There is processes, therapies which seem to help people be more who they can be, but as yet I don’t think we really have processes which are mass market. What I think is needed right now on the planet, a mass market process which produces enlightenment—to put it simply—which shifts people’s consciousness from a very ego bound state to much more loving, open, integrated state, much more encompassing state would actually feel they’re part of the system because that’s the shift in consciousness. And I think we have the ingredients there. A lot of research has gone on for thousands of years into meditation techniques. A lot of research has gone on the last 1020 years in the West in psychology about how these states of consciousness, what psychologists called peak experiences, how these come about. In there, I think we have the material to come out with something which we can actually—. Right away be in the supermarkets or through television. I don’t know what the form is, but I think in there we have the secrets of really shifting human consciousness. And this to me is the most important thing that’s needed on the planet right now. Because otherwise, if we don’t really shift consciousness, we’re going to end up fowling the process up one way or another. So I think the most important thing that any government could do is to say what we need to do is set up an inner Manhattan Project to investigate how do we help people be more who they truly are. And I think if the same energy resources, finance, scientific research went to that, that would shift society, shift the whole of the planet, and that would take us through into the next evolutionary phase.

Peter Russell: Love is very important in all this. It’s interesting. I go back to the 60s. I think this began in a sense in the 60s, this whole movement. In 1967 The Beatles came out and said all you need is love. I sometimes feel The Beatles, like Lennon, McCartney were channel for something happening in the collective consciousness and they came out with this message at the peak of their career. All you need is love, something which people said the centuries and it’s true that all you need is love. If we could truly love each other as we love ourselves, truly love the planet, love everything on it, we wouldn’t foul the process up. But to say all you need is love is not enough because that doesn’t mean we love. To say we must love each other doesn’t make it happen. I can give people hugs, okay it’s nice, it helps through personal interaction, but doesn’t mean that I really love them. And a lot of people I find always come from a false perspective. They go around talking about love but very locked up in their hearts. So how do we make love? is the question.

To me, you make love out of union. And we talk about it physically, you make love out of a physical union with two people. We need to make love on a grander scale. But love always comes from an experience of unity. So to make love for the whole of society we need to begin to experience our oneness with each other, with everything else. And I think when we experience that oneness, we will find we can do nothing else but love as a result of it. The lack of love we have now is merely a reflection of our lack of experience of our mutual oneness.

The energy of the 60s was a very important energy, which is, I think still there. The 60s were very important time. If you look at what happened, I think particularly the late 60s, it was like a creative flash for society as a whole—very parallel to what happens with the creative flash in the individual. What happens with the individual, is you have a creative flash, something you’re been working for years on something, and then suddenly it comes together, and you see you have a flash of what you can do, how to solve a problem. And you then go into the final phase, which is working it all out, implementing it. And I think if you like, on a much grander scale, society had been dealing with things for a long time, slowly coming together. And the 60s, with this flash that we could—society could begin to work properly—The Beatles saying all we need is love, other reflections like this with the flash, that we could do it. We could all come together and live in peace and harmony. That was the insight. And what we’re now engaged in, is carrying that out. And it’s not as exciting as the flash. It never is. The excitement is with the flash and that’s why the 60s were so exciting. And then through the 70s and now into the 80s, it’s been with the low, the long slow slog of working it out, exploring, how do you do it? How do you get people to be more loving? How do we expand consciousness? How do we start dealing with the peace issue, looking at the ecology, all that’s coming out of the concern—the beginning to make the system work.