ON TECHNOLOGY, CO-CREATION AND CHRISTIANITY

CHAPTER 1: TECHNOLOGY

Barbara: I think that our technology is helping us catch up with our consciousness. It is an externalization of that which we, in consciousness and in high mystical experiences, have always known. For example, we’ve always known that we are one body—in mystical experience, all men are members of one body. Now through the externalization of the space program and television you say, hey, it’s true. We’ve always known that this body is going to change. And now through genetic research we are discovering, yes indeed it can be changed. So, I see that the growing edge of technology, when fused with the intentionality of becoming co-creative with God, is part of the tools of co-creation.

I see a continuum of technology, starting with the synthesis of elements and the genetic code is an information technology, photosynthesis is an industrial process of nature. Our mind- body system has a technological aspect, like if you have an operation you put in a new vein or a new little widget somewhere, you know hip, that’s part of you. It’s mechanical no doubt. Alright your thumb is a magnificent technological triumph. Now what we’re doing through the mind is simply making increased instruments, but like a newborn baby we don’t know what they’re for.

Now let’s assume that what they’re for is to help us become co-creative with evolution itself, to restore this earth, to build new worlds in space, to change our bodies. If we used our technology in alignment with the purposes laid down in the New Testament, they would help us build the New Jerusalem. And our current technologies are extremely crude compared to where they’re going, and it is interesting, (Buckminster) Fuller and others have pointed out, the ephemeralization of technology that occurs in nature and in humans, and we start out with these great galumphing objects, and then you end up with the microchip and the laser beam, and the space satellites. And technology is itself is becoming less mechanistic and more bio-psycho neurological. So even the word “technology,” we mustn’t imagine belching steel factories and Cadillac’s as what it’s going to be, any more than the dinosaur is the best that nature has been able to do in bodies.

Another very interesting thing about observing evolution is that aesthetics is inherent in evolution. Everything that endures is beautiful. At the early phases of each form, it’s awkward. The first birds, the first mammals, the first humanoids. And then you notice the tendency to seek out, and finally you get a beautiful form—a cat, a tiger a turtle, a bird. In this analogy we haven’t gotten there yet. Our technology is still ugly. We’re not really creating beautiful environments. We’re new at it. However, if we survive, whatever we create will eventually be beautiful too or it won’t endure, just taking the 15-billion-year trend.

CHAPTER 2: SELF-CENTERED CONSCIOUSNESS

Questioner: You’re saying the whole population will become totally spiritual?

Barbara: What I’m saying is that at the time of that sudden shift you will be affected according to the state of mind you’re in, and that according to evolutionary possibilities what used to be very difficult for you—you’d have to be a saint-like being—becomes easier and easier as more people get it. And when a critical mass of people are experiencing themselves as connected, loving their neighbor as themselves, it becomes accessible to everyone. And here’s an analogy that is fascinating: imagine the dawn of self-consciousness. What was it like for the first one to get up there and know that he wasn’t an animal? It must have been very unstable and uncertain. And maybe they went back into the feeling, forgetting, and then eventually every child born inherits self-consciousness. Self-consciousness from an evolutionary point of view, is an enormous step forward.

Now we have at the early human history, these individuals in let’s call it cosmic consciousness—very few flicker in and out, flicker in and out, more more more more more speed up, shift, it becomes a common inheritance. And the other stage of consciousness may become extinct. Nature extincts species. It is possible that nature will extinct self-centered consciousness. It is not a viable trait at the level of evolution we’re at. If nature doesn’t extinct self-centered consciousness, we will be destroyed.

Questioner: Wasn’t it necessary to begin with?

Barbara: It was very necessary. So instead of criticizing it altogether, we say, in its time it created intellect, individuality, human civilization. Now it must evolve. There’s a very good book called Cosmic Consciousness: The evolution of consciousness by doctor E.M. Buck. And he makes a study of people throughout all of history who have been in the state of cosmic consciousness and relates it to evolution’s tendency to have higher and higher forms of consciousness. And he believes as I do, that eventually it will be the norm. But it isn’t that you and I will suddenly become saints. Because you see, if we have to expect that of ourselves, we probably won’t make it. Yes—

CHAPTER 3: FINDING PURPOSE AND RESPONSIBILITY

Questioner: Sort of a moral question, what we do? I feel sort of like the young man saying, well, I obey all the laws what should I do? And I hear you saying, well probably we should just do what we do and do it as best we can and have a belief in a positive future. Is there more to what ought we do now?

Barbara: Very good question. I’ll tell you the best answer that I’ve come up with, it that I’ve applied to myself. The first thing is I ask myself, am I completely satisfied that I am acting up to my best? Am I doing that which is most creative contribution I can make to the world? If the answer is yes, you’re fine. But if the answer is not quite, there is more that I can do. And the second step is to say what more do I want to do? And I have a set of exercises I call the compass of joy. And I let myself feel myself doing something more, not as some kind of duty or obligation or thing, but as some kind of growth experience. And in my own case, I had five children. I was doing everything I was supposed to do, but I knew there was some more I wanted to do. And I began to ask. And for me the compass of joy kept going to “communicate!” I’m a speaker. When I’m talking like this, I really feel good. I love it.

So, I started to speak a little bit. And then I thought, well I got to meet somebody else because I can’t be in this vacuum of my only person trying to do this. This was back in 1966-67. So, I started, and I was one of the early networkers. Once you’ve identified that more, what you want to do, you find is there anybody else who wants to do that? Or is already doing it. And the beauty of now contrasted to the early 60s is there’s a network of interested people for absolutely everything new that you might think of—in consciousness, in health, in community, in space. And you go find your brother and sisters, who are at the growing edge of their own capacities. And then you go to conferences, and you support each other, and you make friends, and you start bonding, something like you and I have begun to do.

And then you find that networks of different types are interacting, and occasionally you get it a nodal point where lots of different people, all of whom are trying new things are interacting with each other. And that’s when you get the hint of the transformation as being real, because you are buoyed up by the energy of countless others, all of whom as individuals are really nothing. And this phenomenon of networking is massive—millions and millions and millions of people. In fact, Daniel Yankelevich in his book New Rules says he thinks some 80% of the adult American population is experimenting with some greater form of creativity and self-fulfillment. What’s not happening is our mass media is not picking it up. Our mass media is picking up sex and violence and putting us to sleep.

My own step, just one of these signs, is I’ve decided that I want to have a television show in which I will every week put forward ideas of potentials and bring on people who themselves are taking steps to help others who are out there who may never have had the advantage of seeing someone else do it, know they can do it. And also, to give them—it’s a self-help television show idea, to say well if you want to get this book or you can find a local organization or you can do this that and the other. So the answer is find out your creativity, take the risk to do more and meet others doing the same, and your life will lift off. I’ll be fun too.

Questioner: Well in our daily aspirations and everything, do you think that the policy and the law of karma is a more moralistic understanding—

Barbara: Say that again—

Questioner: The law of karma.

Barbara: The law of karma. Do I think it’s a what?

Questioner: It’s a better, more realistic road to take.

Barbara: I don’t know that I fully understand karma, but I’ve come to realize that in my own life that I am responsible for everything that happens to me. I am responsible, not only for my acts but my thoughts. And when I have a thought that creates negativity in me, I know it’s creating negativity out there. And I have, so I’ve accepted the doctrine for myself. I have not been able to go so far as to see someone suffering or see a child born blind and say that’s karma. You know there are people who go that far with it. I can’t. But I must admit that whenever I make a mistake, I know I did it and it’s a wonderful state of being because I no longer feel a victim. I’m responsible. I’m responsible for everything that happens to me. And in that world, even when it seems to come from the outside, I take it as a lesson. I ask why and I learn.

CHAPTER 4: THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH

Questioner: I’m not sure how to phrase this question, but you keep referring to Jesus and to the New Testament. I myself am a Christian but I was wondering do you find the not only the normative but the sole access to Jesus as being through the New Testament, in other words, what is the role of established churches? Many Christian denominations see Christ as being mediated mostly through Christian communities.

Barbara: Well, I see the church, having had in the past—. Well first of all, the church formed because the end did not come in the life of the early disciples. They really thought that when Jesus said he would return he meant next Monday you know. He, they and they gave they didn’t ever expect to form an institution. They put all their belongings in common, and they said repent hurry hurry hurry hurry the Kingdom is coming hurry up! You know? Change your mind right now because you will be judged according to the state you’re in—which is very interesting because I must say I find myself saying exactly the same thing.

But what happened of course, is that the end didn’t come. So, Paul started to write letters, the epistles, to all these little congregations who were waiting for the end to come. But being human they started to have all these other problems you know—sex and money and leadership and jealousy. So we had to say, well do this do this do this. And so, you’ve got the beginnings of the early church, which was persecuted. Then as you know, you got Constantine and the church became institutionalized, which was to some degree a disaster from the point of view of the original impetus of that church. However, regardless of all the institutional problems that have come in the church the thing to me that is so extraordinary, that for almost 2000 years this promise of total transformation was kept—and passed on generation after generation. When you think of what the communion ceremony really says—take, eat this in remembrance of me. You shall do the works that I do. You are to become like me. And through the dark ages and the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and the early science, and then recently people making fun of it all, they kept on saying it.

Now, what I think is happening is that that promise is the greatest promise and the truest promise and it’s starting to happen. Now, the problem with any institution is that when what it’s been preparing for actually starts to happen it may be the last to know. It may be the ones that whoa, whoa, whoa you know, wait a minute. We don’t want it; we really don’t want to see all this change because we are good at giving you the promise. But we don’t know what to do about the reality. And so it’s usually upstart outsiders who come along and say hey you’ve been right all along and then they’re ostracized by the institution like Teilhard de Chardin, and they carry on the great tradition. And institutions disappeared but the promise will not.

Now I think, I hope this isn’t heretical or blasphemous, that the Church of the future will be the Church of the acting out of the promise. And I think what those of us who are attracted to such things as the planetary Pentecost and the acting out of the new potentials need the guidance of the promise to—. We have to be guided by something the church unfortunately is not stepping up front and saying here we’ve got a model to guide us. They are saying it’s not normal to do these things, it’s not natural to do these things. But in fact, the model that the founder of the Christian religion manifested a total transformation. So, what will happen is, Jesus will be used by those who are transforming and my own Christian mission if I could say that I have one, is to point out to people that we have the model of that toward which we must move.

Questioner: What gives you any confidence that your image of Jesus has anything to do with the historical Jesus?

Barbara: I have not been a biblical scholar or—. I just went up to Harvard Divinity School and gave a talk. And I was appalled that they didn’t believe in God. They didn’t believe, really in anything other than the historical phenomenon. And I felt like, you know, a radical believer in the midst of agnosticism. I think historicity is so shallow a view, even though it’s interesting, because the reality of the promise is such that it resonates in your own soul. And if you feel it, it’s there. And if it isn’t, it doesn’t matter what history says about it anyway.

Questioner: Do you have any criteria for being self-critical or anything outside of yourself that you could use to measure against your own judgments?

Barbara: You ask me the best questions! The only thing that I have, or I have two things. One is my own higher voice or meditative experience, which is very hard on me. And I seem to get it a lot from that. And secondly, my peers because they sure give it to you. The only thing you’ve got is your peers in your own higher self.

Questioner: It sounds to me like church.

Barbara: It does—wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there is the church. As far as I’m concerned this is part of the church. Well, thank you all very much. This is most interesting.