James Redfield - God and the Evolving Universe: The Next Step in Personal Evolution

In a world racked by violence and conflict, the authors of two life-changing international bestsellers, The Celestine Prophecy and Golf In The Kingdom , present an important message of hope and vision for the future.

In God And The Evolving Universe , two of the leading co-creators of todays spiritual boom, James Redfield and Michael Murphy, with documentary maker Sylvia Timbers, take us on an unforgettable journey of discovery through the ages to help us see our true potential and take the next step in our personal evolution.

Like the proverbial butterfly that flaps its wings in China and causes a hurricane in New York, it shows how each act of individual improvement and consciousness-raising, even something as simple as lunchtime yoga, is creating a new stage in planetary evolution.

Daily we hear and read about supernormal athletic feats, clairvoyant perception, lives transformed by meditative practices, healing through prayer. Many peoples lives nowadays are marked by improved communication, a will to go beyond ego, and a sense of a growing reconciliation between science and spirituality.

With exercises that readers can use to develop the abilities they are reading about, this bold and exciting work will help you to discover your place in this personal and planetary evolution and set the stage for taking the next step in your spiritual development.

T ODAY WE STAND poised at a threshold in human history. The shock and horror of terrorism continue to haunt us, reminding us of the alienation and hatred that have too often characterized human history. Yet, at the same time, we see reflections of the best in human nature, as people around the world continue to hold a vision of peace and justice as they demonstrate the love and heroism that reflects a greater humanity.

We believe we are on the brink of a new understanding of who we are as human beings, an understanding that includes the depths to which we can plunge when we fail to pursue our greater potentials. In a sense, a new urgency has been declared in our search for self-awareness. During the last four hundred years, science has opened the world to us with discoveries our ancestors could not have imagined. It has revealed the nature of distant galaxies, the structure of subatomic particles, and the evolutionary process that brought our universe from a tiny seed to this immense and still-expanding cosmos.

But the threshold weve now reached involves more than our physical existence. Irresistibly, we are called upon to join our exploration of the evolving universe with an equally daring and disciplined exploration of the inner life. In spite of the negative actions of a few, there has rarely existed a wider interest in mysteries of the soul nor so many experiments in personal transformation.

Such experiments are happening around the world, informed by discoveries in psychology, anthropology, and medical science as well as once-esoteric knowledge from every sacred tradition. They are increasing in number and sophistication today because there now exists more publicly available knowledge about our transformative capacities than at any time in human history. The nature of spirituality and the inner life is coming more clearly into focus, bringing us a vision of human transformation that is unprecedented in its scope and beauty.

Our aim in writing God and the Evolving Universe is twofold. First, we want to add depth to the popular understanding of our human potential by discussing a wide range of capabilities and experiences that are now available to us, all of which can be more readily sustained through disciplined intention and practice. And second, we want to suggest that a widespread actualization of these capacities would herald the dawning of a new evolutionary stepa step as significant as the emergence of life from inorganic matter and the rise of humanity from the first tiny cells, a step that would bless us with spectacular new abilities and levels of experience.

We believe that humankinds exploration of the inner life, in its infancy now, can reveal new frontiers of creativity, antidotes for hatred and alienation, and possibilities for cultural transformation beyond those we presently imagine. As we present this picture of further evolutionary advance, we contend that history is not merely cyclical, but that it is going somewhere and, indeed, that it has been struggling all along toward higher ends.

In Part One we survey the high points of this remarkable journey. We begin with a look at the mystery of how we came to be on this planet in the first place, and at the worlds astonishing evolution from the Big Bang to the appearance of life on Earth to the emergence of humankind. We then briefly chart some of the great turning points of human history that have prepared us for the evolutionary step we can now foresee.

In Part Two we discuss the emergence of extraordinary human capacities, looking not just at how they feel and impact us, but also at ways in which they seem to seek integration with other emergent attributes in a manner that can ultimately lift us to a greater life.

In Part Three we offer a vision of how the cultivation and disciplined maintenance of these aspects of human nature could contribute to the renewal of institutions and culture, to an expanded communion with other levels of existence, and toward the eventual transformation of the body itself.

And in Part Four we suggest specific exercises, which we believe can facilitate personal and social transformation. We include A Guide to the Literature of Transformation, which includes important classic and popular books that have helped set the stage for a new vision of human possibility. We hope that this information will help you explore the extraordinary life that is your birthright.

Come join us as we explore an evolution that has not only brought us to where we are today, but is ongoingand calling us to participate.

J.R ., M.M ., S.T .
Fall 2001

F OR MANY YEARS , a new worldview has been forming intuitively in the hearts and minds of people around the world. Though this emerging picture of our place in the universe has not been fully articulated, it is based on a central perception that we have capacities for a greater life than most of us have realizeda life that seems essentially joined with the evolution of the universe itself. We sense this connection, many believe, because we and the world are unfolding from the same transcendent source and are secretly moved to manifest more and more of our latent divinity.

THE EVIDENCE OF EXPERIENCE

The awakenings that inspire this view of the world, which come to us in many ways, can be enriched by reading various philosophers, scientists, saints, and sages who have opened new perspectives on human nature and the universe. As we shall see, the visions and practices of these pathfinders are available now in great abundance. However, the intuitions and insights that most typically lead us to a sense of our unfulfilled capacities and their relation to the Transcendent come not from books but from direct experience. For many, such openings come during prayer or meditation. For some, they arrive through counseling or other activities designed to help us through difficulty. But just as often they appear when we least expect themat play, at work, or in moments of reverie. But no matter what the moments trigger was, or its hidden roots, our ordinary way of being in the world suddenly blossoms into the extraordinary.