Contents
Cover
About the Author
Also by Gary Zukav
Title Page
Dedication
Preface to The Seat of the Soul 25th Anniversary Edition by Oprah Winfrey
Preface to The Seat of the Soul 25th Anniversary Edition by Dr. Maya Angelou
Foreword to The Seat of the Soul 25th Anniversary Edition
Foreword to the First Edition
INTRODUCTION
1. Evolution
2. Karma
3. Reverence
4. Heart
CREATION
5. Intuition
6. Light
7. Intention I
8. Intention II
RESPONSIBILITY
9. Choice
10. Addiction
11. Relationships
12. Souls
POWER
13. Psychology
14. Illusion
15. Power
16. Trust
Study Guide
Index
Copyright
Spiritual Partnership
Soul to Soul
Self-Empowerment Journal (with Linda Francis)
The Mind of the Soul (with Linda Francis)
Thoughts from the Heart of the Soul (with Linda Francis)
The Heart of the Soul (with Linda Francis)
Soul Stories
Thoughts from the Seat of the Soul
The Seat of the Soul
The Dancing Wu Li Masters
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Epub ISBN: 9781448175062
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Rider, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,
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Rider is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © Gary Zukav 1989
Foreword copyright © Gary Zukav 2014
Preface copyright © Harpo, Inc. 2014
Preface copyright © Maya Angelou 2014
Gary Zukav has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Rider in 1990
This edition first published in the United States by Simon and Schuster in 2014
This edition published in the UK by Rider in 2015
www.eburypublishing.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780712646741
This book is dedicated to my parents, Morris L. Zukav and Lorene Zukav, with love, respect, and gratitude.
I am grateful for the joyful love, continual support, and endless creativity of Linda Francis, my spiritual partner since 1993 and probably long before. I am amazed frequently—through our tendernesses and power struggles—that I not only love her, but I love loving her. This expanded, reenergized, and rededicated Edition carries within it the commitment that we share to creating authentic power and spiritual partnerships and to supporting people around the world to create them. Thank you, Beloved.
by
I FIRST READ The Seat of the Soul in 1989.
As with all books I’m excited about, I had also bought copies for my friends and colleagues so everybody could be reading it at the same time. I happened to be the first to finish, which meant I had no one to discuss the book with. So, I got my hands on the Mount Shasta, California, phone directory and called Gary Zukav.
“Mr. Zukav, hello, my name is Oprah. I just want to talk to you about your book and would love for you to come on my show and share your—”
“What did you say your name was?”
“Oprah.”
“Could you spell that, please,” he said.
I did. “O-p-r-a-h, and the ‘h’ is silent,” I explained. And then I told him that I had a talk show, and had to explain what a talk show was, because Gary had been without a TV for several years. This, of course, made me even more eager to speak with him. I wanted to know how he knew what he knew. The things he’d written resonated so deeply with me, and felt so true, but how did he know for sure?
The Seat of the Soul changed the way I see myself. It changed the way I view the world. It caused a profound shift in the way I conduct all my relationships, business and personal.
The book came to me at the perfect time—at a moment in my life when I was ready for and open to more. More connection. More harmony. More peace. More joy. I could sense that there was more to our existence than day-to-day experiences and the rituals of work and relationships, more to life than our five senses could hold.
The Seat of the Soul put into words what my own soul already knew and had been trying to tell me. It was such an exhilarating awakening to see affirmed in print what I hadn’t discovered the language to articulate myself. When I first read the words “multisensory perception,” I felt as though Gary had touched a nerve. In fact, the book felt like one great multisensory explosion. Everywhere I looked after reading it, I saw and experienced life in a new light.
Gary’s book was one aha moment after another, all steering me in the direction of true north. My favorite insight: “When the personality comes fully to serve the energy of its soul, that is authentic empowerment.”
It’s no big secret that I have a big personality. I’ve been using it to my advantage since the third grade. But using that personality to serve my soul—and making sure the two were aligned—changed the way I did everything. I suddenly recognized all the times I’d gotten off track by letting my personality rule. I started to notice that the degree to which I ever felt unhappiness, discomfort, or despair was in direct proportion to how far I let myself stray from the seat of my soul.
The chapter that stirred me most was the one about intention. These words became my living creed: “Every action, thought, and feeling is motivated by an intention, and that intention is a cause that exists as one with an effect. If we participate in the cause, it is not possible for us not to participate in the effect. In this most profound way we are held responsible for our every action, thought, and feeling, which is to say, for our every intention.” Those words changed my life.
Prior to reading The Seat of the Soul, I suffered from the disease to please. Like millions of people, most of them women, I was a slave to the needs, wants, and desires of others. I would say yes when I seriously wanted to say no. I would give precious time and energy, money, gifts—whatever was asked—simply to avoid the possibility of upsetting someone. I once flew from Chicago to Spain, appeared onstage for less than forty-five seconds at a friend’s charity benefit, then got back on a plane and flew straight to work to do my show—all because I didn’t know how to say no. To this day, I couldn’t even tell you what the charity event was for.
This sort of thing used to happen to me a lot. My life was a whirlwind of one event after another, nonstop speaking engagements, appearances for almost anyone who asked. I wanted people to like me. And as long as I gave them what they wanted, I suppose they did.
My breakthrough was recognizing that my intention to be liked was causing all the requests. Cause and effect. If your intention is to do what other people want, they will keep asking you to do exactly that. That was an aha moment! When I changed my intention to be about doing what I wanted, what I felt was worthy of my time, the effect automatically changed.
Twenty-five years later, today, for me, moving with intentional purpose is like breathing, but I had to learn the practice from the pages of The Seat of the Soul. Gary Zukav’s principle of intention fundamentally altered my every action. It even changed the consciousness of The Oprah Winfrey Show. When we first started, producers would present their ideas in a weekly pitch session, but after encountering Gary’s ideas from The Seat of the Soul, I created a new policy. For all the producers, I would say: State your intention for the show first. Why do you want to do it? What do you want the outcome to be?
Sometimes producers—who had to fill two hundred show slots a year—would make up an intention just to appease me, and I would say, “Nope, not a good enough reason.” Even if the intention had no redeeming value other than, “We just want to entertain people and get a high rating,” I encouraged all of us to be clear about it. State your case with intention and purpose, and the result will follow suit.
On Gary Zukav’s first appearance on my show, in 1998, we discussed the nature of the soul. That interview set my career on a new course. Bringing spirituality to daytime television was uncharted territory. Having a conversation about consciousness, responsibility, intention, and the Law of Cause and Effect was not exactly ratings-busting TV, but I told myself, If not now, when? To be honest, had I not owned and controlled the show, Gary’s thirty-six appearances over the years would never have happened. My producers were convinced in the beginning that television wasn’t ready for a conversation about the soul.
But the course I took has served me well. And I continue to explore the spiritual side of life on my OWN cable network. Quite frankly, I don’t believe I would ever have dreamed of creating such a network had I not read The Seat of the Soul.
I’ve taught leadership classes at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls with the help of The Seat of the Soul. I’ve used its principles to teach elementary school students, high school students, even MBAs at the Kellogg School of Management. I get a surge of delight every single time someone reads this book and feels the amazement I felt twenty-five years ago. If you’re ready to see the world in a new way, if you’re ready for your life to open up and change, if you’re ready for an exhilarating awakening, I think you’ll feel it, too.
by
COURAGE IS THE most important of all the virtues because without courage one cannot practice any virtue consistently. We can be kind, generous, just, courteous, and merciful sporadically, but to display those virtues, consistently, calls for an enormous display of courage. From childhood on we have been taught that the heart, the mind, and the personality, the spirit and the soul have come to life together occupying the same space and then they will go together into death.
The intrepid, daring Gary Zukav, in his book The Seat of the Soul, introduces a brand-new concept to my mind, or rather a concept which I found in my youthful years in the Negro Spirituals which confused me because the lyrics suggested that pain and joy, weeping and laughing were all together when death came and that they left together to go into death.
The song, however, which often calls God the Soul, informs the listener that the Soul never dies but will continue and bring into life another mind and personality as well as other troubles and joys. They would bear the experience of living until death would relieve them of their responsibility. Then as they died, Soul or God would continue as it could not die.
Zukav, a respectful thinker, is able in his book The Seat of the Soul to show the reader how human evolution is achieved by the continuity of the Soul and the ability of a personality to die and another to be born a little better, a little stronger, and a little more daring.
I don’t know if the poet in Zukav took his hand and bid him tell the hard truths as easily as willow trees bow gracefully along a brook side. There are some readers who choose books for summer reading and others for vacation entertainment. The reader who chooses The Seat of the Soul should put the book on a shelf, near the bed, or on a lamp table which boasts a good strong bulb.
I keep my second copy of the book covered in plastic at the kitchen table, so it will be protected from years of use and so that the olive oil from a just-made salad will not smudge the cover.
After reading Zukav’s book for the tenth time, I still found it outrageous. I remembered a play I wrote, called And Still I Rise. The two characters in the play (male and female) have died and found themselves in what they think is a waiting room. A ghoulish creature appears. The male character, named Zebediah, says, “I know who you are. You are the gatekeeper. You will take us to the place we are supposed to go—heaven or hell.”
The female character, Annabel, adds, “I didn’t make it, but I truly tried to live a good life, clean, kind, fair.”
The eerie creature starts a little laugh which turns into huge laughter. He gazes at the two piteous-looking characters and says, “I am always amazed, even startled at the condition of human imagination. You think there is only a heaven or hell. Zebediah and Annabel, in your futures alone, there are possibly eight hundred destinations.”
In my play, Annabel and Zebediah, who had been sitting separately, move to each other without seeming to notice. Suddenly they are close enough to embrace. And they do.
The lyrics of the nineteenth-century Negro Spiritual are
Soon, I will be done with the troubles of the world,
The troubles of the world,
The troubles of the world,
I’m going home to meet my God.
No more weeping and wailing,
No more laughing and dancing,
No more moaning and crying,
I’m going home to meet my God.
Obviously the poet decided a minutiae of daily life occupies one space and that the true Soul of the poet lives in another space which the poet calls God.
I suggest to the new Zukav reader to draw close to share this book with someone who has firm nerve and a wonderful sense of humor, because when Zukav’s ideas stop challenging you, you will laugh with the wonderful laughter of the discoverer who has found a new continent.
No more weeping and wailing.
No more weeping and wailing.
I’m going home to meet my Soul.
THIS 25TH ANNIVERSARY Edition of The Seat of the Soul fills me with gratitude and joy. After I finished the manuscript twenty-five years ago, I sat with it wondering whether anyone would read it, and if anyone read it, whether anyone would understand it. In the midst of these thoughts, another thought appeared, louder and clearer. It said, “Do not be concerned. This arrow will find its mark.” The Seat of the Soul has now found its way to millions of hearts, and the arrow is still in flight.
While writing my first book, The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, I discovered—to my complete surprise—inspiration that came from beyond my mind, nonphysical intelligences that I could not articulate, and the electricity of creating consciously with constructive intent. I had never experienced anything like this. I loved these experiences, but, for the most part, I forgot about them after the book was finished.
The Dancing Wu Li Masters—which won the American Book Award for Science—established me as a popularizer of modern science. Many people expected me to follow it with a sequel, a Son-of-Wu-Li-Masters, that would explain more cutting-edge science. Instead, my next book was about evolution, reincarnation, karma, and the soul. It was about emotional awareness, responsible choice, and intuition. It was about an unprecedented transformation of human consciousness and the emergence of a new power—authentic power. In short, the new book was about a new human species, its new capabilities, and its new potential.
This book was The Seat of the Soul. It surprised me more than anyone. Everything remarkable that touched me briefly while I was writing The Dancing Wu Li Masters returned undeniably, unmistakably, irrevocably into my awareness. I discovered nonphysical reality. I am still growing into that discovery. All creative people—which is everyone—require commitment and time and courage to grow into their insights. Inspiration is one thing. Applying it to your life is another. My friend Maya Angelou tells me that when people tell her, “I am a Christian,” she replies, “Really? Already? I am in my eighties, and I am still trying.” Like Maya, I am still learning, still striving to apply the most meaningful insights of my life, and still changing for the better.
Reading The Seat of the Soul twenty-five years after it was written was a completely surprising and deeply fulfilling experience. The book seemed perfect. Every sentence carried meaning for me. Soon, almost the entire book was underlined. I was thirsty for the words. They sank into me like water into dry sand. They nurtured and soothed me. The blessing that I felt when I was writing this book returned to me amplified many times. I basked in it. I thought I knew it all. After all, I typed it, edited it, and talked about it for years. But rereading the book showed me that I had things to remember, more to learn, and much more to practice.
The Seat of the Soul brought remarkable people into my life. Two of them in particular touched me more deeply than I could have imagined and continue to support me in ways that thrill and surprise me.
The first is Linda Francis. I do not remember the first time we met, although she does. We met again a year later at a small retreat where I was speaking. I remember everything about that meeting. I was surrounded by loving people, and I found myself pushing one of them away—Linda. I wanted none of the hugs she gave so freely. This was my first clue that parts of me were threatened by her, but I was not aware enough to recognize it. I could not escape her at the event—for example, a friend saved a seat for me at a concert, a different friend saved a seat for Linda, and the saved seats were together. I began to share my curiosity with her. Why was I pushing only her away? I shared my intention not to be controlled by this unusual repulsion. “I will not refuse your love,” I told her—not romantic love, but the love that she so obviously felt with her friends at the retreat and that she held out to me as well. At the end of the event, friends invited me to join them for a cold splash in a waterfall. When they suggested that I invite Linda, I became irritated.
Linda! Linda! What is this thing with Linda? Can I not do anything at this event without Linda? When Linda called me a month later to tell me that she was moving to Mount Shasta, California, where I lived—a decision that predated the retreat—I felt frightened and, again, curious. When our friends and I welcomed her to her new home, I was surprised to realize how much I had been looking forward to her arrival! I was relaxed, comfortable, happy, and open. We began to visit each other. Some of our talks I enjoyed, and others I did not, but I found myself looking forward to each one. Several months later the thought occurred to me, “I think I am in a relationship!” Without the sexual interactions that had begun my previous “relationships,” new and different kinds of interactions began to occur. These were my first experiences of a substantive and deep relationship for the purpose of spiritual growth—a spiritual partnership. A half year later, about twenty years ago, she moved into my cabin, and our journey together continues today.
In our years together, I have marveled not only that I love Linda—something I did not think myself capable of when we met—but that I love loving her! This is the experience that intrigues me. It is as strong in me now as it was when I discovered it. Where does that come from?
The second person is Oprah Winfrey. She is the instrument that the Universe chose to explode me out of the back-country and into the larger world. I suspect that nothing less than that explosion could have done it. She took me into her heart, her creativity, and her famous The Oprah Winfrey Show. First, I was a recluse on a mountain, and then, a few months later, I was speaking to ten million people monthly. New friends appeared wherever I went in the world, thanking me for a show, smiling at me from a distance. It took me a long time to acknowledge that my life of isolation was over and even longer to welcome it.
During each show Oprah and I sat before an eager audience and the company of fellow souls around the world. She introduced a theme, asked me some questions, and then, with a gesture of her hand or movement of her face, turned the attention of millions of people toward me. It was terrifying and awesome. “Sacred” and “holy” are better words. When a national magazine pursued me for an article, she counseled, “It’s only cotton candy, Gary. Only cotton candy.” What could have described external power better? My adopted Sioux Uncle, Phil Lane, Sr., once told me after watching one of our shows, “Nephew, you are talking like the old people.” That memory fills me with strength and gratitude. I am grateful for Oprah and to the Universe for all of these experiences and more.
In the years following my shows with Oprah, Linda and I cofounded the Seat of the Soul Institute, gave many events, wrote books, and developed long-term, in-depth programs for small groups. Now our passion for supporting people and spiritual partnerships has grown stronger than ever, but traveling has become taxing for us, so we have created new digital tools and innnovative ways to use the Internet, such as an ongoing support program, eCourse, eNewsletters, an online Spiritual Partnership Community, live videos, and the Web addresses at the end of the Chapter Study Guides in this book. (Tap them in your eBook or type them into your browser and they will take you to Web pages that will help you further explore, integrate, and apply what you are studying.) You will find all of these and more at SeatoftheSoul.com. Linda and I still enjoy giving live events when possible, including our favorite, the annual The Journey to the Soul summer retreat. I hope that I will meet you personally at one of them.
The Internet is a reflection in the domain of the five senses of our emerging awareness of our connectedness. It does not create, or even increase, our connectedness. It is not possible for us to be more or less connected than we are with one another and Life. Can a flower be more or less connected to its color? Let us enjoy this beautiful reflection together and also what it reflects.
The most difficult, gratifying, and thrilling experiences I have had since publishing The Seat of the Soul have been my experiences of authentic power and creating authentic power. Spiritual partnerships, richness of cocreation, and awe of Life have slowly replaced my experiences of people as things and my tormenting journeys through anger, jealousy, despair, and unworthiness. I still encounter parts of my personality that are angry, frightened, jealous, superior, and inferior, but now I see them as opportunities to create authentic power, to choose anew. If I can do this, you can, too. I know that eventually you will. The transformation of consciousness that is expanding our perception beyond the five senses, redefining power, and showing us the potential of a Universal Humanity is proceeding in full force.
Each choice of fear—anger, jealousy, vengefulness—is a choice to evolve unconsciously through the painful, destructive consequences that fear creates. Each choice of love—gratitude, patience, appreciation—is a choice to evolve consciously through the healthy, constructive consequences that love creates.
Why not choose the conscious path, the path of joy? Why not journey consciously to the seat of your soul—that place where you transform energy into matter with your intentions—infuse your world with love and live there?
All roads lead to home.
Gary Zukav
DURING THE YEARS that I was writing The Dancing Wu Li Masters and after, I was drawn again and again to the writings of William James, Carl Jung, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Niels Bohr, and Albert Einstein. I returned to them repeatedly. I found in them something special, although it was not until later that I was able to understand that specialness: These fellow humans reached for something greater than they were able to express directly through their work. They saw more than they could express in the language of psychology or linguistics or physics, and they sought to share what they saw. It is what they sought to share through the medium of their work that drew me to them.
They were mystics. That is my word. They would not use such language, but they knew it. They feared that their careers might become contaminated by association with those who did not work within the scientific model, but in the depths of their own thoughts they each saw much too much to be limited by the five senses, and they were not. Their works contribute not only to the evolution of psychology, linguistics, and physics but also to the evolution of those who read them. They have the capability to change those who touch them in ways that also cannot be expressed directly in the terms of psychology, or linguistics, or physics.
As I came to understand, in retrospect, the magnetic quality that these works held for me, I came to understand that what motivated these men was not Earthly prizes or the respect of colleagues, but that they put their souls and minds on something and reached the extraordinary place where the mind could no longer produce data of the type that they wanted, and they were in the territory of inspiration, where their intuitions accelerated and they knew that there was something more than the realm of time and space and matter, something more than physical life. They knew it. They could not necessarily articulate this clearly, because they were not equipped to talk about such things, but they felt it and their writings reflected it.
In other words, I came to understand that what motivated these men, and many others, was in fact something of great vision that comes from beyond the personality. Each of us is now being drawn, in one way or another, to that same great vision. It is more than a vision. It is an emerging force. It is the next step in our evolutionary journey. Humanity, the human species, is longing now to touch that force, to shed that which interferes with clear contact. Much of the difficulty in doing this lies in the fact that the vocabulary with which to address this new force, which is indeed the eternal force, is not yet born.
In this moment and in this hour of human evolution, this proper vocabulary and means of addressing that which longs to transcend religiosity and spirituality and assume the position of authentic power is longing to be born. We need to give that which we as a species are now touching consciously for the first time a vocabulary that is not clouded, so that it can be identified clearly in the acts and judgments of the human race, so that it can be seen clearly, and not through veils of mystery or mysticism, but simply as the authentic power that moves the force fields of this Earth of ours.
As a way of talking about what we are and what we are becoming, I have used the terms “five-sensory” and “multisensory.” Multisensory is not better than five-sensory. It is simply more appropriate now. As one system of human experience winds down and another, more advanced system emerges, the older system may appear by comparison to be lacking, but from the perspective of the Universe, the language of comparison is not the language of lesser and better, but of limitation and opportunity.
The experiences of the multisensory human are less limited than the experiences of the five-sensory human. They provide more opportunities for growth and development and more opportunities to avoid unnecessary difficulties. I have contrasted the experiences of the five-sensory human with the experiences of the multisensory human in each instance to make their differences as clear as possible, but this does not mean that the five-sensory phase of our evolution, the phase from which we are emerging, is negative in comparison to the phase of our evolution that we are entering, the multisensory phase. It is simply that it is now no longer appropriate, just as there came a time when the use of candles became inappropriate because of electricity, but the advent of electricity did not make candle power negative.
Who among us is an expert on the human experience? We have only the gift of sharing perceptions that hopefully can help those on their journey. There is no such thing as an expert on the human experience. The human experience is an experience in movement and thought and form and, in some cases, an experiment in movement and thought and form. The most that we can do is comment on the movement, the thought, and the form, but those comments are of great value if they can help people to learn to move gracefully, to think clearly, to form—like artists—the matter of their lives.
We are in a time of deep change. We will move through this change more easily if we are able to see the road upon which we are traveling, our destination, and what it is that is in motion. I offer what is in this book as a window through which I have come to see life. I offer this window to you, but I do not say that it is necessary that you accept it. There are so many ways to wisdom and to the heart. This is our greatest richness, and the one that gives me the most joy.
We have much to do together.
Let us do it in wisdom and love and joy. Let us make this the human experience.
Gary Zukav
1 THE EVOLUTION THAT we learned about in school is the evolution of physical form. We learned, for example, that the single-celled creatures of the oceans are the predecessors of all more complex forms of life. A fish is more complex, and, therefore, more evolved than a sponge; a horse is more complex, and, therefore, more evolved than a snake; a monkey is more complex, and, therefore, more evolved than a horse, and so on, up to human beings which are the most complex, and, therefore, the most evolved Life forms upon our planet. We were taught, in other words, that evolution means the progressive development of organizational complexity.
This definition is an expression of the idea that the organism that is best able to control both its environment and all of the other organisms in its environment is the most evolved. “Survival of the fittest” means that the most evolved organism in a given environment is the organism that is at the top of the food chain in that environment. According to this definition, therefore, the organism that is most able to ensure its own survival, most able to serve its self-preservation, is the most evolved.
We have long known that this definition of evolution is inadequate, but we have not known why. When two humans engage one another, they are, in terms of organizational complexity, equally evolved. If both have the same intelligence, yet one is small-minded, mean, and selfish while the other is magnanimous and altruistic, we say that the one who is magnanimous and altruistic is the more evolved. If one human intentionally sacrifices his or her life to save another, by, for example, using his or her own body to shield another from a bullet or a speeding car, we say that the human who sacrificed his or her life, indeed, was one of the most evolved among us. We know these things to be true, but they are at variance with our understanding of evolution.
Jesus, we are told, foresaw the plot against His life, even to the details of how His friends would act and react, yet He did not run from what He saw. The entirety of humankind has been inexorably shaped by the power and love of One who gave His life for others. All who revere Him, and almost all who but know His story, agree that He was one of the most evolved of our species.
Our deeper understanding tells us that a truly evolved being is one that values others more than it values itself, and that values love more than it values the physical world and what is in it. We must now bring our understanding of evolution into alignment with this deeper understanding. It is important that we do this because our current understanding of evolution reflects the phase of evolution that we are now leaving. By examining this understanding, we can perceive how we have evolved to now, and what we are now in the process of leaving behind. By reflecting upon a new and expanded understanding of evolution, one that validates our deepest truths, we can see what we are evolving into, and what that means in terms of what we experience, what we value, and how we act.
Our current understanding of evolution results from the fact that we have evolved until now by exploring physical reality with our five senses. We have been, until now, five-sensory human beings. This path of evolution has allowed us to see the basic principles of the Universe in concrete ways. We see through our five senses that every action is a cause that has an effect, and that every effect has a cause. We see the results of our intentions. We see that rage kills: It takes away breath—the Life force—and it spills blood—the carrier of vitality. We see that kindness nurtures. We see and feel the effects of a snarl and a smile.
We experience our ability to process knowledge. We see, for example, that a stick is a tool, and we see the effects of how we choose to use it. The club that kills can drive a stake into the ground to hold a shelter. The spear that takes a life can be used as a lever to ease life’s burdens. The knife that cuts flesh can be used to cut cloth. The hands that build bombs can be used to build schools. The minds that coordinate the activities of violence can coordinate the activities of cooperation.
We see that when the activities of life are infused with reverence, they come alive with meaning and purpose. We see that when reverence is lacking from life’s activities, the result is cruelty, violence, and loneliness. The physical arena is a magnificent learning environment. It is a school within which, through experimentation, we come to understand what causes us to expand and what causes us to contract, what causes us to grow and what causes us to shrivel, what nourishes our souls and what depletes them, what works and what does not.
When the physical environment is seen only from the five-sensory point of view, physical survival appears to be the fundamental criterion of evolution because no other kind of evolution is detectable. It is from this point of view that “survival of the fittest” appears to be synonymous with evolution, and physical dominance appears to characterize advanced evolution.
When perception of the physical world is limited to the five-sensory modality, the basis of life in the physical arena becomes fear. Power to control the environment, and those within the environment appears to be essential.
The need for physical dominance produces a type of competition that affects every aspect of our lives. It affects relationships between lovers and between superpowers, between siblings and between races, between classes and between sexes. It disrupts the natural tendency toward harmony between nations and between friends. The same energy that sent warships to the Persian Gulf sent soldiers to Vietnam and Crusaders to Palestine. The energy that separated the family of Romeo from the family of Juliet is the same energy that separates the racial family of the black husband from the racial family of the white wife. The energy that set Lee Harvey Oswald against John Kennedy is the same energy that set Cain against Abel. Brothers and sisters quarrel for the same reason that corporations quarrel—they seek power over one another.
The power to control the environment, and those within it, is power over what can be felt, smelled, tasted, heard, or seen. This type of power is external power. External power can be acquired or lost, as in the stock market or an election. It can be bought or stolen, transferred or inherited. It is thought of as something that can be gotten from someone else, or somewhere else. One person’s gain of external power is perceived as another person’s loss. The result of seeing power as external is violence and destruction. All of our institutions—social, economic, and political—reflect our understanding of power as external.
Families, like cultures, are patriarchal or matriarchal. One person “wears the pants.” Children learn this early, and it shapes their lives.
Police departments, like the military, are produced by the perception of power as external. Badge, boots, rank, radio, uniform, weapons, and armor are symbols of fear. Those who wear them are fearful. They fear to engage the world without defenses. Those who encounter these symbols are fearful. They fear the power that these symbols represent, or they fear those whom they expect this power to contain, or they fear both. The police and the military, like patriarchal and matriarchal families and cultures, are not origins of the perception of power as external. They are reflections of the way that we, as a species and as individuals, have come to view power.
The perception of power as external has shaped our economics. The ability to control economies, within communities and within nations, and the ability to control the transnational economy of the world, is concentrated in the hands of a few people. To protect workers from these people, we have created unions. To protect consumers, we have created bureaucracies in government. To protect the poor, we have created welfare systems. This is a perfect reflection of how we have come to perceive power—as the possession of a few while the majority serve it as victims.
Money is a symbol of external power. Those who have the most money have the most ability to control their environment and those within it, while those who have the least money have the least ability to control their environment and those within it. Money is acquired, lost, stolen, inherited, and fought for. Education, social status, fame, and things that are owned, if we derive a sense of increased security from them, are symbols of external power. Anything we fear to lose—a home, a car, an attractive body, an agile mind, a deep belief—is a symbol of external power. What we fear is an increase in our vulnerability. This results from seeing power as external.
When power is seen as external, the hierarchies of our social, economic, and political structures, as well as the hierarchies of the Universe, appear as indicators of who has power and who does not. Those at the top appear to have the most power and, therefore, to be the most valuable and the least vulnerable. Those at the bottom appear to be the least powerful, and, therefore, to be the least valuable and the most vulnerable. From this perception, the general is more valuable than the private, the executive is more valuable than the chauffeur, the doctor is more valuable than the receptionist, the parent is more valuable than the child, and the Divine is more valuable than the worshiper. We fear to transgress our parents, our bosses, and our God. All perceptions of lesser and greater personal value result from the perception of power as external.
Competition for external power lies at the heart of all violence. The secondary gain behind ideological conflicts, such as capitalism versus communism, and religious conflicts, such as Irish Catholic versus Irish Protestant, and geographical conflicts, such as Jew versus Arab, and familial and marital conflicts, is external power.
The perception of power as external splinters the psyche, whether it is the psyche of the individual, the community, the nation, or the world. There is no difference between acute schizophrenia and a world at war. There is no difference between the agony of a splintered soul and the agony of a splintered nation. When a husband and a wife compete for power, they engage the same dynamic that humans of one race do when they fear humans of another race.
From these dynamics, we have formed our present understanding of evolution as a process of ever-increasing ability to dominate the environment and each other. This definition reflects the limitations of perceiving the physical world with only five senses. It reflects the competition for external power that is generated by fear.
After millennia of brutality to one another, individual to individual and group to group, it is now clear that the insecurity which underlies the perception of power as external cannot be healed by the accumulation of external power. It is evident for all to see, not only with each newscast and evening paper, but also through each of our countless sufferings as individuals and as a species, that the perception of power as external brings only pain, violence, and destruction. This is how we have evolved until now, and this is what we are leaving behind.
Our deeper understanding leads us to another kind of power, a power that loves life in every form that it appears, a power that does not judge what it encounters, a power that perceives meaningfulness and purpose in the smallest details upon the Earth. This is authentic power. When we align our thoughts, emotions, and actions with the highest part of ourselves, we are filled with enthusiasm, purpose, and meaning. Life is rich and full. We have no thoughts of bitterness. We have no memory of fear. We are joyously and intimately engaged with our world. This is the experience of authentic power.
Authentic power has its roots in the deepest source of our being. Authentic power cannot be bought, inherited, or hoarded. An authentically empowered person is incapable of making anyone or anything a victim. An authentically empowered person is one who is so strong, so empowered, that the idea of using force against another is not a part of his or her consciousness.
No understanding of evolution is adequate that does not have at its core that we are on a journey toward authentic power, and that authentic empowerment is the goal of our evolutionary process and the purpose of our being. We are evolving from a species that pursues external power into a species that pursues authentic power. We are leaving behind exploration of the physical world as our sole means of evolution. This means of evolution, and the consciousness that results from an awareness that is limited to the five-sensory modality, are no longer adequate to what we must become.
We are evolving from five-sensory humans into multisensory humans. Our five senses, together, form a single sensory system that is designed to perceive physical reality. The perceptions of a multisensory human extend beyond physical reality to the larger dynamical systems of which our physical reality is a part. The multisensory human is able to perceive, and to appreciate, the role that our physical reality plays in a larger picture of evolution, and the dynamics by which our physical reality is created and sustained. This realm is invisible to the five-sensory human.
It is in this invisible realm that the origins of our deepest values are found. From the perspective of this invisible realm, the motivations of those who consciously sacrifice their lives for higher purposes make sense, the power of Gandhi is explicable, and the compassionate acts of the Christ are comprehensible in a fullness that is not accessible to the five-sensory human.
All of our great teachers have been, or are, multisensory humans. They have spoken to us and acted in accordance with perceptions and values that reflect the larger perspective of the multisensory being, and, therefore, their words and actions awaken within us the recognition of truths.
From the perception of the five-sensory human, we are alone in a universe that is physical. From the perception of the multisensory human, we are never alone, and the Universe is alive, conscious, intelligent, and compassionate. From the perception of the five-sensory human, the physical world is an unaccountable given in which we unaccountably find ourselves, and we strive to dominate it so that we can survive. From the perception of the multisensory human, the physical world is a learning environment that is created jointly by the souls that share it, and everything that occurs within it serves their learning. From the perception of the five-sensory human, intentions have no effects, the effects of actions are physical, and not all actions affect us or others. From the perception of the multisensory human, the intention behind an action determines its effects, every intention affects both us and others, and the effects of intentions extend far beyond the physical world.
What does it mean to say that an “invisible” realm exists in which the origins of our deeper understandings are located? What are the implications of considering the existence of a realm that is not detectable through the five senses, but that can be known, explored, and understood by other human faculties?
When a question is asked that cannot be answered within the common frame of reference, it can be classified as nonsensical, or it can be dismissed as a question that is not appropriate, or the person who is asking the question can expand his or her consciousness to encompass a frame of reference from which the question can be answered. The first two options are the easy ways out of a confrontation with a question that appears to be nonsensical or inappropriate, but the seeker, the true scientist, will allow himself or herself to expand into a frame of reference from which the answers that he or she is seeking can be understood.
We, as a species, have been asking the questions “Is there a God?”, “Is there a Divine Intelligence?”, and “Is there a purpose to life?” for as long as we have been able to articulate questions. The time has now come for us to expand into a frame of reference that allows these questions to be answered.
The larger frame of reference of the multisensory human allows an understanding of the experientially meaningful distinction between the personality and the soul. Your personality is that part of you that was born into, lives within, and will die within time. To be a human and to have a personality are the same thing. Your personality, like your body, is the vehicle of your evolution.
The decisions that you make and the actions that you take upon the Earth are the means by which you evolve. At each moment you choose the intentions that will shape your experiences and those things upon which you will focus your attention. These choices affect your evolutionary process. This is so for each person. If you choose unconsciously, you evolve unconsciously. If you choose consciously, you evolve consciously.
The fearful and violent emotions that have come to characterize human existence can be experienced only by the personality. Only the personality can feel anger, fear, hatred, vengeance, sorrow, shame, regret, indifference, frustration, cynicism, and loneliness. Only the personality can judge, manipulate and exploit. Only the personality can pursue external power. The personality can also be loving, compassionate, and wise in its relations with others, but love, compassion, and wisdom do not come from the personality. They are experiences of the soul.
Your soul is that part of you that is immortal. Every person has a soul, but a personality that is limited in its perception to the five senses is not aware of its soul, and, therefore, cannot recognize the influences of its soul. As a personality becomes multisensory, its intuitions—its hunches and subtle feelings—become important to it. It senses things about itself, other people, and the situations in which it finds itself that it cannot justify on the basis of the information that its five senses can provide. It comes to recognize intentions, and to respond to them rather than to the actions and the words that it encounters. It can recognize, for example, a warm heart beneath a harsh and angry manner, and a cold heart beneath polished and pleasing words.