A while back an editor-writer-friend of mine, Carolyn Myss, suggested a title for a book I was about to publish. Call it The Final Choice, she said. I went along with the title, feeling a bit squeamish about using such a dramatic title. My book was about the kinds of evidence pointing toward the next possible step of human evolution. I pictured the idea getting under way in the vague distant future.
Fast forward a few decades to New Year’s Day, 2026, and the notion of final choice seems a little less incredible. What do I mean? As it seems to me, there is a twofold process going on right now that unless stopped, spells catastrophe for all forms of life on Earth—and that includes us humans. The two processes are the heating up of the planet and the heating up of nuclear-armed bellicosity. Countries everywhere are scrambling to purchase and learn how to use the best technology to terrorize and annihilate their enemies. Meanwhile, the glaciers are melting full speed ahead dooming the great coastal cities, a prelude to further disasters. Upheavals of bodies of water, wind, and earth will increase everywhere. The climate crisis and the murderous social bellicosity will combine to turn life on earth into a hellhole. All the signs point to a grim denouement to our story. We have the president of the most powerful nation declaring the climate crisis a “hoax.” With one word, all science is thrown out the window.
The title is a bit flamboyant, but it does speak to the urgent need for change, the need to rethink the way we live. That depends on the way we shape our perceptions of ourselves, of others, and of the world around us. As it turns out, we don’t have to travel far to come face to face with things of great and often intriguing interest. I’m talking about our own minds, our own consciousness. Remember that science has no idea how our consciousness came into being. My take is that the conscious part of ourselves emerges through, not from, our body.
It’s an interesting way to look at ourselves. If the conscious sense of ourselves is streaming from outside our bodies we must be connected and potentially attuned to a transpersonal world of consciousness. So-called altered states of consciousness often provide portals into these extraordinary experiences. At the same time I often hear on the news stories about the pandemic of loneliness that is troubling Americans— ironical, given the availability of different technical ways of connecting with each other nowadays. However final a choice may seem, there is always room to change your mind. The most hardened in their ways often break down at the least expected moment.
In any case, hints of change are visible on the horizon. Either we will make creative changes and spark a renaissance of life on earth or succumb to the death instinct and bring down world civilization. The counterforce to that unhappy climax is to do what you can to ignite the divine kernel in the depths of your being. Locate it, track it down, befriend it, dance with it, sing with it, make miracles with it. Happy New Year!
See the recent edition of The Final Choice: Death or Transcendence 2017 White Crow Books or Amazon
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