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Ervin László: The Upshift

(OMTimes | Sandie Sedgbeer) Ervin László is a Hungarian polymath, philosopher of science, systems theorist, integral theorist, and advocate of the theory of quantum consciousness. He has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, is editor of the international periodical World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, and Chancellor-Designate of the newly formed GlobalShift University. He is the founder and president of the international think tank, the General Evolution Research Group, and the author of 83 books translated into 21 languages. His latest book is The Upshift: The Path to Healing and Evolution on Planet Earth.

An Interview with Ervin László: The Upshift-The Path to Evolution on Earth

Interview with Sandie Sedgbeer

Climate Change, the Pandemic, the Refugee Emergency, Poverty, conflict, and Violence. It’s hard to imagine that there could be a positive side to these converging global crises. Still, according to this week’s guest, they do have an unsuspected silver lining. They bring us to a tipping point where we can choose our destiny. With me, today to outline the nature of this crucial point and share what each of us as conscious and responsible human beings can and must do to choose the right way forward is a world-renowned Hungarian philosopher of science systems theorist and integral theorist Ervin László. A former professor of philosophy systems science and future studies at various universities in the US, Europe, and the Far East. Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Ervin László is the author, co-author, and editor of 106 books and over 400 articles and research papers. Ervin László joins us now to talk about his latest book, The Upshift: The Path to Healing and Evolution on Planet Earth, which not only lays out a pathway to healing and evolution on planet Earth but also offers us a detailed guide to becoming the change we need to see in the world.

To listen to the full interview of Ervin László by Sandie Sedgbeer on the OMTimes Radio and TV flagship show, What Is Going OM,  audio player below.

Sandie Sedgbeer: In your new book, the Upshift, you claim that humanity is at a historical turning point and that two paths are opening for us today. A path up to healing and evolution and a path down to crises and chaos. And the global crisis from which we are emerging holds vital lessons for our life and future. Tell me about those lessons.

Ervin László: Yeah, the bifurcation or evolution is branching off. If we continue the way we go, the path is downshifting because it’s unsustainable. What we are doing needs to be rectified. So, it’s about time that something happened to rectify it. It’s unlikely that we’ll continue the way we have been, living through this crisis period as the need for change grows. If a little more of the crisis deepens, it will spread as it will probably in the next week. The motivation will grow until it becomes very evident to policymakers, politicians, business leaders, and everybody that we need to shift to another path. And the Path I would like to offer I called Upshift. And that is the option that we have. And I say, this is not a bad thing that is happening. It’s a necessary thing. This rectification of our path has been overdue.

Ervin László

We didn’t start yesterday the way we go, the way we have been going. This has been happening for most of the 21st century and the second half of the 20th century. So, for example, in 1972, my partners and colleagues and I published a report to the Club of Rome, which talked about the limits to growth, saying that it couldn’t go on like this because a collapse would happen. And that didn’t have much effect on the people we talked with about it, even though it was only dealt with physical resources, primarily physical resources, and a few human resources. And we dealt mainly with politicians and policymakers addressing it.

So, it was a more limited thing. Today, we know it’s a global phenomenon. We are at the limits of the kind of growth we have been exercising and subjecting ourselves to, which is a good thing. So, we can continue this discussion as you like, Sandie. I just want to say that the rectification of the past is overdue. We should be happy and grateful that it’s happening before it’s too late.

Sandie Sedgbeer: Absolutely. You know, the book, um, the book lays out some incredible statistics- it’s a fabulous book. I have to say that I was pretty horrified by some of the things I read because I think the general public really doesn’t know what’s happening. I mean, they see the headlines and various newspaper reports. But you laid it out so well when you said that, in the mid 19 hundreds of the last century, there were about 1 billion people. Now we’ve got 7.8 billion people. It’s grown so fast, and the cities aren’t sustainable anymore because they’re taken and not putting anything back into the system. We don’t know enough about these kinds of things, and I think that that is probably part of the problem is that the average person doesn’t know.

Ervin László: Well, there are ways we could know just by opening our eyes, but even more important is to open our hearts in our minds. That means allowing our consciousness to take in more of what is happening below the surface. Of course, the surface is what’s in the daily news in every newspaper, standard media and television station, radio, and whatnot, which I think is general knowledge. But under the surface, what is really happening, what I’m telling you, what is happening is an interesting two-pronged process.

On the surface part and on the piece like this would be a deep reservoir of events, a sphere of vibrations. There are various dimensions to this top dimension that increase chaos, confusion, disorientation, and depression. All these negative signs that you can make are growing very rapidly. But, underneath, there is something else happening underneath. There is a reorientation from the individual, from the national, from the purely business, from the purest power politics section to something larger.

It is as if now humanity on this planet is beginning to organize itself, to live on this planet consciously. We didn’t need to live consciously on the planet because, previously, our powers were limited. So, we couldn’t do much harm. True, but We didn’t do much good for the planet as a whole, but we couldn’t harm it much because we had very limited powers. I mean, sort of up to 250 years ago. Then our powers slowly through the 20th century increased, and now they are so great, such vast powers that we can destroy all life on Earth.

We can be pushed into an unsustainable situation like Mars, an arid planet, and that means no life is possible. That’s one of the worst scenarios, perhaps the worst scenario we could think of. But there are many other ways of unsustainability. Climate change is just an advanced sound, an advanced signal of it.

So underneath it all, there is something else happening. Now, when we talk about the problem, we talk about climate change. We talk about heating up the atmosphere in the same way. Then we talked about the refugee crisis. We talk about violence and war, the disheartening of people, and the conflicts of various atmospheres. We talk about the surface.

When we reach what is happening, we realize it’s all a global phenomenon. It had become global. Before it was local, then it was national and local, and now it’s become global. All the solutions are just the same way as all the problems are now on the global level. And that’s remarkable because concerning this phenomenon, now something is being made to happen. And that’s what’s being made to happen, overcoming the problems we have been accumulating for the past 150 to 200 years.

And especially in the past, let’s say, 20 or 25 years. And there’s high time to do so, and humanity is becoming organized, reaching the global level, and trying to work out a way to live sustainably on this planet. So, today, probably already 8 billion people because many of these things are not registered on censuses. We estimate that about 8 billion people can live on this planet, so we don’t kill each other, we don’t destroy each other, and we don’t remove the power and the ability to survive and thrive on this planet. We allow our people to live in peace. There are various ways we can ensure that we can talk about it. Still, I just want to say the positive side is that something was long overdue, which is now taking place. It’s a crisis, but a crisis is an opportunity.

Sandie Sedgbeer: I think that one of the words that underlie a lot of our problems is separation. We think everything is separate. We think that we are separate from one another, that we are all individuals, and it is now that people, especially with quantum science, are showing us that everything is connected. People are just beginning to realize that we survive as a collective, not as individuals.

Ervin László: Interestingly, you are saying this. You’re absolutely right. Einstein, who had never really fully accepted all the findings of the quantum sciences, kept a very matter-of-fact, practical turn of mind. And some of it’s so fantastic that it’s difficult to accept. But even though he said it very clearly, separateness is an illusion now coming through more and more in quantum physics and biology, quantum consciousness research, and quantum sociology. You can’t do just one thing because one thing has so many other implications and consequences. But we can say that we can’t do one thing because there is not one thing anybody can do. We can whenever we do one thing, we address the whole system of connections of each of we are a part.

We are not outside. And that’s a great advantage, a great benefit of the crisis in which we live. As we recognize. That’s why we are not out of nature. We are not above it. We are not beyond it. And we have, we have had this so sophistry that we can overcome nature. We can become superior to nature. We can use technology to govern nature the way we want. That we are learning that we can’t do that. We are part of nature, we are part of the limits of life on Earth, but we are also part of the opportunity of life on Earth. So, you’ve got to rejoin and reconnect. These are terms that are coming up more and more. I wrote the book about a year and a half ago, reconnecting to the source. But these terms are coming up every more.

Yes, we are not separate, we are one, and the scientists are telling us, but common sense and our consciousness itself to us, if we just allow our consciousness to receive that Information as we are getting when they are relaxed when we allow our mind to float and to encounter people, to experience nature, to experience the beauty and to experience love and all these experiences have a deep resonance.

We are now resonating with the world, with the changing world around us. That’s a marvelous opportunity. Let’s take it. If we wait too long, it’s not guaranteed that we’ll succeed because irreversibilities are occurring. And if we wait too long, we find ourselves on a dead-end street. But we are not there. And I think the opportunity is now to get together and act together in light of who we are and the natural member of the Natural system. It’s a beautiful thing to be. We thought it would just overcome it. We can do what we want. We can’t do what we want. We have to do what there is in nature. It’s a generous nature. This is an evolutionary universe. It’s a participatory universe. All of these things are coming through the new sciences. It’s there in our instincts, in our intuition. So, let’s listen to ourselves. That is the message I’d like to say. Listen, hear, and feels who we are. Watch what is around us, and you’ll find the right way. The right way forward is the Upshift, which is a shift into togetherness.

 Sandie Sedgbeer: Your book, the Upshift, outlines several recommendations for overcoming the problems we are facing. Can you share some of those steps with us? Because I think a lot of people agree with everything we are saying, but they don’t know where to start. What can they do? The pathway that you lay out in the book is very solid. So, if you could just share some of the steps along that pathway…

Ervin László: There are several; there are many. There is the simplest one, except for young kids in big cities, where it may not be so simple. But for many people, middle-aged people, a little bit middle-class people, it’s possible; experience nature! You know, the Japanese word shinrin-yoku or something like that means forest bathing. Yes. It means going out into nature, into the taller trees, and where you lay down on the lawn, grass, or leaves. See the sky above you, the clouds. Hear the rustling of the winds and trees. See, I’m not a poet. I can’t. I can’t say that many words, but the fact is, if you allow yourself to experience nature, that’s one way. It’s not the only way, but there certainly is one way.

Another way, which I mentioned very briefly, is simply to allow., Allow your consciousness to access all Easter religions, the Easter spiritual systems, practically without exception. They all tell us, don’t force what we want to achieve, to allow things to happen, and allow our minds to enter a larger dimension. We now know we are looking at the instrumental details of the waves admitted by our brain.

This EEG electroencephalograph waves. We know that in our everyday consciousness, there is a certain level of frequency that we pick up. Above it, we have an exultant consciousness, and deep, sudden inspirations can happen. So sudden exaltation can take place. But below it, there’s another dimension, the alpha dimension, the theta dimension in which connections happen. So people feel themselves connecting to other people’s minds or minds, unlike our bodies, which connect more indirectly. We are directly connected through the waves.

Ervin László

What happens in our consciousness reflects what happens in other people’s consciousness. And it reflects back on that. So, there are so many ways that we can relax. We can take the time to enjoy life, enjoy nature, and enjoy being what we are without all the worry, frustrations, and fear. That is now so much on the surface today. Depression is a danger, all those things are dangerous, but we can be one with the universe. So is this poetry, no science? Yes. This is the new way of understanding who we are.

Sandie Sedgbeer: You’ve written in the book that one of the things that we can do is to rid ourselves of obsolete beliefs and assumptions. Can you outline some of those beliefs we need to eliminate and haven’t?

Ervin László: There a lot of them? And I think there’s no substitute for just looking at the book. And in one chapter, I will try to summarize most of these. Everything that’s individualistic, in that separateness sense, the individuals great, you know, are all individuals. We want to serve the cause of the individual. But you have overdone it. We have separated ourselves from the collective, from the social systems. So, believe that there is only one country. That’s one thing. For example, it’s only one country to which we owe allegiance. Never mind the rest: “There is only one country, our flag, nation, state,” or whatever. And that’s not who we are. And the rest is out, is outside of us. The rest is “they are strangers.” These are outdated and dangerous beliefs. We are also members of a family, members of a community, or members of a region, a state city, of course, of the nation.

But not only that, but beyond that, we are also human beings, members of the human family. And even more, the human family is a member of the system of life on Earth or what is known as the Gaian system.

They, we all of those things together, not exclusively. One. We can have multiple identities, and we have a more embracing identity. It doesn’t destroy the local identity. It just incorporates it and embraces it. We can’t help it. We can’t change that. Life on Earth has developed as a community, a communal form of existence. But strangely enough, and I don’t want to get into physics details now, I just want to mention that we know the way atoms come together using, for example, a so-called Pauli Exclusion principle, but also the whole atomic generation process, the nucleus, and the electron shells. These are not accidental conglomerations.

They are highly entuned elements, diverse elements coming together. It’s as if the nucleus of a hydrogen atom would love certain electrons and, given a pass, would accept them into its electron shells. That’s a sort of particular metaphor, but every natural system is a system of diverse elements coming into harmony, coming into oneness. And then when we recognize as their natural system, the other system with which we are in touch, to which we resonate, they are systems that we can embrace, that we can enter into ourselves, into us so that we become one with them. So, again, it seems like sophistry, poetry, and pure spirituality. Still, as you know and as you practice, spirituality is a great guide to what? To the right way to behave in the world.

But about the point I am trying to make, when you examine the highest levels of evolutionary development, the highest level of consciousness in people defines the higher level of spirituality.

And it’s expressed as a sense of wellness, a sense of belonging, a sense of being part of something larger. William James, a great scientist, and philosopher, said that the religious experience, which he was very much in awe of, he said, it’s the experience of being part of something larger than we are. And that’s now the experience that we need. Not just religious experience, spiritual experience, aesthetic experience, a natural experience, and the beliefs and convictions that go with it. Not separateness, not just the individual alone, but you and I individuals are embracing a larger whole. That, I think, is a natural way. It’s the way in which we can feel it when we feel it. We feel closeness, we feel love, maybe. And that’s how we can go forward because that’s how nature operates. The entire system of life on Earth, on this planet, is a system of highly integrated elements joining together in such a way that every part of the system is an essential part of the whole.

If you remove any one part, you damage the whole. If you remove a set of parts and allow them to work separately, you’re creating disease in the whole. And that happens in the human body or any living body. Then we call it cancer. The Information, the embracing all things that’s health, and that’s part of joining others. Not by external links but by internal feeling and perceiving who we are, part of a larger whole, part of an evolving system on the planet. For example, the Gaian system, which I’m sure is also part of an evolution of life on other planets in myriad places in this enormously vast universe.

Sandie Sedgbeer: I read something the other day, a little headline that said if aliens landed on this planet, they wouldn’t want to study humans. They would want to study ants because they have the system down. And they would want to know how ants have organized such an incredible system. So, it strikes me that we would do well to study ants ourselves and behave a little bit more as they do.

Ervin László: We don’t know what it is that orients ants in such a fantastically coordinated way. So, the ant colony is not a good heap of separate individuals. It’s really, you just look at it because you see the individual hands use your eyes. You can touch the individual hand, the insects, but actually, that’s a whole system of which that, and that we have in mind that you look at, is only a manifestation, is a single, single level of expression. So the system that’s real is the whole, you know, the great German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said: “the truth is the whole.” And that was what inspired many philosophies since then. So it’s not only the holistic philosophy of wholeness. We are looking for wholeness. But I will take exception to this premise of looking at the ants. If you want to study life on Earth, look at consciousness because what we have is something unique.

All things that consciousness that I want to say, but the way human consciousness is articulate, and can express itself, is able to perceive and respond to perception. That’s more developed than any consciousness on this planet. So perhaps whales and dolphins together to come closer to it. We don’t know exactly, but their environment is a different environment.

Our terrestrial environment calls for highly articulate consciousness and manipulative consciousness, and we have that. We can consciously choose to upshift to nature. And ants can’t do that, even in a colony, unless it has a joint consciousness, a collective consciousness. I don’t think so. But it’s not impossible.

But they can’t do that. Our consciousness is here for a purpose. It’s to help us come back to living the life that we are meant to live A life of striving, a life of togetherness, a life of oneness. So, again, child’s poetry, but it is the bottom line. That’s the way to upshift. If you don’t do that, we’ll pay by running into more crises and difficulties. We can’t block the evolutionary trend. It’s there, and we are a part of it. So let’s study the consciousness that allows us to become conscious of people and nature.

Sandie Sedgbeer: Ervin László, you drafted, in collaboration with the Dalai Lama, a Manifesto on the spirit of Planetary Consciousness. Tell us about that manifesto.

Ervin László: It was a very interesting experience. It was quite an experience, and we are now interested enough. There’s a project now to revive that dialogue, to make it an internet-based dialogue. This is Holiness. And today, I’ve been working on my input into that and quoting the Manifesto Planetary Consciousness. Interesting that you mentioned that because there’s no way you could have known that this something came up yesterday. This morning I decided to open up the manifesto and call the last part of the manifesto, called the Call for Planetary Consciousness.

And I’m suggesting we should revive the dialogue with his Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and talk about the need for this kind of consciousness. Let me just say why it was such an interesting experience. At the time, I was staying in Auroville. Auroville is an international settlement in India but not formally part of India.

It’s an international city in India with its own governing board. But, based on the ideas of Sri Aurobindo.

And at that time, I served as chairman of the Auroville board, looking at what Auroville was doing and trying to communicate it with the rest of the world so that there is support; and then spread the idea of Sri Aurobindo which is the more spiritual, high and uplifting ideas that you could imagine. Part of the great imaginings of independence for India, and the new thinking, the New India. So I was in Auroville, and his Holiness the Dalai Lama came to visit, and we sat down to talk. They allowed me to go to meet him. His secretary said he has a few minutes, is very busy, and has planned his whole day out, but let’s start talking.

And he asked me, what are you working on these days? And I said I have a sketch. I have a project I would like to say, a manifesto on a new kind of consciousness. And he said: ” Can I read something?”.Can you have something of it? I had it with me because that’s what I was always thinking about those days. So I started reading his Holiness, then suddenly everyone surrounding me said this, and that’s how about that, and so on. And he ended up the rest of the day. His secretary was sitting there and noting it all down. He canceled all his other appointments. That day the evening came, and we had a few pages, which became the plan, the manifesto, or the Spirit of planetary Consciousness. And it was signed by, later on, a few months later, a year later, at the meeting that I organized at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

I’m a member of that academy. I was born in Budapest. And that at that meeting, his Holiness came to that meeting in the fall of 1996. We, besides the manifesto, are the spirit of planetary consciousness. So this was an experience, a spontaneous experience. Then we adopted this manifesto, and it’s part of the work of the Club of Budapest with its 24 member clubs worldwide, and it is a set of distinguished individuals.

We are developing a new set because life doesn’t go on forever. And there’s a certain change, our attrition, and you’d have to want to bring in new members, especially young members. But we are trying to work on the consciousness, on the potentials of the human spirit, and bring that to people’s attention. So that’s one thing. Another project that is so relevant to what we are discussing is something I’m working on these days, just for the last two weeks.

Very recent, but very intensely good. I decided, and I’m joined by my good friend David Lauermann, the head of the Scientific Analytic Network. I decided we should ask thought leaders, deeply insightful scientists, and spiritual people. What do they think of the path that we need to take? In my book, The Upshift, I say, yes, the path to healing and the Evolution of Planet Earth. How do you look at this path without trying to suggest it to people? What should you look at? What do you think of it? Asking for insights from people, articulated people to write this out. I don’t know what will come out of it. I’ve asked more than two thousand outstanding individuals in the past few days. I don’t want to name any names, but they are people you would know. Ask them to write the path in five or six pages.

Give us an indication of what you think is the right thing. Is it right to shift forward, the right way to go? And the answers are coming in. Just today. I got two very important answers. Again, no names, but I’m very delighted to have them. And I think by the end of this year, end of December, we will probably have two dozen or more contributions to what we then jointly call the imperatives, the upshift imperatives. And so it’s another six months or so, and we’ll publish that too. It follows the book the Upshift, but this time it goes and taps into mind the inside, the consciousness of 2000 or more thought leaders.

Sandie Sedgbeer: Just to go back to the manifesto. There were three clarion calls in that manifesto. Can you describe those to us?

Ervin László: Well, now you expect me to remember what I’ve written all this time, exactly?

Sandie Sedgbeer: I can tell you. Well, the first is the core of creativity and diversity, right?

Ervin László: Yes. Diversity is absolutely necessary. As I mentioned, even the atom has diverse elements if you want to join that whole. This idea is that somehow things are just by things coming together into contact. And that’s what makes a larger hole, just more of the same. The larger whole is not more of the same. Even quantitatively, a whole is never the sum of the parts, and it is always something else. Wholeness is another factor. Diversity is to make wholes. Nature makes wholes, creates wholes, creates molecules, cells, macromolecules, crystals or single-cell organisms, multi-cell organisms, ecology of organisms, and the planetary ecology. These are all whole systems made of diverse plant parts.

Oneness is not created by just adding one thing together or multiplying things. It is opening up to everything else but opening and embracing diversity and working with diversity. So that’s something we already recognized in the late 20th century in the manifesto, which is becoming increasingly evident. The need for it becomes more evident as we want it today.

Sandie Sedgbeer: The second one is the call for responsibility.

Ervin László: It’s an awful word, actually very often said. I’m just responsible when something goes wrong. And then people feel you are being accused of being responsible. So many things have gone wrong, and now the whole planetary system you’re living in has gone off track. And so, my goodness, that means that we are responsible, but there is a call to assume responsibility for what we can do, for what we truly are, and do it to the best of our ability. What we can do is try to live together so all can live. And it’s one of the things I’m saying in this book, that’s ethics; living in a way that other people can also live. I don’t necessarily mean they have to live the same way, but it can also exist. They have often lived in a way that used up too many resources and too much energy, attention, and insight and Information, so many people were locked out of it. It’s not ethical to do anything that others cannot share.

Today, this is close to 8 billion people. So at least in principle, you must be able to live in a way that enables or allows at least other people to live. As I said, not necessarily the same way we live their own way, live the way we can. We are also diverse, but to live, strive and become more of what we are, whole systems working together is all the life on the planet.

Ervin László

Sandie Sedgbeer: And, of course, the third is the core of planetary consciousness.

Ervin László: I said it in the beginning, my goodness. Planetary consciousness,  do you mean the consciousness of the planet? In the beginning, this was a relatively new term. This was not much used. Now people talk about planetary consciousness. They don’t misunderstand it. Usually, they know it’s a new human consciousness that embraces the planet. It’s not the consciousness of the planet. Even though I should add as a philosopher, I’ve convinced that all large bodies in the universe have their own consciousness—all complex bodies, including the planet.

Sandie Sedgbeer: I recently interviewed Dr. Jude Currivan, who I know is a good friend of yours and sometimes a collaborator as well. And I loved what Jude says in her new book, that we need to start seeing ourselves as Gaians, not Americans or Britain or whatever, but as Gaians, and then we will begin to understand that we are one.

Ervin László: Yeah. So I said multiple identities. We have the largest identity, which means we are living beings in this universe, and that’s already an identity. Not everything is a living being. The living beings that emerged are a particular articulate expression of the evolutionary drive toward creating complex and coherent systems.

Here I’m using one term, coherence. Coherence is so important because now we recognize that nature is coherent. And Einstein said. Also, it’s almost a miracle that in this, all this wealth of chaos, the wealth of interactions that are happening in space and time, there’s something coherent that is emerging, as coherent is a system of life. And even the universe, the planets,  the system of planets, and the galaxies are themselves coherent systems from the initial chaos after the big bank; ever more coherence is emerging in space and time.

That’s a great forward trend. That’s the upshift trend. It’s an attractor. I call it the holotropic attractor in my current work, whole, you know, toward wholeness. Tropic means trophism or something pulling you toward something that is an attraction toward the universe that appears to be attracted toward wholeness.

Wholeness means the joining together of those different diverse elements into wholeness. You know, and so recognizing or being part of that is our largest identity. Within that, multiple identities are part of life on Earth, a Gaian, and identity is certainly a very important element.

Sandie Sedgbeer: I find it really interesting; you were a concert pianist. You are still a pianist. What do you think about music, all of the things that make music so wonderful and connect us to our souls? The same things you’re talking about now, coherence, harmony, all of these qualities. Do you notice, do you regard yourself as some kind of musician in the sense of what you are preaching about the planet?

Ervin László: I don’t know how I regard myself. I mean, I’m a seeker. I try to find things, particularly that wholeness and harmony that you find in music, not in every kind of music. I don’t relate to music that is violent with the percussions and whatnot. But it doesn’t have to be sentimental songs but music, which is at a higher level, is a unit of perfection. Every element of it is perfect. When Mozart was asked by the Duke or Emperor at the time in Austria about actually writing too many notes,  this was in the film. Amadeus, I think, he said: No, no, your highness, there are just as many notes as need to be. These are more, no less. Every note counts in a masterpiece; you can’t remove any note without destroying wholeness, unity, and coherence.

You can’t even also just arbitrarily add on at anything. So this is what I’m seeking. I’m seeking the perfection where all things operate to maintain, to be the whole, the expression of art,  the experience of art, the aesthetic experience is precisely that. So when we talked earlier about the ways that we can approach this higher level of upshifted consciousness, now talking about the nature experience, I would like to add the aesthetic experience of human artifacts, music, painting, and even dance in a way that we dance. You know, it’s all human artifacts. And that the express wholeness and oneness and that experience, which is a high level of, a deep experience, a highly satisfactory experience of Oneness That I think is again, one of the ways that we can evolve our consciousness so that we move toward this higher level of Upshift that is so badly needed into work and that we can contribute to. And these are our pathways to move towards.

Sandie Sedgbeer: You created the upshift movement, which you are inviting everybody to join. What is its subjective and its mission?

Ervin László: Okay, I can share with you, as I’ve written out the mission statement. I can make it available. And when the time comes from to if you present that. Next week, we will have a meeting in Rome, Italy, of the members of what we now call the WUM, the world Upshift movement, which has its own board. It’s registered formally as a movement at the so-called company’s House in London, England. But it would be an international registration, and it’ll have its own website developing the current websites, which remains, but it’ll be developed as such. We have to emphasize the term world, which we added to it because it’s not a local initiative in any sense. I would like it to be an initiative of the US Yes, certainly of Europe, but also the east, around the south.

So, and I’m going to ask organizations, I said, I’ll ask, ask the or radio on TV as well to see which way we could adhere to this Movement. So it becomes an international, a world movement. I, myself, I may add, dislike and somewhat the mistrusted term international. We are not talking about Nexus nations being connected in some way. We’re talking about transcending the level of nations so that we become global, which is what the spread needs to be. So world, a world movement. That is our goal. And I hope to involve people at all levels of insight, education, and different interests to come together because it’s our world and one world, and we are one with it. And so let’s see how each of us can contribute to it. We all care. Let’s be articulate. Let’s talk to each other about that.

Sandie Sedgbeer: Can children become part of this Movement?

Ervin László: Children are part of this Movement.

Sandie Sedgbeer: They are part of the Movement.

Ervin László: I think they only get corrupt when they go to school.

Sandie Sedgbeer: Yes, they do. They do. Yeah. Okay. I mean, certainly, your book, “the Upshift, should be part of the school curriculum.

Ervin László: They’re wonderful schools as well. I don’t disregard that. But then we are told that we are only concerned with human affairs as though they will be separate. The only concern is our national interest as though it will be separate; then those are corrupting influences. I’ve been talking to people trying to develop an upshift in business. And I say that there are two terms that I found very dangerous.

One is in the business world, particularly, and one is private. It’s a term. And the other is national. A private business. It’s the private sector. We used to say that in Europe, when we had communism, we were looking for a private sector, a small sector, and more freedom. And I was happy with my parents belonging to the private sector. But now it’s not a question of the private sector; it’s all businesses practically private except for a very small part of enterprises.

But the question is, how did the private sector become public? Becomes part of the human enterprise. Not by taking it out of hand and time to organize it, to direct it by a group of people, managers or politicians, or whatnot. But part, becoming by spirit, becoming a public enterprise, having the public, the human spirit as its guiding principles, profit, yes, it needs to be to run the organization but not as an end and in itself and by itself, profit to become one, and part of a wholly diverse system, which you can call the Gaian system, which is the planetary system, which is a planetary consciousness. That is the great chance and the great challenge that we face.

Sandie Sedgbeer: If people started taking the steps that you advocate now, and now is the only time you know that they should be doing that, how long do you think it would take to turn things around?

Ervin László: Next week!

Sandie Sedgbeer: Next week?

Ervin László: Yes. Things could go very fast. You see, the way ideas spread, insights, and beliefs spread can be very rapid. There’s an openness now because the old ways of thinking, believing, and feeling are breaking open.

The danger is that before reaching the new, natural way, you may break down in depression, fear,  the negative attributes. But if you don’t break down in between, we reach the next level, and the next level will be beyond what we have today. So you have a higher level of up-shifted level, which could go very fast. Sure. Next week could be next year, but we don’t have much time. We don’t have decades. We have years. So let’s get going with it.

Sandie Sedgbeer: We have a situation in England right now, especially in London, where many people concerned about climate change are taking radical actions. They are sitting on freeways and blocking traffic for hours on end. They’re standing on big bridges, et cetera. They’re doing all kinds of things. The other day, a young woman in her mid-twenties was reported standing on top of one of our major bridges. They had to close the bridge down, and all the traffic and the public were annoyed because they could not continue their normal daily life. But this young woman was crying, but she said, I know that everybody is going to hate me for what I’m doing, but you are robbing me of my future. And it was such an emotive thing to hear and see this young woman crying and taking such radical action, knowing that it would make her very unpopular. What would you advise that some of these young people do instead?

Ervin László: Well, it’s fine to take individual action, but you’re exposing yourself to a great deal of criticism and a blockage. Try to create a movement, try to bring other people together. But, of course,  great sudden movements that happened very quickly in the 20th century were mostly negative. Not all, because Gandhi’s insight led to India’s independence and a  new way of looking at things. There was Castro’s attempt to create a more egalitarian society in Cuba, but most of the great movements that got going very fast had negative consequences. Lenin started very positively. He started to create a more collective, a new human, as you call it, a new society, a proletarian society. But he did it by counter-posing it to a negative movement, to the capitalist Movement.

So we are fighting the proletarian struggle fighting the capitalists and finding free enterprise. That became a very negative struggle among political groups. But the principle was good, actually, I must say. And there was also Mao in China, that completely reformed from the Hsinhai one day to the next and practically reformed the entire Chinese system, moving it to this new level. Not necessarily all the way. It could continue to be a racist practice. Still, it changed the future system tremendously into a completely different one. So things can move very fast, very, very fast. And when good ideas catch hold, they also can move. Good ideas can go very deep. There was a being of this Earth on this planet whose beliefs whose personality created the last change that changed the world forever. So as known as Jesus Christ and the love that he brought forth radiated inspired some disciples, and those disciples inspired some more.

And despite the repression of the classical Roman empire, this Movement survived and spread and became Christianity as a force in the world. Tremendous events happened from Hitler to Jesus. You know, the largest possible contrasts. So this is just a response to the question. How long would it take? It can go very fast, but the deep changes take time to happen. But to keep in mind that the time is not likely to be very long because we don’t simply have a long time for change to happen. Things will break down if we don’t act in time or make the change happen.

So let’s not worry about the time, let’s start it, and it will go. It’s, it’s a snowball effect. It’s a butterfly effect. You know, the idea of the butterfly effect of a butterfly flapping its wings in California? We create a storm in Mongolia.

It Amplifies. And It amplifies because we are dealing with a so-called turbulence system. It’s a non-linear system. Lots of things can happen from one moment to the next. And this led the anthropologist Margaret Mead to say never doubt the power of a small group of people to change the world. I shared it. Nothing else ever had. I was still adding another thing. Nothing else ever had. Especially when the world is unstable and it’s already on the point of bifurcation, then the change can be very fast. So I’m optimistic about change, being able to happen and happen fast.

Sandie Sedgbeer: The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy once said that the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. So I guess we all need to get a bit crazier.

Ervin László: Yes, I think it’s almost necessary, but this means being a hopeful monster. Let me come up with this last discussion, the last metaphor. Some biologists some decades ago came up with this concept of the hopeful monster. The hopeful monster is simply a mutation in a species ahead of its time. Which is now a monster because it doesn’t fit the rest. And it’s being exposed and expelled from the rest cause it’s not understood. But then the change occurs when the mutation happens elsewhere to become the new species’ forerunner. So that’s why it’s hopeful, but right now, it’s a monster. So I would say let’s be more and more hopeful monsters.

Sandie Sedgbeer: I think that’s a really good note to end the show on Ervin László: thank you so much for joining us today.

Ervin László: And it’s really was seriously a great pleasure on your part. So that you and your network are doing a wonderful job. So it was my pleasure and privilege to talk with you.

Sandie Sedgbeer: Ervin László is a Hungarian Polymath, a philosopher of science, systems theorist, integral theorist, and originally a classical pianist. He is an advocate of the theory of quantum consciousness.

THE UPSHIFT: The Path to Healing and Evolution on Planet Earth is the latest and most essential contribution to peace and well-being by Ervin Laszlo, considered one of the greatest thinkers and humanists of our time. His book is an antidote to the pessimism and inaction that spreads worldwide. It shows that we can meet the challenges that face us—the challenges of war and aggression, climate change and destitution, and the virus pandemic. Two paths are opening for us today: a path UP to healing and evolution and a path DOWN to crises and chaos. This book tells you how you can move upward and upshift to a better world. Those who have read its advanced drafts consider it a must-read for every awakened and responsible person on the planet. Open its pages and see why. It could change you and change the world around you.

Source: OMTimes


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