In the twenty-first century, humanity will begin the process of settling other worlds in our solar system. It has been a long and precarious voyage for our species, and the final outcome for both the settlement effort and the continuation of human life on Earth is far from assured. It is of vital importance at this point in time to be aware of the factors that have brought us all into the present uncertainty.

The five thousand year cycle-of-civilizations that has contributed to the state of the world we now operate from has been a dynamic and extremely rapid event in the three million year history of those we now call our ancestors. This accelerated jump in the evolutionary possibilities open to the human race is almost miraculous. In effect, we are all the recipients of a five thousand year push to gain dominance over all other life-forms. Along with radical damage to the ecosphere and biosphere, we have even gone so far as to be able to noticeably affect and alter some of the Earth's large scale processes such as climate, the chemical content of the atmospheric and hydrospheric systems, as well as artificially inducing seismic activity in the terrasphere...

The organizational aptitude to bring about such change has apparently given humans the ability to control their environments and to subjugate all species to their interventionistic aims and intentions. They no longer seem to be ruled by the "ordinary" rate of evolution that other species are. To a great extent, the rest of life appears to be in a state of generalized passive homogeneity to larger scale influences such as geography and environment, while it appears that human beings have followed a track that is in particularized aggressive separation from and counter to being influenced by these same factors. As a result, our species now creates its own environments and geographies artificially, regardless of how we may have found these elements originally. We don't adapt to nature's needs, we adapt nature to our needs. We feed off and exploit every other system on the planet. 

Unfortunately, modern humanity's social and cultural arrangements have increasingly produced situations of disconnection and estrangement from the rest of nature for most of its members. Generally, this has resulted in a consciousness of reality that perceives and generates both external and internal fragmentation and isolation. So, on the one hand, we have a species that has completely overrun the planet, exploiting and dominating everything in its path, while on the other hand, due to this aggression, it has rapidly depleted every known resource necessary for the carrying on of its own and other life-forms' essential functions. The sudden rise of human ascendancy has had a very real price and consequence to it. Our knowledge has brought us momentary mastery, but the momentum of our lack of wisdom now threatens to throw everything we've seemingly gained over the edge of a very catastrophic precipice. 

With the advent and advance of science and the spinoff industrial technologies, we have managed to significantly disrupt every ecosystem and every living organism including our own. We destroy what we cannot recreate. Tens of thousands of species have reached extinction due to the unconscious effects of our influence and uncontrolled overpopulation. We have polluted and toxified the environment, destroyed its natural beauty, developed and used horrifying weapons of mass destruction, created untold suffering for our own species through such activities as wars and inequitable, unjust, invasive social systems that have impoverished, starved, violated and enslaved the masses, and yet so many still look blindly to the general principles and attitudes of the past for an answer to the present dilemma, even though it is these very principles and attitudes that have helped generate the crisis. Is this out-of-balance-and-out-of-control-egoism what we hope to export to other planets and other star systems?.... 

There may be an alternative. A rapidly growing number of thinking and feeling humans now recognize the complete inappropriateness of carrying on with the same attitudes that have produced these dire results, especially the impulse fueling exploitative greed for short term "profits", which are always at the expense of long term sustainability of an enriching and consciously evolutionary quality of life. The paradigms that suggest everything on this planet (or any others) is for the use and benefit of human whim alone must be abandoned, along with the mechanistic reductionist view that the universe is only a mechanical entity composed of externally related objects. The momentary benefits that such sets of assumptions seem to have secured for us are illusory; instead they have essentially put us into the most grave danger. The social institutions built on these assumptions are all under immense strain, and under the threat of collapsing. The results of such a collapse will lead to an age of barbarism that has seen no precedent. It is therefore urgently incumbent that we as a global species proceed in a much more conscious manner than ever before in history. We need to think, feel, act and respond in a way that is not only going to sustain the immediately following generations, but in a way that will assure the vibrant fulfilment of life for at least the same amount of time that we have had a recorded history. What is being proposed here is a consciously harmonious sustainability that will assure all species, including our own, the possibility of living at least to the year 7000 A.C.E. 

It is at this critical point in our evolution that such deep and subtle steps need to be taken. In order to do this we need to adopt a new view of what evolution is. To some of today's thinkers on the forefront of modern thought, the mechanistic views of random, accidental evolution no longer seem adequate to address and reconcile the situation that the entire human species now finds itself in. Neither the passively fatalistic nor the aggressively selfish models of evolution can give a clear picture of how to proceed. A much more holistic attitude and approach to life and the universe are necessary. It is an approach which combines and blends the deepest, cutting-edge implications of both quantum-and-relativity-physics into a totally new negentropic cosmological paradigm of living life. It also addresses consciousness in a radically different manner than ever before. Consciousness is no longer a subset of the space-time-energy-matter manifold, but is instead the very ground from which all phenomena arise and dissolve back into, including space-time-energy-matter. In this model, humanity is not an anomaly isolated from nature, but is a co-creative component of universal nature and consciousness. Its function is not predatory and monopolistic, but cooperative and creative. What is being implied here is that even though there may be a mechanistic component to evolution, the real trigger to development in an evolutionary sense is related to an expansion in consciousness. Evolution is conscious evolution.

This new paradigm is still only in its childhood. In order to authentically generate a liveable pattern of life from this paradigm, the greatest, most balanced and integrated minds, hearts, bodies and beings on the planet have to come together for the benefit of everyone. And everyone has to be willing to listen, contribute to and implement what is arrived at, as consciously and creatively as possible. None of this will have any meaning if humans carry on in the habitually self-destructive ways they have over the last five thousand years. Rather than always selfishly taking more than we give back, it should be clearly understood that we have the ability and the obligation as a group and as individuals to give back more than we receive from the universe. A human being has the potentiality of transcending being human. It is an enormous gift that has been given each of us, one through which we may create and contribute something of lasting value that has never before existed. Because the consciousness that sustains every order of reality - great and small - also sustains us, we all have the potential to make a contribution not just to our local community, not just to our planet, not just to our galaxy or the local supercluster, but to the universe of universes, the multiverse that our own universe is only a part of. If every human being realized this profound universal connection and was given the opportunity to fulfill such a potential, it is almost unimaginable as to what benefits would ensue from such a glorious unfolding.

So, when we finally send those members of our species to found and establish human life on other worlds, it is proposed that whoever is part of that group should have this one genuine intention: That we all give back to the universe more than we receive. It should also be irrevocably recognized that competition, intrigue and conflict will only speed the demise of the whole venture, As the Dalai Lama has many times said, "World peace begins with inner peace, tolerance and compassion", here on Earth and wherever else we may go. It is also recommended that equal numbers of males and females, of varying age categories, from every possible sector of life be included in the initial group. Not only members from the scientific and technological communities, but also artists, dancers, musicians, poets, comedians, philosophers, athletes, farmers, cooks, housewives, tradespeople, inventors, mystics, meditation masters, and as many saints as possible should be included in the roster. The more of these talents that can be combined and integrated in a single human being, the better. Integration and balance within each individual and within the group as a whole are the most important keys to the continuing success of any such adventure into the unknown!

Almost everyone recognizes that there is more to life than mere survival. The more attuned we are to the universe within, without and beyond us, the richer and deeper our collective and individual lives become. The more we can open up to the universe, the more the universe within ourselves is revealed. No longer do we need to think and feel that we are some accidentally lost orphans in a vast, uncaring cosmos, but instead we can recognize that we who make up the universe, are all dynamic, wildly creative dancers in a dance that has no limits, no boundaries, no beginning, no end. It is engagement with this consciously co-creative dance that will surely unfold the next phase in the evolutionary destiny of human beings and all other life on this planet.