Awakening Earth:
Exploring the Evolution of Human
Culture and Consciousness

by Duane Elgin
November 1993, 382 pages
ISBN:0688116213
William Morrow & Co.

Description

Just as there are relatively distinct stages that characterize the development of an individual from infancy to early adulthood, so too are there discernible stages in the development of our species as we move toward a planetary-scale civilization. Awakening Earth brings together views from science and spirituality, East and West, the practical and the visionary to present a new picture of human evolution. Based upon twenty years of research, this book explores the human journey from the initial awakening of hunter-gatherers roughly 35,000 years ago, through the agrarian era and industrial revolution, and then goes on to describe three additional stages of development essential for realizing our initial maturity as a global species-civilization.

A disoriented world civilization faced with dwindling resources, mounting pollution and exploding population is a recipe for ecological collapse and social anarchy. It is imperative that the human family begin to make rapid and profound changes in how we live together on the Earth. To accomplish this, we must now ask ourselves fundamental questions: Who are we? What are we doing here? Where are we going as a species? Awakening Earth provides a catalyst for this conversation with its integrative vision and inspiring map of the journey towards a sustainable, compassionate, and creative future.

While not predicting a sudden "new age" of social enlightenment, Awakening Earth does present the promising view that humanity is roughly halfway through seven major transformations in culture and consciousness required to build a planetary civilization that can endure into the deep future.

Reviews

Challenging, thoughtful, original, well-documented, and plausibly hopeful. One of the best long-term futures books in many years!
(Future Survey, Volume 15, Number 10, October 1993)

Awakening Earth argues that we are now collectively poised for a major "species shift." If the first stages of human awakening involved separating ourselves from nature, developing our sense of autonomy as a species and discovering our ability for remaking the world, the next stages of evolution will require reintegrating ourselves with nature, exploring our deep bonding with one another and with the cosmos and developing our capacity to act in harmony with the universe.

Though at times daunting in its comprehensiveness, the book's ultimate achievement is its balance of vision and sober reasoning, in the tradition of Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller. Without denying the tension and suffering that go with change, Elgin conveys a powerful sense of what he calls "enthusiasm for the conscious coevolution of life on Earth, for it is only through our individual awakening and creative action that the Earth will awaken as well."
(San Francisco Chronicle, Review, April 10, 1994)

Elgin bases his tour de force on an awesome synthesis of his reading over the last dozen years and a personal spiritual experience documented as an appendix. He is the West's version of Sri Aurobindo, an Eastern sage who created a mighty synthesis of East and West. For weaving together the strands of spiritual traditions, various thinkers and the new physics, this book is worth the read. For anyone who wants, as I do, the grand overview, you certainly get it here.
("Initiatives," Newsletter of the Institute of Cultural Affairs in the Western United States, Vol. X, No. 3, Summer, 1994)

Comments from the Author, Duane Elgin

There are a number of unique features to this book: First, the span of evolution considered is uncommon. Only a handful of books cover both the historical past and the deep future in one evolutionary sweep. Second, the cosmology or theory is distinctive--it presents a systems view of the cosmos that is congruent with both modern science and the perennial wisdom. This cosmology is neither materialistic nor transcendental, but integrative as it describes a co-evolutionary view of culture and consciousness. Third, the meditative or intuitive origins are unusual--while the particulars of this book are based on two decades of research, the organizing pattern emerged as the culmination of a half-year of self-directed meditation.