GAIA’S DREAM
By Robert Podolsky
The planet’s biosphere is alive; or so say our modern experts; it’s a living entity. The planet itself may be part of that entity. Together they demonstrate many of the properties of other living beings. We call the Living Earth “Gaia” after the mythical Earth Goddess. But it seems to me that if the planet is alive and aware (and I tend to agree she is) she is surely aware the way a person sleeping is aware. Like the sleeper, Gaia stirs, reacts to certain stimuli, adjusts her metabolism to deal with our changes in her chemistry, and perhaps…she dreams.
In their Midéwiwin medicine rituals the Ojibwas say, “The circle of the earth is the head of a great drum. It moves upward with the day…booming. It moves downward with the night…booming. We are but particles of dust as we dance upon the drumhead. Some of us move upward with the day…booming. Some of us move downward with the night…booming. Only those who dream of leaping to the stars from the head of the great drum attain the grand medicine of the Midéwiwin”[1]. Only those who dream…
If Gaia dreams, where are those dreams? Are they in the stone beneath us; in the bones of the earth? Are they in the oceans, our “Googol-Great Grandmother”? Are they in the genes of the planet’s flora and fauna? Are they holograms in the planet’s magnetic field? Are they ripples in a holographic universe? Pondering these and related questions we amuse ourselves; we doze; we imagine ourselves as Gaia, somnolent and fecund. Our vision attenuates, wavers, and re-clears. We hear our heartbeat; then we hear many heartbeats; then the beat of many hearts, the sound of a great drum. Our breath becomes the tide; our aura, the Milky Way. Our vision seems unlimited in dimensions we’ve never seen before. Time fragments; Causality is suspended; and suddenly our bodies are everywhere at once…and nowhere too.
Have you ever noticed how it feels to dream? The dream seems to take over, as if it had a life of its own. Is it obvious that the self we dream isn’t the dreamer? The self we experience in a dream has been dreamed by someone, but by whom? I have often wondered this. At last as I contact Gaia I know the answer: I am Gaia’s dream…and so are you.
Now I have Lucid Dreams; wherein I know I am dreaming, yet continue to dream. Such is life. Such is reality. During a lucid dream we can choose reality and experience many things otherwise unavailable to us. We can peek over the event horizon. It is a highly creative state, where we have the power to forge a new reality, a better future for Gaia.
You can follow along with me now; for as I am Gaia…so are you. We dream together whether we choose to or not. Either we do it outside of consciousness, as in a conventional dream; or we can choose to do it lucidly, in full awareness. If we dream together lucidly we can raise Gaia’s level of awareness to that of consciousness. And finally we can dream Gaia fully conscious and aware of her own awareness. Then we merge with God and all things are possible.
The fabric of Gaia’s dreams is the fabric of all dreams, including yours and mine. To dream of a better world, a better humanity, a better social structure is to permit Gaia to dream with greater awareness. Perhaps she dreams of being awake, conscious, fully aware. What does she dream?
We know what she dreams. She dreams our reality. She dreams our deepest fears and our highest aspirations. She sees a world of possibilities and we choose between the reality of hope and the realities of fear, despite, and despair. Dream with me now a world of peace, harmony, and love…
In Gaia’s shadow the winds of Time are stilled; Causality is unnecessary; and Einstein slumbers. We can set aside our doubts for now; we will need them later.
The year is 511 BOE, Bill Of Ethics, which corresponds to 2,506 AD by the old calendar. On “Spaceship Earth”[2] much has changed over the past five hundred years. The air and water are clean…as pure as they were 1,000 years before. The forests have expanded their boundaries. Once again the wildlife thrives in every corner of the world. All species are safe from Mankind’s earlier depredations.
Looking closer we see that humanity numbers only 1.0 billion souls, a light burden for the planet to support. The population level is stable; and humanity is healthy and long-lived. A life expectancy of 200 years is typical. Soon that number will rise even higher as one by one the debilitating diseases of aging are conquered. As the human life-span expands the birth rate diminishes so that the population remains stable, in keeping with a long-term plan.
There is no War on this planet; no hostile factions eager for one another’s demise; no inter-racial, intercultural, inter-religious, international conflict that isn’t settled peacefully and to mutual satisfaction. Racism, Sexism, Religionism, Nationalism, and all the other “isms” that used to foster hatred and despite are now things of the past.
The interpersonal communications know-how and the values and beliefs that make peace possible are learned in our workplaces, in our homes, in our spiritual institutions, and in our schools; and life is sweet for our children. Today the primary focus of early education is making sure that every child has a place in our society; that no one feels left out…alienated. Because of this culture, education is at last in its ascendancy. Our education is “student-centered”, existing for the benefit of the student rather than for the purposes of prospective employers or other institutional beneficiaries. No one lacks this resource and therefore human society is universally supportive of lifelong learning by all people. More than half of all education takes place outside the classroom in the homes and businesses of participating members of the community. The community has thus become the extended family of every child. No child feels alone or unwanted for more than a few minutes and every child has loving adults to turn to for support at any time of the day or night. This fact alone has profoundly altered the course of human history.
People travel freely everywhere on the planet and off without concern for national boundaries, which are today as transparent as state boundaries were in the United States of 500 years ago. No one is embargoed. There are no tariffs on trade. All commerce is conducted freely and without protectionist restraints.
There is no Poverty on this planet that is not self-imposed. All persons have economic opportunities sufficient to ensure their prosperity if they choose to avail themselves thereof. There is also no “financial slavery” that was once so commonly imposed on the majority by the wealthy few who owned the megalithic corporations of the early 21st century. Today’s business entities are comprised of very small groups of individuals; rarely numbering more than eight. Decisions within such groups are always made unanimously using consensus formation methods that have been taught publicly since 2004.
When a big project is embarked upon, many such “Octologues” band together contractually as a HoloMat to cooperate in accomplishing the project. This way it is rare that an enterprise, once mature, isn’t owned and managed by those whose creativity and productivity are the source of the organization’s wealth. For this reason largely, bureaucracy, that is the systematic elimination of corrective feedback within an organization, has been all but eliminated; and a host of other ills eradicated along with it.
There is little drudgery in the world. When asked, people explain that their chosen work gives meaning to their lives. It is at the same time financially rewarding and emotionally fulfilling.
Crime is almost non-existent since there is such a wide range of financial opportunity available to everyone; and everyone has better things to do with their time.
And what is more, the meaning of “crime” has changed as the meaning of “law” has evolved; and this in turn has resulted from a profound change in the nature and function of “government”.
Today’s governments bear little resemblance to those of five hundred years ago. Today “government” means “consensus”, an activity in which almost all people participate actively and which is universally trusted as benign and supportive. Only those who seek to injure, control, or exploit others have anything to fear from government today; as government takes nothing away from the individual against their will and safeguards the rights of all citizens. In exchange for this extraordinary service the citizens of the world have taken on the responsibilities of self-determination, initiative, and enterprise which former governments have (but no longer) sought to usurp in order to control and exploit their own citizenry.
Seven hundred and twenty five years ago a creative and well-meaning group of individuals dreamed of a society in which government was, “…of the people, for the people, and by the people.” In hopes of achieving this end they had fought a bloody revolution and won their independence from a tyrannical monarchy. Then they established a constitution and amended it with a Bill of Rights. The resulting societal experiment was glorious…but badly flawed.
So, five hundred years ago a new experiment was begun… with a Bloodless Revolution. Having learned many lessons from the first experiment, this one was substantially less flawed.
As we waken from this dream its power and memory persist; and we realize we are living in a special era of time, an era of catalytic change. Humanity’s current way of life is not sustainable. It will either lead to human extinction or to massive change in our social fabric…or both. I vote for massive positive change. To that end I dedicate my life to the Bloodless Revolution, which is already beginning. The foundation stones of a viable plan have already been drafted. A “mastermind group” (á la Napoleon Hill) is already being recruited. The past will not be the future.
To realize any great dream it is necessary to have a sensory-based definition of the dream’s eventual outcome. In other words we have to know what we will see, hear, and experience when we have succeeded. The forgoing pages are, for me, the beginnings of such a definition. But there is one subtler criterion that I think must apply. When Gaia’s Dream is truly an emerging reality, the decisions that humans make collectively, whether in small groups or large, must be generally recognizable as wiser and more ethical than any decision that could be made alone by any member of that group. When this is the prevailing truth we will know that Gaia herself is a participant in the decision making process.
Meanwhile, aspiring to realize this dream, we have to face a really BIG PROBLEM.
[1] This quote is taken from a Midéwiwin ceremonial reenactment witnessed by the author in 1950 at a camp on the Canadian border of Minnesota. It was led by the late Bernard Mason, who was an eminent scholar of Native American lore in his day.
[2] The term “spaceship earth” is borrowed from the writings of the late Buckminster Fuller, who used it to describe humanity’s dependence on the planetary environment
Rush Hemispheres
