1. the love of each other as ourself, and
2. secondly, the greatest vision of the future that has ever been brought to this planet

The part of the Christian faith that has to do with the love is clear to everyone, but the part about the future has not recently been activated, because it seemed too good to be true, too far out and too radical. Now, the vision of the future that comes from the New Testament and from Jesus's own statements is about the radical transformation of the human individual and human society, in history, collectively, at a certain period in time.

The basic image of the individual is heir of God, joint heir with Christ. In other words, what we've been told from the future-oriented perspective of the Christian faith is that we shall do the works that He did and even greater works shall we do. So right out of the Christian heritage comes the faith in the potential of the individual human to be a joint heir with Christ, a shift from the childhood relationship to God, to the partnership, through at oneness.

And that's the greatest future-oriented vision of the human individual that we have, that we should become like Him. Then, there is a collective vision which right now is being narrowly defined, I think, by some Christian orthodoxes, but from a futuristic point of view could be very broadly examined again. Which is, the thought that there will be massive tribulations, there will be a selection process, and there will eventually be a New Jerusalem, a collective community of evolved beings in a universe of many mansions.

Now, I want to tell you that I started out as a secular, Jewish, agnostic futurist. And, for years, and years, and years studied futurism, and I'll share with you the 'vision that has come out of that - and studied what I came to feel to be the enormous potentiality in the system to evolve. And I had not found any model to reinforce the vision that had cone out of me from the study of evolution and futurism, until, 1980, I had a profound experience with the New Testament. And I'm coming to you as a "born again futurist." It's an odd breed, I mean it's a hybrid, it doesn't fit in any category. But what I have discovered, as I’ll share with you, is that the most far out evolutionary vision that comes from the futurist, high tech, high touch, high consciousness planning is a bare, bare glimpse of what is in the New Testament and what it says is coming.

So in the most fundamental sense, I think that the YMCA, the Young Men's Christian Association, on the subject of future planning, should take as its context the vision of the future that is inherent in the Christian faith. And say that what we're ultimately planning for, is that. Nothing less will do. And, as I think I can demonstrate, is nothing less will work. Because the whole futurist field, which is attempting in secular terms to plan for a society that's humanisticly satisfying, constantly fails. And you end up with a lot of pessimism in the futures field. Because unless you go deeper and sense that there is a plan, a planner, a deeper design, an ultimate being, an ultimate intelligence, and an ultimate intentionality in the universe, with which we are planning and co-designing and co-creating, you end up with failure.

So, I'm stretching out to say that because of where I am, I'm going to be able to treat this subject somewhat differently than I might be able to treat it elsewhere. And we're going to look at the potentiality for the future and how we might plan for it, making a synthesis of what we've learned from futurism with what we have already been given by Christianity. And then look at how we as individuals alive at this critical moment in history, might activate the plan toward its next stage. I mean that's a very big order and it was only because I had breakfast with you all that I would dare to take such a subject on. But, I really think it's worth going the whole way with this conversation here, because of the quality of people.

So, first of all I want to define these terms, high technology and planning, and then give you the evolutionary perspective on it, and then relate it to our Christian heritage. From the perspective that I will be presenting, this .is coming straight from Buckminster Fuller.

The universe is technology in its material form. Technology is the technique by which nature, God, manifests in material form. It is not something that just occurred with human beings. It is the way it works, technique, technology. And as we go through the evolutionary story here, we'll see the magnificence of God's technologies, such as the atom, the gene, the whole process of photo- synthesis, the human individual. My thumb is a magnificent technological achievement from this perspective. I had a thought, it went through a nervous system, it pushed a thumb, I felt it - if you cut a nerve, there'll be no movement. That is the technological component of the human body. So when we talk about high technology, what we're going to look at is it as an extension of the entire process of creation which we are now entering consciously. That is what's new about it. Technology isn't new. Our conscious participation in creating technology is new. When we look at it this way we'll see enormous guidelines about technology, so just hold that thought.

Second thought - what is planning? Now in the futures field there are all kinds of techniques of planning which have to do with extrapolating from trends and doing delphis and making up scenarios. And all of those have validity. But from the point of view of this deeper understanding, the human capacity to plan is, I believe, our capacity to discover the design in the pattern of nature itself. And cooperate with them. It's a much more sacred task than just thinking up in a vacuum as though there are no innate values and tendencies, what we would want or what's going to happen.

Planning is going to mean the discovery of the pattern implicit in creation, and working with it. So my thought here is technology is the mechanics of the expression of creation as it manifests in material form. And planning must become the human capacity to understand the design and consciously facilitate and cooperate the natural tendencies, or you might say the intention of God. Otherwise it won't work.

Now, in order to give you some sense of that, I'd like to present to you this futurist evolutionary perspective that has led me to this point. And then we'll bring it right back down to where we are, and how we might utilize it. And I'd like to use this if I can. In order to catch a glimpse of how we plan, at a time of radical change, I have discovered that it's necessary to look way, way back and examine the process of creation that led us to right now. That long extrapolation will give us the guidelines for planning at a time of radical change such as we're in. Now I'm going to draw you a very crude map of our more recent understanding of the history of this planet and how we got here. And the context I'd like you to imagine for a minute is that we are right now, in a universe of billions and billions of galaxies. Our Milky Way itself is billions of star systems. And here we are - a tiny planet at the very far edge of the Milky Way, just barely opening our collective, scientific eyes, looking out and asking where we are. From this perspective we're at a very early stage of knowledge, rather than at some late period. Now, what we are seeing as we are looking out the first time, with the eyes of science, is a miraculous past, it's truly awesome, what we're discovering. And here it is in somewhat crude terms.

About 15-20 billion years ago, the material universe was formed. 4½ billion years ago solar system and earth. 31-2 billion years ago, single celled life; about 800 million years ago, multi-cellular life; 2-3 million years a-o human life. And I'm going to suggest that starting around 1945, with the explosion of the atomic bomb, we are heading into another quantum change - is what I call it. Earth, life, multi-cells - or animals, humanity, and whatever this is going to be. Now the first lesson you see when you look at that spiral is that quantum transformation is traditional. Quantum transformation. That means nature perceived by long periods of incremental change, leading up to systems change, which results in radical units. You have sub-atomic particles coalescing into the solid material of the earth.

In the early seas of earth you have molecules getting more and more complex. At some point there is a breakthrough, you get the DNA, the genetic code, and you have a new energy - molecule integrated into cells. Then you have a leap ,in consciousness. Then you have single cells replicating in the early seas of life. At some point there is a limit to growth in those early seas; single cells have gone as far as they can go as single cells. You get a leap in synergy, you get multi-cellular organisms; plants, animals and the biosphere is formed. I can't take time to go into the fascinating process of those quantum leaps which is just now being looked at with the systems theory, the evolution theory. Here you have animals and at some point in the animal world, not fully understood, there was a quantum leap in complexity in the brain. Very rapid. In the study of evolutionary history, those quantum leaps are links that are missing, they can't find out how they happened. Darwinianism explains incremental changes within the species. It does not explain fully. There's no explanation on how to get from animal to human. There seems to be a quantum step - which is to say that Ethere is] nothing between there and here to explain it. So that's why we're going beyond mechanistic theory in evolution, it does not fit.

The origin of the human consciousness was a leap, and you'll see that at the basis of every leap is a greater complexity of organization which makes greater consciousness. And the characteristic of that greater complexity is a synergystic organization.

Okay, now, the theory that I have is that what we have hit here with the beginning of our massive high technology explosion through the atomic bomb and all the rest of the high technology, as I'll explain when we get there, is that we've hit a meta-crisis comparable to other of these radical situations in which the condition can no longer maintain itself in its current modality. And it's preparing for a quantum jump. I'm going to try to make that point as we go along. But the first point I want you to get, and this is in the book, Evolutionary Theory, is that quantum transformations are traditional. And there is no way that Darwinian evolution can explain how we got to sub-atomic particles, in the original act of creation, to individuals of consciousness. The tendency is irreversible and irresistible toward higher consciousness.

You find that crisis perceives transformation at every one of these Points. We won't take time to go into it, but there is a crisis to the existing system .that amounts to a meta-crisis. For example here, there is nothing that the single cells could do in the early seas of earth, except limiting themselves .totally, to resolve the problem that they were having over population, pollution, stagnation. Much of the same stuff. The way the crisis was resolved was by, dramatic innovation; chlorophyl, photosynthesis, multi-cellular organisms. An entire leap. Nature's way of handling limits is not adaptation to those limits but transformation. Nature's way of handling limits is not adaptation to those limits, but adaptability to new potentialities which transcend the limits and create a new environment for growth. This has happened throughout evolution.

Our next great lesson that you get from this, that I've been alluding to is that - the word holism - is now being used. Holism is inherent in the nature of reality. Holism is a word now being used for nature's tendency to form whole systems. It's interesting because it's the same as the word holy, and the real root of the word religion is relegare - to find fact and to make whole. So one of the things that we discover in witnessing the magnificence of' this process is nature's irreversible tendency to form whole systems. Out of sub-atomic particles you get molecules, out of molecules you get cells, out of cells you get multi-cellular organisms, and the thought is, that the tendency to become whole is now operating on planet earth. It's operating within us as individuals, to become whole, it's operating in relationships, it's operating in communities, and it's also operating globally. Not necessarily because we understand it or even will it, yet, but because the tendency toward whole systems is irreversible. And you can see right on earth now, our environment, our communications systems, our economies, our defense systems, are linked. And what's actually happening is we're caught in the fact that we're one. And we can't get out of it, because nature's tendencies to form whole systems is irreversible. Now you can catch hold a little bit about what I mean about cooperating with the plan. The plan is a 15 billion year trend to become whole and what planners have to begin to understand is this plan and how to participate consciously in the direction of becoming whole. And every time you find anyone attempting wholeness - you find some- thing working. It's really fascinating. And I think that's because it is aligned with the process. Holism is inherent in the nature of evolution.

Now, what you see is that through this tendency to holism there is a rise of consciousness and freedom in the system. Consciousness and freedom, consciousness and freedom are inherent in our system. It's just perfectly obvious as you move from molecules to cells, to animals, to humans, we are going up the chain of awareness. And, as there is more consciousness in the system, there is more freedom to initiate. Obviously a cell can move, and move and initiate more than a molecule, and humans more than animals. Now, here's the fascinating part of it. Let's start about 6,000 years ago in Egypt and India. It's my thesis that with the early religions we got the first evolutionary advances of the new norm. In Egypt, in those pyramids, you see a first symbol of the human desire to transform, the pharaohs wanted to become as God. In India, with those early great yogis, you get the first glimpse of consciousness beyond the waking state, cosmic consciousness. The possibility of the individual transcending the limits of the body and becoming part of the whole. In the Jewish people, it seems to me there was brought down a great evolutionary idea, which is that humans and God are in partnership for the transformation of the world The promised land, the new heaven, and the new earth, through obedience to the law.

Now the law, if you want to draw God as a process, I see it as an intentionality going through nature. The law is wholeness, oneness, which in human terms is love, it's expressed and experienced as love, that through loving God above all else, and in process terms it's loving the process, the intention, the directionality as well as the eternality of it. Loving God above all else and neighbor as self, that there will be a transformation of the material world. And you see, from an evolutionary point of view, the concept that we're going to have a transformed world is perfectly natural, because .quantum transformation is natural when nature hits certain limits.

So, I'm suggesting that the earlier religions laid the groundwork in conscious- ness for the idea of something more, something new, some radical capability being available to the human race. Now with Jesus, I believe He was the first example of us in the future. That what we are going to become, He was. And He came into history ahead of time as an evolutionary leap forward, and in one lifetime did the whole span of the transformation. And said, that is the birth, a new kind of birth, a new kind of connection with God that is unbreakable The ability to handle the material world, produce from nothing, to levitate, to heal, to regenerate, to resurrect, a total capacity of mind to control the material world through at oneness with the Creator.

And I'd like to make the quantum leap of thought to say the ultimate purpose. of technology is to be able to totally handle the material world the way Jesus did. To produce in abundance, to move with the power of thought, and to be at one with God. That's what we're aiming toward with all of this technology. He says you shall do the works that I do, and even greater works than these. And promised that there would be a time in, history when this would happen. Now, it's my thought that what galvanized Western civilization was that idea. And what galvanized us more than Eastern cultures was the expectation and the promise that we as individuals and we collectively, would be at a next stage of evolution, through the love of God and through the love of our neighbor as self. And out of that expectation of personal transformation came immense tools in modern Western society and the great tools that we have developed are democracy and science. And I am making a suggestion that democracy and science are human tools which, when combined with the spiritual pattern, will eventually lead to the transformed person, and the transformed world.

Democracy, in its deepest roots, is the human recognition that each of us is created by our Creator as a sacred being, with unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That idea has liberated human potential around the world. In other cultures, the human individual was not the key, it was the collective. Once the human individual realized that he or she is sacred and ultimately the heir of God, all Hell broke loose. I mean you couldn't hold back, because it awakened the truth. And in the United States of America, that's where the truth has most enormously expressed itself in all its magnificent diversity. Nobody is willing to be less than anybody else. That's great. That has released human potentiality which is the very beginning, I think, of our capacity to transform totally. We have to know each of us is a son or daughter of God, to go the whole way with our transformation.

Then, through science, many other cultures had great scientific insights, but they never thought of using them, because they had no expectation or desire to transform the material world. I think China, in early China, they had the rocket. It was an aesthetic device. Many other cultures have had beautiful technological innovations but never thought to change anything with it. Science is the mind's understanding of the processes and laws of nature. And technology is the ability to work with nature to transform it. If you think of our understanding of the atom, of the gene, the genetic code, the brain - just take those three - what is in fact happening to our scientific knowledge, is the human mind, through understanding God's invisible technology, such that we can co-evolve, co-create with Him. We’re doing recombinant DNA for example. We're taking genes and splicing them and making new life forms. Vie are designing new worlds, for space. There at NASA they have on the drawing boards, the whole idea of how to create a world. A little ore, but it's practice for co-creation. With the understanding of the atom, we didn't create the atom, but through a mind understanding it, we've gotten hold of its power - for good or bad. What's happening through science, I believe, and technology and democracy is that individuals are gaining power to co-create, to co-evolve, to become nature in a conscious way, moving toward the next stage. And if you really examine the implications of high technology, and take it 20 to 50 years ahead, take our capacity in astronautics, in the space program - in 20 to 50 years, we could have a non-terrestrial resource space, utilizing lunar materials, asteroids, solar energy, and the human race would become an earth space, and eventually, an earth independent nation.

Now, the meaning of that is yet unknown. But it is evolutionary, there is no way to say that this is just a slight change. It's as important as when the fish came out of the sea on to the dry land. Then take our capacity in the bio-technological area, genetics, particularly the research into the design of the body, which was developed here. What we're learning is that it's a language. And once you're on to the fact that it's a language, you can communicate with it and change it, and we are backing into it; it's a very controversial and dangerous area because if we continue to use it in the illusion of separateness and misuse it as was done by people like Hitler and all that - horrible! But if you say it is the natural tendency of evolution for us to co-create, because that's what we've been promised, then you begin to look at what's the model of what we want to become. Rather than saying we're not meant to have this, we say God has created us in His image, what is the image of man at the next stage?

And here's the thing that just amazed me as the Jewish, secular, agnostic futurist. It's Jesus. I believe that Western civilization has got the model of what the power is aiming toward. I hope this thought is not just blowing your minds or making you feel it's wrong. It is a jump, but if you look at those powers, implicit in high technology, like genetics, just starting off, we can change our bodies. And in the laboratories, now, what they're studying is the aging mechanism itself, and there are certain laboratories that have a bit sign on it: "Stamp Out Death." They're looking at death as a disease. They're looking at the body's programming to degenerate, which is, our cells are programmed to degenerate. They're looking at the possibility of re-programming us to regenerate. And there's lots of experimentation on how to extend life and bring in regeneration.

The definition of synergism, from the English Oxford Dictionary, is human and God cooperating for the regeneration of the human race. You look up synergism in the dictionary and that's the theological root - this is really fascinating - that holism and synergy are the same thing. Synergy. It looks to me like what's happening with our high technology is that we are honing in on the technology of the creation. And that, that power is symbolically the power that's implicit in the tree of life. Do you remember the story of Genesis, when Eve went for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And we separated out from the creation, something went wrong there. The illusion of separateness entered the human consciousness. And in that story, humans were heading for the second tree, the tree of life, and the Lord God said, if they, if the man gets to the second tree, they'll be like us, they'll be like the Gods. they'll be immortal. And we were expelled, and the tree of life was protected. The tree of life is what we're aiming at here. We have to face it, the powers of high technology - is projected only 20-50 to 100 years - lead to the powers of co-creativity, of life extension,, of universal development, of the control of mind over matter - that's where it's going. And it is my thesis that out of Egypt, India, Judea and Christendom – just take Christ, we got democracy and technology, all came out of that. Leading to a meta-crisis here on earth.

Now, here's the real big one. A species, designed in the image of God, experiencing still the illusion of separateness, a conscious, genetic defect that we can't seem to remember, we're connected to each other, and to nature, and to God. A species designed in the image of God, still in the illusion of separation, inheriting the powers of high technology. Starting with the atom, then going on into bio-technology, and mind control. A species in self- centered consciousness with that power, cannot survive for long. Because the power is so destructive if misused. You can see it with the nuclear issue, you can see it right now for the first time in human history. Due to that power, we have the possibility of destroying civilization. Project that negative power 10 to 20 to 50 years and you see the power of changing our whole biochemistry, you see the power of mind control through electronics, you see that self-centered consciousness given those powers is self-limiting and self-destructing.

So here's where we get to the immense theological issue with high technology, with planning. It is, that we have to feel the illusion of separateness to continue to evolve. Which brings us back to the message of Christ. There is no way, in my opinion, that we can continue to evolve, given the power and given the fact that we're designed to have power due to our minds, if we do not re-connect experientially to God. And what Christ represents is the re-connection of the human to God. Not speaking on religious terms or Church terms, but just speaking in deep human terms, the question before us is how the human race can re-connect to God in time, before it misuses its power and goes through an Armageddon. Now if you remember in the New Testament, the results of the Armageddon scenario is eventually a victory for the whole human race who is willing to be God centered. And I think the ultimate issue is can we do it without having to go to Armageddon. It's a cosmic drama. Can a brilliant species, on a little planet, at the far corner of the Milky ,Way, get itself together and recognize its oneness, and experience its wholeness, in time to use its high technology for the good of the whole. Or, will it have to go through massive destruction first?

Now, if we choose, and it has to be a free choice, to reconnect - to do the human part of the re-connection to God - I'm assuming that God has to do His part. It's not by will alone that this shall happen. But if we who already experience oneness and wholeness, could connect with each other - to the Big One - if there could be a synerqy among those who know, planetwise, right now, to say the planet is in crisis. We who are experiencing this love need to experience it with all our brothers and sisters in consciousness around the world. We could, I believe, have the opportunity to shift to consciousness toward oneness in time. And I'd like to just say that if we do that, we will find that the purpose of our high technology is indeed to build a new order of the ages.

The purpose of the United States of America is specifically, I think, to utilize its high technology and its planning power to rediscover the pattern in creation and say that the purpose of our power is to emancipate the potentiality of humans. And that includes the capacity to restore and renew this earth. We know how to do that. The capacity to provide basic needs of people; food, shelter. The capacity to emancipate unique and individual creativity. And this is where the service part of this comes in. It's a view of service as the emancipation of individual creativity, as well as just taking care of the weak. And, we can begin the exploration of outer space in a peaceful way. Eventually, shifting the defense game to the new world's building game. The United States of America has to change the game. Not lose it or win it, but change it, toward the image of a world society through which each person is free to do his or her best. And I think we need a radical re-awakening of our vision. Which is that there is a supreme intelligence, that our purpose is a new order of the ages, as it says on the dollar bill. And that our high technology, industry and military skills are the very skills needed to fulfill that commitment. And that - let's say - our volunteer sector, our citizens who are capable of freely joining at the community level, need to recontextualize their work as elements of this radical opportunity for the human race. And see that - as we were saying at breakfast - that if we can look at the humans we're serving once again as the heirs of God, and look at all the techniques of awakening human creativity that have been developed in the last 20 years; the human potential movement. Holistic health, and many of these other areas. And re-awaken the sense of collaboration. Moving towards synergy at the community level, bringing together the various elements to collaborate at the community level, re-awakening the transcendent vision that as we do that we are not moving towards middle income housing for everyone. We are moving toward a new society, a new order, a re-connection with God.

There are the seeds in that of what needs to be done. And the only way it's going to be done is by individuals of integrity freely joining at the community level. What I saw at breakfast is that the YMCA, being the oldest service organization in the country, with the Christian heritage as its faith – and with the purpose of service could serve a real leadership role in bringing together the various segments of our community. To look ahead, not just in the ordinary futuristic way, but in the way of saying we as children of God, with these new potentials that are in our culture, how can we meet our needs here? And how can we begin toward the conscious collaboration of a new order of the ages in cooperation with God? When anyone begins to talk this way, what you will find in any group of human beings is that there is a whole group already knows this. This sounds radical, but actually the truth, it's the truth of the foundation of our culture, being said it's true again. And truth is always radical. The truth is more radical than anything, and there's not a word that I said here that isn't imprinted deeply into the promise of Western civilization. All I'm saying to you is that the truth is deeper than we nay have recently known as we've gone through the secularization of society. This is now a synthesis of the secular power with the spiritual potentiality of each human to enter the evolutionary process toward what I think will be eventually a universal humanity Co-created with God. That's what we're aiming for.

I think it's time for me to conclude. I'd like to take 2 minutes just to tell you that in my own life, after 15 years of being a futurist and lecturing about this, I've made a personal commitment to take a new step. And I've decided that it is essential that in American politics there be an expression of spiritual vision. And so I am running to be selected as the Vice Presidential nominee on the Democratic ticket in 1984. And I've created a vehicle called "The Campaign For A Positive Future," whose purpose is to provide a place for people who are doing models of excellence at the community level, who are coming together in collaborative ways, who are working on long range goal s to coalesce and express to the American people what it is we now can do to build a positive future. So I'm taking this whole voluntarism, and ,futurism, and attempting to create a constituency and a base for it to become a political reality, rather than standing separate from the system. And this just comes out of my sense that there is an urgency in all of this. Because what we've learned in evolution is that when you come to one of these shifts, they're very swift. And we can see we don't have 2 to 3 more generations to have nuclear wars, and pollute, and over-populate and alienate. We don't have that time. So whatever is going to happen, is going to happen quickly, I believe.

Well. I’ll conclude this with the thought that each of us, wherever we are, but, specifically if we are already in organizations dedicated in this direction, have immense opportunity to join with God’s Plan to create a new order that has the characteristics of greater consciousness, greater freedom, and greater synergy. And that when we consciously take that step, we are working with the process of creation and will be empowered by forces greater than ourselves. If that were not so, this would be impossible, but if that is so, this is inevitable and that’s the faith.

Thank you.