The concept of an imminent cataclysmic earth destruction and apocalypse have always and continue to grip the imagination of our culture. Movies and television spread the image of destruction by polar shift, alien attack, flood, flame, comet or nuclear wipe-out.

For some the literal return of Christ is eagerly anticipated. Millions of fundamentalists across America and the White House consider themselves rapture ready, living out the script of the book of Revelation. Best selling novels predict the return of a Rambo-like Messiah who is going to put the hurt on all non-believers. Why reduce carbon emissions or preserve resources when the "end of days" is just around the corner. Why not, instead, accelerate the process. While these fundamentalists might seem to contradict their sacred texts, they believe that no harm can come to those already saved, even though in that same text of Revelation the angel promises to, "destroy them which destroy the earth".

The world denying and transcendent emphasis of our patriarchal (this point is worth noting) major religions is reaching a fever pitch. God is thought to cast his blessings on imperialist wars, territorial violence and acts of terrorism; to condone free market capitalism and its exploitation of the resources, to uphold the integrity of the nuclear family, while opposing abortion and same sex unions.

Those on the other side of the fence, secular believers in science and technology and the progress of the two, still expect that the future will continue the pattern of the last century; sleeker machines, virtual worlds, longer life spans and further ecological deterioration. They accept the projections of 4% growth ad infinitum and reject or ignore other figures indicating depletion and devastation. Faced with terrorists threats, most are willing to forfeit a degree of freedom for the feeling of security. They avoid or ignore the underlying aspects of our situation that contradict their hopes and plans for the future.

I propose a kind of extravagant thought experiment, an "all in" poker type gamble played in the realm of ideas. To accept this wager no belief is required and none desired. What is required is what the philosopher Nietzche called "uninhibited fingers for the unfathomable." He noted that much of what we take for knowledge even science is actually a projection of our psychology onto the world, our thinking tends to circle around established conventions whose basis is forgotten or obscure. Nietzche proposes the attainment of knowledge requires "a granite foundation of ignorance...the will to knowledge on the foundation of far more powerful will; the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not as its opposite..but its refinement."

The myth and traditional view even the development of individual capacities and the evolution of our self awareness derive from the capacities contained in the potential of the natural world. We are capable of sensible, intelligent thought because nature is sensible and intelligent. The aboriginal mentality recognizes no ultimate distinction between matter and spirit...no dualistic split between mind and world. A view of the world shared by the cutting edge of physics. By this logic, an evolutionary process on the level of human consciousness should be comprehensible to us, if we can stretch our minds toward it.

If we have reached the time of prophecy, then the process should have a logic behind it...even an empirical basis. It should conform to natural laws. Of course, this logic and these laws could be radically different from the ones upheld by the narrowly defined materialistic paradigm. What might help is a perspective that is open to radical possibilities, yet at the same time is logical, sensible and calm.

It is my thesis in this poker hand, that the rapid development of technology and the destruction of the biosphere are by-products of a psycho-spiritual process taking place on a planetary scale. We have created this crisis to force our own accelerated transformation...on an unconscious level we have willed it into being. Human consciousness, the sentient element is in the process of self-organizing to a more intensified state of being and knowing...what some call a higher octave, the Hopi talk of a Fifth World, the Aztecs anticipated a Sixth Sun, St. John foresees the descent of heaven to New Jerusalem, they are describing the same thing; a shift in the nature of consciousness.