Awakening at the End of Time Intro & Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword
by Kiara Windrider
Introduction
Prologue
PART ONE
The Death of The 3-D Human “Caterpillar”
1 Economic Crises 1
2 Social And Political Crises 3
3 Ecological Crises 5
4 Energy Crises 7
5 Climate Change Crises 21
6 Abrupt Climate Change 29
7 Overshoot and Collapse 39
8 Sixth Great Extinction Ahead? 49
9 Facing and Embracing Apocalypse 59
PART TWO
The Birth of the Luminous Human “Butterfly”
Introduction
10 A Vaster Perspective 67
11 The Essential Evolution of Consciousness 75
12 The Gift of Facing Death 83
13 Prophesies of a Great Evolutionary Leap 89
14 Signs Of An Evolutionary Leap 95
15 Galactic Re-Seeding 109
16 The Birth of Homo Luminous 115
17 Visions of a Wave of Light 119
18 Understandings and Confirmations of the Visions 129
19 Approaching the Quantum Moment 137
20 Beyond the Quantum Moment 143
21 Many Futures 147
22 Visions of the New Earth 153
23 The End That Is The Beginning 159
PART THREE
Bringing It All Home
24 Embrace and Transcend 165
25 Dealing With Ego Resistance and Defense 169
26 The Essential Reframe 175
27 Faith and Surrender 179
28 Love and Acceptance 183
29 Finding Meaning and Purpose at the End of an Age 187
30 Beyond Hope and Hopelessness 191
31 The Path of Grace 197
32 The Deep, Dark Descent of Ego Death 201
33 Facing Death as the Ultimate Doorway to Awakening 217
34 The Coming of the Collective Avatar 221
Afterword
An Offer of Many More Resources 227
Foreword
by Kiara Windrider
by Kiara Windrider
There is a mystic, a poet, and a warrior awakening in each of our hearts.
How many of us have gazed up at the stars at night and contemplated the mysteries of space and time, pondering how this vast universe came into being, looking for our own place in this tapestry of infinity?
How many of us have surveyed the beauty of an ancient forest, the stillness of a mountain lake, or the vast restless ocean, and felt the unifying pulse of an immense web of life energizing and connecting all things?
And how many of us have felt the ache of despair, impotency and rage as we watched the disappearance of this incredible world of mystery and beauty in the fast onslaught of a human civilization gone out of balance, and out of control?
Is this all there is to existence, fading out with a whimper or else going out with the proverbial bang, as we move inexorably towards the precipice of what many have called the Sixth Extinction Event?
Or could there perhaps be an evolutionary purpose to all this, once we are able to align with it, that allows us to transform our aching despair into hope, our impotent rage into creative action, transforming our precious blue planet into a galactic jewel of light?
I first met Barry and Karen in Mt. Shasta, California, where I lived during the 90s, and remember endless walks through the mountains examining these inter-related issues. We bonded instantly in our common search for meaningful hope, speaking of galactic waves and coronal mass ejections, ancient history and geomagnetic reversals, evolutionary cycles and templates of creation that shape the worlds of apparent physical form.
We discussed the possibility that despite our technological and spiritual advances, we were still an incomplete species, and that we needed to go through an evolutionary crisis much as a caterpillar does on its journey towards becoming a butterfly.
We spoke about how there is a divine intelligence pervading the universe and within our cells which was shaping our biology and creating new species on Earth just as surely as the forces of death were tearing down our current state of human civilization, resting on the illusion of a personal ego existing separately from the rest of creation. We realized we were not separate from the divine intelligence that was continually oscillating between states of form and formlessness, birthing new forms of increasing complexity and creative awareness.
We considered how the Earth herself was a living conscious being with her own cycles of growth and evolution. We pondered Sri Aurobindo’s mystical understandings that a supramental descent was taking place right now and that our current cataclysms were simply a response to this incoming cosmic light so that outdated forms could give way to the new.
In all of this we noted how important it was to keep our hearts and minds open to the voice of the living Earth, denying neither our current ecological and human realities, nor our ability to harness the forces of creation to collectively transform these realities. We realized that for those who have chosen to come to this Earth as warriors of light, these times of crisis were unprecedented opportunities to evolve further. And that a ‘big picture’ perspective was essential if we were to look beyond the outer realities of these times.
This meticulously researched book, an expansion of those earlier ideas, spans vast realms of scientific and metaphysical enquiry, as well as deeply personal stories, futuristic visions and spiritual encounters. It is unique in that it not only provides detailed, sometimes brutal, descriptions of the current state of our planet, including the political agendas, climate changes and ecological disasters that are increasingly affecting our very survival, but also provides perspectives and possibilities for emerging from this chaos into a glorious new cycle of human and planetary evolution.
We have managed to desecrate and pollute the Earth in innumerable ways that threaten her survival as a planet, and the survival of millions of her species, including our own. This is a fact that can no longer be denied. The most recent of these threats has to do with the largely unacknowledged ongoing contamination of sea-water from the Fukushima nuclear reactor, which has already turned a third of the Pacific Ocean into a virtual dead zone.
The truth of cataclysmic climate change can no longer be denied either. Increasingly severe bouts of heat, cold, floods, fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, droughts, food and water shortages are becoming a reality for many around the world. There is still ongoing debate whether these cataclysms are caused by global warming resulting from greenhouse emissions such as carbon dioxide and methane, as Barry and Karen tend to concur, or from the inflow of cosmic rays and terrestrial cooling resulting from decreased electrical activity within the Sun, similar to what was experienced during the ‘little ice age’ in 17th century Europe, which happens to be my own personal conviction.
Whatever the ultimate verdict, and this will become clear very soon, the fact remains that we are entering a period of unprecedented environmental catastrophe, food shortages, social disintegration, economic collapse, and political tension. We must prepare for this with awareness and courage. Relegating all this into the trashcan of ‘doom and gloom’ is to deny that we are already in a rather gloomy state of runaway doom.
However, is it possible to face these coming times not from a place of fear and denial but from a place of vision and hope? What would this look like? If we are witnessing, at the end of our current evolutionary cycle, the death of caterpillar consciousness, what would it mean to emerge as a human butterfly? Can we embrace our deep subconscious fears of death, and thus realize our identity as infinite beings of creativity and light? What are some perspectives and practices for achieving this?
Many spiritual traditions speak of moving out of an age of darkness into an age of light. What are some of these prophecies, and what does the journey of Self-realization mean in this context? How does this correlate with revelations emerging from modern seers, mystics, yogis and physicists? Is there such a thing as collective enlightenment or quantum awakening? What would this look like, and what are the planetary mechanisms and timing keys for achieving this?
Ultimately, what power for change do we possess as awakened souls consciously attuned to the Soul of the Earth? What happens when we begin to shift into higher dimensional timelines for the future? Can we transform the worst-case scenarios of ‘doom and gloom’, and consciously shape the next evolutionary cycle as members of a new, soul-oriented human species, homo luminous?
The answer is a resounding YES! But transformation can never happen as long as we resist or reject any aspects of ourselves, whether dark or light, whether held within our own psychological landscape or projected out into the world as global events. The path of awakening is not about transcending, denying or bypassing our current realities but about honoring and embracing them.
This is the path of alchemy. This is what the final section of this book is about. As we connect with the simple truth of who we are, in the midst of all our illusions, fears, pain and attachments, we open to the magic of grace, where human ego and divine soul merge together as one, and where the caterpillar discovers its own hidden face as the butterfly. Our deep fears around survival, ego dissolution and death become the doorway to a life divine.
Please join this masterful exploration with Barry and Karen as they guide us into an exciting renaissance of the human body and spirit, taking our place as stewards and protectors of a living Earth, pioneers of tomorrow, Sun-eyed children of a new dawn!
Kiara Windrider is a transpersonal therapist and author of ‘Gaia Luminous: Emergence of the New Earth’ and ‘Homo Luminous: Manual for the Divine Human’ (Kiarawindrider.net).
Introduction
When I began to awaken four decades ago, one of my first realizations was that I was not the human personality I thought I was, but a being from another world. There was a knowing that I had come here for a time when the Earth and humanity would go through a great crisis. Many of you may also know that this is part of your soul purpose and destiny.
During this long journey of awakening, there has been a continual deepening and expanding of my understanding of what is transpiring on this planet, and what might lie beyond the great transformation we face individually and as a species. This passion was always in the forefront of my spiritual journey, but waned after living through decades of failed predictions of financial collapse and great Earth changes. A few years ago, amidst the debate around climate change and the obviously deteriorating state of the ecological and financial systems, I found myself entering the stream of passionate investigation once again.
This time, it was not initially from a spiritual perspective, but from a pragmatic, left-brained exploration of what was unfolding on the economic, ecological, energy, and climate change fronts. A nearly two-year research project ensued, reflecting the perspective of the scientific mind of my undergraduate chemistry major studies. The results were sobering indeed.
Even while this deep exploration of the third-dimensional, physical plane situation was occurring, major consciousness expansions were also taking place, accompanied by revelations on what lay ahead from a larger, extra-planetary and spiritual viewpoint. It became clear that both the material and spiritual aspects are essential facets of what is unfolding, neither more important than the other.
Unlike most books, which tend to emphasize either the material or spiritual perspective, this book traverses the entire scale of reality. Part One takes a serious look at the physical dimensions of where we are as a species, diving deeply into scientific data and projections on where the myriad crises of climate change, financial and energy collapse, and ecosystem demise might be taking us. We explore the darker shadows of a potential extinction crisis in a grounded, factually documented way.
In Part Two, we shift our viewpoint to the highest levels, seeing what is occurring on Earth as an unfoldment of God/One/Source in its most primal impulse, which is to know and experience itself through its myriad souls embodied in the species Homo sapiens sapiens. We embrace and transcend any apparent paradoxes between these two perceptual lenses. In truth, the spiritual and material dynamics dance together in a story that we will not fully understand until we look back on it sometime in the future.
I do not present this book as the truth, but as a version of reality that I have come to, which will probably change even before Awakening at the End of Time is published. So much is being revealed day by day as we accelerate towards this climactic moment in planetary history. As you read this book, you will be taking in a lot of information on the many crises humanity faces. This may open the door to some difficult passages, as it has for the two of us at times.
Frankly, that is one of the purposes that motivated us to write the book. Through our awakening work with people, we have come to know the importance of facing and embracing whatever is occurring. We’ve found this to be essential if true awakening is to occur. The inner and outer changes will only accelerate in the days ahead, providing one evolutionary opportunity after another. Will we meet them with our full presence, or do our best to evade and avoid them?
What I do know beyond any doubt is that there is an omnipotent, infinitely loving and intelligent Source Presence that is presiding over and orchestrating all that is unfolding. Despite appearances, all that shall unfold will be based in the most loving possibility, and in the end all that we shall go through, individually and as a species, will be well worth it. What lies ahead beyond the time of the great changes is grander than any of us could possibly conceive of. And it is the will of the One that this shall come to pass.
We hope that through reading this book your mind will be stretched to new levels of understanding. And we hope you will also find yourself asking new questions, or returning to ones you haven’t thought about in a while. On that note, Part Three addresses the all-important question of What do I do with all the information and stimulation that I just experienced (in Parts One and Two)? Here, we attempt to provide support and assistance on how to face and embrace the death of our human, third-dimensional “caterpillar identities,” while we open up to the luminous unfoldment of our emerging, divine “butterfly Selves.”
Throughout the book, many links are embedded in the text as underlining, for those who want to go deeper and to verify our information and conclusions. You’ll also find links to our other resources — books, website, YouTube channel, and so on — at the end of the book. Go to https://www.luminousself.com/awakeendtime-book-links.html to download a pdf of all the live hyperlinks or access them directly. The links are listed in order by chapter, worded exactly as they appear in the book.
We hope that you and your awakening will be stimulated and catalyzed by the information and insights in Awakening at the End of Time. More importantly, we hope that you experience a journey of transformation and awakening through reading this book. May that journey increase your awareness of the immense potential for awakening and Self-realization that is present on Earth at this time. And may you consecrate your life to that!
NOTE: The “I” voice of this book is that of Barry, and the research that informs it was done by him. Although Karen has contributed significantly to the book’s creation, her primary role has been that of a ghostwriter, editing and polishing everything Barry wrote. She has also added content when prompted to do so. The totality of the book, like all that we do, reflects the we of our nearly 30-year partnership. We have come to understand that the co-creative communion we are blessed with works through the two us as one being, in a non-linear, unified manner that is beyond any personal attributions for what comes forth.
During this long journey of awakening, there has been a continual deepening and expanding of my understanding of what is transpiring on this planet, and what might lie beyond the great transformation we face individually and as a species. This passion was always in the forefront of my spiritual journey, but waned after living through decades of failed predictions of financial collapse and great Earth changes. A few years ago, amidst the debate around climate change and the obviously deteriorating state of the ecological and financial systems, I found myself entering the stream of passionate investigation once again.
This time, it was not initially from a spiritual perspective, but from a pragmatic, left-brained exploration of what was unfolding on the economic, ecological, energy, and climate change fronts. A nearly two-year research project ensued, reflecting the perspective of the scientific mind of my undergraduate chemistry major studies. The results were sobering indeed.
Even while this deep exploration of the third-dimensional, physical plane situation was occurring, major consciousness expansions were also taking place, accompanied by revelations on what lay ahead from a larger, extra-planetary and spiritual viewpoint. It became clear that both the material and spiritual aspects are essential facets of what is unfolding, neither more important than the other.
Unlike most books, which tend to emphasize either the material or spiritual perspective, this book traverses the entire scale of reality. Part One takes a serious look at the physical dimensions of where we are as a species, diving deeply into scientific data and projections on where the myriad crises of climate change, financial and energy collapse, and ecosystem demise might be taking us. We explore the darker shadows of a potential extinction crisis in a grounded, factually documented way.
In Part Two, we shift our viewpoint to the highest levels, seeing what is occurring on Earth as an unfoldment of God/One/Source in its most primal impulse, which is to know and experience itself through its myriad souls embodied in the species Homo sapiens sapiens. We embrace and transcend any apparent paradoxes between these two perceptual lenses. In truth, the spiritual and material dynamics dance together in a story that we will not fully understand until we look back on it sometime in the future.
I do not present this book as the truth, but as a version of reality that I have come to, which will probably change even before Awakening at the End of Time is published. So much is being revealed day by day as we accelerate towards this climactic moment in planetary history. As you read this book, you will be taking in a lot of information on the many crises humanity faces. This may open the door to some difficult passages, as it has for the two of us at times.
Frankly, that is one of the purposes that motivated us to write the book. Through our awakening work with people, we have come to know the importance of facing and embracing whatever is occurring. We’ve found this to be essential if true awakening is to occur. The inner and outer changes will only accelerate in the days ahead, providing one evolutionary opportunity after another. Will we meet them with our full presence, or do our best to evade and avoid them?
What I do know beyond any doubt is that there is an omnipotent, infinitely loving and intelligent Source Presence that is presiding over and orchestrating all that is unfolding. Despite appearances, all that shall unfold will be based in the most loving possibility, and in the end all that we shall go through, individually and as a species, will be well worth it. What lies ahead beyond the time of the great changes is grander than any of us could possibly conceive of. And it is the will of the One that this shall come to pass.
We hope that through reading this book your mind will be stretched to new levels of understanding. And we hope you will also find yourself asking new questions, or returning to ones you haven’t thought about in a while. On that note, Part Three addresses the all-important question of What do I do with all the information and stimulation that I just experienced (in Parts One and Two)? Here, we attempt to provide support and assistance on how to face and embrace the death of our human, third-dimensional “caterpillar identities,” while we open up to the luminous unfoldment of our emerging, divine “butterfly Selves.”
Throughout the book, many links are embedded in the text as underlining, for those who want to go deeper and to verify our information and conclusions. You’ll also find links to our other resources — books, website, YouTube channel, and so on — at the end of the book. Go to https://www.luminousself.com/awakeendtime-book-links.html to download a pdf of all the live hyperlinks or access them directly. The links are listed in order by chapter, worded exactly as they appear in the book.
We hope that you and your awakening will be stimulated and catalyzed by the information and insights in Awakening at the End of Time. More importantly, we hope that you experience a journey of transformation and awakening through reading this book. May that journey increase your awareness of the immense potential for awakening and Self-realization that is present on Earth at this time. And may you consecrate your life to that!
NOTE: The “I” voice of this book is that of Barry, and the research that informs it was done by him. Although Karen has contributed significantly to the book’s creation, her primary role has been that of a ghostwriter, editing and polishing everything Barry wrote. She has also added content when prompted to do so. The totality of the book, like all that we do, reflects the we of our nearly 30-year partnership. We have come to understand that the co-creative communion we are blessed with works through the two us as one being, in a non-linear, unified manner that is beyond any personal attributions for what comes forth.
Prologue
As the second decade of the 21st century winds down, many of us are contemplating what the future might be like for the Earth and humanity. With so many crises increasingly impinging upon our everyday lives, we can’t help wondering what the next decades will be like. Right alongside the growing specter of an extinction-level event, could the next steps in the evolution of our species also be occurring?
All of this has been front and center in my consciousness since I began to awaken four decades ago. I have found it helpful in answering these questions to look at the big picture, the long story of evolution. This has enabled me to see the invisible thread of grace that winds through it all.
Evolution on planet Earth is a mysterious process in which the seeming opposites of death and transcendence endlessly dance together to create the new. High drama typically ensues, as the One continually dissolves outmoded life forms and re-sculpts them into more complex and conscious forms that ever more fully embody and reflect its true, eternal nature. For the great desire of the One is to reside more completely — and more magnificently — within its myriad manifestations.
Often, the evolution of a species seems to be flowing along just fine. It may spend centuries or even millennia flourishing in its own particular way, when out of the blue it encounters an evolutionary precipice. Suddenly, that species has reached the limits of its existing capacities and/or its ability to thrive within its environment. Extinction may seem imminent, when an inexplicable breakthrough happens. A miraculous “something” — totally unexpected and previously inconceivable — occurs. Call it what you want, attempt to define it in relative, physical terms if you like, but the highest understanding of what is going on may be that it is a movement of Grace.
Well-known futurist and visionary Barbara Marx Hubbard often refers to “Our Story” — the long journey of ensoulment within life forms during the last 4.5 billion years on Earth, from the first organisms all the way up to us, homo sapiens. Her video, “Humanity Ascending”, offers a fascinating glimpse into this eons-long process. To fully understand “Our Story” as human beings, we must travel back to one of the very first lifeforms, the prokaryotes, single-celled organisms that had no nuclei or other organelles. These tiny beings were as basic as life could be, and their existence was confined to drifting around in the primal oceans, gobbling up whatever floated by. They had no competition, so they multiplied until they reached the limits of what their environment would support. When that point came, a mass die-off seemed certain. Would one of the first attempts to express the evolutionary impulse on Planet Earth fail?
At that moment, magic happened. Grace descended. In her wonderful TED Talk, “How a Single-Celled Organism Almost Wiped Out Life on Earth”, (Remember to go to https://www.luminousself.com/awakeendtime-book-links.html to download a pdf of all the live hyperlinks or access them directly) Anusa Willis tells the story. Not long after the Earth was formed, the atmosphere was largely made up of nitrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide, with very little of the oxygen we depend on to live. In fact, oxygen was toxic to the first organisms, the prokaryotes, which were anaerobic. And the oxygen that was present was chemically bound within molecules, as in water, not floating around in the air in the amounts that sustain human life today. The prokaryotes flourished for quite some time, as mentioned above, until they became so numerous that they exhausted their food supply. Their doom seemed assured.
But sometime between 2.5 and 3.5 billion years ago, the grace of evolutionary magic happened. One of the types of prokaryotes called cyanobacteria spontaneously developed the capacity we now call photosynthesis. Their cell membranes grew structures to turn carbon dioxide into simple sugars, which they then used for energy. Catastrophe had been averted!
Since Sunlight and carbon dioxide were virtually unlimited, the cyanobacteria population exploded. Instead of an extinction event, a whole new chapter of life unfolded as these more complex life-forms flourished. Is it any surprise that cyanobacteria soon became a dominant species?
A byproduct of their photosynthesis process was oxygen, which was released into the atmosphere. Soon there were so many cyanobacteria that the composition of the atmosphere became increasingly rich in oxygen. Since oxygen was toxic to anaerobic bacteria, a massive extinction event, called the Great Oxygen Catastrophe, ensued. Almost all single-celled life on Earth perished, but the new transformational capacity of the cyanobacteria allowed them to thrive.
Yet their very survival wasn’t the only repercussion of the cyanobacteria’s evolutionary leap into photosynthesis. The Earth’s atmosphere, which had previously been very rich in methane, changed in the presence of the additional oxygen. The methane reacted with the oxygen, forming carbon dioxide and water. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is eighty times more potent than carbon dioxide, so as its insulating effect lessened, more and more heat was released from the atmosphere into space. A massive global cooling resulted in the Huronian Glaciation, which covered most of the Earth with ice for 300 million years.
Once again, just when it appeared that this great evolutionary experiment might fail and life would end on Earth, another movement of Grace arrived. Whereas oxygen had been poisonous to the initial life-forms on the planet, a new, aerobic organism appeared; it could ingest oxygen and use it as a superior energy source. This evolutionary leap in turn catalyzed the development of many other more complex organisms. As the cyanobacteria were ingested by larger microbes, a process called endosymbiosis was set into motion. Just as the cyanobacteria had become capable of rudimentary photosynthesis, the organisms that ate them developed organelles capable of photosynthesis, too. This key evolutionary leap set the stage for the entire plant kingdom to eventually come into being.
This basic story has repeated countless times during the evolution of life-forms on planet Earth. A species reaches its evolutionary limits in its current form. Extinction may seem inevitable, as the sustainability of the organism overshoots the support it receives from its environment. Or seemingly unrelated external factors such as asteroids, vulcanism, or changes in the Earth and Sun trigger the death and rebirth process. But in the midst of scenarios of doom, an inexplicably benevolent, creative event occurs. While many species meet a rapid and cataclysmic end, at least one new, higher-order life-form emerges.
If scientists had been on the planet when prokaryotes faced extinction, they almost certainly would have examined the situation and concluded that evolution appeared at a dead end. No one had ever heard of photosynthesis. There would have been no known mechanism that could catalyze an evolutionary leap into a new life-form that transcended the limitations of the prokaryotes.
How did that leap happen, and where did it come from? This is the mystery of evolution, and not even the brightest scientists can answer these questions. Nor can Darwin’s theory of natural selection explain such immense evolutionary leaps. In virtually all cases, there is no discernible link from a failing species to the new organism that thrives in the same environment that brought death to its predecessor. This leads many of us to conclude that only the Grace emanating from an unfathomably intelligent, loving and powerful beingness can adequately explain this mystery.
Fast forward a few billion years to the second decade of the 21st century AD. Wherever we look, we humans seem to be facing an analogous situation to the one our little friends the cyanobacteria encountered eons ago. Our species has flourished to the point where we have overshot the Earth’s capacity to support us. Increasing numbers of scientists agree that the Sixth Great Extinction Event has begun. Our story is entering a critical chapter, the most pivotal in its multi-billion-year journey. This time, we are the species that is front and center in the evolutionary drama.
All of this has been front and center in my consciousness since I began to awaken four decades ago. I have found it helpful in answering these questions to look at the big picture, the long story of evolution. This has enabled me to see the invisible thread of grace that winds through it all.
Evolution on planet Earth is a mysterious process in which the seeming opposites of death and transcendence endlessly dance together to create the new. High drama typically ensues, as the One continually dissolves outmoded life forms and re-sculpts them into more complex and conscious forms that ever more fully embody and reflect its true, eternal nature. For the great desire of the One is to reside more completely — and more magnificently — within its myriad manifestations.
Often, the evolution of a species seems to be flowing along just fine. It may spend centuries or even millennia flourishing in its own particular way, when out of the blue it encounters an evolutionary precipice. Suddenly, that species has reached the limits of its existing capacities and/or its ability to thrive within its environment. Extinction may seem imminent, when an inexplicable breakthrough happens. A miraculous “something” — totally unexpected and previously inconceivable — occurs. Call it what you want, attempt to define it in relative, physical terms if you like, but the highest understanding of what is going on may be that it is a movement of Grace.
Well-known futurist and visionary Barbara Marx Hubbard often refers to “Our Story” — the long journey of ensoulment within life forms during the last 4.5 billion years on Earth, from the first organisms all the way up to us, homo sapiens. Her video, “Humanity Ascending”, offers a fascinating glimpse into this eons-long process. To fully understand “Our Story” as human beings, we must travel back to one of the very first lifeforms, the prokaryotes, single-celled organisms that had no nuclei or other organelles. These tiny beings were as basic as life could be, and their existence was confined to drifting around in the primal oceans, gobbling up whatever floated by. They had no competition, so they multiplied until they reached the limits of what their environment would support. When that point came, a mass die-off seemed certain. Would one of the first attempts to express the evolutionary impulse on Planet Earth fail?
At that moment, magic happened. Grace descended. In her wonderful TED Talk, “How a Single-Celled Organism Almost Wiped Out Life on Earth”, (Remember to go to https://www.luminousself.com/awakeendtime-book-links.html to download a pdf of all the live hyperlinks or access them directly) Anusa Willis tells the story. Not long after the Earth was formed, the atmosphere was largely made up of nitrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide, with very little of the oxygen we depend on to live. In fact, oxygen was toxic to the first organisms, the prokaryotes, which were anaerobic. And the oxygen that was present was chemically bound within molecules, as in water, not floating around in the air in the amounts that sustain human life today. The prokaryotes flourished for quite some time, as mentioned above, until they became so numerous that they exhausted their food supply. Their doom seemed assured.
But sometime between 2.5 and 3.5 billion years ago, the grace of evolutionary magic happened. One of the types of prokaryotes called cyanobacteria spontaneously developed the capacity we now call photosynthesis. Their cell membranes grew structures to turn carbon dioxide into simple sugars, which they then used for energy. Catastrophe had been averted!
Since Sunlight and carbon dioxide were virtually unlimited, the cyanobacteria population exploded. Instead of an extinction event, a whole new chapter of life unfolded as these more complex life-forms flourished. Is it any surprise that cyanobacteria soon became a dominant species?
A byproduct of their photosynthesis process was oxygen, which was released into the atmosphere. Soon there were so many cyanobacteria that the composition of the atmosphere became increasingly rich in oxygen. Since oxygen was toxic to anaerobic bacteria, a massive extinction event, called the Great Oxygen Catastrophe, ensued. Almost all single-celled life on Earth perished, but the new transformational capacity of the cyanobacteria allowed them to thrive.
Yet their very survival wasn’t the only repercussion of the cyanobacteria’s evolutionary leap into photosynthesis. The Earth’s atmosphere, which had previously been very rich in methane, changed in the presence of the additional oxygen. The methane reacted with the oxygen, forming carbon dioxide and water. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is eighty times more potent than carbon dioxide, so as its insulating effect lessened, more and more heat was released from the atmosphere into space. A massive global cooling resulted in the Huronian Glaciation, which covered most of the Earth with ice for 300 million years.
Once again, just when it appeared that this great evolutionary experiment might fail and life would end on Earth, another movement of Grace arrived. Whereas oxygen had been poisonous to the initial life-forms on the planet, a new, aerobic organism appeared; it could ingest oxygen and use it as a superior energy source. This evolutionary leap in turn catalyzed the development of many other more complex organisms. As the cyanobacteria were ingested by larger microbes, a process called endosymbiosis was set into motion. Just as the cyanobacteria had become capable of rudimentary photosynthesis, the organisms that ate them developed organelles capable of photosynthesis, too. This key evolutionary leap set the stage for the entire plant kingdom to eventually come into being.
This basic story has repeated countless times during the evolution of life-forms on planet Earth. A species reaches its evolutionary limits in its current form. Extinction may seem inevitable, as the sustainability of the organism overshoots the support it receives from its environment. Or seemingly unrelated external factors such as asteroids, vulcanism, or changes in the Earth and Sun trigger the death and rebirth process. But in the midst of scenarios of doom, an inexplicably benevolent, creative event occurs. While many species meet a rapid and cataclysmic end, at least one new, higher-order life-form emerges.
If scientists had been on the planet when prokaryotes faced extinction, they almost certainly would have examined the situation and concluded that evolution appeared at a dead end. No one had ever heard of photosynthesis. There would have been no known mechanism that could catalyze an evolutionary leap into a new life-form that transcended the limitations of the prokaryotes.
How did that leap happen, and where did it come from? This is the mystery of evolution, and not even the brightest scientists can answer these questions. Nor can Darwin’s theory of natural selection explain such immense evolutionary leaps. In virtually all cases, there is no discernible link from a failing species to the new organism that thrives in the same environment that brought death to its predecessor. This leads many of us to conclude that only the Grace emanating from an unfathomably intelligent, loving and powerful beingness can adequately explain this mystery.
Fast forward a few billion years to the second decade of the 21st century AD. Wherever we look, we humans seem to be facing an analogous situation to the one our little friends the cyanobacteria encountered eons ago. Our species has flourished to the point where we have overshot the Earth’s capacity to support us. Increasing numbers of scientists agree that the Sixth Great Extinction Event has begun. Our story is entering a critical chapter, the most pivotal in its multi-billion-year journey. This time, we are the species that is front and center in the evolutionary drama.