009 — The Evolutionary Vision
This piece is a lightly edited transcript of a live talk [December 24, 2016] given by Dr. Marc Gafni and Barbara Marx Hubbard on the weekly broadcast One Mountain, Many Paths, founded by Gafni and his evolutionary partner Barbara Marx Hubbard. Thus, the style of the piece is spoken word and not a formal essay.
Edited by Mak Dizdar and Kristina Tahel Amelong. Prepared for publication by Jamie Long.
Crisis is an evolutionary driver
Dr. Marc Gafni
It’s a rare time: we are celebrating both Christmas Eve and Hanukkah eve.
It’s the first night of Hanukkah,
the first light, the first candle of Hanukkah is lit,
and we are also on Christmas Eve.
Our evolutionary movement is about —
- the evolution of Church,
- the evolution of Christmas,
- the evolution of Hanukkah.
- It’s about reclaiming prayer at a higher level of consciousness.
- It’s about not being politically correct, but spiritually incorrect.
Politically correct means protecting people from all sorts of microaggressions, where we include and include and include. But we forget to include a positive image of Reality. Political correctness is, let’s protect ourselves from any and all hurt, but we’ve got nothing positive to say.
Politically correct is beautiful, but we forget to articulate a positive vision of Reality.
We are so postmodern that we’ve deconstructed everything. We say that everything is a social construction of Reality. All the deconstructions are over.
We’re left with — we’re all protected, but who are we?
What’s our identity?
Where are we going?
What’s the vision of our lives?
What’s the larger story?
We need to begin the great reconstructive project: that reconstructive project, that new vision that incorporates the best of premodern, modern and postmodern in a gorgeous, integral vision of Love, of Evolutionary Love.
The new evolutionary story in which Hanukkah up levels, and Christmas up levels, and they integrate into a higher place — that’s spiritually incorrect.
It’s spiritually incorrect because we are saying some things are true, things matter.
There are narratives and stories that are not just social constructions, but actually reflect deep truths about Reality like —
- Reality is driven by Love, or Evolutionary Eros.
- Reality is moving towards more and more Love.
- Evolution is Love in action.
The miracle of Hanukkah
Dr. Marc Gafni
We’ll uplevel Hanukkah.
The word is like this:
a little bit of Light dispels a lot of darkness,
a minor fluctuation point in a whole system uplevels the entire system.
The miracle of Hanukkah is the story of these Maccabees, 165 BCE. The temple in Jerusalem is conquered by Antiochus Epiphanes, and then recaptured by the Maccabees.
They want to relight, rekindle, the menorah, but there is not enough olive oil — kosher oil — in order to rekindle. There is only enough oil for one day.
They decide to light the menorah anyways and miracle of miracles in this great, holy, mythic, gorgeous story, what happens? The oil lasts for eight days.
Here’s the evolutionary question: if there was only enough oil for one day, in that great Hanukkah myth, but the oil lasted eight days, how long was the miracle?
Seven, right, because you had enough oil for one day? The extra days were only seven days. The miracle was only seven days, so why do we have Hanukkah for eight days?
The great evolutionary answer: the miracle of the first day is having the courage to light the candle even though you don’t have enough oil.
That’s how evolution works; evolution works in baby steps —
- We take the first step.
- We dare to light the candle.
- We dare to hope.
- We dare to dream.
- We dare to take the first step even though we have no idea how the whole journey is going to traverse.
— it’s the lighting of the candle itself which is the true miracle of Hanukkah.
Crisis is an evolutionary driver. That’s the evolutionary invitation.
Now let’s go into the resonance of what the silent night feels like:
The sacred story of evolution
Barbara Marx Hubbard
Silent night, holy night, holy promise that was given to us at the birth of Christ.
In this resonance, I would like all of us to tune into that source of Being within us that is pulsing with the power and presence and being of the evolving Christ.
This impulse that we have to love more, to create more, to be more was promised to us by the Christ when he said, You will do the works that I do, and greater works than these will you do in the fullness of time.
This is the fullness of time.
Why do we say this is the fullness of time? Why do we believe that this is the fullness of time?
We live at the exact moment of evolution when the human species is being required to wake up, or become a guide of our own evolution.
In this resonant field, let us realize we’re waking up to be guides to our own evolution.
How do we know which way to guide ourselves?
The guide is the sacred story of evolution.
The sacred story of evolution tells us that at a time of critical breakdown we need to become aware of —
- the emergence of the new,
- the higher order of consciousness,
- the higher order of freedom,
- the more comprehensive synergistic order.
This is the promise of evolution. This is not a mystical dream of Reality. This is a scientific, psychologic, and spiritual discovery.
The story of evolution, is the story of the birth of the living Christ, of the living Buddha, of the living Divine in every one of us.
Our first way of knowing this is the time of the change is the evolutionary story of creation because we cannot continue to live in this degree of separation and survive.
It is also true that the precise story of the birth of Christ, as it is written in the New Testament, tells us that the time will come when “You will do the works that I do,” said he, “and greater works than these will you do because I go to the Father.”
What does that mean? It means that everyone who is saying yes —
- to the inner impulse of the Divine,
- to the inner impulse of creativity,
- to the inner impulse to love more,
- be more,
- do more in the model of the living Christ,
- or the living universal human,
- or the living Evolutionary Unique Self,
- by whatever name we call it,
— this is what’s awakening in us now.
We have in us, coded in the entire memory of our life, the knowing of the next stages of evolution for more consciousness, greater freedom, more synergistic order, and more love.
Doing the works that Jesus did, and greater works, and being the most blessed generation of humans ever to be on the face of this Earth.
Consciously — to be aware — we face devolution and destruction, or evolution and co-creation.
The awesome story of evolution
Barbara Marx Hubbard
Place ourselves in the mind of God. 13.8 billion years ago, the Creator awoke to desire the creation.
How else could this have happened?
As the Creator desired the creation, He created the quarks, the electrons, the protons, the neutrons, all the way up the chain of life. Every particle attracted to every other particle by allurement, by Eros, by attraction.
Bring that awesome journey of evolution, by attracting it to ever greater parts of a greater whole system, to bring it into our consciousness.
In our own hearts, the impulse of evolution, to more consciousness, more freedom, more order, more love. Rather than thinking this is simply an impossible dream, in this resonance, we know and declare it is the conscious direction of the entire process of creation.
By awakening together and by deepening our memory of the future growing within us, we do declare we will give birth in every one of us —
- to the natural Christ.
- to the universal human,
- to the co-creator of a new world.
We are a memory of the future
Dr. Marc Gafni
We are the memory of the future.
In much of the addiction world, for instance, the focus is on recovering the memory of the past in order to get healthy and whole.
But, when I realize the nature of Reality, I realize the reason the addiction treatments — which are so beautiful in the country — still have many people treatment doesn’t work for is because you can’t get healthy by just recovering a memory of the past.
We need a memory of the future. Hope is a memory of the future. Evolution is a memory of the future. Evolution is Love in action.
A positive vision, a reconstructive vision, a memory of the future, that is evolution in action.
We’re here to be not politically correct but spiritually incorrect, to actually claim and enact this memory of the future.
The intelligence of Reality hears our voice
Dr. Marc Gafni
To realize that the god we don’t believe in doesn’t exist, that we can pray again, and that prayer is not owned by a xenophobic, regressive, homophobic, patriarchal community owned by a particular church.
Prayer is rather the awake, living realization that not only does the Divine live in me, but I am held in every moment.
Read Rumi.
Every passage in Rumi is about, I am the Beloved and I am falling into the arms of the Beloved. Every place I fall, I fall into God’s hands.
Christ is Holding me in every second.
The Mother, Rama Krishna, “MOTHER! Mother, Mother, hold me Mother.” Rama Krishna, the great non dual realizer who realizes I am held by the Mother.
Divinity is, God is, the Mother is, the ceaseless creativity of All, alive in me even as She holds me.
We turn to her and we ask for everything because prayer affirms the dignity of personal need.
We realize that God is not only God in the third person —
- the Infinity of Power,
- billions of light years of complexity and gorgeousness,
- science,
- physics
- and the laws of mathematics.
But God is also second person, the Infinity of Intimacy that knows my name. You are, I am, God’s unique intimacy.
Whatever is happening in life, even when it all goes wrong, we stand before the Lord of Song and from our lips She draws the hallelujah.
Hallelujah as we know is pristine praise and holelut, the drunken stupor that life sometimes leaves us in. There’s a blaze of light in every word, in the holy and the broken hallelujah.
We open the gates in prayer, Leonard Cohen, modern hymn maker, Hallelujah.
And from that place of Hallelujah, we turn to offer prayer. We pray our voices into the noosphere, into the resonant field, and as sure as you hear my voice because your intelligence, every single person listening, hears my voice. As sure as I heard Barbara’s voice — because my intelligence hears their voice — the intelligence of Reality hears our voice.
That’s a Pointing Out Instruction. That’s what prayer means —
- Reality is intelligent.
- Reality manifests mitosis and meiosis, before there was a neocortex.
- Our intelligence participates in the intelligence of Reality.
- The same way that we can hear each other, Reality hears us.
It’s true! It’s awesome!
Reality, the god you don’t believe in that doesn’t exist, the God who is the Infinity of Intimacy, who is the ceaseless, intelligent creativity of Kosmos that knows our name, that assures that we never live in lonely desperation, because every one of our tears is drunk by God.
When we pray we ask for everything because prayer affirms the dignity of personal need. Let’s be evangelicals, sharing the good news.
The good news is that I’m held, that I’m not alone, that the Infinity of Intimacy knows my name.
Life ever evolving
Barbara Marx Hubbard
Let us donate our gifts and bring the message of life ever evolving to the world.
I would like us to give the gift of this greater hope, greater life, greater purpose to everyone in the world, so that we can assist the world in coming together in a new faith and a new discipline of hope.
In 1980, I had a first Christ experience. I was trying to write a book on the future of humanity and I asked the universe a question: What kind of person can handle all the power of science, technology, biology?
I had been working with Jonas Salk and he showed me the biolabs that people were working in. On the door of the lab was, “Stamp out physical death.” This would be a large step forward, if we were to stamp out physical death.
Okay, this is a large step forward if this were to happen! We don’t know what it means. And, if we add nanotech, biotech, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, which is all already happening. We are at the stage of being able to do the works that Jesus did, and even greater works.
Within our lifetime, if we can bring the new power of gods the human race has created by the intelligence we have been given, we could experience the breakthrough of the system, rather than experiencing the breakdown.
Together.
We could experience — in my own language which I got from Teilhard de Chardin — the noosphere getting its collective eyes, where everyone places any gift into the thinking layer of Earth, our voices, our words, our passion coming right into the thinking layer of Earth.
Our goal is, just like for the Catholics it is the Second Coming of Christ, it’s the first awakening of humanity as one creative body born into a universe of infinite intelligence and life.
Marc: Yes! Yes! Amen! Hallelujah!
Barbara: It could be right in our lifetime, even in the next few years! We could have a disastrous decline. The timing is exactly like the timing of a birth.
As I once said to my doctor while I was in labor, I think I’ll go to New York and get my hair cut.
He said, How often are these pains coming Barbara?
I said, About every three minutes.
He said, Mrs Hubbard, you are going nowhere. You are not going to New York to get your haircut with your labor pains coming every three minutes.
The timing of birth is once that labor pain starts you can’t say, I think I’ll go to New York. This was quite true for me. So, humanity, you’re not going to New York to get your haircut. [laughter]
Humanity, we’re in it together.
I just want to say that in asking what kind of person could handle the new powers, I got an image of the living Christ. I was walking by a monastery. I saw hang gliders jumping off a high mountain with butterfly colored wings. They descended above the cross and the image of mass metamorphosis occurred to me.
Behold, I show you mysteries, said St Paul. We shall not all sleep, we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump. And the trumpet shall sound.
I thought, oh my god, the meaning of the resurrection is the metamorphosis of humanity.
“You will do the works that I did, and greater works will you do, in the fullness of time,” He told us. I can’t read it all now but I’ve got a whole workbook from this writing. I want to read a section:
Jesus Christ was simply a first example of what you can all be.
Since very few could actualize their full potential during the last two thousand years I was deified and put above you all. People worshiped me instead of actualizing themselves. My mission was to trigger the awareness that you are all to become joint heirs with Christ. You shall do the works that I did and even greater works shall you do.
Now is the time in planetary history when the hidden human reserve will be triggered in millions and millions of you at once.
Your biochemical systems are being stimulated by Holy Love.
Esoterically, from without, the noosphere, the thinking layer of Earth is thickening, linking everyone in an information plenum in which we, the holy Church of the new resurrection of humanity are putting our input into right now, into this noosphere.
Esoterically, from within, the evolutionary spiritual adepts are triggering God-consciousness and mind/body transformation by conscious choice to attend to the presence of the inner divinity.
Folks, is this true?
Marc: Yes, yes yes!
Barbara: We are here for the planetary awakening of humanity. It will happen in our lifetime. Evolutionary Church is going to be of service to that great mission. Each of us is going to incarnate the living Christ, by the effort to do this.
Outrageous Love is a perception
Dr. Marc Gafni
The prayer of Christmas, of Hanukkah eve, is I want to know what love is. What does it mean to start an Evolutionary Church rooted not in ordinary love, but in Outrageous Love? Just like in that time in Bethlehem, the Church was being founded, we are the people.
It’s our turn, in this generation.
We are the ones who want to know what love is.
We are here together in Evolutionary Church on this Christmas Eve, on this night of Hanukkah.
- We are here together.
- We are Christ in the manger.
- We want to know what love is, not ordinary love but Outrageous Love.
- We live in a world of outrageous pain, the only response to outrageous pain is Outrageous Love. We live in a world of outrageous beauty, the only response to outrageous beauty is Outrageous Love.
What is the difference between Outrageous Love and ordinary love?
Ordinary love is a strategy of the ego. Ordinary love is an emotion, it’s energy in motion, it’s a reaction.
Outrageous Love is a perception.
That’s unbelievable!
I was sitting with the Dalai Lama in his sitting room in Dharamsala, we were talking about love. We were sharing the difference between Buddhist deep teachings and deep Hebraic/Kabbalah teachings.
I shared with him this simple, beautiful idea that love, at its core, is not an emotion it’s a perception.
Emily Dickinson, remember her? Wow! “Not revelation ’tis that waits but our unfurnished eyes.”
- We have to unfurnish our eyes.
- We have to cleanse the doors of perception.
- An emotion comes and goes.
- A perception gets infinitely deeper.
- To be a lover is to see with the eyes of God.
And he got so excited, one of the wonderful things about the Dalia Lama is, he gets excited. He gets excited and he starts jumping up and down going, “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,” in that great way that he does.
If love is a perception then we can all become lovers. Love doesn’t wane away or fall away after five years, or ten. It gets deeper and deeper.
Here’s the evolutionary vision of a holiday:
The evolutionary vision of a holiday is that a holiday is a holy day. A holy day is when we are lovers. To be lovers is to see with God’s eyes.
To be lovers is, we’re not waiting for the redemption, it’s already here.
The great Christian contribution to the prophetic conversation of redemption is that the Christ has already come. He’s already here.
And then the Jews said back, Yes, the Christ is already here and we have to bring Him. We have to transform, we have to create heaven on Earth, bring those two visions so redemption together and we get the heavenly vision. The Christ is already here, it’s already true.
Remember Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise, “I love him not for the man he is but for the man he almost is,” or “I love him not for the man he is but for the man he wants to be”? That’s not it. That’s ordinary love. We love Tom Cruise, we love Jerry Maguire, that’s ordinary love.
Outrageous Love is when I look at you in my gaze and you already are. When I look at you, you are transformed.
Wow! Can you feel that?
I tweeted something, when Barbara and I started tweeting. I wrote, Trump is an Outrageous Lover. A bunch of reporters retweeted it. How could Gafni say something so terrible?
Then I tweeted, Hillary Clinton is an Outrageous Lover and Sarah Palin.
Yes, he did say it.
And, Michelle Obama is an Outrageous Lover and Barack Obama. Bill Clinton is an Outrageous Lover.
What does it mean when I actually look at a person?
I don’t demonize them.
It’s not that I’m not careful, it’s not that I don’t tie my camel to a post, it’s not that I don’t fight for the environment, of course I should. But instead of saying he’s the other —
- How much of this country made Hillary Clinton the other?
- How much of this country made Donald Trump the other?
- We demonize the other and then we get to be kosher.
- When we don’t feel like we’re really in the circle, we put somebody else outside the circle to give us the illusion that we are on the inside.
That’s not Eros, that’s pseudo Eros.
To be a lover is to see with God’s eyes and to know that it’s already true.
A holy day is a day when it’s already true.
You know why we love Christmas? We love Christmas because we see a little clearer.
Our hearts are a little softer.
Scrooge is in our ear.
We’re lighting the menorah.
The light is already here.
We know just a little bit of light dispels so much darkness.
Let me tell you an evolutionary story. It’s a beautiful, mystical story about a master who lived in the place where Jesus lived, actually where I also lived for many years, in Safed, in Israel.
He was a great master. It was about 1790. He had come from Europe. When he decided to move to Israel, a man came into his study hall and whispered in his ear. This whisper in his ear moves him, a divine whisper. He moves his entire mystical court to Israel, to Safed, that place near Tiberius, near the great Sea where I spent so much of my adult life, where Jesus walked.
He’s there for thirty years and he develops his community until thirty years later that same man in Europe who had whispered in his ear walks again into the study hall. The man whispers in his ear again and his face goes white.
He steps out of the public room, goes into his private room, and refuses to see anyone. They all see him staring out of the window at the cobblestone streets of Safed for seven days. All he does is stare.
Then, seven days later he comes out, he jumps on the tables of the study hall. He begins to dance and all of the disciples begin to dance with him. Oh my god, lions and tigers and bears oh my, ecstasy!
They dance all night and when they fall exhausted at dawn one of the older disciples says, voos tutuzchik in Yiddish, meaning, what just happened? Who was that man who came thirty years ago that we remember?
And he just came again. What did he say in your ear? The master says, Thirty years ago when that man whispered in my ear he said, “Go to the Holy Land. In the Holy Land the air is more pure than the air of heaven. The water is more clear and gorgeous than the water of the Garden of Eden. The stones, the cobblestones in Safed, are diamonds and rubies.”
I came here to Israel a year ago. The air was more pure than the air of heaven. The water was more clean and clear, crystal and gorgeous, refreshing and life-giving than even the water of the Garden of Eden. But the stones, the cobblestones, were just cobblestones. They weren’t diamonds and rubies, it wasn’t true. So it was okay, he exaggerated.
Then the man came thirty years later, he whispered in my ear and he said, The cobblestones ARE diamonds and rubies, and I realized I couldn’t see.
If I couldn’t see it means I didn’t love enough.
I didn’t love enough.
I spent seven days finding all the love inside of me until just a few hours ago I looked at the cobblestones and there it was, they were diamonds and rubies. It was true! It was true!
To be a lover is to open our eyes, to know that it’s already here, that the Christ child is already born.
That it’s our turn,
that we can make a difference,
that we can change everything.
that we’re not past the age when churches can be founded.
Yes, whenever a new life force arises there will be attempts to murder all life forces and all social forces.
Now I’m going to say today Donald Trump, today, on Christmas, Donald Trump is an Outrageous Lover. I’m madly in love with him today. Sarah Palin is an Outrageous Lover today. I am madly in love with her today. I am filled with admiration. I am in devotion. And Bill Clinton is an Outrageous Lover and Hillary, Outrageous Lover. Michelle, oh my god, an Outrageous Lover.
Outrageous Love is not a mere human emotion, it’s the heart of existence itself.
Forgive me my dear friends, forgive Barbara, we always ask you to forgive us because we get so caught up. We’re all wounded healers, we’re all imperfect vessels for the light. But, most of all, we’re messengers who forgot the message.
- We are the message.
- We are the future.
- In each other’s gaze, we become whole and we become holy.
Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! What a delight to be with you. What an awesome delight.
[Marc singing:]
How could anyone ever tell you
you are anything less than beautiful
how could anyone ever tell you
You are less than whole
How could anyone fail to notice
That your love is just a miracle
And how deeply we are connected in our souls
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