By Troy Williams

podcast the entire interview

James O’Dea is the president of IONS: The Institute of Noetic Sciences. He was the director of the Washington DC office of Amnesty International for ten years.  O’Dea is also a contributor to the new anthology, The Mystery of 2012: Predictions, Prophecies and Possibilities.  In his chapter, “You Were Born for Such a Time as This”, O’Dea argues that humanity is rapidly approaching our pay date, “when our debt will be maxed and no further credit from a depleted and over-taxed Nature will be extended to us.”   

Troy Williams: What do you mean by a “noetic science”? 

James O’Dea: Noetic science comes from the greek word nous – it means to know directly.  In the western development of our intellectual capacities, technologies and worldviews, we’ve relied heavily on the rational mind  — which we still love and treasure – but it’s not the only part of us.  There is another way of connecting with our deepest wisdom.  It goes beyond the “left/right”, “up/down”, sequential logic of the rational mind and captures a whole gestalt of information.  The Institute of Noetic Sciences was founded by Edgar Mitchell Jr., the sixth man to walk on the moon, who coming back to the planet earth, started to flood internally.  He had an intense sense of connection beyond his body and into the universe.  He was a hard-core scientist and marine pilot, but when he came back to planet he realized that there is a whole other way to connect science and spirituality.  “Social justice”, “wisdom civilization” – whatever you want to call these terms – humanity is reaching into our highest evolutionary possibilities to activate the transformation and changes that are possible.  And The Mystery of 2012 is really a compendium of thought from many perspectives that says: it’s coming.  There is some synthesis of evolution that is about to trigger and change the course of events.  Of course, these are predictions and possibilities – they are not some Biblical truth being passed on as some new religion.

TW: And your primary work focuses on health and healing, extended human capacities and emerging worldviews. What exactly are you trying to track?

JO: Just as in that experience with Edgar Mitchell, we are seeing a big crack in the dominant materialist scientific world-view. Science can only relate to that which is material.  The whole of western civilization has organized around materialism – and materialism gone insane to the extent that we are destroying the very habitant that is essential to our survival.    We have traced the breakdown in this materialist worldview and the beginning of our understanding into the subtle field of mind, healing and energy. We’ve also looked at the relationship between attitude, belief and health. For example, the whole field of epigenetics – the study of the relationship between consciousness and your own genetic triggers — the notion that our consciousness and awareness is truly causal.  We can now begin to reframe a civilization not built on materialism but on consciousness and awareness. We can ask how do we raise the kind of awareness that will sustain us ecologically and bring us peace and health and activate our highest wisdom. 

TW:  When I look around I see extreme poverty, resource wars, religious fundamentalism, global warming – everything feels like it’s breaking apart.  And yet you are optimistic.

JO:  I was in Turkey during the period leading up to the coup in 1980.  I was knifed and my house was machine-gunned. After that I was in Beirut during the massacres of the Palestinians.  It was a very low point for me because I saw children murdered.  It was a true nightmare.  That led me to working for ten years as the director of Amnesty International in Washington.  And yet even though I have witnessed the deepest depravations of cruelty, torture and inhumanity, I have looked into that place and seen the heroism of the human spirit. You can see the indomitable nature of the human being rising through those kinds of catastrophic abuses.  You see profound humanity.  When I left Amnesty International I was leading dialogues around the world called “Compassion and Social Healing”, where we brought together former Nazis and Holocaust survivors – people who you would never imagine could look at each other and offer each other love and forgiveness and reconciliation.  And that is what led me to the Institute of Noetic Sciences.  We have this deep capacity in consciousness to transform the worst and rise out of it.  Just as South Africa created the Truth, Reconciliation and Forgiveness work.  That is the model that we need to hold for this planet.  It is not the ‘cowboy “go get ‘em!”  slaughter each other’ approach.  But rather, how do we find the modalities and the consciousness to transform, as in South Africa, the apartheid of hatred into an inter-communal civilization?   

TW: You talk about the need to clean wounds before they can properly heal.  Whether it’s the dispossession of indigenous peoples or even our current occupation of Iraq.  Before wounds can heal they first need to be cleaned.  So there is a need for us to take responsibility for our own actions and the actions of our people, before this healing can begin. 

JO: You are very accurate. As one leaves a worldview that is based on absolute certainty and fundamentalism one has to have a truth system that is able to dialogue with others.  There has to be spaces between “your truth” and “my truth”.  And this is a very subtle area because you want to be able to face the past, but not to live in a way that always has somebody else to blame. Yes, we can look at evolution and all the errors that were made, but we need to hold it in a container of compassion so that it can be resolved — so that we can move on.  That cleaning out process is truth.  It’s not a vindictive truth.  It’s not a “my truth” above “your truth”.  But it is, as in the case of South Africa, truth, reconciliation and then forgiveness.  So let’s look honorably at the past – for example, the devastation of indigenous cultures – not so that we can fixate on blame or punishment.  But so we can realize the preciousness of what was lost and the power of what can be reconfigured when we unite indigenous wisdom and the western way of knowing.  That is what is being called for.  A whole new synthesis of how we know.  And that is what people are looking for in The Mystery of 2012.  They are looking at some synthesis that will take us beyond the either/or polarities of western development and indigenous knowing.  What is the planetary civilization that can be sustainable, eco-centered, nature based and yet also allow for the ingenuity and creativity of the human spirit to optimize?  We are reaching the point where we’ve got to learn these lessons quickly.  Knowing that we have a choice to change the course of history and not repeat it.   

TW: Talk about The Shift Report: Evidence of a World Transforming. You are exploring innovations in all kinds of different fields.

JO: The Shift Report looks at education, commerce, and a whole variety of fields and begins to track the worldview shift from the reductionist to the more integrating.  From competitive to cooperation and from outer-directed to inner-directed. What, below the radar, is an evolutionary sign of change? For example, we are seeing a deep and amazing conversation happening between science and spirituality.  We are seeing that the evolutionary story of domination and competition is actually more collaborative.  We are seeing that the human body – the mind-body system — is much more healthy when we focus on love.  We’ve discovered in the last 20 years many of the powers and capacities of the human heart that were never understood before.  Just think of someone you love and your body starts to break down cortisol, which is the driver of stress, and starts to create DHEA.  It starts to release the pleasure seekers, the hormones, the biochemical stew of love friendship and empathy. This conversation between scientific and spiritual worldviews is accelerating.  It was triggered by the mind-body health movement and the startling insights of quantum physicists.  They’re looking deep into the quantum word and seeing a reflection of our own attitudes and beliefs.  The observer is fundamental to the thing that is observed. And that is one of the domains that I am personally interested in, as someone who has an activist perspective.  How do we bring this conscious model into activism?  Some people are talking about spiritual activism or transformational activism.  But it’s one in which we are not projecting out into the world.  It’s all too easy to say the problem is out there. Whether it’s the corporations or the military or whomever.  It’s a projective solution.  We believe that the emerging worldview is more inner-sourced.  It’s more, how do I transform and become a transformational agent myself?  How do I go beyond the polarity?  You know the beautiful quote from Rumi, “out there beyond right and wrong there is a field. I will meet you there.” How do we get to that place in consciousness where we’re not creating the enemies who are the solutions to our problems, but rather configuring a new sense of community?

TW: You make this connection that because of the inter-connectivity of our globe – our economy, our environment, etc.,  – if things break down, it’s a global breakdown.  And then juxtapose the potential of that for a global breakthrough. 

JO: Yes, there is something so accelerated about the way ideas, perceptions and business is conducted on planet earth these days.  The skies and oceans are whole elements that we share. We see the weave of connections of how what happens in one place affects another.  There is a sense of these years now, accelerating more into that window of 2012, where the lessons before us may be extremely harsh.  We’re not waking up at sufficient rates to respond to the ecological crisis.  We’re still caught in a very punitive mentality.  We’re not exercising our deepest capacities to dialogue with “the other”.  That is what is fundamentally needed – how do we engage the other?  We see what is emerging before us. The human story is likely to unravel into further conflict until we reach some turning point.  A turning point that changes the story because we see that we have no other choice but to reach for our better natures.  We will see graphically how profoundly we are connected and how we can in fact shift consciousness itself to move into new modalities of being. There are model cooperatives where people are learning prosperity and health through new paradigm economics, new paradigm psychology, and new paradigm health-care. 

These are abounding and will become a much more central part of the story.  And yet it’s an ancient
story too.  The fascinating thing about 2012, is that it gives you tremendous respect for those in ancient times and in various cultures, who looked up in the heavens, studied them and tracked them as accurately as we can track them today. They saw 26,000 year cycles that come to a closure in the years ahead. It gives you a sense of awe of our place in the cosmos. We do have a place in the cosmic story.  We’re a little planet, but we’re in the midst of great cycles and movements within the starry heavens themselves. The people of the Kalahari have a end times, kind of 2012 story where they visualize All Devourer eating up the trees, rivers and everything. And it devours Mantis, the divine spokesperson of the Kalahari people.  But eventually they emerge out of the belly of Devourer completely restored.  So there is some sense that we are inside the very thing that needs to be transformed.  And that’s the good news.  Because if we are in here, in it, we can transform it. We have to go back into our own awareness to find out those deep truths that will then be essential to the next evolutionary shift.

Check out IONS’ One Minute Shift — video clips on how shifts can happen in a minute.

an interview with Diane Musho Hamilton
by Troy Williams

In my last blog I spoke with Zen teacher, Diane Musho Hamilton, about the fundamentals of Integral Philosophy.  In this segment, Diane applies an Integral understanding to the often fragmented nature of our various identities – queer, religious and national.   

TW: I want to jump into the idea of identity.  I grew up a Mormon kid in Oregon – and I was teased for being part of this strange and peculiar religion – which made me feel like an outsider who never quite belonged.  At a very young age I began identifying with the margins and the fringe. Ironically as I got older I moved to Utah to fit in – but I was gay – and hence began identifying with another alienated, outsider class of people.  And I’ve often wondered about the impacts of this on my psychological development. I sometimes wonder if I’m destined to be an outsider all my life.  How do we obtain a sense of wholeness and belonging?

DMH: Okay.  Basically The Universe itself has two directions.  It has a direction toward autonomy and it has a direction toward communion. Arthur Kessler identified that everything in the Universe can be conceived as a “part-whole”.  You are both a part and a whole. As a human community we require each other to survive.  It’s deeply embedded in our evolution.  You can’t exist apart from oxygen.  You can’t exist apart from water or heat.  You are completely embedded.  And there is also a part of you that identifies as a separate being. The Buddha’s insight was that it is the identification with our separateness that creates suffering.  An Integral perspective would say that we need to learn to identity with both parts of who we are.  Each of us has the experience of being on the outside.   You go into one context you are an insider and you belong.  An hour later you could go into a different context and have precisely the opposite experience.  So in your own awareness start to look into the question:  “how much communion do I want to cultivate and how much am I willing to be on the outside?” There are many people who get their primary identity of being on the outside and challenging the status quo, and many people who love being in the middle.  But the truth is that we’re both.

TW:  And yet there is an imbalance with myself and with a lot of people in our culture – because that sense of separation becomes everything. It can be all consuming.  How do we get back to that connection to the whole?

DMH: In this particular moment as you and I are talking to each other, there is a continuum, where we can move toward separation or we can experience ourselves as more connected.  What do you notice in our conversation that moves us toward communion?

TW: A lot of it is language — when we use the word, “we”.  And when we talk about our commonalities and those connections — we’re forming empathic bonds.

DMH:  Beautiful.  So just noticing the difference of using the word “I” or “we”.  Noticing the way in which we frame things as either separate or collective.  And then always, being radically willing to listen to another perspective.  The ability to surrender your own perspective enough to receive another person is probably the most profound thing we can do to create communion.  But it’s very difficult, particularly if what someone is saying creates a difference in us.  How do we return to communion?  Practice your listening skills. 

TW: Sure.  But I like to talk a lot!

DMH: (laughs) Of course.  Talking is the autonomous side.  You’ve got to do both.

TW: And when we begin to dis-identify with our ego (our “Self) – and when we begin to identify with that which is bigger than our Selves, that is where transformation happens.

DMH:  Yes.  In fact, there is a Harvard developmental psychologist named Robert Keegan who says, development always occurs when what is once regarded as subject (“I”) becomes an object – where you can actually look at it in your awareness.  You can separate yourself from your life, from your ego, from your sense of self.  By dis-identifying then we are able to re-identity at a greater stage of awareness.  So the subject of one stage of development becomes the object of the subject of the next stage.  That is literally how development happens.

TW:  For me it’s been this really interesting process of embracing my Mormon heritage, embracing my gay self, embracing my American identity (even when the actions of my country makes me angry) – and being able to actually say, “I am a gay Mormon American Male” and including all of these facets of myself from an integrated perspective.  It’s been challenging. 

DMH:  What you are describing is a healthy process of development. You’ve gone through a process of dis-identification and at a later stage have been able to re-identify from a place that is more inclusive of the fact that you are gay or more liberal in your politics. But what you will find is that often in our culture and our religions is that we tend to push people out who want to have that larger identification.  We keep people often at an ethnocentric level of development.  So then you have to find your own identity elsewhere because within your own community you are not allowed to identify more broadly.  If you are specifically of one faith you are not allowed to identify or to appreciate people of another faith.  So our culture actually works to keep people from moving forward in their development.   

learn more about Integral Theory at www.integralnaked.org