When hands touch
In my previous essay “Humanity: Horizontal Development”, while examining the spiritual state of our civilization, I pointed to the emergence of a global community characterized by material consciousness, whose transformation requires deliberate support from “above.” It is now worth addressing the key aspects of this transformation, which is proceeding at an ever-accelerating pace.
The processes unfolding within the energy dynamics of the planet itself constitute the backdrop and environment in which all monads on Earth exist. The planet follows its own path, evolving through interaction with consciousnesses of a comparable level, both within the Solar System and beyond it.
It is not the Earth that adapts to its inhabitants, but the other way around.
Yet to human beings, with their perennial anthropocentrism — which is why God is so often conceived in anthropomorphic terms as well — it may seem that the planet is subject to the whims of Homo sapiens. Even so, Earth’s energy processes unfold at a pace that is slow not merely by the standards of a few generations, but even by those of our entire civilization. Therefore, while keeping this factor in mind as a whole, let us set it aside for the time being.
What, then, are the most important aspects of the transformation of human consciousness that deserve attention?
The key one is the arrival on our planet of increasingly advanced monads. This process is entirely natural. Humanity creates a particular cultural environment that makes it possible for ever more advanced consciousnesses to incarnate and realize their own mental potential through interaction with matter.
There would have been little point in a monad of Mozart’s or Michelangelo’s level incarnating in the time of the Cro-Magnons. Of course, we can observe creative expression even in the period when cave paintings were being produced. Nevertheless, at that stage, the conditions were not yet ripe for the full and multifaceted self-expression of consciousnesses that, by today’s standards, would approach the level of genius. The cultural soil was too poor for them. Human genetics and the structure of the brain may have differed hardly at all from their modern counterparts, but a monad incarnates not only on the basis of vibrational correspondence with a given form, but also in consideration of the possibilities that form offers for its use.
A new era has now dawned, and vast opportunities for self-expression are opening up to human beings, ranging from composing music to developing quantum computers. The problem, however, is that everything mentioned above — the biological form and the cultural environment — belongs to the material world. For more highly developed human-type monads to incarnate, this is not enough: a suitable energetic form and a spiritual environment are also required.
As I wrote in the essay mentioned above, the spiritual development of the bulk of humanity proceeds, so to speak, horizontally: we are witnessing intellectual progress, but within the framework of material consciousness, which does not sufficiently integrate with its subtler component. The achievements of individual members of the human species do not fundamentally alter the situation.
To overcome this impasse in spiritual evolution, we genuinely need support. And that support is being provided.
A gradual transformation is taking place in the intermediate energetic environment between the physical and mental worlds, and its effects are particularly palpable during prayer or meditation. An immense amount of work is underway, allowing subtle energies of various kinds to permeate the realm of our emotions and desires. The very environment that will be better suited to new monads ready to incarnate on Earth is being created.
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Undoubtedly, we must also acknowledge the reciprocal process arising from below — from the consciousnesses of those already incarnated who, perhaps without fully realizing the energetic underpinnings of what is unfolding, have chosen their own direction of development: the vertical, spiritual path rather than the horizontal, material one. And this is not a matter of isolated individuals, but of large groups of monads. This choice can manifest itself in various forms, one of which is the pursuit of freedom and self-expression, even at the expense of material well-being and one’s own life.
One example of this kind of choice is provided by the events in Ukraine: from the hope of becoming part of a free European community during the Orange Revolution to the willingness to stand up to an overwhelmingly powerful aggressor in 2022. The emotional upsurge that swept through a critical mass of people living in Ukraine was not merely a reflexive response to a military invasion. It was an act of spiritual solidarity in which the choice of a direction for energetic transformation found expression.
At the same time, it served as an example for a considerable number of people in developed European countries who are unwilling to emerge from the comfortable, materially oriented world they have built through the aforementioned horizontal development — a world that, however, comes nowhere near expressing their true spiritual potential.
This is precisely how the transformation of the energetic environment takes place, in a process that partly resembles the formation of lightning. When lightning forms, the electrical discharge propagates not only from above but also from below, in the form of an upward-moving connecting streamer. The two channels thereby merge into one, and the result is the brilliant flash we observe. The joining of the spiritual and physical worlds requires reciprocal effort.
Michelangelo’s fresco comes to mind depicting God reaching out his hand to Adam. Yet it is still up to Adam to decide whether he is ready to make contact with his Creator.
Those who chose freedom, who sacrificed their own well-being for the sake of a spiritual choice, however subconscious, have completed this circuit by joining hands with the Almighty. They deserve to have a genius of this new, contemporary Renaissance paint a new fresco symbolizing the union of the spiritual and the earthly.
There is, however, one more point worth mentioning: the transformation of the energetic environment means that by no means all human consciousnesses will be compatible with the new realities.
In books on esotericism, Theosophy, and past-life regression hypnosis, one can find accounts of alleged past lives in prehistoric times. The problem is that most of these are misconceptions.
The human monad is not bound to the physical world; it comes here on the basis of correspondence, developing within a particular environment according to its own capacities.
I do not fully subscribe to the idea of the “Wheel of Samsara,” according to which a monad cannot move on to a subtler plane of Being or attain liberation until it has completed all its tasks. On the contrary, a monad evolves and then leaves the planet’s sphere once it has reached the limits of its evolutionary potential there. But sometimes, this limit lies below the mental world of Earth: many consciousnesses are simply incapable of ascending to that level and are compelled to leave Earth in order to evolve in other worlds, where they eventually attain levels equivalent to the realm of thought.
Most contemporary human monads did not begin incarnating in the time of the Cro-Magnons, or even with the emergence of Sumerian civilization. Entire groups of consciousnesses have come to Earth and departed from it after gaining the experience they needed, but without being able to move “upward.” There is no tragedy in this: if progress proves impossible here, the necessary level can be attained elsewhere. The same phenomenon can be observed not only among human monads, but among all the other inhabitants of the planet as well.
It is difficult to say how extensive this forthcoming exodus will be. Nevertheless, the process is underway and will continue to grow. Perhaps, however, it should not be directly linked to the decline in fertility rates across virtually the entire world, particularly in developed, highly urbanized countries. This is more likely a form of natural global self-regulation under new socioeconomic conditions. Even so, the question may warrant further investigation within a broader spiritual context.
And yet the arrival of new monads with greater mental capacities, together with the transformation of the energetic environment, is only part of what will accompany the transformation of a human community absorbed in material concerns. These processes must find some form of conceptual and philosophical articulation in a particular body of teaching destined to supersede religious dogma. What might this new teaching look like? What will distinguish it, and what organizational form will it take? These are questions that call for separate consideration in one of the forthcoming essays.
