This vision of our future springs from witnessing the awesome mystery of our past, from 14 billions years of astonishing evolution, from the genesis and unfolding of the cosmos to the present and beyond. The stunning realization is that from No Thing at All has come everything that has been, is now, and will be. Whatever force, intelligence or process produced this universe is still operative in us. We are the universe in person. We are manifestations of that mystery.  We are the cosmos becoming self-reflective and attempting to understand its own origin; birth and direction, and how we can best participate consciously in the process of creation.

We are gaining guidelines for our own conscious participation in evolution.  We learn it from our past.  How did nature evolve from sub atomic particles to us?  When we comprehend this new story of creation, from the first flaring forth to us now, we see a recurring pattern of ever-greater complexity, bringing forth ever-higher consciousness and freedom.  From atom to molecule to cell to animal to human, to the Buddha and Christ and so many others, to us now, at the threshold of devolution or transformation, “Evolution’s Arrow,” as John Stewart calls it, has manifested a progression toward more comprehensive whole systems through ever-greater cooperation and synergy, quantum jump by quantum jump. 

Herein lies the foundation of our hope for an immeasurable, ever-evolving future.

We also notice that crises precede transformation.  Problems are evolutionary drivers. Intensifying pressure leads either to devolution and extinction or evolution and transformation.  Furthermore, we see that evolution creates radical newness.  Life out of pre-life, human life out of animal life. Is it possible that out of Homo sapiens sapiens, out of our model of human, there is now emerging a new human and a new humanity?  We can see the sequence from Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo Neanderthal, Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens sapiens….why should it stop here with us?

In fact, we see ourselves coming to the end of the viability and even survivability of ourselves in our current stage of self-centered, self-consciousness.  We are becoming “egoic mutants,” as Alan Lithman calls current leadership, as we are gaining powers we used to attribute to gods while remaining in the same state of consciousness as our ancestors. 

It is my intuition that stimulated and even driven by shocking planetary conditions of environmental collapse, social inequities, violence and the spread of weapons of mass destruction, that many of us are being pressured from within, and from without, to give birth within ourselves to a new kind of person, perhaps eventually a new species.  If we imagine ourselves only a few decades in the future, providing we do not destroy ourselves first, we see the outlines of a vastly enhanced humanity, applying the growing edge of human consciousness, capacities, and evolutionary technologies to life affirming goals, resulting in a quantum transformation of the human species itself.

This evolving human has been gestating in the womb of self-consciousness for thousands of years in great mystics and visionaries of humanity.  But all the major traditions originated before we had any notion of the evolutionary process, of the billions of galaxies, of the fact that earth is not the center of the universe, but a small planet revolving around a sun in the midst of a multi-dimensional universe of awesome mystery.  They also all originated before we gained the power to cause our own extinction or transformation, before the advent of conscious evolution, as we are now being called upon to understand how to sustain and fulfill the potential of life on Earth.  Something new is happening now.

So the first element of my vision of humanity is that Homo sapiens is giving birth within many of us to a more “universal human,” a human who will eventually be as different from us as we are from Neanderthal.

This evolving human comes from every race, nation, religion and discipline.  Some of the qualities of being are becoming apparent.  A universal human feels connected through the heart to the whole of life and is awakened from within by a passionate and loving desire to empress unique creativity for the good of the self and the whole.  For this emerging human, the veil between dimensions of reality is thinning. We are becoming multi-dimensional beings, having expanded reality, and peak experiences, receiving higher guidance and epiphanies vital to guide evolution now.  The universal human is developing evolutionary consciousness and evolutionary spirituality that gives us a cosmic, whole organism, scientifically/spiritually based awareness. And as women have fewer children and live longer lives, we are shifting from maximum procreation toward cocreation, from self-reproduction toward self-evolution through life purpose and creative self-expression, giving birth to the authentic feminine self and her expression in the world.  Men, in their own way, are experiencing this same inner evolution.  We are participating in what Carl Jung calls the continuing incarnation of the Self.  The Self we projected outward upon the gods is coming home as our own developmental potential. 

Let’s place this emerging human in the context of planetary evolution.

We can see that every system is breaking down – health care, environment, economics, government, etc. We also notice if we look carefully that innovations and creative solutions are arising in every field and function, still disconnected, under funded and under communicated.  But nonetheless here now. 

We learn from Ilya Prigogine, the Nobel prize winning chemist, that when systems become more dysfunctional, they tend to use ever more of their energy in handling their own dysfunctionalities.  At the same time, mutations or social innovations crop up throughout the system, apparently weak and inadequate.  However, nature has a tendency to converge that which is creative, to manifest new whole systems at a higher degree of order.  We are not very far, right now, from the possibility of the non-linear, exponential interaction of innovating elements, leading to the transformation of our social systems. The very crises we are facing are causing innovations and breakthrough solutions which are even now networking and connecting.  With just one more degree of the networking of the networks, we are approaching a breakthrough in “co-intelligence,” in the collective capacity of that which is emergent, compassionate and creative. 

When I ran for and was selected as a nominee for Vice President on the Democratic ticket in 1984 I proposed a new social function, a “Peace Room” which was eventually to become as sophisticated as our war rooms.  Its purpose is to scan for, map, connect, and communicate what is working to heal and evolve our world.

Now that the Internet is functioning, it is possible to do just this.

We may be at the threshold of a jump in social synergy –- of the coming together of separate groups and functions to form an emerging whole organic system.  We know that the whole is greater than, different from, and unpredictable from the sum of its parts.  We can expect radical newness.

We can move toward a more synergistic democracy, a democracy based on innovations that are emergent in every field, a democracy that has as its purpose the encouragement of everyone to do and be their best within the evolving whole.  Imagine a Cocreative Society that emancipates the greatest untapped resource on Earth -- the suppressed or misdirected capacity and creativity of the peoples of the world. 

Some genuinely radical breakthroughs are at the horizon.  As we run out of fossil fuels and develop renewable sources of energy, we are at the threshold of a quantum jump.  It may be possible to tap into zero point energy, the infinite energy available in the “plenum” of space.  We may be able to extend our life span, to live and settle our solar system and move into the galaxy.  We may be able to reach out and contact other life, other dimensions of reality.  Quite literally, Earth is giving birth to a universal humanity, a species capable of co-evolving with nature and co creating with Spirit…or devolving and self-destructing.

It appears to me that one of the fundamental keys to all of this is the evolution of the person, the appearance of greater numbers of humans capable of comprehensive compassion, and consciousness to guide these new powers and to develop new social systems and structures to enhance Earth life. 

If we project ourselves forward as universal humans, pioneers in the building of a new culture and civilization -- a universal humanity -- both on this Earth and eventually in the universe beyond our home planet, we can see the outlines of a quantum transformation.

A long-range vision for humanity sees us stabilizing in cosmic, universal consciousness.  The inner impulse of evolution is becoming Self aware in us. We are gaining access to the implicate order or creative intelligence of the universe and it is manifesting in our own guidance and actions.

We are an Earth/Space and eventually a universal species.  As we restore the Earth and free the creativity of our people we realize that we are literally like the fish coming out of the sea onto the dry land.  We will build new worlds on this Earth and in space; we will extend the Earth environment into the solar system and beyond.  We will cocreate with nature a humanity that lives beyond our planet. As the sun eventually expands and destroys all earth life and all solar systems, we will be a galactic species. 

Our combined intelligence extended through our computers will be a quantum jump beyond what we have ever known before. 

We will experience cosmic contact and find that we are not alone in the universe.  The trillions of star systems may actually be mothering wombs for new life on countless planets.  Maybe we are too young to have yet encountered others.  When a baby is just born its nervous system is not yet mature enough to see “other life.” But out of hunger and the need to coordinate, her nervous system links up, the infant opens her eyes, sees her mother, and smiles.  There is recognition of what has never been seen before. We may be on the threshold of our first “planetary smile,” a first planetary awakening. 

It is my intuition that as we mature as a universal species, we will learn resonance and mass connectivity here on Earth.  Through a more harmonious order among us we will be in touch with whatever other life there may be in the universe.  Instead of contact with alien cultures I foresee us attracting higher life that has dimensions of our own higher state of being.  We can see that if we do not mature ethically, with all our high technology, that we won’t make it through the next stage of our evolution.  If we do learn ethical, conscious evolution, our morality and compassion will have evolved beyond the current warring humanity.  This may be the viability test for our birth into universal life. If and when we learn to love one another, to resonate with the higher aspects of our own being, my sense is we will find that we are in a universe full of life, that we are reproducing and evolving Earth life in a universe of fabulous diversity, and that our species itself will diversify and multiply like star seeds throughout the universe.

Beyond that, I can see that “God is reproducing godlings.”  We are to become cocreators with the process of creation until we have joined together with others doing the same in a universe that is infinite and self-creating through all of us.  Worlds without end.

Barbara Marx Hubbard

Barbara Marx Hubbard has been a pioneer in positive options for the future of humanity for forty years. A public speaker, author, and social innovator, she is president and executive director of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution.

She has been instrumental in the founding of many future-oriented organizations, including the World Future Society, New Dimensions Radio, Global Family, Women of Vision In Action, The Foundation for the Future, and the Association for Global New Thought.

In the 1960’s she published one of the first newsletters on evolutionary transformation called The Center Letter, with the support of Dr. Abraham H. Maslow, founder of Humanistic Psychology. She worked closely with Dr. Jonas Salk and was one of the original contributors to the Salk Institute. In the 70’s she co-founded the Committee for the Future in Washington, D.C. which developed the New Worlds Educational and Training Center, based on her work. She co-produced twenty-five SYNCON (Synergistic Convergence) conferences to bring together people from every field and function to seek common goals and match needs and resources in the light of the growing potentials of humanity. She wrote and presented the Theater for the Future, a multi-media story of creation culminating in “Previews of Coming Attractions”—what it might be like if everything worked.

In 1984 her name was placed in nomination for the vice-presidency of the United States on the Democratic ticket. She proposed a Peace Room in the White House and throughout the world, to scan for, map, connect, and communicate what is working. She was one of the original directors of the Center for Soviet American Dialogue and served as a citizen diplomat during the late 80’s. See here complete bio at:

http://www.barbaramarxhubbard.com