392A — The Evolution of Conscious Evolution: Celebrating Barbara Marx Hubbard, My Evolutionary Whole Mate

Summary: In the last years of her life, Barbara Marx Hubbard wasn’t growing older — she was becoming newer, deepening her understanding of reality till the last breath. In this celebratory episode, we focus in particular on the evolution of Conscious Evolution, one of the core themes of her life. In the last years, we together (Marc and Barbara) fundamentally reformulated a vision of Conscious Evolution. Although the original realization of Conscious Evolution — from evolution by chance to evolution to choice — was true, it was also very partial, because evolution was never just a chance process. It is driven by the inherent plotlines of Cosmos — First Principles and First Values, real and evolving. The essence of Conscious Evolution is in these plotlines becoming conscious and awake in us, so that each of us becomes a unique and conscious expression of the evolutionary impulse itself.

Value is real

Today, we are doing a big Barbara Marx Hubbard celebration, because it is Barbara’s birthday.

Barbara, I love you madly, my evolutionary partner and whole mate. We celebrate your birthday every year, and there is no way we are going to miss it. We’re going to celebrate Barbara and hear from Barbara.

There is a very deep relationship between a person’s birthday and the day that they passed. It’s very deep. Barbara was born December 22nd, 1929. That’s her birthday. She passed on April 10th, 2019. I was at the bedside when she drew her last breath.

April 10th, 2019.

Five years ago? Is that five years ago, my friends? I can’t quite believe that it’s five years ago. Eighty-nine unimaginable years. The day of my birth and the day of my death — this portal into the world and this portal out of the world, this sacred and wondrous time — are so deeply related. David, the master of the lineage, dies and is born on the same day. It’s a special privilege.

Barbara made a decision. Her decision was — I would say it was her last huge creative decision — to say yes to this invitation, issued by Reality itself: to start this Evolutionary Church, to start this One Mountain Many Paths. I remember calling Barbara and talking to her about this. Her first response was, “A church? Religion?” And then we went deep into it together, and we realized this was the only thing that could be done. It’s what needed to be done. We stepped into it, together with Lisa, who did a wonderful job, with great competence and presence. Barbara and I together, as evolutionary whole mates, launched this adventure — and we are now on week 392.

What’s the purpose?

Why do we have an evolutionary church, which we named One Mountain Many Paths?

We have it in order to realize that value is real. I would say that the most exciting dimension of the last five years of Barbara’s life was the realization that value is real. It’s a very big deal.

There were many people in Barbara’s world, people in her family and people around her, who told her — she would tell me all the time — “Hang up your cleats.” Meaning, you’re done. You’re 82, you’re 83. You’ve done so much.

• You’ve been the great storyteller of Conscious Evolution.
• You’ve started SYNCONs, which were these wonderful conferences designed to bring the vision of Conscious Evolution into the world.
• You’ve been the great evangelist of Conscious Evolution.
• You gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1984, where you were a symbolic candidate for vice president.

You conceived this vision of the Office for the Future. The Office for the Future is now the holding vision of everything, the One Mountain Many Paths and the think tank, the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, and the Foundation for Conscious Evolution. All of that is under the umbrella of the Office of the Future. Barbara conceived this vision of the Office of the Future.

You did such a great job, so everyone told you, “Hang up your cleats.” Why didn’t Barbara hang up her cleats? Why don’t you just say, I’m done?

People around her were saying, she’s impulsive, she can’t stop. No, it wasn’t that at all. It wasn’t this inability to stop. It wasn’t impulsiveness. It wasn’t a desire to stay relevant in some way. It’s that Barbara wasn’t getting older. Barbara was getting newer.

That was Barbara’s actual experience, and it wasn’t just an existential experience. What actually happened is: Barbara stepped into — together with me, we did it together — she stepped into this deeper world, which took her understanding of Reality to the next level. It completely changed the way she understood Conscious Evolution. We re-understood, we-revisioned Conscious Evolution together. It’s a very big deal. We literally re-visioned Conscious Evolution.

What is evolution?

The way Barbara had always taught Conscious Evolution is: evolution by choice, not by chance. There are a thousand talks online of Barbara saying that. But we went deeper.

What does Conscious Evolution actually mean?

Evolution is never by chance — and evolution has full freedom.

Conscious Evolution is not: Oh, evolution was a chance process, and now the human being is awakened. Now it’s not a chance process because we are in the age of the Anthropocene. The human is at the center, so what we do determines the future.

That’s how Barbara taught Conscious Evolution. That was the way it was taught all over the world.

It is a powerful realization. It is true, but it’s extremely partial — because it’s not true that evolution used to be by chance. Evolution is something far more beautiful — and the move to Conscious Evolution is therefore a different move.

So what is evolution? I am just going to give an example.

I was doing Holy of Holies with this new person; we’ve gotten to know each other in the last couple of years. Last Saturday, we did this very deep dive, very beautiful. It was graced by Goddess, every step of it. And we said at the end, Wow, if we get a transcript of what we just talked about in the last hour, we will see that everything we talked about is in perfect synchronicity, in perfect symmetry, in perfect design.

Many of us who do Holy of Holies can attest to the exact same experience — that it was perfectly designed. And yet, we didn’t spend even one minute designing it. Had we tried to design it, it would have taken us like four years to design every moment in it.

Why? Why? Why?

Because what designed it was the First Principles and First Values that we were operating within, which were the fundament, the basic structure, the universal grammar of value. We shared between us this grammar of value, this desire to participate in the Evolution of Love, this knowing that love and Eros are real. There was a whole set of understandings in the shared space between us, rooted in two things:

• the shared set of First Principles and First Values,
• and the realization that the values themselves are real.

These are real values. These are not arbitrary. We are, in some sense, invited by, defined by, animated by — not constrained in a negative sense, but directed by, or allured by — the shared set of First Principles and First Values. We are looking together in the same direction.

In Holy of Holies, we are not just soul mates looking into each other’s eyes. We are whole mates — we are looking in a shared direction. And because we are looking at a shared horizon — animated, and allured, and invested, and suffused with these shared First Principles and First Values — what emerges is the most elegant design you could possibly imagine — and yet completely spontaneous, completely contingent, radically new, radically novel, radically emergent.

• It’s not the old premodern religious position in which God is sitting and saying, “Okay, do this, and do that, and do that.” It is all preordained and eternal, and there is no freedom, and there is no emergence. We are just playing out a prewritten script. That clearly is not the interior nature of evolution.
• At the same time, it’s not a postmodern deconstructive world, which is purely materialist, and evolution is a process of pure reductive materialist mechanics that’s utterly chance and random.

No, evolution is not by chance. It was never by chance. Evolution is an expression of the precise synergy. It’s the synergy of radical intention, telos, direction. The direction is the plotlines of cosmos, and the plotlines of cosmos are First Principles and First Values that are real — and complete freedom, complete openness, complete new possibility, complete emergence, complete novelty.

Evolution is the creative advance of novelty animated by First Principles and First Values that are real.

Wow!

Plotlines of Evolution awakening in us

Now we begin to understand what Conscious Evolution is.

Conscious Evolution is not the move from evolution by chance to evolution by choice.

Conscious Evolution means that the First Principles and First Values of Reality come alive in me and in we — and we are now aware that we are First Principles and First Values in person.

It is the move from the inherent values of evolution operating at the foundational levels of the evolutionary process — like Eros being real, and evolution reaching for ever deeper intimacy, and freedom, and personhood, and uniqueness, and transformation, and creativity — to becoming aware we are First Principles and First Values in person.

Conscious Evolution means I realize I am the evolutionary impulse animated by plotlines called First Principles and First Values, in person. I am an irreducible, unique incarnation of the plotlines of the cosmos.

That’s exciting. Because what that means is I’m not just making up value. Value is real. Barbara’s crazy delight was this realization: Everything I’d done up to now in my life was perfect, and now we can take it to the next level, and realize that evolution is actually a mystery, and often we don’t understand it. But it’s a mystery within the context of an Intimate Universe in which intimacy itself is a value.

It is reaching towards ever greater wholeness — and wholeness is value.

It’s reaching towards ever greater value — and value is real.

Wow! That’s Conscious Evolution.

Let’s say it a little better.

There are values of Cosmos at its foundational levels — in the world of matter.

In the world of matter, you have this Eros and allurement between subatomic particles that creates a new intimacy, a new wholeness, a new value called an atom.

But that same intimacy evolves. It gets deeper. It gets wider. It gets thicker. The intimacy between us — between beloveds today, or between participants in the Unique Self Symphony, and the intimate communion of the Unique Self Symphony with a shared vision —

• participates in a wider and deeper degree of freedom,
• and a more conscious sense of uniqueness,
• and a more radical creativity,
• and a more profound sense of choice —

than the intimacy between subatomic particles. All of the values of cosmos are at play all the way up and all the way down the evolutionary chain (in subatomic particles, or early plants, or early fish, or early animals, and then early mammals), but they become more and more conscious, more and more awake.

They become more and more awake in us, to be more precise.

In other words, the entire process of evolution is self-evidently intelligent and conscious. A non-intelligent and non-conscious process does not generate mitosis and meiosis before there’s a human neocortex. It doesn’t generate photosynthesis before there’s a human neocortex. The process of photosynthesis, which is shockingly, dazzlingly complex — we’ve barely begun to get a glimmer of even vaguely understanding it — takes place billions of years before there is a human frontal lobe or neocortex.

That doesn’t happen from an unintelligent mechanical accident.

That has nothing to do with fundamentalist versions of intelligent design. Intelligent design is wrong in the sense that it often (although not always) denies that there is an inherent process of creativity that’s constantly evolving. There are many versions of intelligent design that deny that, and that’s a mistake. There is no intelligent design in a fundamentalist sense — but there is an inherent consciousness and intelligence in Reality that contains what we might call design principles.

DNA is a code. A code has design principles. There are no design principles — ever — that don’t come from some kind of inherent intelligence and consciousness.

Conscious Evolution evolved. That was our wild excitement.

The way we meet Barbara is by showing up in our full selves

It was sad to Barbara — she talked to me about it literally every day — that her family didn’t get it. They just didn’t get it: What are you doing? Hang it up. Hang it up, mom. Her friends over the years: What are you doing? You’ve done it already. You’ve achieved victory.

This is what she would tell me. She would call me every day, and she would say, this person or that person or that person would say to her, “Barbara, declare victory and go home.”

But Barbara was not getting older. She was getting newer — her phrase. She was madly excited to be alive as an evolutionary whole mate. She knew what evolutionary family meant, and she was madly committed to every single person who is here today, and to the existence of One Mountain Many Paths, and to its unfolding in the world.

You are in her space. You are in her bosom now. You are in her embrace.

Is that fair, Barbara? Is that fair, love? That’s fair.

We are madly celebrating Barbara Marx Hubbard — evolution alive in person, as Barbara Marx Hubbard — the stunning vision of evolution.

There could be nothing that would make Barbara more ecstatic than this book, The First Values and First Principles. And if I would turn to Barbara now, and I would say to Barbara now, or she’d be texting me now and she would say, “Marc, we really got to talk to everyone, so they get to participate.”

The way we meet Barbara is by showing up in our full selves and transcending the limits of our contraction, the limits of our collapse. Because everyone has reasons to contract. Barbara transcended every day the limits of her collapse. It’s not that we can always do it, but we can do it a lot more than we think.

We actually step in, and —

• all of a sudden we are filled with power;
• all of a sudden we are filled with joy.
• all of a sudden we are filled with this realization: I am Conscious Evolution in person.

We are celebrating — wildly celebrating — Barbara Marx Hubbard. We’re going to see a little clip now. This is a tradition we do every year on the anniversary of Barbara’s passing. It’s both her birthday and the day of her death. It’s her birthday into the next world. In the lineages, birthday and the day of death are the same. We call them the same thing. They are called by a name that indicates both being born and passing. You’re being born into the next world, and you’re passing. And they are happening together.

We’re just going to spend like just three minutes, and we’re going to feel into the space. We’ll feel into Barbara Marx Hubbard.

Oh my God! Oh my God! Barbara, we miss you, love. We miss you. I miss Barbara every day. I miss Barbara. Thank you for being our beloved. And thank you for being my whole mate. And thank you for being all of our whole mates. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for everything.

Barbara, this is your home. This is your home.

I want to share with everyone the emergence of two books that Barbara and I did a lot of conversation and deep dives into before she died. I promised her I would get a series of books out, together with her. The first one is going to come out soon, and it’s on the evolution from role mate to soul mate to whole mate.

Who has been here long enough to have heard Barbara and I talk together about not joining genes but joining genius — this was Barbara’s phrase, and I talked about the move from role mate to soul mate to whole mate? How many people actually directly heard Barbara and I talk about that? I would talk about it all the time. It was a huge topic, beautiful and gorgeous and stunning. We are finally getting out a book. The first volume is 200,000 words. After I wrote the first draft, Barbara and I talked a lot. The first draft was written back in 2016. And then we talked about it more. Barbara did another version, and played with it, and then Barbara passed. And then at a certain point, Paul and Carol stepped in and did a big piece of work with it, which is fantastic. And then Kerstin Zohar stepped in and did a piece of work with it, and then it passed to Elena, who did an important piece of work with it. Everyone’s work was important. And at the same time, I wrote another 50, 60, 70, 80,000 words, and it became essentially two volumes, these two beautiful volumes.

So Barbara is about to put two major works into the world, which is wildly exciting, and it’s just a beginning. There is a series of works that will be part of the Great Library that Barbara and I will be putting out. In her last will and testament, with our lawyer, she explicated the series of books that we’re committed to. This is finally happening. It has been a long road, and we are going to be publishing in the summer. As we publish that new book, we’ll put up the new website, which is wildly exciting and wildly good and wildly crazy.

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