August 4, 2001

NO ROOM FOR `RATIONAL' IN NEW AGE

The future is no place you'd want to stumble into unprepared, but since that's where we're all going, like it or don't, guidance doesn't come amiss.

Those who provide it sometimes call themselves futurists, an occupation that suggests to me an appealing fusion of policy wonkery with science fiction. Given today and yesterday, what could tomorrow be like? And if we don't like it that way, how could we make it different?

Many people who believe those are useful questions -- even if the answers almost always turn out to be wrong -- are members of the World Future Society, established in 1966 as a forum for discussing just such matters. It publishes a magazine called The Futurist, which I read intermittently, analyzing social and technological trends. So I expected there would be presentations at the organization's annual convention, held in the Twin Cities this past week, that I could write about.

But I wasn't expecting quite such a heavy dose of New Age mysticism.

Evidently it's been a strand in the development of the society since the beginning. Barbara Marx Hubbard, a society founder and currently president of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, led a session about her new book on the subject. Her thesis: that this is the generation that will cross over from Homo sapiens to a new species she calls Homo universalis, one possessing ``a more cosmic consciousness.''

This new species has been gestating for thousands of years, she said, ``and we give thanks that we are the generation born during this shift.''

The evidence for this unlikely event is impenetrable to science, though couched in vaguely scientific terms.

``The universe evolves through quantum jumps,'' she said, ``and we're living through one.''

``Planets have life cycles,'' and the new species is emerging now because the planet is endangered.

``Everyone has a genetic code; I want to awaken our genius code.''

She urges her acolytes to submerge their quarreling local self and find their deep self, which ``is actually a vibrational field.''

And in just 21 days of practicing yoga and keeping a journal, ``the alchemical process will be set.''

This makes no sense at all, but the audience ate it up. Hubbard asked, ``Who feels this happening?'' and every hand went up -- well, except mine. I was taking notes.

``Of course,'' she said, ``You wouldn't be here if you weren't. They would never come.''

A miscalculation on her part.

Could it be that I am like a colorblind person listening uncomprehendingly to a conversation among painters? Could be, except that people talking about color, which really exists, have no need to borrow vocabulary from the sciences to invest their talk with a spurious gravity. Furthermore, color can be measured as well as seen, in ways that do not depend on the subjective experience of color.

She asked also how many in the audience have experienced ``intuitive flashes of a higher self,'' or the `` `Aha!' moment when the deeper self comes through.''

Everybody had. And, leaving aside the slight confusion about dimensions, so have I experienced flashes of intuition or ``Aha!'' moments. But not suffering from metaphysical hypochondria, I figure they happened to me, not some other entity occupying my body along with me. If I have an ``essential self,'' it's the rational part, and in this company rationality is not a contender.

Perhaps you think I am just being mean, and you would like to check out conscious evolution for yourself. Hubbard is prepared to accommodate you. On the Web site of the same name, consciousevolution.net, you can sign up for a full six-month Gateway session. It takes two to four hours a week, including a weekly one-hour teleconference with Hubbard that is recorded for later listening. If you have a ``willingness to be transformed by the process,'' it's just $200.

I've nothing against transformation, but this is definitely not the direction I want to go. It's back to The Futurist for me.

(661 words)