Ervin László: The Upshift
Ervin László is a Hungarian polymath, philosopher of science, systems theorist, integral theorist, and advocate of the theory of quantum consciousness. He has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, is editor of the international periodical World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, and Chancellor-Designate of the newly formed GlobalShift University. He is the founder and president of the international think tank, the General Evolution Research Group, and the author of 83 books translated into 21 languages. His latest book is The Upshift: The Path to Healing and Evolution on Planet Earth.
An Interview with Ervin László: The Upshift-The Path to Evolution on Earth
Interview with Sandie Sedgbeer
Climate Change, the Pandemic, the Refugee Emergency, Poverty, conflict, and Violence. It’s hard to imagine that there could be a positive side to these converging global crises. Still, according to this week’s guest, they do have an unsuspected silver lining. They bring us to a tipping point where we can choose our destiny. With me, today to outline the nature of this crucial point and share what each of us as conscious and responsible human beings can and must do to choose the right way forward is a world-renowned Hungarian philosopher of science systems theorist and integral theorist Ervin László. A former professor of philosophy systems science and future studies at various universities in the US, Europe, and the Far East. Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Ervin László is the author, co-author, and editor of 106 books and over 400 articles and research papers. Ervin László joins us now to talk about his latest book, The Upshift: The Path to Healing and Evolution on Planet Earth, which not only lays out a pathway to healing and evolution on planet Earth but also offers us a detailed guide to becoming the change we need to see in the world.
To listen to the full interview of Ervin László by Sandie Sedgbeer on the OMTimes Radio and TV flagship show, What Is Going OM, click the video or audio player below.
Sandie Sedgbeer: In your new book, the Upshift, you claim that humanity is at a historical turning point and that two paths are opening for us today. A path up to healing and evolution and a path down to crises and chaos. And the global crisis from which we are emerging holds vital lessons for our life and future. Tell me about those lessons.
Ervin László: Yeah, the bifurcation or evolution is branching off. If we continue the way we go, the path is downshifting because it’s unsustainable. What we are doing needs to be rectified. So, it’s about time that something happened to rectify it. It’s unlikely that we’ll continue the way we have been, living through this crisis period as the need for change grows. If a little more of the crisis deepens, it will spread as it will probably in the next week. The motivation will grow until it becomes very evident to policymakers, politicians, business leaders, and everybody that we need to shift to another path. And the Path I would like to offer I called Upshift. And that is the option that we have. And I say, this is not a bad thing that is happening. It’s a necessary thing. This rectification of our path has been overdue.
We didn’t start yesterday the way we go, the way we have been going. This has been happening for most of the 21st century and the second half of the 20th century. So, for example, in 1972, my partners and colleagues and I published a report to the Club of Rome, which talked about the limits to growth, saying that it couldn’t go on like this because a collapse would happen. And that didn’t have much effect on the people we talked with about it, even though it was only dealt with physical resources, primarily physical resources, and a few human resources. And we dealt mainly with politicians and policymakers addressing it.
So, it was a more limited thing. Today, we know it’s a global phenomenon. We are at the limits of the kind of growth we have been exercising and subjecting ourselves to, which is a good thing. So, we can continue this discussion as you like, Sandie. I just want to say that the rectification of the past is overdue. We should be happy and grateful that it’s happening before it’s too late.
Sandie Sedgbeer: Absolutely. You know, the book, um, the book lays out some incredible statistics- it’s a fabulous book. I have to say that I was pretty horrified by some of the things I read because I think the general public really doesn’t know what’s happening. I mean, they see the headlines and various newspaper reports. But you laid it out so well when you said that, in the mid 19 hundreds of the last century, there were about 1 billion people. Now we’ve got 7.8 billion people. It’s grown so fast, and the cities aren’t sustainable anymore because they’re taken and not putting anything back into the system. We don’t know enough about these kinds of things, and I think that that is probably part of the problem is that the average person doesn’t know.
Ervin László: Well, there are ways we could know just by opening our eyes, but even more important is to open our hearts in our minds. That means allowing our consciousness to take in more of what is happening below the surface. Of course, the surface is what’s in the daily news in every newspaper, standard media and television station, radio, and whatnot, which I think is general knowledge. But under the surface, what is really happening, what I’m telling you, what is happening is an interesting two-pronged process.
On the surface part and on the piece like this would be a deep reservoir of events, a sphere of vibrations. There are various dimensions to this top dimension that increase chaos, confusion, disorientation, and depression. All these negative signs that you can make are growing very rapidly. But, underneath, there is something else happening underneath. There is a reorientation from the individual, from the national, from the purely business, from the purest power politics section to something larger.
It is as if now humanity on this planet is beginning to organize itself, to live on this planet consciously. We didn’t need to live consciously on the planet because, previously, our powers were limited. So, we couldn’t do much harm. True, but We didn’t do much good for the planet as a whole, but we couldn’t harm it much because we had very limited powers. I mean, sort of up to 250 years ago. Then our powers slowly through the 20th century increased, and now they are so great, such vast powers that we can destroy all life on Earth.
We can be pushed into an unsustainable situation like Mars, an arid planet, and that means no life is possible. That’s one of the worst scenarios, perhaps the worst scenario we could think of. But there are many other ways of unsustainability. Climate change is just an advanced sound, an advanced signal of it.
So underneath it all, there is something else happening. Now, when we talk about the problem, we talk about climate change. We talk about heating up the atmosphere in the same way. Then we talked about the refugee crisis. We talk about violence and war, the disheartening of people, and the conflicts of various atmospheres. We talk about the surface.
When we reach what is happening, we realize it’s all a global phenomenon. It had become global. Before it was local, then it was national and local, and now it’s become global. All the solutions are just the same way as all the problems are now on the global level. And that’s remarkable because concerning this phenomenon, now something is being made to happen. And that’s what’s being made to happen, overcoming the problems we have been accumulating for the past 150 to 200 years.
And especially in the past, let’s say, 20 or 25 years. And there’s high time to do so, and humanity is becoming organized, reaching the global level, and trying to work out a way to live sustainably on this planet. So, today, probably already 8 billion people because many of these things are not registered on censuses. We estimate that about 8 billion people can live on this planet, so we don’t kill each other, we don’t destroy each other, and we don’t remove the power and the ability to survive and thrive on this planet. We allow our people to live in peace. There are various ways we can ensure that we can talk about it. Still, I just want to say the positive side is that something was long overdue, which is now taking place. It’s a crisis, but a crisis is an opportunity.
Sandie Sedgbeer: I think that one of the words that underlie a lot of our problems is separation. We think everything is separate. We think that we are separate from one another, that we are all individuals, and it is now that people, especially with quantum science, are showing us that everything is connected. People are just beginning to realize that we survive as a collective, not as individuals.
Ervin László: Interestingly, you are saying this. You’re absolutely right. Einstein, who had never really fully accepted all the findings of the quantum sciences, kept a very matter-of-fact, practical turn of mind. And some of it’s so fantastic that it’s difficult to accept. But even though he said it very clearly, separateness is an illusion now coming through more and more in quantum physics and biology, quantum consciousness research, and quantum sociology. You can’t do just one thing because one thing has so many other implications and consequences. But we can say that we can’t do one thing because there is not one thing anybody can do. We can whenever we do one thing, we address the whole system of connections of each of we are a part.
We are not outside. And that’s a great advantage, a great benefit of the crisis in which we live. As we recognize. That’s why we are not out of nature. We are not above it. We are not beyond it. And we have, we have had this so sophistry that we can overcome nature. We can become superior to nature. We can use technology to govern nature the way we want. That we are learning that we can’t do that. We are part of nature, we are part of the limits of life on Earth, but we are also part of the opportunity of life on Earth. So, you’ve got to rejoin and reconnect. These are terms that are coming up more and more. I wrote the book about a year and a half ago, reconnecting to the source. But these terms are coming up every more.
Yes, we are not separate, we are one, and the scientists are telling us, but common sense and our consciousness itself to us, if we just allow our consciousness to receive that Information as we are getting when they are relaxed when we allow our mind to float and to encounter people, to experience nature, to experience the beauty and to experience love and all these experiences have a deep resonance.
We are now resonating with the world, with the changing world around us. That’s a marvelous opportunity. Let’s take it. If we wait too long, it’s not guaranteed that we’ll succeed because irreversibilities are occurring. And if we wait too long, we find ourselves on a dead-end street. But we are not there. And I think the opportunity is now to get together and act together in light of who we are and the natural member of the Natural system. It’s a beautiful thing to be. We thought it would just overcome it. We can do what we want. We can’t do what we want. We have to do what there is in nature. It’s a generous nature. This is an evolutionary universe. It’s a participatory universe. All of these things are coming through the new sciences. It’s there in our instincts, in our intuition. So, let’s listen to ourselves. That is the message I’d like to say. Listen, hear, and feels who we are. Watch what is around us, and you’ll find the right way. The right way forward is the Upshift, which is a shift into togetherness.
Sandie Sedgbeer: Your book, the Upshift, outlines several recommendations for overcoming the problems we are facing. Can you share some of those steps with us? Because I think a lot of people agree with everything we are saying, but they don’t know where to start. What can they do? The pathway that you lay out in the book is very solid. So, if you could just share some of the steps along that pathway…
Ervin László: There are several; there are many. There is the simplest one, except for young kids in big cities, where it may not be so simple. But for many people, middle-aged people, a little bit middle-class people, it’s possible; experience nature! You know, the Japanese word shinrin-yoku or something like that means forest bathing. Yes. It means going out into nature, into the taller trees, and where you lay down on the lawn, grass, or leaves. See the sky above you, the clouds. Hear the rustling of the winds and trees. See, I’m not a poet. I can’t. I can’t say that many words, but the fact is, if you allow yourself to experience nature, that’s one way. It’s not the only way, but there certainly is one way.
Another way, which I mentioned very briefly, is simply to allow., Allow your consciousness to access all Easter religions, the Easter spiritual systems, practically without exception. They all tell us, don’t force what we want to achieve, to allow things to happen, and allow our minds to enter a larger dimension. We now know we are looking at the instrumental details of the waves admitted by our brain.
This EEG electroencephalograph waves. We know that in our everyday consciousness, there is a certain level of frequency that we pick up. Above it, we have an exultant consciousness, and deep, sudden inspirations can happen. So sudden exaltation can take place. But below it, there’s another dimension, the alpha dimension, the theta dimension in which connections happen. So people feel themselves connecting to other people’s minds or minds, unlike our bodies, which connect more indirectly. We are directly connected through the waves.
What happens in our consciousness reflects what happens in other people’s consciousness. And it reflects back on that. So, there are so many ways that we can relax. We can take the time to enjoy life, enjoy nature, and enjoy being what we are without all the worry, frustrations, and fear. That is now so much on the surface today. Depression is a danger, all those things are dangerous, but we can be one with the universe. So is this poetry, no science? Yes. This is the new way of understanding who we are.
Sandie Sedgbeer: You’ve written in the book that one of the things that we can do is to rid ourselves of obsolete beliefs and assumptions. Can you outline some of those beliefs we need to eliminate and haven’t?
Ervin László: There a lot of them? And I think there’s no substitute for just looking at the book. And in one chapter, I will try to summarize most of these. Everything that’s individualistic, in that separateness sense, the individuals great, you know, are all individuals. We want to serve the cause of the individual. But you have overdone it. We have separated ourselves from the collective, from the social systems. So, believe that there is only one country. That’s one thing. For example, it’s only one country to which we owe allegiance. Never mind the rest: “There is only one country, our flag, nation, state,” or whatever. And that’s not who we are. And the rest is out, is outside of us. The rest is “they are strangers.” These are outdated and dangerous beliefs. We are also members of a family, members of a community, or members of a region, a state city, of course, of the nation.
But not only that, but beyond that, we are also human beings, members of the human family. And even more, the human family is a member of the system of life on Earth or what is known as the Gaian system.
They, we all of those things together, not exclusively. One. We can have multiple identities, and we have a more embracing identity. It doesn’t destroy the local identity. It just incorporates it and embraces it. We can’t help it. We can’t change that. Life on Earth has developed as a community, a communal form of existence. But strangely enough, and I don’t want to get into physics details now, I just want to mention that we know the way atoms come together using, for example, a so-called Pauli Exclusion principle, but also the whole atomic generation process, the nucleus, and the electron shells. These are not accidental conglomerations.
They are highly entuned elements, diverse elements coming together. It’s as if the nucleus of a hydrogen atom would love certain electrons and, given a pass, would accept them into its electron shells. That’s a sort of particular metaphor, but every natural system is a system of diverse elements coming into harmony, coming into oneness. And then when we recognize as their natural system, the other system with which we are in touch, to which we resonate, they are systems that we can embrace, that we can enter into ourselves, into us so that we become one with them. So, again, it seems like sophistry, poetry, and pure spirituality. Still, as you know and as you practice, spirituality is a great guide to what? To the right way to behave in the world.
But about the point I am trying to make, when you examine the highest levels of evolutionary development, the highest level of consciousness in people defines the higher level of spirituality.
And it’s expressed as a sense of wellness, a sense of belonging, a sense of being part of something larger. William James, a great scientist, and philosopher, said that the religious experience, which he was very much in awe of, he said, it’s the experience of being part of something larger than we are. And that’s now the experience that we need. Not just religious experience, spiritual experience, aesthetic experience, a natural experience, and the beliefs and convictions that go with it. Not separateness, not just the individual alone, but you and I individuals are embracing a larger whole. That, I think, is a natural way. It’s the way in which we can feel it when we feel it. We feel closeness, we feel love, maybe. And that’s how we can go forward because that’s how nature operates. The entire system of life on Earth, on this planet, is a system of highly integrated elements joining together in such a way that every part of the system is an essential part of the whole.
If you remove any one part, you damage the whole. If you remove a set of parts and allow them to work separately, you’re creating disease in the whole. And that happens in the human body or any living body. Then we call it cancer. The Information, the embracing all things that’s health, and that’s part of joining others. Not by external links but by internal feeling and perceiving who we are, part of a larger whole, part of an evolving system on the planet. For example, the Gaian system, which I’m sure is also part of an evolution of life on other planets in myriad places in this enormously vast universe.
Sandie Sedgbeer: I read something the other day, a little headline that said if aliens landed on this planet, they wouldn’t want to study humans. They would want to study ants because they have the system down. And they would want to know how ants have organized such an incredible system. So, it strikes me that we would do well to study ants ourselves and behave a little bit more as they do.
Ervin László: We don’t know what it is that orients ants in such a fantastically coordinated way. So, the ant colony is not a good heap of separate individuals. It’s really, you just look at it because you see the individual hands use your eyes. You can touch the individual hand, the insects, but actually, that’s a whole system of which that, and that we have in mind that you look at, is only a manifestation, is a single, single level of expression. So the system that’s real is the whole, you know, the great German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said: “the truth is the whole.” And that was what inspired many philosophies since then. So it’s not only the holistic philosophy of wholeness. We are looking for wholeness. But I will take exception to this premise of looking at the ants. If you want to study life on Earth, look at consciousness because what we have is something unique.
Continue to Page 2 of the Interview with Ervin László
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