Ervin Laszlo
Readings on the Pursuit of Purpose and Meaning
A Better Life
To find our way toward a better life and a better world we need science as well as spirituality. Science without spirituality misses the intuitive elements of human experience; elements that many great scientists have valued on a par with, and even above, reason and logic. But spirituality without science cannot offer reliable guidance for confronting the problems we face in the world. We need both science and spirituality, and we need them together, coherently linked. The need is for a dedicated and lasting alliance between science and spirituality.
Ervin Laszlo
The Kosmos
The Kosmos appears to have or perhaps to be an allencompassing intelligence. This endows the processes that unfold in our universe with the tendency—the “tropism” to create complex and coherent wholes. These wholes dynamic natural systems range in size and complexity from groups of quanta in atoms to groups of solar systems in galaxies, and groups of galaxies in the metagalaxy.
This hypothesis suggests a meaningful concept of purpose in life. Searching for it is perhaps the most meaningful endeavor we could adopt in our life. It could help us align ourselves with the rhythms and balances of the universe. This is saner and healthier than pursuing myriad artificial goals of questionable validity and benefit.
My Journey
The Crossroads
It is clear that we are at a crossroads. We have a choice either to continue down the road beset by many crises caused by divisiveness and separation or find the road toward unity, well-being, and thriving. Change is needed on all levels: change for the individual, change for society, and change in the consciousness that defines what we do and who we are. It is imperative that we achieve constructive change on all levels if we are to avoid even greater crises heading our way with the direst of consequences.
It is easy to be overwhelmed by a sense of chaos, but amidst the chaos lies the possibility for connecting with each other, reconnecting to our roots, and creating a shift in our consciousness. Now we can set about creating a new and better era for the human family, an era marked by individual and collective well-being.
This task and possibility inspires and motivates the ideas put forward in this book. It is the hope and expectation of the authors that they will prove to be of practical value as the human community sets about the monumental task of building a better world, rising from the global health crisis as a phoenix rises from the ashes of the past.
Dawn of an Era of Wellbeing
The Universe
The universe is a coherent “thing” made up of other coherent “things.” More precisely, it is a coherent supermacrovibration composed of coherent meso- and microvibrations. This is a miracle. If the universe were a passive, soulless mechanism, as the mainstream physics of the modern age has envisaged, it would be a random sea of incoherent vibrations. There would be “no-thing” in it. But now there are many “things” in it, and if not arbitrarily subverted, they prove to be highly, indeed amazingly, coherent. This truly is a miracle. Ours is a miraculously coherent universe.
The Wisdom Principles
Laszlo’s hypothesis describes a universe in which all that occurs remains encoded in spacetime. ‘If the universe preserved and fed back the traces of its own evolution, ‘”informing’” its parts consistently with the whole and the whole consistently with its parts, it could evolve towards order creatively and self-consistently, without either the mechanistic constraint of self-repetition, or the chaotic anarchy of unfettered randomness.
Cosmos: A Creator’s Guide to the Whole World
Planetary Consciousness
In our world static stability is an illusion; the only permanence is in sustainable change and transformation. There is a constant need to guide the evolution of our societies so as to avoid breakdowns and progress toward a world where all people can live in peace, freedom, and dignity. Such guidance does not come from teachers and schools, not even from political and business leaders, though their commitment and role are important. Essentially and crucially, it comes from each person himself and herself.
An individual endowed with planetary consciousness recognizes his or her role in the evolutionary process and acts responsibly in light of this perception. Each of us must start with himself or herself to evolve his or her consciousness to this planetary dimension; only then can we become responsible and effective agents of our society’s change and transformation. Planetary consciousness is the knowing as well as the feeling of the vital interdependence and essential oneness of humankind, and the conscious adoption of the ethics and the ethos that this entails. Its evolution is the new imperative of human survival on this planet.
The “Manifesto on the Spirit of Planetary Consciousness”
Leadership
There is nothing more important in any group and in any society than having an informed and responsible leader. The quantum leader—the leader acting on the wholeness principle deriving from the quantum paradigm is one who focuses on aligning, collaborating, and creating conditions conducive to the flourishing of life.
The leader effectively serving the good of society serves the interest of all life on the planet. This requirement may appear idealistic and even utopian in the context of today’s dominant ideology in business and politics. But the post-pandemic era requires radical changes in our idea and ideals of leadership. The quantum paradigm offers the necessary fundamental reorientation.
Dawn of an Era of Well-Being
The Whispering Pond
Come, Sail with me on a quiet pond. The shores are shrouded, The surface is smooth. We are vessels on the pond, And we are one with the pond.
A fine wake spreads behind us, Traveling throughout the misty waters. Its subtle waves record our passage. Your wake and mine coalesce, They form a pattern that mirrors Your movements as well as mine.
Other vessels, who are also us, Sail the pond that is us as well; Their wakes intersect with both of ours. The surface of the pond comes alivess With wave upon wave, ripple upon ripple. They are the memory of our movement; The traces of our being.
The waters whisper from you to me and from me to you, And from both of us to all who sail the pond:
“Our separateness is an illusion; We are interconnected parts of the whole We are a pond with movement and memory. Our reality is larger than you and I, And all the vessels that sail the waters, And all the waters on which they sail.”
A lyric poem originally written by the author for the book The Whispering Pond
Influence
Consciously and purposively tuning us and our highest values to the laws of the Akashic Field makes good sense. If we live in a world where all we do influences and is influenced by what everyone else does, it is foolish to do anything that harms anybody. Whatever harms one, harms all and harms whoever caused the harm. In such a world, it is essential to realize that whatever we have done in the past did not vanish, but continues to influence all we do in the present. And will influence all we will do in the future. It is also foolish to ignore the great trends that unfold around us and inspire the deeper domains of our consciousness. If we fail to live consistently with these trends, we reduce our chances of creating a better life for ourselves and a better future for all.
The Immutable Laws of the Akashic Field
Collaboration
Collaboration, not competition, is the royal road to the wholeness that hallmarks healthy systems in the world. Collaboration calls for empathy and solidarity, and ultimately for love. I do not and cannot love myself if I do not love you and others around me: we are part of the same whole and so are part of each other.
The Wisdom Principles
The Akashic Field
What is the Akashic Field is it fact or fancy? Does science admit the existence of this field, and does it offer valid grounds for describing it? The new physics, in particular quantum physics, offers an answer. The answer is yes: although we may call it by other names, the Akashic Field exists. It is a universal information-and-memory field it is how the universe appears to an observed within it.
The Immutable Laws of the Akashic Field
A Better World
To build a better world, you need to ensure that your technologies serve genuine needs, the need to live in harmony with each other and with living nature. You will find that this is not difficult to conceive and even to try to achieve. The tendency to live in harmony is an “attractor” that is encoded in you, in every cell of your body. When it reaches your consciousness, it inspires you to strive for coherence with other people, and with the world around you. Harmony and wholeness are “the force” that is in you, and so it is the force that is with you.
The cosmic force within you creates empathy and compassion, a sense of belonging, and ultimately universal unconditional love. Life is not a jungle where the strongest survives, but a system of encompassing harmony where all things work together and flourish together. You are a social and ecological being, and living up to your intrinsic inborn force is good for you, good for everybody, and good for life on the planet.
The Wisdom Principles
Who Am I?
What does the possession of an evolved consciousness imply for understanding who I am who a human being is?
Alternative definitions exist. These are: (1) I am a physicalbiological being who has consciousness, or (2) I am a spiritual being who has a physical-biological body. I am a body that generates the stream of sensations we call consciousness, or a consciousness with a body that displays the sensations. Who am I truly? Do I have consciousness, or am I consciousness?
My consciousness could be a kind of illusion, a set of sensations produced by the workings of my brain. But it could also be that my body is but a vehicle, a transmitter of the consciousness that exists above and beyond me in the world. The universe could be material, and mind an illusion. Or the universe could be consciousness, and the materiality of the world could be the illusion.
My Journey
What Is Reality?
How does one perceive reality? Only through the senses and the brain? Brain, Laszlo explains ‘is neither a passive system so open to the world that nothing of its own structure would be evident in perception or cognition, nor a system so closed that only its internal workings would appear to mind and consciousness. Rather, the human brain is a living part of a living system, constantly monitoring and regulating the relations between that system and the world at large. Some of that monitoring and regulating takes place in the conscious region of the brain: the phenomenon we experience as the mind. This constitutes the human brain-mind, the most accomplished information-processing system in the known world.
The Whispering Pond
A Healthy Environment
The lesson is clear: if you do not want others to violate your right to a healthy environment and to a fair share of the planet’s resources, you must not degrade other people’s environment and interfere with their access to basic resources. In today’s world, “Do as you would be done by” becomes “Live in a way that allows all people on the planet to live” (and not just subsist at the edge of starvation).
You Can Change the World
An Interconnected World
The current shift in science’s concept of the world from a lifeless rock to an interconnected and quasi-living universe has intense meaning and significance for our times. The concept of a subtly interconnected world, of a whispering pond in and through which we are intimately linked to each other and to the universe, assimilated by our intellect and embraced by our heart, is part of humanity’s response to the challenges that we now face in common. Our alienation from each other and from nature is at the root of many of our problems; overcoming them calls for a recovery of our neglected, but never entirely forgotten, bonds and connections.
The Whispering Pond
Society’s Evolution
In periods of relative stability the consciousness of individuals does not play a decisive role in society’s evolution, but in periods of chaos it does. When a human society reaches the limits of its stability, it becomes supersensitive and is highly responsive to the smallest fluctuation. Then the system responds to even subtle changes in values, beliefs, worldviews, and aspirations. A Macroshift is a process of societal evolution in which the limits of the system’s stability initiates a bifurcation: an era of transformation. This is an era of unprecedented freedom to decide the system’s future.
Macroshift: Navigating The Transformation To A Sustainable World
Conscious Evolution
The threat to human survival has its ultimate roots in the outdated consciousness of a critical mass in today’s world. If the obsolescence of today’s dominant consciousness is the root cause of the survival threat, evolution of consciousness is the way to overcome that threat. You, as everyone around you, can do your part by evolving your own consciousness.
You Can Change the World
Creative Evolution
The stakes are high. Without a new consciousness it is unlikely that we will be able to avert deepening economic, social, and cultural conflicts and ecological breakdowns. But, if our consciousness is able to move up from the selfcentered and parochial to the planet-centered and universally human dimension, our economic power and technological sophistication will be matched with a deeper spiritual and emotional maturity. This is the creative evolution we need in order to consciously evolve our world, and bring ourselves and our children safely to a soft landing in the post-modern age of the third millennium.
The 3rd Millennium –The Challenge and the Vision
Evolution of the Universe
In each universe, complex systems leave their traces in the vacuum, and the informed vacuum of one universe informs the evolution of the next. Consequently, each universe creates conditions favorable to the evolution of life in successive universes. In each successive universe, life evolves more and more efficiently, and thus in equal times evolves further and further. This is a cyclical process with a learning curve. Each universe starts without life, evolves life when some planets become capable of supporting it, and wipes it out when planetary conditions pass beyond the life-supporting stage. But the vacuum shared by all the universes records and conserves the wave-form traces of the life that evolved in each universe! The vacuum becomes more and more informed with life, and therefore more and more informing of life.
Science and the Akashic Field –
An Integral Theory of Everything
Reality
We must remember, however, that it is not possible to test a grand evolutionary synthesis – or any conceptual scheme, for that matter – by comparing it with pristine reality. There is no immaculate perception: we do not see reality except through the spectacle of a theory. But not all spectacles allow coherent vision, not all theories, when applied to experience, can make sense of the strands of order that we intuitively believe interconnect the myriad phenomena we encounter around us. The best we can do is to prove the validity of our conceptual scheme by showing that, when we use it as a spectacle to view reality, reality appears coherent and meaningful.
Evolution – The Grand Synthesis
The Wavefunction
The individual’s brain is in-formed with the collective wavefunction of the human species as well as with the wavefunction of the socio-ecological system in which the individual participates. In modern people this information is repressed from waking consciousness, but remains present in the subconscious domains of the mind. Transpersonal intuitions and images together with specieswide ‘”archetypes”’ and archetypal elements are present in the psyche of all normal individuals. They shape emotional and intuitive aspects of behavior and may surface to conscious awareness in meditative and other altered states. The cerebral activity of generation after generation of individuals, integrated in the collective wavefunction of the species, in-forms the brain and nervous system of successive generations of individuals.
Connectivity
Hypothesis
Human Society
The goal is to achieve harmony and unity amidst diversity to make human society a reflection of the reality of nature. By integrating the Western life science of consciousness with traditional Chinese wisdom a foundational structure for universal ethics will guide humankind’s journey toward Great Unity, a society in which diversity is not only respected but deployed in the process of creation and collaboration. It is only in diversity that great things are made. The same things brought together create more of the same things, but diversity creates something extraordinary.
Dawn of an Era of Well-Being
The Interconnected Whole
I began to see the world in this new and strange light that was also strangely familiar. I realized that nothing in the world merely “is.” Everything tends, grows, and develops. It develops into, and develops as, an interconnected whole. This is true evolution. It is not evolution in the classical sense where it refers to changes in the gene pool of living species; it is evolution in the cosmic, universal sense—in the sense in which it grasps the constant and consistent transformation of everything in the world with and by everything else.
My Journey
Evolved Consciousness
The rapid spread of an evolved consciousness is crucial for humanity’s future. Whether such consciousness reaches a critical mass will decide if humanity moves in time from the business-as-usual scenario leading to breakdown to the transformation scenario that leads toward a new civilization.
Quantum Shift in the Global Brain
Crisis
Crisis is often the necessary condition for timely and fundamental change, and the crisis we have just lived through is not an exception. The timeliness of today’s system-change is empowered by the spread of the new information technologies. A world linked by networks of communication and interaction can change fast: faster than a world of unconnected or more weakly connected individuals and organizations.
Disruptive change has happened, and it has opened the way to fundamental change. At the same time it has made clear the fallacy of trying to return to previous conditions. We cannot stay as we are and we cannot and certainly should not go back to where we were. But we can go forward. And we can choose the way we go.
The Upshift: Meeting the Challenge
2. 3. 4. 5.
Ten Commandments for Thriving in a World of Diversity
Live in ways that enable other people to live as well: Meet your needs and pursue your objectives without detracting from the chances of other people to meet their needs and pursue their objectives.
Live in ways that respect the right to life and to economic and cultural development of all people, wherever they live and whatever their ethnic origin, sex, citizenship, station in life, and belief system.
Live in ways that safeguard the right to live in a viable environment of all the living things that inhabit the earth.
Pursue happiness, freedom, and personal fulfillment in harmony with the integrity of nature and with consideration for the related pursuits of others around you.
Require of political leaders that they relate to other peoples peacefully and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing the legitimate aspirations for a better life and a healthy environment of all members of the human family.
The Upshift: Meeting the Challenge 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Require of business leaders that they accept responsibility not only for the owners and shareholders of their enterprise, but for all its stakeholders, demanding that they produce goods and offer services that satisfy legitimate demand without impairing nature and reducing the opportunities of local enterprises and poor economies to compete in the marketplace.
Require public media to provide a constant stream of reliable information on basic trends and crucial processes to enable citizens and consumers to reach informed decisions on issues that affect their health, prosperity, and future.
Make room in your life to help those less privileged than yourself to live a life of dignity, free from the struggles and humiliations of abject poverty.
Work with like-minded people to preserve or restore the essential balances of the environment in as well.
Encourage young people and open-minded people of all ages to evolve the spirit that could empower them to make ethical decisions on issues that decide their own future and the future of their family, partners, and children.
The Books
Ervin Laszlo is the author coauthor, or editor of more than 100 books that have appeared in 24 languages. The content of this ebook has been excerpted from a variety of the authors books.
Visit the Complete Ervin Laszlo Library Here
Newest Books
Don’t miss these new releases by Ervin Laszlo, available soon wherever books are sold…
The Author
Ervin Laszlo was born and raised in Budapest. He was a celebrated child prodigy whose public appearances as a pianist began at the age of nine. When he received a Grand Prize at the international music competition in Geneva, he was allowed to cross the Iron Curtain and begin an international concert career, first in Europe and then in America. At the initiative of Senator Claude Pepper of Florida, he was awarded United States citizenship before his 21st birthday by an Act of Congress.
Laszlo received the Sorbonne’s highest degree, the Docteur ès-Lettres et Sciences Humaines in 1970. Shifting to the life of a scientist and humanist, he lectured and taught at universities in the United States, including Yale, Princeton, Northwestern, the University of Houston, and the State University of New York. Following his work on modeling the future evolution of world order at Princeton, he was asked to produce a report for the Club of Rome, of
Photo © Bernard F. Stehle
which he was a member. In the late 70s and early 80s, Laszlo ran global projects at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research at the request of the SecretaryGeneral. In the 1990s his research led him to the discovery of the Akashic Field, which he has continued to study and expound on ever since.
The author, coauthor, or editor of more than 100 books that have appeared in 24 languages, Ervin Laszlo has also published several hundred papers and articles in scientific journals and popular magazines. His autobiography was published in June 2011 under the title “Simply Genius! And Other Tales from my Life.” Gaia TV produced a special series on his life in the Heritage cycle, and he was the subject of a one-hour PBS television special titled Ervin Laszlo: Life of a Modern-Day Genius. He is a member of numerous scientific bodies, including the International Academy of Science, the World Academy of Art and Science, the International Academy of Philosophy of Science, and the International Medici Academy. He was elected member of the Hungarian Academy of Science in 2010. He is Founder and President of The Club of Budapest, an international organization established in 1993 that stands for planetary consciousness and a mission to be a catalyst for the transformation to a sustainable world, and he is the Founder and Director of The Laszlo Institute of New Paradigm Research.
Laszlo is a recipient of various honors and awards, including Honorary PhDs from the United States, Canada, Finland, and Hungary; an Honorary Professorship at the Institute of Technology of Buenos Aires; and Honorary Citizenship of the City of Buenos Aires. He was awarded the Goi Peace Prize of Japan in 2001, the Assisi Mandir of Peace Prize in 2006, the Polyhistor Prize of Hungary in 2015, and the Luxembourg Peace Prize in 2017. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 and again in 2005.
The Laszlo Institute Join
The Laszlo Institute works at the cutting-edge of new research in Science, Medicine, Healing, Consciousness, Education, Business and Society, and brings together leading thinkers across the world to work for a better future through the insight provided by the new paradigm at the cutting edge of the sciences. We invite you to become a Member, a Research Fellow, or a Patron of the Institute and sustain and participate in our work.
Membership Details