Subtle Activism The Inner Dimension of Social and Planetary
Transformation
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SUNY series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology
Richard D. Mann, editor
SUBTLE ACTIVISM
The Inner Dimension of Social and
Planetary Transformation
DAVID NICOL
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
Cover art: Gaia Rose by Bonnie Bell and David Todd, © 2012
Blue Marble image in cover art: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Image by Reto Stöckli (land
surface, shallow water, clouds). Enhancements by Robert Simmon (ocean color, compositing, 3D
globes, animation). Data and technical support: MODIS Land Group; MODIS Science Data Support
Team; MODIS Atmosphere Group; MODIS Ocean Group. Additional data: USGS EROS Data Center
(topography); USGS Terrestrial Remote Sensing Flagstaff Field Center (Antarctica); Defense
Meteorological Satellite Program (city lights).
Published by
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS, ALBANY
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by
any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact
State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Laurie D. Searl
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nicol, David, (date)
Subtle activism : the inner dimension of social and planetary transformation / David Nicol.
pages cm. — (SUNY series in transpersonal and humanistic psychology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5751-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5752-9 (e-book)
1. Transpersonal psychology. 2. Human evolution. 3. Self-actualization (Psychology)
4. Consciousness. I. Title.
BF204.7.N53 2015
155.2′5—dc23 2014036364
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
An Ancient Approach, Revisited
Science and Consciousness
Empirical Evidence
Direct “Versus” Subtle Activism
Skepticism
Meaning
CHAPTER ONE
The Inner Dimension of Social and Planetary Transformation
The Planetization of Humankind: Teilhard de Chardin
The Integral Earth Community: Thomas Berry
The Re-enchantment of the Cosmos: Richard Tarnas
Summing Up
The Path of Subtle Activism
Broadening the Scope of Activism
Broadening the Scope of Spirituality
Global Meditation and the Evolution of Consciousness
CHAPTER TWO
Subtle Activism and Spirituality
Shamanism
Yoga, Hinduism, and the Vedic Tradition
Buddhism
Judeo-Christian Tradition
Western Mystery Traditions
Eclectic/Interfaith
Caveats
CHAPTER THREE
Subtle Activism and Science
Lessons and Metaphors From Quantum Physics
Parapsychology
Distant Healing
Implications of Psi and Distant Healing Research for Subtle Activism
The Maharishi Effect
Field REG Research
Global Consciousness Project
Global Coherence Initiative
Discussion
CHAPTER FOUR
Foundations of Subtle Activism
What is Consciousness?
History of the Scientific Study of Consciousness
Theoretical Perspectives Examined in this Chapter
Maharishi’s Theory of Vedic Defense
Sheldrake’s Hypothesis of Formative Causation and Theory of Morphic
Fields
Bache’s Model of Collective Healing by Individuals in Non-Ordinary
States of Consciousness
Areas of Overlap and Difference
Parallels in Physics: Bohm’s Theory of Holomovement and the
Implicate Order
Parallels in Psychology
Parallels in Esoteric Thought
A General Hypothesis of Subtle Activism
CHAPTER FIVE
Subtle Activism and the Emergence of Planetary Consciousness
Definitions and Concepts of Planetary Consciousness
Owning the Shadow
Embracing Difference
Identifying Resistance
Signposts of an Emerging Order
Crossing the Threshold
Subtle Activism and Planetary Consciousness
CHAPTER SIX
Conclusion
APPENDIX 1
Subtle Activism Resource List
APPENDIX 2
Subtle Activism: Science, Magic, or Religion?
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 1.1. A spectrum of social action.
Figure 1.2. Matrix of Nine Modes of Spiritual Practice. Reprinted with
permission from Donald Rothberg (2008).
Figure 1.3. Rothberg’s Nine Modes of Spiritual Practice. Adapted with
permission from Donald Rothberg (2008).
Figure 2.1. Changes in TM group size compared with changes in a
composite index of quality of life. Reprinted with permission
from Orme-Johnson et al. (1988). Reprinted by Permission of
Sage Publications.
Figure 3.1. Response of Global Consciousness Project network to
coordinated global meditation and prayer. Reprinted with
permission from Nelson (2003).
Figure 3.2. Updated analysis of response of Global Consciousness Project
network to global harmony events. Reprinted with permission
from B. Williams, (2014). Global Harmony Events Composite:
1998–2014. Retrieved from http://global-
mind.org/papers/pdf/global.harmony.2014-Williams.pdf.
Figure 4.1. The structure of the unconscious. A: ego consciousness; B:
personal unconscious; C: group unconscious; D: unconscious
of large national units; E: universal archetypes. From von Franz
(1985).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to express my deep gratitude to the following people and
organizations who have supported me, in a variety of ways, throughout this
project.
First, I acknowledge the wonderful faculty and students of the
Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at the California
Institute of Integral Studies for providing the richly creative intellectual and
spiritual container from which the ideas in this dissertation emerged. In
particular, I thank Sean Kelly for his friendship and encouragement
throughout the process.
I acknowledge Leslie Meehan, my close friend and colleague on the
Gaiafield Project, for her love and support on multiple levels, including
generous financial support that made this project possible.
The Gaiafield Council, especially Leslie Meehan, Myra Jackson,
Claudia Weiss, Cynthia Jurs, Philip Hellmich, Bonnie Bell, and David Todd
nurtured this work on the subtle realms for many years.
My beloved teacher and friend Florentin Krause guided my spiritual
development throughout this project and beyond.
I thank my other spiritual teachers, Hameed Ali, Karen Johnson, and
David Silverstein, and my Diamond Approach small group for their support
at key moments.
Thanks to the people and organizations who provided physical spaces
for me to write: Jon Rubenstein and Karin Swann, Lisa Tompkins, Ted
Seymour, Leslie Meehan, and the Vedanta Retreat Center at Olema,
California.
I give thanks to the production and marketing team at SUNY Press—
especially Nancy Ellegate and Laurie Searl—for their warm encouragement
and support throughout the process.
I acknowledge the many inspiring pioneers in this field: Dion Fortune,
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Sri Aurobindo, David Spangler, and Marianne
Williamson.
I thank my family in Australia and the United States for their
unconditional support.
Last, but certainly not least, I thank my wife Kate for her fearless and
steadfast love.
FOREWORD
Many good books are published each year but important books are harder to
come by. One of the marks of a truly important book is that it challenges
our deeply held convictions about what is real and what is possible in the
world. It opens new intellectual horizons by showing us previously hidden
connections. David Nicol’s Subtle Activism is an important book, a very
important book.
As a professor in a department of philosophy and religious studies all
my life, I know firsthand how difficult it is for new ideas to dislodge deeply
entrenched ways of thinking. Although a growing alliance of scientists has
been demonstrating that wholeness and non-locality are inherent features of
existence at multiple levels, this is still far from being the mainstream view
in psychology and related disciplines. The Newtonian paradigm encouraged
the emergence of an “atomistic” psychology that views minds as discrete
separate entities, reinforcing our everyday experience of separateness. This
vision continues to dominate our psychological thinking even after quantum
theory and relativistic physics have radically changed our understanding of
the universe. It seems easier to redraw our outer landscape than the inner
landscape where we live and breathe.
This is precisely what makes Nicol’s book so important. Subtle
Activism invites us to rethink our entire inner landscape. It tackles one of
the deepest questions we can ask about consciousness, namely, what are the
boundaries of our mind? Where does one mind stop and another begin? I
think this question is even more fundamental than the “hard problem” of
consciousness—how does conscious experience arise from nonconscious
biochemical processes? While not diminishing the significance of this
question, I think the question of the boundaries of consciousness is more
fundamental because it reframes how we interpret large bodies of data that
bear on the hard problem itself. Most of the contemporary discussion about
the significance of various neuroimaging technologies, for example,
assumes the entrenched model that our minds are essentially separate
entities. It assumes that minds and brains are paired in a one-to-one
relationship and that our minds, like our brains, are isolated from each
other.
Subtle Activism challenges this assumption. Through critically sifting
research often ignored by mainstream thinkers, Nicol demonstrates the
subtle interplay of minds at a distance and the emergence of collective
fields of consciousness. He harvests what contemporary science is
demonstrating but which many academics have been slow to accept—that
our minds reach out and touch one other beyond the physical senses, that
when intention is well focused, fields of influence arise, that group
meditation can actually become a dynamic force in the world.
Those familiar with the history of religions know that these are not
entirely new ideas. Wherever contemplatives have gathered, they have
affirmed the view that collective intention can have far-reaching effects.
What is novel in Nicol’s book is the depth and breadth of evidence that he
assembles for this hypothesis. His chapter on the scientific evidence that
consciousness is a nonlocal phenomenon is the best I have seen, and I say
this as someone who has tackled this issue in print himself. In my book The
Living Classroom, I too marshaled the laboratory and clinical evidence for
the existence of collective fields of consciousness, but Nicol’s treatment is
stronger than mine. His analysis of parapsychology, distant healing, the
Maharishi Effect, and the Global Consciousness Project is more detailed
and thorough. There is clearly more research to be done in this area, but
Nicol has documented the tipping point we have come to intellectually. In
this he has done serious thinkers a great service.
But the strength of Nicol’s project goes beyond gathering the
necessary evidence to give this hypothesis teeth, although that by itself
would earn his book high marks. He embeds this discussion in a larger
intellectual history, entering into thoughtful dialogue with Rupert
Sheldrake, Edgar Morin, Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Berry, Richard
Tarnas, Sean Kelly, myself, and others. He carefully compares and contrasts
his thinking with these authors, affirming common ground and marking
differences. The scholarship is excellent.
Nicol goes on to place subtle activism in perhaps the most important
social narrative of our day, the story of the emerging global systems crisis
generated by our escalating desecration of the Earth. Here he aligns himself
with those who believe that humanity has entered a century of increasing
ecological and social instability, drawing us toward a critical bifurcation
point that will decide our future for generations to come, perhaps even our
viability as a species.
It is against the backdrop of these world events that Nicol argues that
collective meditation may actually exert a positive influence in human
affairs. Bridging the world of the social activist and the contemplative, he
writes:
The more controversial proposal that I am making in this book … is
that … certain activities of consciousness or spirit, which from the outside
might appear to involve no obvious action at all, can be recognized as
legitimate forms of social action. These activities can be understood to be
subtle forms of social action because they transform (or so I will claim)
what we might call the collective psychic or spiritual context out of which
ideas themselves—and, therefore, decisions and actions—arise.
Acting on his convictions, Nicol, who is director of the Gaiafield
Project, founded at the California Institute of Integral Studies, helped
organize “WiseUSA 2008” and “WiseUSA 2012” which brought together
thousands of participants in prayer and meditation around the 2008 and
2012 U.S. elections. He emphasizes that such initiatives are not a substitute
for more overt forms of social and political action but a complement to
them. Subtle activism provides “an expanded view of social engagement in
which the inherent power of spirituality is recognized in and of itself as a
legitimate component of an integral approach to social change.”
These are ideas that deserve our careful attention. If we are not as
psychologically isolated as we had previously thought, if our minds actually
do meet in interactive fields of awareness as Nicol suggests, this leads to an
expanded vision of the self and an expanded social agenda. Which brings us
to perhaps the most important conclusion of this study. By helping us see
our minds differently, Nicol encourages us to act differently. He has
provided a powerful rationale for actively harnessing the collective
potential of our minds in this time of humanity’s great need.
Albert Einstein famously observed that, “You cannot solve a problem
from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world
anew.” When the reader sees the world through David Nicol’s eyes, he or
she will truly see the world in a new way and hopefully act in a new way.
Christopher M. Bache, PhD
INTRODUCTION
I should not make any promises right now,
But I know if you
Pray
Somewhere in this world—
Something good will happen.
—Hafiz
This book suggests that spiritual or consciousness-based practices like
meditation, prayer, and ritual, in addition to their positive effect on
individuals, may play a subtle, yet crucial, role in supporting change in the
world. It proposes that the intentional use of such practices for collective,
and not merely individual, benefit can be understood as a subtle form of
activism, or subtle activism. Subtle activism is a creative approach to social
engagement that broadens the traditional scope of both activism and
spirituality. On the one hand, it can be seen as a novel component of an
integrative spirituality that aims to extend our spiritual attention to all
aspects of our lives, including our participation in the social and political
realm. On the other, it can be viewed as part of an integral approach to
social change that seeks to address the underlying psychological and
spiritual dimensions of sociopolitical transformation alongside outer
actions. In straddling the worlds of spirituality and social change, subtle
activism represents a bridge between the consciousness movement and the
movements for peace, environmental sustainability, and social justice.
Although tales of yogis, shamans, and other adepts intervening on
spiritual levels for the benefit of humanity are the stuff of ancient lore, this
