In Newton’s mechanical view of the cosmos, the universe is thought of in terms of particles whose behavior can be known and predicted at any moment in time. It’s like balls on a pool table: If we have the information that describes the force of a ball as it strikes another (speed, angle, and so on), then we should be able to predict where and how the one that has been struck will travel. And if it should hit other balls in its journey, we’ll know where and how fast they’re traveling as well. The key here is that the mechanical view of the universe sees the smallest units of the stuff our world is made of as things.

It is obvious, even to the most Prozaced-out individual, that today’s global crises impacting the environment, health, economics and social stability are threatening the survival of human civilization. Suddenly, the old cartoon of some bearded weirdo carrying a placard reading, “The World is Ending!” doesn’t seem that funny. Media and government continuously focus our attention on the darkness of impending crises, however, recent advances in physics and biology offer a significantly different and amazingly hopeful alternative for these very same symptoms.

New scientific insights suggest the evolution of human civilization resembles the recurring fate of the Phoenix, a sacred firebird revered in ancient Egyptian mythology. At the end of its lifecycle the Phoenix builds a nest of cinnamon twigs that it then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes. From the ashes arises a new and greater Phoenix.

Researchers discovered genetic evidence that human evolution is speeding up – and has not halted or proceeded at a constant rate, as had been thought – indicating that humans on different continents are becoming increasingly different.

“We used a new genomic technology to show that humans are evolving rapidly, and that the pace of change has accelerated a lot in the last 40,000 years, especially since the end of the Ice Age roughly 10,000 years ago,” says research team leader Henry Harpending, a distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of Utah.

Harpending says there are provocative implications from the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

The entire universe is a projection of consciousness. We experience the universe as a projection through us because each of us is a center of consciousness. Therefore we are all centers of the universe. There really is no here or there because everything is at one point where consciousness is. We all do not exist in different places but are all present at one point. The reality of here and there is all created and experienced within the singularity of consciousness itself. Where you are is the center of the universe.