Author: Dr. Nicholas Beecroft

Publisher: Dr. Nicholas Beecroft

ISBN-13: 978-1494340070

ISBN-10: 1494340070


                                     From Polarity to Unity Consciousness

Who are we? Where are we headed? What is right and what is wrong? What is true and what is false?” The answers to these and four pages full of questions, to be exact, are taken up in this brilliant series of interviews of a number of passionately committed visionaries and professionals by Dr. Nicholas Beecroft. At the very least, this series of books is a valuable resource of the kind of work that is being done today, away from the spotlight, in order to bring in much needed, spiritual and paradigm changing solutions to many of our pressing problems, both at home and in the workplace.

In this series of books, Nicholas Beecroft attempts to predict the future of Western civilization on a global scale. The reason that this  is not a futile exercise is as follows:  Despite immense breakthroughs in science and technology, leading to a significant improvement in the physical quality of our lives, the same cannot be said about the mental, emotional and spiritual vacuum that most of us are experiencing today to an increasingly large extent. The enormous problems that we grapple with, disease, poverty, unemployment, terrorism and sexual violence among others, require different solutions. They require a change of mindset. Can we do it?  That’s the million dollar question.

A positive answer to this question is easier said than done. In this series of interviews, the author looks for possible solutions to the myriads of social problems that we are facing at this time. He does this by talking to some well-chosen experts, all well known sociological innovators, many of them with an international standing.  The goal is universal happiness and the freedom to pursue one’s goals for all, bar none.

It is self evident that the ultimate goals of Western civilization do not include “happiness” as a goal per se. The desires that register on the brain’s neural pathways for the majority of today’s population, are those that reinforce the pursuits of amassing power and material wealth, even at the expense of others. Changing a reality  to one in which the majority realize that it is for the ultimate benefit of all, to collaborate instead of to compete, to interact from a place of heart based unity consciousness instead of a we-vs-they polarity, intellect based consciousness is the aim of this series of interviews. Most of the experts interviewed, agree on this fundamental change, that people at least, ask themselves, what is life about and act on that.

This series of interviews with the experts that are included in this, show that the above ideas are not just so many empty Shangri-La dreams. All the interviewees have looked for solutions to humanity’s problems, based on a fundamental respect for the life and dignity of all and they are deeply involved in propagating their ideas, not least because of the urgent need to conserve the Earth’s dwindling resources. The conversations themselves, are very readable, informative, incisive and full of humour as the nitty-gritty of some never-before performed social experiments are discussed. The transition to a heart based paradigm from a brain based one is far from straightforward, yet the rewards that emerge are much greater and they enrich the lives of many more people.

The material in Book One is as follows:

Dr. Nicholas Beecroft begins by outlining the vision behind this series of interviews by posing four pages full of questions which reflect the problems currently plaguing humans at the present moment, which, if not addressed, can undermine our very survival. He introduces himself and his academic credentials, after which he further elaborates on his mission through an interview of himself, conducted by his partner, Melanie Mortiboys and the transcript of a talk, he gave at an event organized by the 21 Century Network in 2011 called “What’s the Next Big Shift?” The contents of that talk yield a bird’s eye view of the contents of this book.

The first interview is with a Ugandan Psychiatric Nurse called William Nkata with whom the author discusses the immigrant experience in Britain and what can be done to improve it. The next interview is with a businessman called John Bunzl who launched the Simultaneous Policy (SIMPOL) campaign that encourages citizens to use their votes to pressurize their governments to act together in order to solve global problems. The hurdles to formulating a common policy for all governments and people-to-people mobilization are discussed in the light of a new paradigm, viz. collaboration instead of competition, a strategy employed by the organelles in a bacterial cell that ensures the cell’s survival. The discussion proceeds to seeing the above as a paradigm shift in which the human consciousness evolves from being nation-centric to world-centric.

The third interviewee is Jon Freeman, the Director of the Center of Human Emergence in the UK, on the future of human capitalism. Here, a shift in the values needed to relate to money differently is discussed. The evils of the present system where the bottom line is profit instead of life enhancement, have led to a state where there is huge economic disparity between the haves and the have-nots, as 99 per cent of the Earth’s resources are concentrated with 1 per cent of her population. Feasible solutions to the above problem in the light of “creating an upgrade to the human operating system” are also explored in this conversation.

The fourth person to be interviewed is Joseph McCormick on what is called “Transpartisan Politics”. Transpartisan Politics is an approach to integral politics “that aims to include the healthy expressions of all values, ranging from survival through to human potential, including all those held by those represented, acknowledging that to live in complexity, we need to integrate the best of all strands of political belief”. In this interview, Joseph McCormick shares his personal story as a pioneer of transpartisan politics, mentioning his toolbox of techniques which enable groups of people to align around a shared vision and values. Prominent among these values is the concept of “heart intelligence”. The goal of this kind of politics is that “everyone wins, the victims become creators and the perpetrators become challengers”.

The fifth person to be interviewed is Martin Rutte about his project “Heaven on Earth”. This naive concept is to be contrasted with “hell on Earth”, which is much more acceptable as a topic of discussion. In this conversation, Martin shows that talking to people of their individual vision of “Heaven on Earth” is a “simple but powerful approach to aligning people with their greatest purpose in service of their highest mission.” He provides examples from his own experiences which validate the above premise, as he shows that Project Heaven on Earth is about “evoking something that is already existing within you”.

The next visionary to be interviewed is Lynne McTaggart who is interviewed on “the science of spirituality”. Among other issues, Lynne feels that the virus affecting humanity today is competitiveness and individualism. If this we-vs-them mentality were to be replaced by a we-plus-them mentality, where competition is replaced by collaboration, win-lose by win-win, our world would be very different. She mentions experiments like the Robert’s Cave Experiment to prove her point. She also questions the basic values of the pharmaceutical industry for ignoring results based on the integrative holistic part of human beings and for suppressing alternative  health care.

All in all, Lynne McTaggart promotes the idea of the power of “we” as compared to the power of “I”, stating that our natural state is one of an interconnection with all beings, a state negated by individualism. This way, she also corroborates the vision of “The Rainbow Bridge” by Brent  Hunter.

The seventh expert to be interviewed is Dr. Marie Gentile. Her interview takes up the question of how to effectively stand up for your values when pressured by your boss, colleagues and others to do the opposite. She talks about the program she has started, called “Giving Voice to Values” a program that is now taught in over a hundred business schools worldwide. She provides vigorous, philosophical guidelines for ironing out ethical dilemmas and also how to invoke a dialog on contentious systemic issues.                            

The eighth expert to be interviewed is Prof. Jim Garrison who has established “The Wisdom University”. He talks about how the definitions of Science and the Scientific Method need to be upgraded, being based on materialistic beliefs and ignoring other more right-brained human attributes. He discusses how wisdom can be used in medicine and politics and affirms that it is essential to our survival as a species, thus echoing the same aphorisms as some of the other experts, mainly Lynne McTaggart. “I believe that the next great frontier of science, will, in fact be, the exploration of consciousness. When that happens, science will come alive for the first time.”                                           

The penultimate interview and my personal favourite is with Evolution Biologist, Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris. She inspires us to perceive the Universe as a conscious living system, illustrating with examples of how the theory applies to finance, the falling Western birth rates, welfare systems and medicine. “One of the things that’s been long obvious to me as a biologist is that you cannot have a healthy global economy at the expense of local economies, any more than you can run your body at the expense of your cells”.

The last interview in this book is with Traci Fenton on Organizational Democracy”. The purpose of her organization, World-Blu, is to unleash human potential  by encouraging free speech and democratic norms in corporate systems, riddled hitherto with command and control, top-down hierarchies. Traci provides examples of a few systems which implement these democratic principles.

In conclusion, I must add that Nicholas Beecroft does a marvellous job of extracting out from his interviewees, all the information that is relevant to this project on the future of Western Civilizations. As mentioned earlier, all the experts interviewed advocate a future world, running on heart-based logic, where cooperation replaces competition and win-win solutions are preferred to those which are win-lose.

For those of you who are interested in learning of alternative views about the functioning of Life, for those who believe there is more to Life than meets the eye, that there can be financial systems which are non-predatory and among others, better and less expensive health care, then, yes, this is a book for you. For those of you who are not so easily convinced of the absence of the long accepted, cavernous divide between living and nonliving systems, you will find in this book, much valuable information, to confront, ingest and contemplate.

Highly recommended to one and all.

        Follow Here To Purchase The Future of Western Civilization Series 1 Book 1: Psychiatrist Dr Nicholas Beecroft interviews Visionary Leaders (Volume 1)