- Audio: 03/11/08 – THE WISDOM LEADER SERIES DR. HAZEL HENDERSON “Earth Ethics.” Listen to this show while you work, prepare dinner or get the kids ready for school.
- Video: Empowering Women’s Visions. Hazel Henderson and Barbara Marx Hubbard, author of The Hunger of Eve, discuss women as visionary leaders and why they are important for our changing world.
- The Book: The New Form of Eros:
On becoming co-creators with the creative process. The world-mind-body continuum: linking the organic human species body. Making the instrumental rationality responsible. Monitoring for ego needs and motivation. “You are the accomplishment.” Female achievements: nonquantifiable, resonance achievements.
Barbara: Let me pursue this idea we were talking about at lunch—our relationship to the Unus Mundus. Our relationship to this, it seems to me, is deepening as we mature. Now, that may mean through many lifetimes, or perhaps through an extended life, which may be an option in the future. This has to do with the symbol of the Tree of Life as being intrinsic to human motivation—of getting to the point where we are in phase with the creative process. If I could define E that expectancy . . .
Someone once asked me, What is the “hunger of Eve”? And I said: Union with God. Not meaning the little god Jehovah—but union, deep beingness. The primary drive of human nature has been to know—not only the knowledge of good and evil, but to know the Tree of Life—the invisible processes of creation—how creation works, so we can cooperate with the process. But, as the Genesis story describes it, God prevented the human species from reaching the Tree of Life. He said, if they get there, they’ll be like us—immortals, gods.
And He expelled the human species from the Garden. But nothing could make us—Homo sapiens—the knowing species, stop knowing. We cannot know less; we must know more. So we are approaching the Tree of Life again, and gaining access to the powers of creation and destruction—the atom, the gene, our own brain. It’s a cosmic drama. The outcome, I think, depends on whether we in this living generation can learn to love each other as one, and to love “God”—or the creative processes—above all else. With that love we will be able to reach the Tree, to form a deeper union with Creation—to become cocreators.
Jean: Lover and beloved is what you’re talking about—the moment of recognition. But if that moment of recognition is not had by you, then it can be dancing all around you, and dancing through you, but you won’t see it because you don’t experience that level.
Barbara: That’s quite possible, but it’s also very obvious to me that most people don’t see it either, or we wouldn’t have a world operating the way it is. I mean, nine out of ten—actually it’s much more than that—have never experienced anything even near to that level of union we’re talking about or they could not behave in such a manipulative, destructive, ego-centered way. We are talking about the world itself becoming what it could be—what it already is, but has not manifested. We are a warring, destructive people in limited consciousness boxes. How are we going to get out of those boxes? Even if some have in fact gotten beyond that level, most people are still locked in boxes. How do we get out?
The point is that we are a part of the universe, and that our link to it is potential always. Some beings have made the link on a personal level; however, most beings are not making the link. They are still locked in the self-concentration camp. If we truly love and care for the world, there is a natural desire to evoke that linkage. I see this in a lot of your work, Jean: taking the blocks out of people so that they can make the link. And the world itself then becomes something that is much more than if it only happens to you as an individual. If the species does it—and I don’t mean every last member of the human species—but if enough members can make the link, then something happens that is much greater than Jean Houston making the link.
Jean: Oh yes, very much so.
Barbara: I would have to express my own motivation as not just Barbara Hubbard making the link, but—well, if that were it I think I would have gone to a mountaintop long ago. I would not be where I am. I believe very deeply that the species as a whole must make the link.
Jean: This is what both of you and myself are all doing—we are evoking linkages in other people. We may be the last to have it in ourselves, but are all very successful in helping to create a world-mind-body continuum in which others and the world become beloveds.
Barbara: Yes, beautiful!
Jean: Dante’s closing words in The Divine Comedy: “l’amor che muove il sol e l’altre stelle.” The love that moves the sun and the other stars. And, you know, we ultimately come down to that. What is it about? It’s about that apprehension of union, of connection, not just with one, but with the plurality of being—which then primes all further growth.
Barbara: This is the vision that has motivated me: the vision of being part of the body of humankind, and that body struggling to become one and moving towards the sense of universal life. It wasn’t Barbara Hubbard connecting with God.
Hazel: Yes, I’ve always sensed that in you.
Barbara: And I don’t think it’s Hazel Henderson making just the personal link.
Hazel: Oh no.
Barbara: And you, Jean, wouldn’t be working out in the world as you do, and at the New School for Social Research.
Jean: And with all of the little black children and prisoners.
Hazel: It’s really the attempt to link the organic human species body.
Barbara: Maybe we’ve hit upon one of the key elements of feminine consciousness: putting that effort first.
Hazel: Yes!
Barbara: Each one of us could have pursued a life of deep contemplation. We could have become yogis. You probably are one, Jean, but you don’t spend all of your time in a lotus position. You are out in the world.
Jean: Yogi means union.
Barbara: Yes, but in the traditional forms, yogis spent a great deal of time isolated from the world. You have a tremendously active life. And so does Hazel, and so do I. You, being a real worker in the spiritual field, are manifesting this sense externally.
Jean: This is the new form of Eros!
Barbara: I have a vision of you as seeing all of the members of the human species, and being attracted to the potential of each one. And the more that you can reach with your power to emancipate them, the more the human species will be able to connect. You have a very powerful motivation to reach a lot of people. How do you see that desire to reach as many as possible?
Jean: Well, it didn’t begin that way. From about 1960 until about five years ago I had been working with thousands of individuals on a one-to-one basis. And then I began to realize that these things could happen—it works! And now I’ve gotten rid of a lot of the little local self—the galloping hubris and a certain arrogance that comes from having been too successful too early, and a college professor at nineteen. That’s a lot of garbage! If you can get rid of that, the channels become much clearer. When you get rid of the unnecessary ego protections—leaving enough, of course, to keep body and mind and soul together, and to make you get up in the morning—then the flow to others becomes very natural. It’s not a question of having to go out and reach more people; it’s just that one is prepared, and the natural ecology of things demands it. But I’m glad I wasn’t cut loose on the world fifteen years ago!
Barbara: But you’re cut loose on the world now.
Jean: Yes, but in a condition I hope and pray is not ego conditioned. And it has to be cleaned out and revitalized every morning! Not for reasons of ego, but because of the accumulation of garbage—people projecting things on to you: angers; fears; hostilities. You know all about that.
Hazel: Yes, right.
Barbara: How do you clear out in the morning?
Jean: Well, there are many ways of doing it. I lie there, and my mind becomes a marvelous emptiness, and a great expanse. It’s the breathing into that and realizing that I am no-thing . . . and that when being began nothing mattered. [laughter] But it needs constant observation. Any moment that I’m a little suspicious that I’m doing something for reasons that might be ambitious or personal—I stop.
Hazel: Isn’t that interesting, Jean, the extension to the next level of the observer/observed thing. This is very important to me; I find that I’m constantly watching myself. If I find that I’m doing things hysterically, or for ego needs, or for any of the old motivations that I’m trying to shed, I want to monitor it and get rid of it. We’ve recreated the old dichotomy on the next level.
Jean: Yes, that’s very interesting.
Barbara: I find that I do the same thing: constantly monitoring myself to see if my ego, my hubris, my desire to succeed, is what’s motivating what I’m doing. The further I grow, the more my ego sticks out like a sore thumb—a painful anachronism that stops my growth. I have to get it out of my way!
Jean: You have to allow yourself moments of tremendous spontaneity. In the morning, when you are “morninged,” the world is full, and you lose the little local self; the leaky margins allow you to become diaphanous to the rhythms of the universe. It’s the great cleansing.
Barbara: Here’s another aspect of the feminine principle.
Jean: It’s a profound passivity. Not: “Watch out world, here I come!” Which is how many men view themselves in the morning! [laughter]
Barbara: All of us are effective women in the sense that we are out in the world doing things that do have effects. But we’re checking ourselves; we’re allowing our Higher Selves to monitor our activities to check for ego and hostility, and to clear out and relate to the whole each day. We are moving beyond self-oriented consciousness to holistic consciousness.
Hazel: The motive has to be right or the results could be disastrous. I’ve seen so much of that that I’ve become very, very aware.
One of the things that I’m now talking a great deal about is the need for a reflective science. Instead of the paradigm being “scientist observes phenomenon,” you have to pull back one photo frame so that it becomes “scientist observing scientist observing phenomenon.” Even though this has overtones of control, and we all get very upset about control, we must remember that voluntary control is really the essence of true freedom and of the next stage of growth. But you suggest, as I’ve been suggesting the last few years, that scientists should perhaps voluntarily submit themselves to psychoanalysis in order to understand their true motives.
Jean: Well, I don’t know about psychoanalysis, but certainly some kind of analysis.
Hazel: Yes, some sort of reflection about why they’re doing what they’re doing. Gerald Holton, the physicist from Harvard, has been so wonderful in trying to develop that same kind of self-awareness. I think that that’s about the only attitude that will make one’s instrumental rationality really responsible and self-limiting. I have a fear of runaway positive feedback systems. If instrumental rationality just goes charging on without the self-limiting, cybernetic control, it becomes cancerous.
Barbara: The real joy in this—the “scientist observing scientist observing photon”—is that as the observer becomes more aware, the rewards and the pleasure increase dramatically.
Jean: Yes, because one becomes less self-conscious, and more Self-conscious. This is an ancient Buddhist exercise: the watcher of the watcher of the watcher. You watch yourself watching yourself watching yourself—and soon the whole thing begins to break down. It’s a koan kind of thing. And it finally becomes just Self and photon. You become the great interdependent realm of being.
Barbara: And the reward of that is such tremendous fulfillment that the ego needs are lessened. I’ve had experiences like this, where the joy was so great that the idea of being worried about ego rewards was too paltry to even consider. I’ve had those moments of connection—that’s what keeps me going. You would never need, for instance, a status reward, because it doesn’t feel as good.
Hazel: And also, this whole idea of peer group recognition—when you realize how sorry a state the peer group is in, it can actually be a slap in the face!
Barbara: It can be a signal that you haven’t gone very far!
Jean: But there are still moments in time when one needs a vital affirmation from the depths of one’s being . . . quite apart from who and what you are.
Barbara: Yes, that’s quite different. It’s the need for communion.
Hazel: And there is another kind of vital affirmation, which is why I am enjoying being here at this very moment. At a time when there is a sense of this emergent consciousness, and we are trying to express it, and amplify it, and link it, and play midwife to it, we do need the psychic support of finding and affirming others who are doing the same thing, and to receive their affirmation. This is just vital to me; otherwise you tend to feel that you’re operating on a rather esoteric wavelength.
Barbara: One of the things that I find I must constantly deal with is this question of—What have I accomplished? Usually, in looking back, it seems as if I really haven’t accomplished anything at all—abortive attempt after abortive attempt. But I’ve begun to feel that maybe that’s the wrong question.
Hazel: It is. You see, you are the accomplishment. We’re so product oriented! You, as a being, are a very beautiful product. That’s the accomplishment—you and your interactions.
Jean: Do you by any chance remember the film back in 1946 called It’s a Wonderful Life? It begins with a guy falling off of a bridge. And suddenly someone else falls into the water beside him. It’s this curious little being—an Irish drunken angel who says to him, “Now where did you want to go?” And he answers, “My life has been awful, shameful; I’ve accomplished nothing!” “Oh, you think so?” says the drunken angel. “Why don’t we go back and see what the world would have been like if you hadn’t lived!” And the whole town becomes a complete mess! [laughter] And so the drunken angel earns his wings for that one! But the point is true: one’s life is the accomplishment. Why must one have a debit and credit list? That’s the old Judeo-Christian programming.
Barbara: Well, let’s take an example—the Salk vaccine. Now that’s a wonderful accomplishment. It’s wonderful that children don’t get polio. If I were Jonas Salk, I could get up in the morning and say, “Never mind everything else, because of my work, children are no longer getting polio.” Now that’s an accomplishment; there are such things.
Jean: And who is not getting jaundice of the soul because you have been? And who may be living because of you?
Hazel: And who has been helped to grow by you? Me, for one.
Barbara: I’m not saying that the human being is not a wonderful product.
Jean: You’re talking about acknowledgement.
Barbara: No, it has nothing to do with being acknowledged. In the case of Jonas, no matter what kind of person he might be, or anything else, he has achieved something very tangible.
Jean: But there are still other modes of creation that are less tangible, but no less significant.
Barbara: But you can’t discount the more tangible kind of achievement.
Jean: No, you don’t discount it, but you don’t want to make it the only thing that dominates your consciousness. This is another thing about being female: the accomplishments are much more subtle.
Hazel: They are not quantifiable.
Jean: They are resonance achievements, not quantifiable achievements—by and large.
Hazel: I think that that is why the whole Eastern sort of approach has been so helpful to me; that is, looking at the fields of interplay rather than the entities. This has helped me to see that there is no way that a foundation could fund what I do. If you could quantify it, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to do it in the first place. And so you have to understand that what we’re doing is playing around with fields of interplay, and that there is no way for the dominant culture to reward that.