Christ Consciousness, LSD, and Evolution

A humble hypothesis

In past books, I explored the idea that the meta-crisis of post-industrial civilization is an initiatory crucible for humanity. The crisis we are entering will — assuming anyone survives it — force an evolutionary mutation of human consciousness. I suspect what we call “Christ consciousness” is an important, necessary strand in this unavoidable metamorphosis. Psychedelics, visionary plants, and entheogens also have a crucial role to play. I am going to tease out these ideas, this hypothesis, in what follows.

I theorize that the evolution of human consciousness is not an accident, epiphenomenon, or happenstance. I see it as an essential, integral expression of the same evolutionary processes we find throughout nature. For example, fetal development is an extremely precise sequence where certain signals received from the mother initiate particular processes in the developing offspring.

Is it possible that humanity — as one species-organism, an expression of a planetary sentience and intelligence with a transformative effect on the geophysical environment of the Earth — is undergoing, like the fetus in the womb, a precise process of development and, in a sense, “gestation?”

The human species reached its physical maturity as a highly adaptive organism long ago. We aren’t growing any bigger, developing more arms, a longer tongue, or even a bigger brain (although a range of genetic modifications may become possible, soon). Unlike other species, we succeed as generalists able to carve out a niche in many climates and ecosystems (deserts, mountains, jungles, etcetera) through our use of tools. Yet, today, humanity doesn’t approach its potential for psychological maturity or consciousness.

We are still in an adolescent phase — dangerous, destructive and foolish. We tear ourselves to shreds and wreck the ecosystems that support us. While many believe that humans (particularly men) are inherently aggressive and violent, there is also the possibility that we can evolve beyond violence. The natural history of life on Earth moves from competition and dominance to cooperation and symbiosis over time. For example, a tree — an elder species — provides shelter and nourishment for a vast range of other beings, from insects to fungi, worms to epiphytes, monkeys to birds. As ecosystems mature, species learn how to work together.

In 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, I explored the numinous discovery of LSD in Basel, Switzerland, in 1943 as one example (like a “tell” in poker) that seems to reveal we are, without knowing it, enmeshed in a cosmic-evolutionary process on the level of consciousness itself. In the same way that the mother releases certain chemical signals at very precise intervals during the process of fetal development, LSD appeared at a precise juncture in human history, where we required such a chemical catalyst to challenge the overwhelming effects of reductive materialism, industrialized war, and media indoctrination. In fact, when you take LSD you often understand history to be a kind of play or a spectral theatre of consciousness, in which you are enmeshed as both helpless witness and active participant. Individual “free will” may not exist, but it is a necessary illusion within the game.