1. First Mapping

So, Miss Penny-la (a dark, low, unmistakably older male voice and presence says). The first thing we want you to understand much more fully is the state of your world, what is really happening there, how to “read” the current situation, and how to understand it in a much wider developmental context. To do this completely is a huge task. You may choose whether you’d like a very brief summary now or a much more developed account over days,perhaps a week or two.

Oh, Sir, I’d like the fullest account I can have. You know, I’ve been interested in that broad question all my life. I have plenty of time, especially if we can do this in small, daily installments.

Okay. Then we will begin. Later, then, my colleagues will teach you about some other topics: consciousness and the mind, freedom and human responsibility, the possibilities of language, and much more. But let us begin.

First, let’s be clear. This will become an extensive set of teachings, a well-developed way of understanding the human world and the trajectory of human life and consciousness. We don’t want you dithering about what you are to do with this. Obviously, it’s not only for you. It may well develop so fully that it can be a book—either our book, a book received from “the other side,” with all that implies, or your book, with our participation muted and disguised. That has its own advantages, as we know. My point is this: Recognize we are beginning a big project that is not only for you personally. Agree that its ultimate voice and form can be decided later. Free yourself from those concerns, or it will inhibit the flow of information. And we’d suggest you experiment with writing directly on the computer, which would be much easier for you.

Okay, Sir. I am ready on the computer. It would be very good indeed if this would work.

You see the world from several perspectives: you see states and global forces such as markets and how they shape the parameters within which people live. You also have a strong focus on individuals, how they find meaning, how they proceed with their lives, and how they meet their most essential psychosocial and spiritual needs. You have often found the tension between these two views, which you describe as political and spiritual, to be very difficult to handle. You have done some of your most creative teaching and thinking by trying to be in the space between and around them. It has stimulated some of your best work with students because you have never lost sight of their deeper personal issues. And it has given you a perpetual sense of not being a legitimate academic, not quite belonging to that world. That has been a source of unease for you. Eventually, through our work together, these two viewpoints will be much better integrated, largely by expanding the framework of your thinking. The core question, which has so dogged you all your life, is what is the purpose and meaning of human life? We will try to shape a viable answer for you. No, not right. There is an answer, and we will try to teach you enough so that you can understand it.

This is a story about the evolution of humans, which has not been primarily driven by the pressures of adapting to the local environment but by the pressures of responding to ever-increasing needs to relate to Spirit. That is a big claim, and it will take some time for us to explain to you what that means and how it has happened. It is not that suddenly Darwin’s scheme is no longer operative for humans. In fact, it certainly is operative on the level of DNA and organic functioning. But human life, as it is of interest to us now, has been relatively brief, too brief for much change on a physical level. Most adaptations to the shifting environment have been behavioral and cultural, and the knowledge of what works best is stored culturally as best practices and traditions. No need to discuss that now. The point is that that is what governs human development as seen within the concrete, embodied physical environment.

But that is only one environment within which humans live. They also live within the enviro