Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris is an Internationally Known Evolution biologist, futurist, professor, Author and Consultant on Living Systems Design. She Shows the Relevance of Biological Systems to Organizationa

We have brought into the system really beautiful music, art, dance -- not that other species haven't done some of that. But another thing humans do differently from other species is that we've learned to communicate through complex languages, while other species and our own cells only commune. They do direct transmission of information to each other. We don't even give them credit for doing that because Western science doesn't even acknowledge that Nature is intelligent, to start with. I distinguish between communion and communication, and communication in a more complex way than species such as whales, dolphins, birds etc., is something that humans brought in.

My basic law of the Universe, which I see as a self-organizing, self-creating Universe that's all conscious, all intelligent, is that anything that can happen, will happen. I think that's the only principal of Nature. I believe in observing regularities. But I don't see a law-giver. In the course of self-organizing, certain regularities have happened because they worked well, and they continue. Humans are some of the most far-out experimenters the world or the Universe has ever known perhaps. Maybe that's our claim to fame. We can push the boundaries further than other species and still recover from our transgressions.

Mark: Elisabet talked about how many things are going on in parallel to the old paradigm, that is newly emergent everywhere. I would offer that my sense is, what’s invisible to most of us is definitely invisible to the media, but there is this collective emergence in evolution. My sense is that we humans are in the very process of slowly learning to connect the genius of half of our brain to our hearts and guts, and to the other half of our brain that knows we are connected to everything. And evolutionary maturity is learning how to put those in sync, so that we become more beauty, grace, elegance; dancing and living in resonance and harmony with a greater Universe that we've had our tuning cut out to, for so long.

Elisabet: He's so right, and I don't know how I managed to forget that, so thank you for the reminder that the really wonderful task of humans is to bring cosmic love, all the way down to our toes. To ground it, not just intellectually, and not even to the heart level, but all the way down to our toes. To bring cosmic love to Earth, fully embodied.

Amit: One of the things that you mentioned, Mark is this maturity that we have to gain. Is there a way to speed that up or does it end up just having to take its course?

Elisabet: It's speeding up. It's speeding up fast now. There's nothing like a good crisis to kick species into action. When you know things are this bad, you really need to get through. Let's ground that cosmic love!

Mark: I don't know if we're five weeks, or five months, or five years before the equivalent of the Berlin Wall falling, before apartheid ended, before the civil rights movement had a name, before the first Earth Day. Nobody could predict any of those things a month beforehand. They looked purely impossible. The old paradigm had such a grip. My sense is that our hearts know this is absurd. To me, we are so close to the living in fear, saying "I'm going to change you instead of doing my inner work." Service Space has been pioneering this inner work. It's time, to me, when we get to transcend living in fear, scarcity, and separation, and we get to live in this collaborative, cooperative beauty, grace and elegance. Thanks for pioneering it.

Elisabet: There's something called "black swans", when you can't predict them and suddenly we hear of them. Nobody knew that there were anything but white swans until somebody finally saw black ones.

The newest one to me is the finance minister of Greece. I've been following Yanis Varoufakis for the past two years. He’s an amazing person. What he's role-modeling now is a whole new kind of politician -- a politician who's totally transparent, who doesn't wear politician clothes, who just holds his ground and is so logical that no one can argue him down. It's causing such a flurry in the world for him to say, "Look, it's crazy to keep lending money to people and getting them deeper and deeper into debt.” And even though things are so deep into this debt and credit system now that he's had to make some compromises, he is rolling back austerity in Greece -- the first person who's been able to start that process going. He doesn't want to save just Greece, he wants to save the whole European Union. He is exposing the neo-liberal project, the whole project that in the U.S. was called the neo-conservative project, Reagan-Thatcher economics that privatized the world in this juvenile mode of fierce competition and set up these huge economic inequities (Update: Varoufakis was pushed out of his position in Greece, but founded a new Europe-wide political party DiEM25).

Amit: Virginia Levin writes in that she lives in a retirement community of a 1000-plus residents. She asks, "What gentle methods can be used to raise ecological consciousness? Our powers-that-be do much to encourage this area, but apathy is rampant."

Elisabet: The gentle ways are to tell new stories and to make sure our new stories really fire people with the ecstasy of forming true community and practicing that community on the most local level in your retirement home or wherever you are. In your community. The spirit of Service Space. Doing nice things for people. Random acts of kindness. Gifting. Not always looking for a return. It's living the future as if it is already here. The one you want. That's the gentle way. Because you can't change other people. You can only change yourself. You have to become an attractor. You have to become a role model. Most parents figure out sooner or later that you can't puff on a cigarette and tell your kids not to smoke. You have to role-model the things you're trying to teach. If you're ethical, if you're transparent, if you're kind, if you're loving, other people will benefit from that and get a little more loving and kind themselves. It is gentle in that sense.

Sometimes we have to be fierce and stand up and say, "No! You can't do this to me and my children and my grandchildren anymore." It takes all kinds. That's why I like to say, "However you want to change the world, make sure it's a way that makes your heart sing.” It has to be something you're positively passionate about. You waste your time pointing fingers at all the people doing things wrong. You waste your time trying to tear things down. It only makes sense to role-model and to build that butterfly.

Mind matters. Mind matters in the whole world. That again is what gives me optimism. I know that if I hang out with positive people, if I behave positively myself, if I talk in this kind of a group rather than with the CEOs and board members of the multinationals, which can be very challenging, I can feel the energy in this kind of group --- the energy of the future world we want.

Aryae: I want to go back to the early part of your story you were telling about yourself as a rule-breaker who would have these impulses to do things in a different way. Looking back over the past, from your perspective today, where did those impulses come from?

Elisabet: I think they're available to all of us. We sometimes call them intuition. By the way, in being a rule-breaker, sometimes I got fired from jobs and had to scrabble to raise my children. It wasn't always easy. I'm thinking of Ed Mitchell the astronaut, who on his moon trip had this epiphany that he was held in the arms of the Universe and could not be lost. He lost all his fear of getting back into that tiny, little, tin can and having to ride all the way back to Earth after the last mission (Apollo 13) had gotten into such serious trouble. It's that feeling that we are permanently a part of this great eternal Now. None of us has any experience outside of Now. The whole Cosmos is all Now. I have this profound sense that we're here intentionally, we're immortals, we're part of the Universe that is much more fascinating than we dream of as humans, and that's what keeps me going.

Amit: It's been an incredible call. One thing we're going to take away is bringing down that cosmic love, all the way down to our feet.

Elisabet: That's right. And have a good time. You were meant to have fun on this planet, even if things are as bad as they are. It doesn't matter, you see. We are immortals. It's a challenge, and it's all here for us to learn from. The learning is love. "Whatever the question, the answer is love.” I love that song!