Global Shift Now With Ervin Laszlo

In this podcast, I am in conversation with philosopher, system theorist, and polymath Professor Ervin Laszlo, who has been twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He has just written a book for these strange times called Global Shift Now! It is a clarion call as a response to the pandemic for humans to evolve from being planetary abusers to planetary caretakers.

Transcript

So hi,

I'm Tom Evans and welcome to another Zone Show,

A very special Zone Show because for the second time on the Zone Show I've got a professor on the line.

The first professor was Professor Armit Gazwami,

Which I understand that you understand.

And I'm very pleased to be speaking with Professor Vinn Laszlo.

Welcome.

Thank you very much.

It's very good to be here with you.

Lovely,

Lovely.

I've just read your book,

Global Shift Now,

But I want to refer back to a book just before that and something which I understand happens when you tap into the Akashi field.

And that's your amazing ability and your amazing prescience because you wrote this book Reconnecting to Source and I noticed it was published on the 24th of March this year.

That means you must have written it sometime last year.

In it you talk about the four big bangs at the very end of the book.

The big bang that Peter talked about 13.

8 billion years ago,

The big bang of life on planet Earth 3.

8 billion years ago,

The big bang of self-awareness.

We don't know how many years ago that was,

We're going to need to survive.

And then the big bang that could hit us if we don't get things sorted.

And then in the early part of this year,

A big bang hit us.

Indeed,

Indeed.

Yes,

When I wrote it,

I had no idea of that,

Of course.

Of course,

Yeah.

I thought the new big bang is bound to come,

But what will catalyse it?

I didn't know and I can still say that I didn't know and it is unexpected that it will be a virus.

It was more likely,

I thought it was the drying out of the fertile lands of the ocean level rising of the economic and social inequities.

You can make a list of things.

I thought any one of those things could reach a critical threshold and then it will create a kind of a global crisis.

But that it would be a virus of unknown origin,

I didn't dream,

Of course.

But anyway,

What's happening is a new big bang,

Is a force big bang.

Yeah.

And then you very quickly have written another book because the book Global Shift Now that I've just read was published on the 7th of July.

So it's not a very big book in terms of physically being big,

But it's very big in terms of its scope and its range.

And you must have written that very quickly in reaction to the virus.

I think in two weeks or so.

Yeah.

You're a man after my own heart.

That's how long it takes me to write a book sometimes.

Wonderful.

But actually,

Can I give you a personal note of thanks?

Because if it wasn't for reading your book,

Science in the Akashic Field,

I wouldn't have written my book,

A fictional book called Soul Waves.

Oh really?

And Soul Waves starts in 2058.

And would you believe it's based in Beijing and Wuhan?

Oh my goodness.

I've been to Beijing once,

But I've never been to Wuhan.

And it's about a possible future history for planet Earth.

And Soul Waves are a fictional version of the Akashic Field,

If you know what I mean,

Which is amazing.

Amazing.

Amazing.

So I've got personal note of thanks to you and to Sarah for introducing us both.

In that sense,

I'm just sort of an awakener,

You know,

I mean,

Just trying to poke and nudge people to open up because that is themselves.

That is you yourself who write it.

But I mean,

It's good to have a call.

And this new book is also a call.

I call it the call to evolution.

It's a call that to wake up and get going with what we need to do.

But it struck me though,

That the book you wrote before this,

Reconnecting to Sourcebook,

Is the manual of how to do it.

In a way it is,

Because this is the how to do it is to involve,

In addition to science and rational thinking,

How to involve spirituality or deeper knowledge that is in us.

And I think I still look to that as being the key to finding a way forward.

So I was struck by the fact that in when I wrote the Reconnecting to the Source,

I asked these people,

More than two dozen people,

I think there are 19 people,

To tell their own experiences.

And they were all well-known people and very high integrity people as well.

And it turned out that they all had life changing experiences.

I asked them,

Did you have such an experience?

And they said,

Yes.

Would you mind describing it?

And they agreed.

And when they did,

They all came up with very,

Very similar conclusions.

And so I think there is more to this spiritual experience than just purely chance or woo-woo.

You know,

We are tapping into something with that.

And it strikes me that you don't just write about these experiences theoretically.

You're also a proponent and you've experienced them yourselves.

Well,

I started my career as a child prodigy on the piano.

In fact,

I met my wife after a concert in Wipmore Hall in London.

So until I was actually in my mid-20s,

I made my living.

I was purely as a concert pianist,

You see.

And my interest in philosophy and science was a hobby.

And the experiences that I had as a musician started from the age of five by starting my giving concerts and being in a public concert pianist sort of since the age of nine.

And the experiences I had in performing,

Especially performing for a public or with a chamber group or with an orchestra,

Is such a feeling,

Sense of oneness,

Such a feeling of coherence,

Of meaningfulness,

That that in turn has led to my search for that kind of sensation,

For the grounds for this kind of sensation through science and philosophy.

And that's what led me then to write First Essential Society.

Then now by now there's 101 books published by my name.

So this is a long term search,

Started in about 1960,

I would think.

Having written Global Shift now,

Are you optimistic?

I am possibilities.

Realistic.

That's a lovely word.

And how else can one express this?

There is a possibility.

It's up to us.

If we are not completely a hopeless species,

Just stuck into the old ways and incapable of changing,

Then we'll wake up and change and we'll find a way because we are built into this universe.

Everything that I know from science and biology and consciousness research and also my own experience tells you we are not separate beings.

We are not delivered to our own little insights or insights coming from inside our head.

We are really part of a larger whole and this larger whole is a kind of a consciousness,

Is a kind of an intelligence,

Which is there in the universe.

I'm not alone to say that Einstein has said it,

Max Planck has said it,

Jung has said it,

Etc.

Etc.

This I think gives me trust,

Gives me faith that we could make it because at a deeper level which is already showing up here and there in the world,

There is a change in mentality,

A change in consciousness coming about and that has to spread and I trust,

I hope of course,

But I also have some level of confidence that it will spread.

I cannot guarantee that.

I don't think it's predetermined.

I think it's still open,

But we have a good working chance.

It strikes me also that that opportunity is very much a grassroots opportunity.

It's not necessarily something we're going to have passed down from a leader to everyone below that leader allegedly,

But for enough people just to think about being planetary caretakers as opposed to being planetary abusers.

Yes,

Yes,

Absolutely.

I've been very much struck with findings coming from biology,

From population biology,

By Nils Eldridge and others around him,

That when a population evolves or changes,

The change doesn't come from the center.

We used to think,

Well,

We are all very hierarchical systems,

Even in the life systems and not just the human systems,

And so how it changes,

The leaders start changing and they start making change.

It turns out that's not the case in the non-human systems.

The leading species don't change.

They die out.

The changes come on the periphery.

There are constant changes.

There's a constant creativity going on.

They're a little changing here and there.

They are mostly suppressed.

As long as the system is stable,

They are suppressed because then the center,

The power centers,

Just maintain the status quo because that's how they get their power.

But when that center is challenged,

When it's weakened,

Then these peripheral changes can penetrate,

Can move toward the center,

Can be empowered.

There is no dead end of the past.

The power centers no longer suppress the possibilities of change.

They're no longer living in a dictatorship of the political and economic powers.

We are now living in a transition period.

And that occurs to me that what happens today is very much like what's been happening all along in the non-human,

In the biological systems.

You don't expect us,

Our leaders to change.

We shouldn't need to.

Our leaders will no longer be able to lead when the change that comes from the periphery.

It's very interesting,

By the way,

I have many,

I think 10 or 12 years ago,

I've written a little book on,

You can change the world,

It's called,

And I asked Mikhail Gorbachev to write a foreword to it.

And I was talking about this kind of changes coming up,

And in his foreword he said,

Don't expect your leaders to change.

And he was one of the top leaders of the 20th century,

Late 20th century.

He said,

Don't expect them,

Do the change yourself.

And that's in his foreword.

So I think people with insights recognize this.

People who only see as far as they know who they want to preserve their own little privileges.

And then they don't want to permit any change to penetrate anywhere around them.

That's the danger,

Of course,

That such people still exist.

But the opportunity is that such people become weakened now.

They no longer have the power that they have,

Because people are asking,

Is that the world that we want?

They no longer operate,

You can no longer govern a system which is in such a crisis,

There's most economic,

Ecological and political systems out there,

You can't just simply govern them from above.

Interesting.

And you talk about global shift now,

Two things,

I wonder if they're diametrically opposite.

The first is a possible bifurcation.

And the other is the upshift scenario.

Can you have an upshift with a bifurcation?

I think you can only have an upshift with a bifurcation.

Okay,

Interesting.

Because bifurcation is the tipping point.

I'm saying that in the book,

There are many things that are possible.

But the status quo is not possible.

And going back to exactly where you were is not possible,

At least we hope that it's not possible,

It will be catastrophic.

But I think the upshift comes as a conclusion,

As the positive conclusion of a bifurcation.

Is there an upshift or a downshift?

And it's up to those little fluctuations,

The little evolutions that happen in the periphery,

And how they move toward the centre.

That's what defines and determines what happens next.

And you do something,

Which I do a lot in a lot of my books,

You write a postscript in the future.

And although I agree with all the sentiments in the book,

I just wonder whether 2030 is enough time to get there.

Can we get there by 2030?

I'm not sure.

I write this because I don't want people to say,

Okay,

That's so far away,

We don't need to think about it.

Right now,

If you start doing something conceivably,

We'll see results in a ten-year period.

And so what if somebody,

Apart from reading your books,

Which I highly recommend,

And I think you can actually read them backwards,

So get Global Shift now,

Then read Connecting to the Source.

And if you're like me and a bit nutty,

And you want to know a little bit about the underlying infrastructure,

All this,

Then The Science in the Akashic Field is a great book too.

And obviously there's nearly 100 more as well.

What would be the thing that each individual could do today to get us to that 2030 point?

Well,

Let's just simply quote Gandhi,

Be the change for each individual.

Change starts at home.

And this recognition that I believe is a good,

Valid recognition coming from science,

But it's confirmed the spirituality,

That the change,

The code for the change,

Codes for the positive change is in us.

It's in every cell of our body and in our deeper consciousness.

So be the change means be what you truly are,

Not what you sort of believe yourself to be when you are competing and when you are just entering the rat race and distrusting everybody and fearing everything.

Those are the artificial elements that convert that bias or true self.

So get back to what you truly are.

That's why I say we connect to the source,

Okay?

Connect to the Akashic Field,

Connect to the spiritual experience,

Or take the same thing,

Or take the opportunity of a bifurcation to become more truly what you are intended to be,

A cooperative oneness oriented coherent element in an ongoing evolution of life in this biosphere.

Wow,

That's amazing.

And you talk about the end of this book about a new vision for natural sciences,

Physical sciences,

Life sciences.

It strikes me that this lockdown that we've had is actually gives us all the potential for a new opening up.

It's questions.

What we need to do before we can really shift is to question the old.

We have to loosen the hold of the old.

That means questioning.

I think as a philosopher from my early twenties onwards,

I think the key element was everything behind everything that I was doing and writing was this asking,

Is this really true?

Is this really the case?

Is this how we should act?

Is this who we are?

You know,

These kind of questions are the opening paraphrase or opening element for moving into the portal or moving to the next phase,

Which is looking around asking how else could it be?

How else could the world be?

Maybe it is like that.

And what is the evidence for today?

The evidence is amazing.

It's coming from the quantum sciences.

Everything we talked about oneness,

About wholeness,

About contact and communication,

About communication between elements and over bridging time and space.

It's all there in the quantum physics,

In the quantum cosmology,

In the quantum biology,

Consciousness research.

It's all surfacing.

It's the new paradigm.

I've been excited about this idea of the new paradigm.

It's all based on the quantum sciences.

But it's there.

It's emerging.

Everything that was speculation,

Philosophy or esoteric thinking before,

It's now moving toward a scientific base.

Let me ask you maybe a kind of personal question then.

What's the connection between music and the quantum sciences?

These two themes that run through your life?

It's not just quantum,

Any deep physics,

Any fundamental source.

If you look at the biography of the leading thinkers,

They are musicians one way or another.

We know it of course from Einstein,

But it's true from the others too.

Nobody was just a dry mathematician.

They were all thinking deeper.

And what music offers is a fullness,

A oneness,

A completeness,

A harmony.

It's typified in work that is so simple and at the same time so perfect as the works of Mozart.

You can't change a single note without destroying the harmony.

It's all perfect the way it is and it's all complete the way it is.

And then a biological human system,

Psychological system,

Bio-social psychological system as a human being operates well then that system operates harmoniously.

All its elements in tune with all its other elements and the system as a whole is in tune with the world around it.

So that's music tells you that you can experience it and it's a fantastic experience.

I've been looking for it consciously or subconsciously.

I don't know,

But I've been looking for this harmony,

For this oneness,

Which is so very present in the leading edge of the sciences,

Very much coming to expression the quantum sciences,

But it's there in all the Eastern philosophers.

It's been there for thousands of years in the Tao,

In the Buddhist philosophy,

In the Chinese philosophy,

In Confucianism,

It's all there.

But maybe rediscovering it.

The world is not a passive Newtonian mechanism.

It's a highly integrated system that evolves and the world is,

Since you read this book,

You mentioned yourself,

Is an Akashic field and not just a passive indifferent domain of space and time,

But it's a dynamic field of which we are a part.

So that's what I learned from music.

That's what I tried to express through my research in science and consciousness research.

So in some respects then,

This virus is a note being changed that's upset the symphony.

Something is entered here that was not part of it before.

Challenges,

What there was.

It's a push.

You can look at it as a wake-up call at the same time.

That is simply a new element.

We don't know if we can master it and put it into the old.

That would be a job for a vaccine,

But we can't certainly simply cope with it as it is.

We can't adapt to it.

I will take a genetic mutation,

But we can try to defend ourselves for it.

We can,

This particular note has to be re-adapted to a note that's compatible with the note of life.

Could there be a possible solution to it?

Just to take a paragraph from the very end of your book,

Reconnecting to Source.

If we were to achieve the Kong state or the Kong-Kong-Kong state,

Could that allow us all to kind of epigenetically mutate to another level so we become immune from such things?

Indeed.

I think epigenetics is a tremendous new discovery.

It means that our consciousness or will can influence the way our system works.

So if you enter into this total harmonious state,

Probably our genes will show it in their operation,

That we are more in harmony,

More in tune,

And therefore the genes are likely to operate more in tune with one another so the entire organism operates more clearly,

Better tuned,

Better oriented toward its survival,

Its survival and thrival.

So I think yes,

Through epigenetics,

Yes,

It is entirely possible that we can operate and make changes on the genetics,

On the level of genetics.

Fantastic.

Well,

Listen,

I'm aware that we had a finite time to talk about the infinite today,

And it's been an absolute honor for my part to be able to speak to somebody I've been admiring for many,

Many years.

Do you just have one final note you'd like to share with the population of Earth?

After all,

It's a wonderful time to be alive.

After all,

It may be that the challenge that we face now,

The viral challenge,

Is a kind of a blessing in disguise.

Of course,

It's in a deep disguise because it calls for a lot of sacrifice and martyrs.

But after all,

It's a change that is coming about before the roof falls in,

In so many other ways,

Through economics,

Through the ecological system,

To the population system.

So I think look at this world today,

Not with the fear of the danger it poses,

But with the tremendous excitement of the opportunity to finally pull out of that negative direction,

Find a better direction and become what we can be,

Harmoniously oriented,

Wholeness seeking people,

Working with each other,

Not fearing each other,

But learning to work together with each other,

Living together like that.

The great wisdom traditions have always told us that that's the way,

The sciences are telling us that's the way.

So let's finally find ourselves to take that way.

That would be a positive future.

Wow,

Thank you.

Erwin Laszlo,

You are a blessing incarnate.

Thank you very much for your time today.

Thank you so much,

Simon.

It's wonderful to talk to you.

And I'm so glad that you also find these ideas so useful in your own work,

Which is so important.

Thank you very much.

Reviews

‘Gandhi’ is my reminder from this interview. Thank you for echoing the evolution we are birthing 🙏

wow!! what a wonderful zone show. thank you, Tom. 🙏

Hello dear Tom, this talk so delightfull. I am touched on the deepest level of my being. It is so beautiful to hear You talking to Mr Ervin Laszlo, such a capacity, such an ease, insight, truth. Not one capacity, but two capacities, in co-creative dance about our Future. Thank you so much. Halka

Thank you for this inspiring conversation ❤️

Töm that’s such an interesting interview. What a beautiful conversation and fascinating topic. Inspiring. Thanks for sharing. Namaste 🙏

Excellent interview.

Thanks for the opportunity to listen to this great mind!

Thank you for this interview. We must be the change❤🙏

Thankyou for sharing this possibility of connection through consciousness to keep healing our planet.

VERY INTERESTING and ENCOURAGING❣️thank you, Tom. 🙏🏻💕

It was amazing and wonderful to hear Mr Laszlo speak on the subject of global change that potentially can bring human beings together. Thank you both.

Interesting man!

Intriguing & inspiring. I will have to read some of his works. Thank you 🙏🙏🙏

Wonderful blending of spiritual and scientific, and consciousness. Thank you

Brilliant thank you ⭐🕊