There is nothing new to say when looking around at our planet! As my dear friend and EUROTAS Advisor Serge Beddington Behrens often reminds us, “I feel both deep sorrow for its condition and a profound anger at the many injustices that persist.”
There is also no need to affirm that we need a vision – a vision grounded in heart, compassion, unity, and wisdom. What we need to affirm, however, is the growing realization that such a vision already exists. This is the transpersonal vision that needs to expand beyond theory and inner transformation, to generate a concrete, transformative impact, not only on society but also for the planet.
During the EUROTAS Board of Advisors meeting that was held in Oxford in October 2024, we reflected deeply on this point. We concluded that while the transpersonal perspective does offer a profound understanding of human consciousness and potential, it now calls for us to take another step: to actively engage with the social, ecological, and ethical crises of our times. Since that meeting, some of us have embarked on a journey that, despite encountering resistance, is beginning to give shape to new guidelines for what we might call Transpersonal Activism.
Encouragingly, many visionary activists are emerging within the younger generations, alongside innovative thinkers who are already paving the way toward a renewed and more engaged transpersonal vision. Serge, once again, offers powerful inspiration in his Mission Regeneration, where he writes.
“The activist’s path is a blessed one, because it allows us to realize that it is possible to live a passionate, meaningful life, even when many of the structures around us are crumbling.”
A similar spirit resonates in the work of our friend and transpersonal psychologist Steve Taylor. In his poem “The Human Race Will Rise Again,” he reminds us.
The human race will rise again.
This chaos isn’t inevitable, and this discord won’t last forever.
The evil that flows from us so easily isn’t innate.
Our discord is a distortion, not a permanent condition.
They are symptoms of a disease that will one day be cured.
Looking even further ahead, Richard Bucke, in his seminal work Cosmic Consciousness, envisioned a future in which expanded awareness becomes increasingly widespread.
“Cosmic consciousness will become more and more universal earlier in an individual’s life, until the race at large will possess this faculty… A new race is in the act of being born from us and, in the near future, it will occupy and possess the Earth.”
Duane Elgin, in his insightful book Choosing Earth, outlined three possible paths lying ahead for humanity.
The first is a path of escalating chaos, leading to the collapse of civilization.
The second leads toward increasingly authoritarian systems, where control and surveillance are justified in the name of security.
The third path—perhaps the most challenging yet hopeful—suggests that while we may descend into significant chaos and witness the crumbling of many institutions, we do not fully collapse. Instead, the destructive unravelling of dysfunctional systems meets the creative forces that are already weaving a new planetary culture, grounded in cooperation, consciousness, and shared responsibility.
This third path is the one I believe lies before us in the coming decades. Today, the invitation is clear: to join this emerging movement, to become the future we wish to see, and to help shape it consciously. We invite you to share your ideas, dreams, reflections, and writings with us. One of the upcoming issues of the Integral Transpersonal Journal will be dedicated to Transpersonal Activism. Let us imagine and together embody, the world that is waiting to be born.
Pier Luigi Lattuada
