Once you have grasped the essence of this transformation, many otherwise inexplicable events and trends in the immediate environment or in the news m… - Marilyn Ferguson

Scientific discoveries about the richness and complexity of nature reveal the poverty of our usual approaches to health, especially our efforts to deal externally, forcefully, and invasively with systems whose delicate balance can only be corrected if the inner physician is recruited. Just as outer reforms have limited effect on the body politic, external treatments are insufficient to heal the body if the spirit is in conflict.

Rather than debating whether capitalism is right in its emphasis on opportunities for the individual or socialism in its concern for the collective, we should reframe the question: Is a materialistic society suited to human needs? Both capitalism and socialism, as we know them, pivot on material values. They are inadequate philosophies for a transformed society.

By radically altering one's values and perceptions of the world, mystical experience tends to create its own culture, one with wide membership and invisible borders. This parallel culture seems to threaten the status quo; as Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, Western society is outraged if an individual gives his soul as much daily attention as his grooming.