CONSCIOUSNESS FOR THE 21ST-CENTURY

Human action and experience are the outcome of genes and memes. Not on ly are both of these represented in consciousness, but consciousness m ediates their claims and thus governs our choices. Hence it is importa nt how consciousness is ordered and where it is directed. Sorokin's ty pology of the sensate and the ideational ("spiritual"), and the dialec tic between them, is relevant to this issue. In our period of history, the sensate factors of materialism and secularism need to be dialecti cally counterbalanced by the reinforcement of memes that value the spi ritual intimations of the realm beyond the senses. As we approach the twenty-first century, the memes that will undergird our spirituality w ill be those that resacralize nature and emphasize our unity as humans with all of universal reality, in an idea of common "beinghood." Spir itual systems that accord with this trend in evolution will have to re spect three conditions. They will (1) integrate the sensate and the id eational; (2) reflect the importance of the "flow" state of optimal ex perience, which matches ever-complexifying skills with comparable chal lenges; and (3) move the fulcrum of their worldview from the human bei ng to the network of beings and its evolution.