BRAHMA KUMARIS WORLD SPIRITUAL UNIVERSITY
Consciousness and Climate: Confluence of Two Living
Systems II
Statement for the 16th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to theUnited Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
November 29 to December 10, 2010, Cancun, Mexico

Context
As a nongovernmental organization in consultative status with the United Nations(UN), the contribution of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University (BKWSU)
to the UN community is in considering issues, such as climate change, in a spiritualframework, highlighting the inner dimension of the decisions f acing the UN memberstates.
Our premise in the first in this series of papers (Dec. 2009) was that what the world
needs at this time is a profound shift in awareness – a shift in the thinking that is
producing our current crisis. Expanding the Climate Change conversation to include
the inner dimension, will transform the quality of the conversation and the possible
agenda for action among stakeholders. We proposed that the UN, with its
unparalleled convening power, could elevate the climate change agenda in this way.

The Confluence of Two Living Systems
The crucial challenges facing the Earth at this time are best understood when we see
the Earth as a living system. Living Systems Theory is a body of work that describes
how all living systems function, how they sustain themselves, and how they develop
and change. “Living systems” is a metaphor that represents an animate arrangementof parts and processes that continually affect one another over time self organizing,growing, changing, and connecting. When we are able to see the intricate
interconnections of the many parts of the living system, our view of the world begins
to change.
Human thought is also a system, a flow of impressions, memories, habits, thoughts
and feelings, affecting everything they touch. This assertion was advanced eloquently
by physicist David Bohm in a 1990 seminar in Ojai, California and was later
published in a book called Thought as a System (Routledge, 1994). He believed thatthe breakdowns in the living system of the Earth were attributable to our lack ofunderstanding of the systemic nature of thought. For one thing, he asserted, thought
naturally fragments things:“One of the obvious things wrong with thought is fragmentation. Thought
is breaking things up into bits, which should not b e broken up. ...Thoughtfragments knowledge and so our system of thought allows us to separate
causes from effects, to miss the interconnections between what ishappening upstream and the effect of that action downstream. ” (pp 2-3,Bohm).
Another problem with thought, Bohm explained, is that thought is participatory – itaffects the world, all the while claiming that it is only commenting on the world.

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Bohm: “Thought is always doing a great deal, but it tends to say that it hasn’t done
anything, that it is just telling you the way things are – that ‘you’ are inside there,
deciding what to do with the information...but you don’t decide what to d o with theinformation. The information takes over and runs you.”(p. 5, Bohm).
The implications of the role of human thinking in creating and perpetuating the tragic
degradation of the Earth cannot be overstated. Without a profound epiphany orawakening we are never able to see ourselves as separate from the kind of thinking
that we do. We believe we are simply perceiving things the way the y really are, when
in fact our limited thinking is causing us to see a fragmented world, f or example, tosee the Earth as a storehouse of resources to be mined for the World’s consumers.
What can we do to intervene in the vicious cycle of increasing fragmentation andblindness? What will allow us to dismantle the artificial boundaries we haveconstructed (in our minds and in the world) and to see the unified system of which weare a part?

A Change in AwarenessThe inner world of thought and the outer world of physical phenomena are actually
not separate worlds or systems. They are part of the same “causal continuum.” Outerphysical phenomena begin as inner subtle phenomena – impress ions, thoughts andfeelings. Experiences, impressions and thoughts can change even a long heldawareness. For example the astronauts and cosmonauts would have believed they
were part of a large, solid, and stable earth until the moment when they foundthemselves in space looking out the window of a spaceship and seeing the lovely
Earth spinning slowly in the vast ocean of space like a small blue marble. After thatexperience, many of them spoke of Earth’s vulnerability and of “Spaceship Earth.”In this causal continuum, our awareness naturally produces a certain kind of attitude.
Our thoughts and feelings emerge naturally from the attitude we hold. Our attitude
also causes us to see things in a certain way. Because we see things in this way, wetake a certain kind of action, in turn creating a certain kind of world. This is Bohm’s
point about how our system of thought misleads us: we think we are simply
perceiving things as they are, but actually we are perceiving things as they are
constructed in our minds based on our attitude, formed invisibly, silently by our innerawareness.
So if we want to change the world we are continuously recreating, we need to go“upstream” of laws, treaties, and policies designed to police actions, because withthose actions we are working at the end of the causal continuum. We need to consider
how we can work at the beginning of the continuum to change awareness, andsubsequently action, on a massive scale.

The Call of Our Time: To Engage in a New Creation
The multiple indications of global crisis and break down are generating a sense ofurgency worldwide. The “Green Movement” has swept the world embroiling nations
in arguments about short-term economic viability versus long-term ecologicalsustainability. While there is merit in this discussion, it is a distract ion from the more
important conversation to understand what the prime mover is in this global crisis.
At this time virtually everyone understands that there is something enormous inmotion that is threatening to destroy our way of life. What we need to understand isthat there is also something enormous underway that is creative. It is generating aPage 2 of 4

new way of life, a new era on the Earth. This movement from the devolution of afragile old condition to a stable new one makes sense in the context of a cyclicalunderstanding of the natural and the underlying energetic worlds. This time is theconfluence of an old and a new era.
The Brahma Kumaris understand this time to be unique. It is a time of transition on ascale unparalleled in the history of time, a movement of the world from an old age toa new age, a new beginning, a renewed creation – a time when t he Divine Energy isactive in the world and engaged in creation. As in all transitional times, there are twothing s going on simultaneously: there is a part of the world that is falling away anddying and another part that is emerging as new growth.
What is possible at this time is to understand, experience, and support this emergent
world, beginning with a shift in awareness.

An Opportunity for the UN
Unique to the UN is the opportunity to convene a global conversation, to set theparameters of the conversation, to raise the fundamental questions and to invite thoseto the table who offer new distinctions. In addition to t he marathon conversations on
the exchange of carbon units and management of forests, the UN would do well tocreate space for a conversation with a different focus – a conversation that considers
the emergent world and the opportunities it might hold for the global family. To tap
into the inner dimension of a new creative era such a conversation might include
periods for silent reflection and might involve those with expertise in the innerdimensions as well as those with expertise in the material worlds of science andgovernance. It might eschew speech making in favour of shared discovery, reflective
listening, and sense making.
This courageous act by the UN might shift the direction of the global public discourseand bring important perspectives from the margins to the centre of publicconsideration. It would be an act of true and original leadership and may lead to shifts
in awareness, which could open the door for sunrise technologies, new economic
models and a higher bar on integrity in caring for the global commons.

An offer from the Brahma Kumaris
Since 1998 the Brahma Kumaris have been supporting a dialogue among global
leaders on “The Call of the Time.” The Call-of-the-Time Dialogues convene leaderson the field of world service around the question, “What is the cal l of this time?”
Over a period of three and a half days, a group of about thirty moves between
reflection, small group conversation and conversations of the whole exploring thesubtle inner shifts in awareness that are necessary to respond to the call of this time.
We focus on the cultivation of practice to sustain the elements of awareness that arenecessary for this time.
Over the past eleven years we have held roughly thirty dialogues and related retreats,published two journals and one imprint for the Stat e of the World Forum in 2000 all
exploring the dynamics between inner awareness and outer action. Hundreds ofthought leaders from science, business, media, politics, and academia from allcontinents have participated – many returning year after year for rejuvenation anda space from which to consider vexing problems with fresh eyes. MIT lecturer andco-facilitator of the annual international Call-of-the-Time dialogue in Oxford,
England, Peter Senge, wrote an article proposing that the quality of treaties such

Page 3 of 4as the Kyoto Protocol would be vastly improved if the meetings in which they are
created are preceded by a dialogue, such as the Call-of- the-Time dialogue.
The Brahma Kumaris are happy to extend an offer to the UN to collaborate on thecreation of a dialogue, or a series of dialogues, to explore the deeper dimensionsof the global climate change issue. We might begin by inviting a few leaders fromthe UN community to attend the annual international dialogue in Oxford and thenuse this core group to develop a dialogue focused on global climate change.
Our hope is that by combining the convening power of the UN with the Brahma
Kumaris expertise in designing and holding these dialogues, we might accelerate
the shifts in awareness that are crucial to the global climate change conversation –that are in fact the call of this time.

Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University
The BKWSU is a non-governmental organization in general consultative status with the United
Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and in consultative status with UNICEF. The
University was founded in India in 1937 and has branches in over 108 countries worldwide. It has
been affiliated to the United Nations Department of Public Information since 1980.

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