In 1966, when I was 14 years old, I found myself on the floor of my bedroom creating a large poster of a girl. It was a full-length silhouette. Her long dress and hair flowed behind her. Streaming forward through her eyes were swirling multicolored clouds. I wrote in the space under the clouds: THERE MUST BE SOMETHING ELSE.

It wasn’t a mental idea. I had no idea why I was making the poster, and I never created another one. The image and words were just there, and needed to be expressed. I then embroidered that same girl, with the colors flowing out of her, onto the right leg of my bell-bottom jeans. 

A year later, when I was 15, I informed my mother I was going to Woodstock. My mother knew she couldn’t stop me, so she relented to my going. It wasn’t about the music; I just had to be there. There are moments in our lives when larger forces are at play, when you can’t not feel and follow them. Two years later, in 1970, I found myself in San Francisco at the inception of yet another cultural beginning – what would later be called the transformational movement.  

I know I’m not alone in being pulled by SOMETHING ELSE at pivotal moments in life. Those who find the Evolutionary Collective typically recognize that pull of SOMETHING ELSE. They are diverse nationally, spiritually, and generationally, and their version of SOMETHING ELSE is no doubt unique and yet undeniably present.  

What matters is sensing the deeper reality that’s been calling all along. It’s there – strangely guiding you, sometimes disturbing you, and when you hear someone speak to it, there’s an inner thrill of recognition. 

This call to SOMETHING ELSE is the emergence of a new reality, a new world that evolutionary forces are only now bringing forth – so we can gather, find each other, and begin to give it true expression. 

In the Evolutionary Collective, we explore rich teachings about evolution that foster awareness, awakenings, and quantum shifts for those who engage with this knowledge. 

For now, I want to share the shortest version of the evolutionary story I can tell. 

Evolutionary waves of creation are what give existence its potentials and possibilities. The Big Bang brought light, which turned into matter. That matter, with no life, formed what we call the geosphere: planets, rocks, fire, and earth. The geosphere existed for 1 billion years before life began.

The biosphere began 3.5 billion years ago, bringing forth all living forms, all manner of existence – tiny organisms, fish, birds, reptiles, flowers, insects, trees, mammals… and eventually humans. 

Let’s not include human beings in the biosphere for the moment. The biosphere without humans has no mind, no thought, no language, no memories, no judgment, no self-reflection, nothing mental whatsoever. That’s one of the reasons why we innately love the quiet of nature and all life that doesn’t have a thinking mind. We escape from our thought-filled mental cage to walk on the beach, hike in the forest, and hang out with our pets. There’s no mind, only life.

Now, let’s include humanity. Early humans were also without much thought, a kind of animal-human. Then, just over 5,000 years ago, evolution downloaded into humanity the next incredible potential: the compartmentalized mind. We gained self-reflection and free will. It was a quantum leap in evolution, and the noosphere was born. The thinking layer of the Earth came into existence through our mental capacity. Consider everything human beings have created in these 5,000 years – civilization and all its expressions were born through us. EVERYTHING we exist within is the noosphere (the thinking layer of the Earth). 

It includes not only our thinking and self-awareness, but everything we live within; cities, what we wear, how we manage our families, governments, philosophies, religion, war, digital media, addiction, medicine, all means of transportation, sports, science, EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING. 

If you close your eyes and feel it, it’s everywhere inside you and all around. We exist within the noosphere, within civilization. What humans have created and discovered is a great accomplishment, of course. But it’s a kind of web or cage that we are held within and can’t see past. Being inside it is suffocating, at least for some of us. And for sure, it’s not taking us to the next evolutionary potential – it can’t. Given how we are as a survival-driven humanity, nothing we have created can take us forward – not AI or anything the noosphere has to offer can.

I love this quote from The Mother – Sri Aurobindo’s partner of many years.

It’s enough, you see, when that web gets
more and more stifling, more and more stifling, 

there comes a moment when something
inside us really CRIES OUT – it cries,

“Something else, something else!
I need something else!

Enough of this!”

 

Many of us knew at an early age that there must be more to life than what we could see around us. And still, what we see particularly these days is not the fulfillment of our almost 5,000-year journey of having free will and compartmentalized minds. It’s not even what religion or social change promised. There must be more. 

The current design of being human is woefully insufficient.

Evolution is the source of creation and has demonstrated unimaginable quantum shifts in existence. We are at the precipice of a new era in which higher evolutionary forces are bringing forth the highest manifestation of not only human existence, but terrestrial existence in its entirety. In the current thinking, we are asked to accept life as it is, with its oppression, violence, and stupidity. We are further asked to forgive, heal, focus on ourselves, and do our best to transcend, achieve, love, and work with life as animal-humans dominated by survival and self-preservation instincts. It’s not the only design of being human. It’s not the only way life can be. For some of us, it’s OK to acknowledge how exhausting it is and allow THERE MUST BE SOMETHING ELSE to get louder and more insistent. 

We need to say yes to cry out for what the source of creation is finally ready to bring forth. No one can argue that we are the ultimate version of what it means to be human. When I was born, there were 2.5 billion human beings populating the Earth; now there are 8.4 billion. Our evolutionary trajectory as a human species was never meant to stop here. There’s much more to share about how evolution is functioning – how powerful and promising it all is. To start, let yourself out of the cage of having to accept life as it is and as we are. 

Forgiveness and making peace with ourselves and each other is fine, but go underneath into a deeper truth within yourself. A place that resonates with SOMETHING ELSE.

We are often afraid to want more or dare to long for more, because it disrupts our thinly veiled equilibrium. Let yourself really wake up to the question… 

“If you were the force of creation, and you could create anything, everything, what world would you create?” 

 

Who says we need to live in a world where the battle between good and evil never ends, where there is an assumption of duality, light and dark, crucifixion and resurrection, endless limitations, violence, lies, survival, and fear being a fact of life? 

Maybe there is a whole new design for existence that is only coming online now that has nothing to do with your healing, growth, and development. And this powerful upleveling only needs our attention and alignment.

Vast new potentials are opening that can take us beyond our imaginings.

Never forget, evolution is the source of creation and has demonstrated unimaginable quantum shifts in existence for billions of years. Life appeared in a world of no life – dinosaurs have come and gone. Never underestimate evolution. We are at the precipice of a new era in which higher evolutionary forces support new potentials for the human species and all of existence.   Glorious….   there are no words!