Customer Reviews

An Evolutionary Agenda for the Third Millennium: A Primer for the Mutation of Consciousness

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Every couple of years over the past two decades, I've been given, or discover, or have been discovered by, a book that grabs me by the scruff of my neck and forces me to face up to yet another vital new view of ourselves and our role in the grand evolutionary process.

This has been the sequence of these literary epiphanies:

Fritjof Capra's "Tao of Physics"
Buckminster Fuller's "Critical Path"
Arthur Young's "Reflexive Universe"
Paramahansa Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi"
Ken Carey's "The Third Millennium"
Barbara Marx Hubbard's "Conscious Evolution"
Duane Elgin's "Awakening Earth"
Richard Moss' "The Second Miracle"
Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry's "The Universe Story"
Ken Wilber's "Sex, Ecology Spirituality"
Janine Benyus' "Biomimicry"

Alan Sasha Lithman's An Evolutionary Agenda is the latest book to capture my sentence-by-sentence underlining, highlighting, annotating, early-morning-contemplative attention.

James Carse, in "Finite and Infinite Games," provides a distinction that's quite appropriate for Lithman's work:

"Finite players play within boundaries,
infinite players play with boundaries."

Lithman is clearly an infinite player. He's written a book for fellow infinite players, and especially for designers of infinite games-those he calls "evolutionary activists.

What Lithman brings to above lineup of luminous literature is a wonderfully sophisticated bridging between the cosmic aspects of this evolutionary moment of truth, and the very real systemic developmental challenges we face as a species. I particularly appreciated his challenging those spiritual traditions whose teachings imply that individual enlightenment is our ultimate goal as humans. I also was grateful for his descriptions of how many of our "evolutionary thinkers" do us a disservice by skipping over the very real transitional challenges we are only beginning to appreciate as a species.

Lithman has been influenced by Sri Aurobindo, Michael Murphy and, no doubt, a bevy of cosmic guides and muses. At times, his style reminds me of the poetic prose of Ken Carey's "The Third Millennium."

If you are a committed steward for the future, an infinite player, a pathfinder, an evolutionary activist, then "An Evolutionary Agenda" is must reading for you.

Enjoy!

I was deeply touched by this book, both for its scope and vision as well as its practical approach to conscious evolution. I was drawn to this work by Barbara Marx Hubbard who says in the intro note to the book:

"As an evolutionary explorer, I encounter every now and then another kindred person on the same path who possesses a brilliance and deep understanding of our evolutionary potential. Alan Sasha Lithman is such a person. I highly recommend his Evolutionary Agenda to all those who feel the emergent potential of humanity arising in their hearts, and who long to be more effective in their actions in the world." -Barbara Marx Hubbard, President, Foundation for Conscious Evolution; author of Emergence and Conscious Evolution.

There was so much to take in that I found not only insightful but original and ground-breaking. It has given me a whole new way of looking at the meaning behind our evolutionary crises as well as positive steps to more consciously address them, opening the door to our future possibilities as an ongoing species. I know I will reread this work many times in the coming millennium.

May we all move forward as a more conscious species, hospicing the old world as we midwife the new.

Sunny Victorio

I see that other reviewers rave about this book, and I don't argue that the author has some thought-provoking ideas. But have you ever known a person who was otherwise likable except that they insisted on turning every single statement into a one-liner, or relied on flowery language and obtuse metaphor to share basic ideas, as if they couldn't just hold a reasonable conversation? A person who tried SO HARD to be witty or clever that you ended up dreading their presence? That's sort of what this book is like. If the author would just share his (admittedly valuable) ideas in a direct and readable manner, the book would be only about one eighth as long but it would be all the better for it. The author's writing style is so effusive that many paragraphs and even whole sections are redundant, piled on top of each other, merely obscuring his points rather than clarifying them. I got a third of the way through the book and couldn't tolerate it anymore. Perhaps the remainder of the book is better and I missed my chance.

I was put onto Lithman's book is a suitably synchronicitous way, considering the evolution of consciousness theme. A friend discovered it after her first encounter of her own psychic abilities, and on skimming and flicking, so many of the themes from the book were resonating I had to order one.

Lithman is seriously left brain, and this comes from a man with three degrees of intellectual separation! His narrative sometimes detours into conceptual detours that would warrant a separate monograph or a 5 page footnote!

But his main theme is exciting and a little bit dangerous. IF consciousness is your aim, take a journey with Lithman with your mindfulness at the ready and perhaps be ready for some upheaval.

Lithman will lead you on a journey of historical reflection and future imagination that will give you some serious food for reflection and action in the present. The main theme is the ways and means beyond the egoic limits on consciousness, through understanding the natural and global origins of the ego, and its inherent implosive or incurving action.

Lithman hopes for a version of humankind he calls homo holistic, and indeed beyond that to 'psyche materialis' - ie, a spiritual being embodied.

On the way we travel through homo transitionalis, and it is the wrestling whacky world of being between these two modes that Lithman's work is clarifying and stirring - not necessarily in that order. He describes wonderfully the present state of a worl in egoic overkill - ego mode overstretched, and causing tension, ecological, economic, spiritaul, and community upheavals. ANd personal ones.

Journey into this theme and watch your own ego structures rationalise or rebel or intellectualise or simply self bsabotage your best efforts to evolve in your daily routine. But let these be signposts to the journey forwards into transitional versions of holism.

I found Lithman a bit too defensive of his stance at points, arguing in detail for a proposition at points where the argument demands the focus on real life implementation. And then, as I went inot life I did the same thing, and watched as egoic mode reared its head with a vengeance. Challenge yourself to grow and the system will resist.

but take the challenge. and lithman will be an interesting provocateur at the very least!

I saw Lithman speak in 2006 and I purchased his book at the time. I read it over the next year. Sometimes I only read a page a day. I found the ideas and words sinuous, delightful and sometimes disturbing ... as in disturbing a slumber. I know it sounds strange but, from reading it, I could feel new shapes in my mind and they were sending out tendrils, new connections. This book changed me and I look at the world differently for it.

Our biological evolution may or may not have slowed but our collective software is still in flux. Will you recognize the changes as they occur in us as a species? Are you recognizing the changes already occurring? The challenge, you soon realize, is determining how best to influence the mutation. This book will provide some perspective.

After completing the book I bought five copies and gave them away, something I have rarely done. I wish I could say that it worked the same effect on the others that it worked on me. It did not. It affected my recipients in obvious ways but did not seem to have the same depth of impact on them that it did for me. I am not sure why but I think it has to do with how you read this book. It feels a little like some kind of poetry at times but it clearly isn't. An inner-tube float trip, mostly languid and smooth, but sometimes turbulent and kicking, might be a better metaphor for the approach.

I recommend giving this one a try. It was certainly a great experience for me.