Introduction

Abstract

We are facing a tremendous crisis; a crisis which the politicians can never solve because they are programmed to think in a particular way—nor can the scientists understand or solve the crisis; nor yet the business world, the world of money. The turning point, the perceptive decision, the challenge, is not in politics, in religion, in the scientific world; it is in our consciousness. One has to understand the consciousness of mankind [womankind], which has brought us to this point.

—Jiddu Krishnamurti (1983, 9; emphasis added)

[C]hange in human… consciousness is necessary and [a] precondition of a laterpolitical change…. If we utilize the concept of a dialectical relationship over longer periods of time between consciousness and structural change, it is at the “moment” of consciousness in this dialectic whereby we may expect to have any meaningful input in the change process.

—James Macdonald ([1981a] 1995, 157; emphasis added)

Our world is in crisis. Our ecology, the foundation of life on planet earth, is in danger due to our lack of concern for the impact of our actions on the fragile ecosystem. Peace on earth is also denied because of antagonistic nationalistic, religious, ideological, racial, and economic groups.