06 March 2012

Panpsychic

Posts in this blog have been dismissive of World Futures, the journal under the auspices of millenarian, education entrepreneur and communication-with-the-dead fan Ervin Laszlo.

The latest issue of that journal (Volume 68, Issue 2) - which in Australia's official scholarly rating system ranked higher than some credible law journals - features a change of name. World Futures was tagged The Journal of General Evolution; it's now The Journal of General Education.

The preceding issue of World Futures was largely devoted to "introducing" Laszlo's Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University, the much-renamed institution originally named WorldShift University.

Alas, it's still a journal of the bizarre. One article, by Jeff Jenkins, is titled 'Nature Awareness and Panpsychic Ritual Gratitude: Revitalizing Our Ancestral Heritage'. Oh dear.

What does "panpsychic ritual gratitude" involve?
This article suggests that nature awareness and panpsychic gratitude transform a wounded mechanistic reductionist worldview into creative regenerative participation with the more-than-human world. Four practical keys are shared that have proven to be helpful in resuscitating the indigenous heart and cultivating greater empathy, love, compassion, and insight into the metaphoric resonance and teachings of the natural world. This inquiry situates the human family as vital consciousness tendrils of the living planet in this critical time of shifting climate patterns, loss of biodiversity due to human presence, geopolitical conflicts, and other challenges as we step into the Ecozoic Era.
"Vital consciousness tendrils"? Not too surprising in an "academic" journal that's recurrently espoused reincarnation, dowsing, remote healing and other parapsychology along with a jurisprudence of 'quantum holism'.