Our current economics is oriented to exploit, to obtain the maximum and give the minimum. This is how investments are made. An investor is someone who invests as little as possible and hopes to obtain as much as possible.
The soul strives to give. It has special gifts, and in giving them an individual finds meaning. If you have no meaning in your life, if you do not know why you are alive, you are not on the path that your soul wants to walk. As you begin to move in the direction that your soul wants you to move, you begin to get a sense of meaning. When your life is alive with meaning, when you are excited every day about what you are doing, when you want to get up, when you want to be with people, when you have no fear, when you have forgotten to worry, when you are fully engaged with your life, you are moving in alignment with your soul. That is authentic power.
Souls have agreements with the Universe. We incarnate with sacred contracts. As we develop authentic power, we develop the ability to fulfill them-to give our gifts. Each of these ways of speaking is a different way of saying the same thing: we are now evolving through the pursuit of authentic power, the alignment of the personality with the soul- which means living meaningful, engaged, responsible, joyful lives. I am not speaking of work-a-holism. Beneath work-a-holism is fear, deep insecurity. Every attempt to build an empire is a reaching outward to fill a sense of powerlessness inside. That is our former evolutionary modality. Our new evolutionary modality is to become inwardly whole and healthy and secure.
The old economics which is based upon the assumption of scarcity and the orientation of exploitation will be replaced with a new economics that is based upon abundance and oriented toward contribution. This new economics is so different from our current economics that it is evident that we are in for a big change. That change is underway.
DiCarlo: As we shift from a five sensory species to a multi-sensory species, and as we recognize ourselves to be immortal souls first and physical beings secondly, and also as power shifts from being external to being authentic and inwardly derived, what effect will that have in business?
Zukav: The soul is that part of an individual which strives for harmony, cooperation, sharing and reverence for Life. As individuals begin the process of aligning their personalities with their souls they move towards these values. So every aspect of business...
DiCarlo: Well, let's take the example of leadership. How might leadership change as a result of the changing perceptions and values you've mentioned?
Zukav: Leadership today is based upon the perception of power as external. A leader has more external power-more ability to manipulate and control-than others. A business leader can say, "Do this" and you must do it. If you don't, you'll lose your job, or your life will become miserable-or at least unpleasant. Maybe you'll lose a promotion, or a stock option. Leaders assume responsibility, and for this they are given the authority to direct the activities of others. When I went through infantry officer candidate school, I wore a patch on my shoulder that had a sword over the words, "Follow Me." That concept of leadership is not what individuals who are growing in authentic power gravitate toward or desire.
Leadership is a state of mind. If you have a need to build an empire or to dominate a market, you are driven by fear. But if you have an inspiration that excites you and fulfills you, one in which there is no fear, then you will move into your activities with joy, and you will attract other people who are similarly oriented. As you step forward, others of like interest will constellate around you. You will be the pole star that magnetizes their interests. They will align the parts of themselves that are interested in the same thing with you. Then, as a leader, you will support, coordinate, and nurture them. The people with whom you are working will be more important to you than the activity that has brought you together. Your activity is the means by which you have attracted one another.
This means that, as a leader, you will spend a lot of your time interacting, heart to heart, with fellow souls. In business now, all of this is excluded by intention. If too much concern is given to an individual, someone within the organization who is impatient for results-usually a leader-will say, "Let's get to the bottom line." "This doesn't really have to do with why we're together." As you become authentically empowered, you become interested in Life. That means other people. So business will no longer be the arena in which primarily you strive to accumulate profit at any emotional cost. And, as we can see by looking at our global ecology, at great physical cost, too. It will become an arena in which you interact consciously with fellow souls for the purpose of mutual spiritual growth.
DiCarlo: How might decision-making change in business?
Zukav: Decision making today is primarily an intellectual function. We use logics and understandings that originate in the mind. These logics and understandings are linear and exclusionary. That is, you cannot think of one thing without excluding others. You cannot understand something one way and understand it in other ways simultaneously. We are now developing a higher order of logic and understanding that originates in the heart. The heart is inclusive. It accepts. The intellect judges. The higher order of logic and understanding that originates in the heart comprehends non-linear realities and simultaneous realms of truth.
All of this effects decision-making in all aspects of life, including business. It means that intuitive processes will replace intellectual processes as the main decision-making faculty in business, as in all other human activities.
DiCarlo: What will happen to the intellect?
Zukav: The intellect will not be discarded. A business executive may have a hunch about which area of activity to move into. Once she decides that, she can use her intellect. For example, she may have a hunch to produce a certain product, and then use market analyses to confirm that there is a receptivity for the product, and then use statistical quality control to produce it well. But the mind will no longer be the boss, the "leader" in the old sense. Decision-making will be intuitive. The logic and understanding utilized will be the higher order of logic and understanding of the heart.
Collective decisions will be made by consensus. This is inconceivable to the business community now. We cannot imagine an efficient organization that's run by concensus. That is because there is so much dissension and pain-which are the same things-in business today. So the ability to make decisions by concensus will require that an organization's environment be transformed into one of safety for all involved.
DiCarlo: Would all decisions be made collectively, or would there be some decisions that would be deferred to particular individuals within the organization, who have been given proper authority.
Zukav: Whether that happens or not would be a consensual decision. Every time someone writes a letter it does not have to be approved by other people. If you trust your colleagues, and you know in your heart that their intentions are to contribute to your good and to the good of the whole, then it will be easy for you to say, "Do what you know needs to be done." Later, if it doesn't work out, the appropriate part of the community can come together to understand what went wrong, or why it didn't feel good to everyone involved. This is quite different from a manager executing external power because he has seniority, or political skills that have elevated him or her in the hierarchy of external power. In that case, there is no trust in either direction. There is simply the necessity to do what must be done in order to survive physically-to keep your job.
Imagine a work environment in which you like the people that you are working with. You are interested in who they are. You are interested in their children. You are interested in their spiritual partnerships. You like being with them. You like growing with them. It's not always easy but you know that the friction between you is what allows you to grow, and to recognize patterns of behavior within yourself that need to be released in order for you to grow spiritually, to become more whole.
In that context, imagine what a delight it is to work with and to accomplish projects with your colleagues. That is our future.
DiCarlo: Are there any other implications we need to discuss-we've touched upon economics and business-that would be relevant to our discussion, regarding the consequences of moving from being a five sensory human to a multi-sensory human? For example, the judicial system, government, medicine, environment and personal relationships.
Zukav: All of them are changing dramatically. The changes that are now underway in the business world, and the changes that are underway in health, education, the military, science, art, law and every other human endeavor are parts of the same change. The changes that are underway inside millions of individuals now are also the same change. There is one change occurring, and all of these are different expression of that change.
Changes in the way that you relate to your brothers and sisters, your spiritual partner, yourself as a male and to other males, or yourself as a female and to other females, are all parts of the same change.
DiCarlo: In talking with a number of individuals whom I've interviewed, there has been quite a variance in opinion as to when this shift from a five sensory species to a multi-sensory species might take place. Ken Wilber for example says he doesn't feel these changes will effect most people for another couple hundred years. Peter Russell on the other hand suggests that these changes are immanent.
Zukav: They are immanent from an evolutionary point of view. A hundred years is less than an eye-blink in terms of our evolution, but I think that they will happen faster than that. Look inside yourself, and you will see how fast change is occurring. Now try to understand what humans three generations from now will be like if this change continues or accelerates. Also, the change that is now occurring is non-linear. As you open to your heart, you open to multiple realities in which nonlinear change is occurring.
DiCarlo: If someone were to come to you and say, "Why should I choose to develop into a multi-sensory human being?" what would you tell them?
Zukav: You are in the process of becoming multi-sensory, as are all humans. Humanity is becoming multi-sensory.
This transition is not yet complete, but within several generations, the human species will be very different than it is today. One of those differences will be that every human will be multi-sensory.
Being multi-sensory and being authentically empowered are not the same. To become authentically empowered requires that you align your personality with your soul. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is where intention and courage are often required. To align your personality with your soul means that you consciously strive for harmony, cooperation, sharing and reverence for Life. This can be difficult.
So to someone who says, "Why should I become a multi-sensory and authentically empowered human being?" I would say, "Humanity is becoming multi-sensory. It is not a matter of choice." To the question of why you should become authentically empowered, I would say, "To heal the pain in your life." This is not something that you have to do. You have free will. But you are a creative being and if you don't, you will continue to create unconsciously, and to experience the pain that you are experiencing now.
DiCarlo: How would you characterize the experience of authentic power?
Zukav: Joyful. Complete. Engaged. Fulfilling. The first time I experienced this was writingThe Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics. I had never been interested in physics before, and I was not interested in it when I got invited to a weekly meeting at the Lawrence-Berkley Laboratory in Berkley, California, by a physicist friend of mine. I went because I wanted to see what scientists looked like.