Glimpses of an Ecological Consciousness

Recognition of the role of consciousness in shaping our experience, our perceptions, our expectations, and, ultimately, our actions is one of the most powerful themes to emerge in Western societies during the twentieth century, another Copernican revolution according to Willis Harman (1988). He notes Nobel neurological scientist, Roger Sperry’s observation: “Current concepts of the mind—brain relation involve a direct break with long-established materialist and behaviorist doctrine that has dominated neuroscience for many decades. Instead of renouncing or ignoring consciousness, the new interpretation gives full recognition to the primacy of inner conscious awareness as a causal reality” (Harman, 1988, p. 11). How we think, how we interpret what we see, indeed, what we see and experience is recognized as critical in the unfolding of our history and our lives. Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela (1987), Chilean biologists of cognition and consciousness, assert that we “bring forth a world.” Fritjof Capra (2002) has summarized their cognitive theory another way, “The process of knowing is the process of life ... . The organizing activity of living systems, at all levels of life, is mental activity” (p. 34).