Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword by Jane Goodall, Ph.D., DBE

PART ONE

Perennial Questions and the New Answers

1 Who Are We?
A NEW CONCEPT OF THE WORLD
A NEW CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS
AN IN-FORMED WORLD

2 Why Are We Here?
INDICATIONS OF PURPOSE IN THE DIRECTION OF EVOLUTION

3 New Answers
WHO WE ARE
WHY WE ARE HERE

PART TWO

The Meaning of the New Answers for Our Life and Times

4 The New Answers Re-Enchant Our Worldview
Kingsley L. Dennis

5 The New Answers and the Power of Purpose
Emanuel Kuntzelman

6 The New Answers and the Goals of Contemporary Social Change Maria Sagi

7 The New Answers and the Purpose of Business
Dawna Jones

8 The New Answers and the Wisdom Traditions
Shamik Desai

9 The New Answers--A Meaning for This Life and the Next
John R. Audette

10 The New Answers and the Challenge: Reconciling Science and Spirituality with Life
Garry Jacobs

Afterword by James O’Dea

Biographical Notes on the Author and Contributors

Books by Ervin Laszlo: A Selected Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Ervin Laszlo is a philosopher and systems scientist. Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, he has published more than 75 books and over 400 articles and research papers. The subject of the one-hour PBS special Life of a Modern-Day Genius, Laszlo is the founder and president of the international think tank the Club of Budapest and of the prestigious Laszlo Institute of New Paradigm Research. He lives in Tuscany.

Reviews

“From the time when the conscious universe was a preposterous notion to today, when it’s a cutting-edge idea full of promise for your future, Ervin Laszlo has been its staunch champion. Now he and his colleagues press the argument with even more urgency and depth. I concur that consciousness must be regarded as the ground state of existence. Only when we begin to see ourselves embedded in a reality where mind, body, ecology, planet Earth, and the cosmos are all expressions of the same consciousness will we truly know who we are.”
*Deepak Chopra, coauthor of You Are the Universe*

“Ervin Laszlo is without any doubt one of the greatest scientists and philosophers of our time. His seminal concepts of the Akashic holofield and the connectivity hypothesis represent an extraordinary intellectual achievement that will be seen in the future as a critical landmark in the history of science. Laszlo succeeded in something previously deemed impossible--creating a ‘map of everything’ that dissolves the boundaries between natural sciences, psychology, philosophy, and spirituality. In his latest book, The Intelligence of the Cosmos, Laszlo summarizes in a clear and captivating style his profound understanding of the nature of reality and human nature that has emerged from six decades of his unrelenting search for truth. His work might become the cornerstone of the new comprehensive scientific worldview of the twenty-first century.”
*Stanislav Grof, M.D., author of Beyond the Brain and Psychology of the Future*

“Professor Ervin Laszlo, author of the 1987 world-changing classic Evolution: The Grand Synthesis, again gives us a great work for the future, The Intelligence of the Cosmos: Why Are We Here? New Answers from the Frontiers of Science. For the entire past century science has inched steadily toward a synthesis of physics, cosmology, and biology. Increasingly cosmology looks more and more like evolutionary biology, and intelligence is discovered in the tiniest nooks and crannies of the universe. Now comes the bold step in which Laszlo points out the obvious, showing us that the universe is a living intelligent being. This book is science at its most engaging and absolute best!”
*Allan Combs, Ph.D., professor at the California Institute for Integral Studies and author*

“In 1897 the French painter Paul Gauguin titled one of his masterpieces Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? The painting ended up in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. But those questions, and many others brilliantly embraced in this remarkable work, The Intelligence of the Cosmos, continue to haunt every aspect of our lives. Ervin Laszlo and colleagues have gently and demonstrably entered a domain of that luminous haunting, that “supercoherence” which they reveal to be rooted to the quintessential mysteries of all life forms: life’s origins, destiny, and seemingly incomprehensible, flickering instant of Being. It is a book like no other and offers a remarkable and hopeful context for better navigating these colossally challenging times—for biodiversity, for humanity, and for something indescribable shaping our entire universe and ourselves. Indeed, this may be the most important book ever written on the subject of consciousness, against the backdrop of a starry night and the alluring earth beneath our feet.”
*Michael Charles Tobias, Ph.D., president of Dancing Star Foundation*

“I highly recommend this timely cutting-edge material from Ervin Laszlo, as it brings together science-based evidence in a way to understand the transformational revolution and new insights into consciousness and the evolution of humankind taking place now!”
*Kevin Moore, host of The Moore Show*