Because it is customary in Western civilization to think of evolution solely as a biological phenomenon, we have left it to the biologists to name the species. However, as we can see when we look at our evolutionary story as a whole, a new species was born about 25,000 years ago when Homo sapiens sapiens was given the great gift of self-reflective Intelligence, which distinguishes human beings from the other animals and machines, like computers. We can call this psychospiritual species Homo divinus, a term that is not unknown on the Web.

But this species is not really new, as Eckhart Tolle, for instance, suggests in the final paragraph of A New Earth, being enthusiastically promoted by Oprah Winfrey: “A new species is arising on the planet. It is arising now, and you are it!”

In a similar fashion, in the Zorba the Buddha discourses given in January 1979, Osho simply called the new species Homo novus, no longer split, not suffering from schizophrenia, detached from Reality, from the Greek skhizein ‘to split’ and phren ‘mind’.

In a letter published in the December-February 2005/2006 issue of the What is Enlightenment? magazine, now called EnlightenNext, Barbara Marx Hubbard, founder of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution and the Evolutionary Edge, went much further, suggesting these names for our emerging species: Homo universalis, Homo noeticus, Homo spiritus, and Homo sapiens sapiens sapiens.

So what is really happening today is that we are rediscovering our true Divine, Cosmic nature. For tragically, when the analytical mind began to dominate evolutionary processes about 5,000 years ago at the dawn of recorded history, many began to lose touch with our Divine origin and Homo divinus split into two subspecies, which we can call Homo divinus analyticus and Homo divinus divinus, neither of which can lead to Wholeness, the union of all opposites.

Thankfully, however, this deep split between science, philosophy, religion, and economics, on the one hand, and mysticism, on the other, is being reconciled through the healing power of the Principle of Unity, which is leading to a third subspecies, which we can call Homo divinus universalis.

The second diagram on the vision page illustrates the ontogenetic differences between these three subspecies of Homo divinus. First, Homo divinus analyticus is engaged primarily on the relentless movement away from Reality, through the divergent tendencies of evolution emerging from Formlessness into form. Secondly, Homo divinus divinus marks the turning back of a minority of the population towards our Divine Source in Oneness, essentially with ‘no-mind’. Thirdly, in Homo divinus universalis, all the divergent streams of evolution converge in Wholeness at its Omega point, before turning back to Reality through a dying, involutionary process.

So Homo divinus divinus and Homo divinus universalis are countercultural movements, not understood by the mainstream cultures of the world. Both movements are happening as evolution makes the transmission from the patriarchal epoch to the androgynous Age of Light at the end of time through a great spiritual renaissance and scientific revolution.

But how are Homo divinus divinus and Homo divinus universalis emerging from Homo divinus analyticus? Well, if we look at biological evolution, in general, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. For instance, individual oaks, lizards, herrings, thrushes, and giraffes, develop characteristics similar to those of their parents and hence of their species as a whole. A similar situation applies to the evolution of civilizations. When we are young, we tend to learn what our parents and teachers want us to learn; we are programmed or culturally conditioned like machines, suppressing our Natural Intelligence as human automata. That, essentially, is how civilizations maintain themselves.

However, if evolution always followed this pattern, no new species or civilizations could ever emerge. In a process that is still poorly understood, new species and civilizations emerge because innovative individuals develop characteristics that are different from their parents, after which phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny. And in general, these ‘rebellious’ individuals have a pretty hard time of it at first because all structures, including species and civilizations, have a tendency for self-preservation, called homeostasis in systems theory.

During the conflict-ridden patriarchal epoch, when the 20-odd civilizations identified by Arnold Toynbee in A Study of History were mostly focused on the outward movement of evolution, those seeking to return to Reality did not really fit into their prevailing cultures. Their ontogeny did not recapitulate the phylogeny of the society into which they had been born.

Foremost among these were Siddhartha Gautama and Jesus of Nazareth, who were both rebels, in whose names two major religions were formed: Buddhism, from buddha ‘awakened one’, and Christianity, from khristos ‘anointed one’, Greek translation of Hebrew masiah ‘messiah’. But these and other religions were generally more exoteric than esoteric as the analytical mind emerged to dominate the psyche. So comparatively few people could be identified as members of Homo divinus divinus. The time was not yet right for this to happen. The analytical mind first had to develop as far as it could until it reached the evolutionary cul-de-sac it is in today.

However, turning one’s back on the various cultures into which we are born is far from easy. By the time we are three years of age, most of us are so conditioned by the culture we are born into that becoming free of these restraints in later life presents an immense challenge. For both the education system and business world are designed to prevent us from discovering that Love is the Divine Essence that we all share, that Consciousness is the overall Context for all our lives, and that we are all one, not separate from God, Nature, or any other being for a single instant in our lives.

Nevertheless, more and more people are becoming free of what William Blake aptly called our ‘mind-forged manacles’, leading to the spread of Homo divinus divinus and Homo divinus universalis, returning Home to Oneness and Wholeness, respectively. As these subspecies are expanding through the ontogeny of individuals following a radically different path from the mainstream of Western civilization, we look briefly at the characteristics of these developments in three further pages.