What about consciousness? The dictionary refers to it as a state of awareness of one’s own impressions and feelings. Where do outer and inner merge? Where do large quantities of anything and personal feelings connect?

Could the principle of the Tao describe what we call mass consciousness? The Tao can be explained in simple fashion by saying that when water flowing downhill meets an obstacle, it simply waits until it gathers sufficient volume and force to flow over or around the object and establish a new path.

Does mass consciousness then occur when thoughts and feelings of individuals attract similar force from others until they flow over as a climate, an influential whole that is greater than the sum of its parts?

For 2000 years we’ve been immersed in the age of Pisces, symbolized by two fishes with their tails hooked together while trying to swim in opposite directions. History shows this duality swinging back and forth, pen-dulum fashion, from darkness to renaissance; from paganism to Christianity; from bondage to insistence upon freedom; from wars based upon religious and political issues once popular to marches for peace. Have we understood these tides?

Not at all. It’s impossible to understand evolution or the direction of change while we’re moving through it. And change, because of our need to hold on to the familiar, is something we resist. Have we resisted from the standpoint of mass consciousness, or from personal reactions to uncertainty and fear? These rhetorical questions could be argued forever.

In the l600th century Descartes, French philosopher and mathematician, insisted that human existence, freedom, and even the existence of God were matters of philosophy and science and not of religion. For the next two centuries, humanity was over-shadowed by its pessimistic view of planet Earth as a small and insignificant particle of sand; man an "evolutionary accident" who survived by devouring the animals who wanted to devour him.

Through this period human beings vainly sought for purpose and direction. With a one-sided philosophy that looked toward the external universe and yet lacked knowledge of con-sciousness, however, we’d think of it today as trying to make sense of a jigsaw puzzle where half of the pieces were missing.

For the next 500 years, in the chilly predawn light of the coming Aquarian age, man grew more illumined. But he still felt alone, separate and forgotten by God. Finally yawning and stretching, he began dreaming of ways in which he could fulfill his longing for redemption, comfort and peace. Perhaps that’s when an exodus began to the shores of the North American continent, the land that was destined to become a melting pot, a vision of hope for all on the face of the Earth.

With this bold move, a new paradigm opened, a desire for the freedom to want and seek more and better. Was it mass consciousness that moved these hardy souls, or the choice of awakening individuals expressing free will?

If we are to approach this enigma and consider the extent to which a larger influence might overshadow individual free will, it appears that we must stretch our minds and question further. Where are we going? What do we want, and what forces direct the masses of fellow travelers who march by our side?

If it were possible to identify one thing that human beings want, what would it be? Could there be a common denominator for all? Let’s hy-pothesize and say in the fewest possible words that what everyone wants is simply more and better. Of course we know that in some parts of the world right now people would be happy for any kind of food and any sort of shelter at all.

In America, however, individuals are heard to say they want more health, peace, com-panionship, love or money; better jobs, cars, relationships or homes. The list is endless, and so are people’s interpretations of their desire. The person who robs a bank wants more and better but chooses an unwise way to get it. The person who takes someone else’s child wants more and better, unaware of an inviolable karmic law that would advise against it.

With each successive phase of civilization, leaders and vis-ionaries have pulled ideas from the ethers and produced new symbols of progress. Behind them, the broad middle segments of society all have reacted in separate ways and then settled into patterns of adjustment. Reactionaries, the remaining number who resist change, get dragged along, grumblingand resisting, eventually to be absorbed into a new system.

Newcomers to the shores of America, in slightly over 100 of their first years, performed within these three separate roles. They fought for and declared inde-pendence on American soil, then they fought between themselves until agreement for a unity of sorts could be agreed upon so they could move ahead.

Finally, late in the 1800’s with Civil War declared to be over, reactionaries still grumbled over issues of North and South. But a new influence entered. Victoria, Queen of England and later the Empress to India, caught the attention and then the fancy of a young western nation weary of struggle.

Now the pendulum of Piscean duality swung from smoke, destruction and the horrors of war. Visionaries of the day eagerly imported and then manufactured reproductions of Her Majesty’s style and elegance. From ornate home furnishings, her gowns and her hair to the carriages in which she rode, anything "Victorian" became a demand. Ladies adopted long, high-heeled boots with dainty buttons or laces. Ankle length dresses featured pinched-in corseted waists and form-fitting skirts. Ornate feathered hats adorned high-piled hair; and of course such ladies could only be courted by well-dressed gentlemanly gentlemen. Was this mass consciousness, or was it individual relief after four devastating years of war?

Whatever it was, this era can be looked back upon as prelude for even more and greater changes to follow in the 20th and last century of the millennium, when new inventions, one after another, would leap into being — each one a building stone for the next.

Although Americans still tilled fields with simple tools and pumped water from wells by 1900, many folks already had migrated to cities. Edison’s electricity had unleashed a host of other dis-coveries, and before long such items as air conditioners and refrigerators came into use. Telephones, Gillette safety razors and the Sears Roebuck catalog appeared. Film, invented in the 1880’s by a man named Eastman sparked Edison’s interest, and moving pictures soon followed.

By 1911 Edison’s work had changed the world. Air travel, too, had caught on, and that year Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to fly. In ballrooms all across the country the airplane waltz" that required dancers’ arms to be extended like wings, became a craze.

Pisces swung again when Germans sank the Lucitania in 1914. World War II was declared, and women started working outside their homes. Six years later they demanded and won the right to vote. The "roaring twenties" brought new dreams and visions of wealth and ease that mounted until the infamous stock market crash of 1929 brought them tumbling down.

In spite of the "Great Depression" that followed, progress in this country continued. By 1931 the Empire State Building, 125 stories high, was completed. Yet without a simple, ratchet-operated safety device already invented to enable the safety of elevators, this "skyscraper" could not have existed.

That year, in addition, the first World’s Fair opened and Henry Ford exhibited an assembly line production destined to put the world on wheels. In rapid succession, within the area of transportation, came the opening of the Panama Canal, completion of the Lincoln Tunnel — creating a complex of five underground roadways needed for growing urban traffic, and construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. This marvel of sus-pension engineering 65 stories high, with cables three feet in diameter, linked shores formerly separated by juncture of the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate strait.

1945 brought World War II and displays of power and weaponry that further changed the world. Only a scant eight years later the space age began with communist technology and the chagrin of Americans whose first rocket toppled into flames and dust. A Russian cosmonaut was first, too; but with Alan Shepard’s successful flight a month later, President Kennedy inspired the nation by saying, "Let’s shoot for the moon."

This brief sketch only skims the surface of outer changes that persons of seventy or eighty summers well remember. No mention yet has been made of computer technology, the field of communication, nor of the con-sciousness explosion during the decade of the ‘70s. The questions are, how free is free will, and what perhaps mass consciousness, like other terms we’ve outgrown, no longer fills our needs. Contem-plating the metamorphic Cosmic Destiny of Pisces and the shim-mering future of Aquarian promise, it would appear that Cosmic Consciousness is the actual track upon which we’ve run.

Every Christmas for a very long time we’ve sung of peace on Earth, good will toward men. Inspired by this hope, yet scarcely daring to believe it can happen, visionaries have gathered in prayer and meditation and performed acts of brotherly love. The broad middle segment of society talks the talk and tries its best to walk a better path. Those of reactionary ten-dencies sometimes surprise even themselves by making spiritual turn arounds.