I’ve been thinking about human evolution lately. Not where we come from, but where we headed. To better understand this I ventured to Focus 35, a realm where it?s possible to connect with nonphysical beings that have gathered to observe and aid humanity as we enter an important phase of our development.

When I arrived I asked for guidance by someone who could show me an example of another world in which evolution paralleled what is going on here on Earth. There I met Xan.

Xan appeared to me as a point of light. He made no effort to present himself in any particular way that I could associate with a physical form. But once we established contact he communicated to me that he had lived many physical lives on planet known as Ikthiar. This is a rough phonetic pronunciation that represents my best replication of his language.

After making our connection, Xan offered to take me to his world for a tour and a history lesson. I agreed and set my intention to follow him as we set out across space-time to return to his planet of origin. The star field I often associate with Focus 35 winked into blackness and I felt a sensation of movement through nothingness that lasted for perhaps ten seconds. Then the darkness brightened to reveal an aerial view of a forested planet.

With Xan at my side I soared over verdant tree-covered hills, large bodies of iridescent water, and tranquil slow moving rivers. From my bird?s eye view the topography resembled a vast broadleaf forest that may have been what the Appalachian Mountains looked like 1,000 years ago. Greens and blues dominated the color pallet of the landscape and the sky, but on closer inspection I saw more earthly grays and browns as I picked out stones and soil amid the fecund vegetation.

The planet appeared remarkably Earthlike, yet curiously I saw no signs of cities, roads, farms, or any other indication of inhabitation. I asked Xan how such a pristine planet could represent a parallel transition in the evolution of his species.

“This is our world as it exists today. It was not always this way,? he said. ?What you see before you is evidence that our troubled past has long been healed. Very few of our kind still inhabit this world in physical bodies. A select few do so because they volunteer to be physical caretakers of our planet. The rest have evolved to a nonphysical existence. This is the happy ending to a very long story. Let me go back a few millennia and start there.”

We stopped in midflight and as two points of light we hovered effortlessly in the air a few thousand feet above the landscape below. Then Xan began to explain. ?Like humans we were a warlike species that fought over limited resources. Tribal similarities were our strongest bonds. Beyond those small groups we had no sense of loyalty at all. We were quick to anger over the slightest of perceived insults. We skirmished and raped and pillaged as a way of life. We had little respect for ourselves, less respect for our enemies and no respect for our planet.

“In our desire to defeat our perceived enemies we looked for anything that might give us an advantage. For this we turned to the resources of our planet. Our world had an active molten core and we used geothermal energy as our primary source of power. We did this not because we were concerned with pollution, which would never have entered our minds, but rather because the planet was already hot and we were lazy. Why take the trouble to generate heat when you can use what is already there?

“We dug deep within the ground to tap the molten center of our planet and to draw from it the heat we needed to power our society. As we were only concerned with our own tribal energy wells or those we could forcibly acquire from our enemies, we paid no attention to the overall impact that we were having on the planet.

“War kept our planetary population in check but it also brought about an increasing dependence upon the planet for additional energy to fuel our weapons of destruction. As more and more energy wells were dug, greater amounts of energy were directed toward the surface. We needed to move that energy from place to place, so in addition to the primary vertical shafts we also dug a lattice work of diagonal and horizontal tunnels to transfer the energy to different locations. This lattice work was so extensive that it undermined the stability of our planet?s crust.

“Our unchecked mining and burrowing ushered in a period of great volcanism on the planet. Eruptions were small at first. Little more than explosions here and there as the tunnels expanded due to trapped pockets of superheated magma and gas. But they grew stronger and more widespread as the hot magma from within the planet?s core melted and widened the channels that we had dug. Our tunnels created lava vents that released huge amounts of energy. And they directed the explosions directly toward our population centers.

“Soon more people were being killed from the explosions than from our wars. But we didn?t care for the misfortunes of our enemies. We considered their losses to be our gain. At first we devoted more effort to figuring out how to benefit from their destruction than we did to solving our own problems. But an even bigger problem was developing.

“As the heat trapped within the core of our planet poured into our atmosphere it caused a rapid change in our environment. Weather changed. Food sources failed. And our warlike tendencies made matters even worse. We used the excess geothermal energy to fuel our weapons of war to fight each other over our dwindling resources. We may well have erased ourselves from the planet if we had kept up our battles for much longer.

“But another problem developed that we could not ignore. As our climate changed it became difficult to breathe. All the venting of energy was literally changing the gaseous combination of our atmosphere. We eventually realized we would soon asphyxiate if we didn?t do something.

“This invisible threat was sufficiently frightening that we united in an effort to resolve it. Although banding together went against our natures, we accepted the wisdom of our leaders that the only way to survive would be to work together to find a way to change our atmosphere before it was too late. At that point we only had two ideas in common. First, we needed to work together to solve our problem. Second, once the problem was solved we would go back to our old ways of fighting one another. But those two beliefs were enough for us to begin cooperating.

“At first we tried to seal the energy vents but that quickly proved futile since anything covering the vents soon melted away. After studying the problem for a while we realized that the best way to save the planet was to increase our vegetative cover because the plants would draw out the poisonous gases and return them to the soil, while replenishing the life giving air we needed to breathe. So we choose some of the fastest growing plants on our planet and began to cultivate them in nurseries. Then we started planting them across our denuded hillsides. Our scientists worked to find and breed new species of plants that would grow closer to the geothermal vents and pull even more of the noxious gases from our air.

“As this was a planet wide problem it was not solved overnight. But as this processes scaled up our entire economy shifted. More and more individuals dedicated themselves to growing, planting, and tending the plants. And many others acted to support those people who were working directly with the plants. By necessity we learned the power of cooperation.

“In time the benefits of cooperation grew so obvious that they became the preferred way of living. After three generations of this, the plans that our grandparents made for returning to our previous warlike existence seemed more like the subject for our history books than a prescription for our future. Within a few more generations our previous warlike existence was considered to be our legendary strength but not our current way of being,? said Xan.

“Fascinating,” I replied. “I can certainly see parallels with our own planet. But it gives me hope for the future.”

“This history I’ve recounted glosses over many difficulties we encountered on the way to resolving our problems,” said Xan, “but it points out that it took a common crisis to bring our people together. This is a fairly frequent theme in the development of intelligent species, but the outcome of the crisis depends upon the collective wisdom and capabilities of the individuals, the societies involved, and the species as a whole.”

“And there’s the rub,” I said.

“Cooperation and self-organizing systems are a natural development as intelligence and complexity increase,” Xan continued. “But that transition need not follow a prescriptive path. Free will always dominates. Our species was lucky. Or rather we were lucky that we chose the path of prudence and diligence when we did. We chose to do what was necessary to survive even though it went against our natural way of being. Your species has yet to negotiate the transition. That is why so many of us have gathered to observe and render assistance to humanity at this time.”

With that concluding remark we left his world and returned through the blackness to the star field where we met. Then I thanked Xan for his tour and his teaching and returned my full awareness to my body.