Books/Articles | Space is not Empty

A BIBLIOGRAPHY TRACING BOOKS DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY REFERENCING FIELD AWARENESS & RELATIONAL INTELLIGENCE (1992 – 2009)

This list was originally developed by Alan Briskin in 2009 for a presentation to the Society of Organizational Learning (SOL)

1.  Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World - Margaret J. Wheatley (1st Edition: 1992)

"Many scientists now work with the concept of fields – invisible forces that occupy space and influence behavior. I have played with the notion that organizational vision and values act like fields, unseen but real forces that influence people’s behavior. This is quite different from more traditional notions that vision is an evocative message about some desired future state delivered by a charismatic leader.” Margaret Wheatley

2.  Sitting in the Fire: Large Group Transformation Using Conflict and Diversity - Arnold Mindell (1995)

… “the atmosphere of a group – its humidity, dryness, tensions, and storms. This atmosphere, or ‘field,’ permeates us as individuals and spans entire groups, cities, organizations and the environment. The field can be felt; it is hostile or loving, repressed or fluid. It consists not only of such overt, visible, tangible structures as meetings, agendas, party platforms, and rational debate but also hidden, invisible, intangible emotional processes such as jealousy, prejudice, hurt, and anger.” Arnold Mindell

3. Walking A Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice - Lauren Artress (1995)

“Sacred space is by definition the place where two worlds flow into each other, the visible with the invisible. The finite world touches the infinite. In sacred space we can let down our guard and remember who we are. The rational mind may be released. In sacred space we walk from chronos time to kairos time, as we allow our intuitive self to emerge. ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed,’ said William Blake, ‘everything would appear to humans as it really is: infinite.’” Lauren Artress

4.  Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership - Joseph Jaworski (1996)

“I continued to think about …my meeting with Bohm, which had forever changed my view of how the universe is linked together by a fabric of invisible connections…. Unseen connections create effects at a distance – quantum leaps – in places quite surprising to us…. I was aware scientists had begun to speak of “fields” to explain the connections that they observed…. ‘We are all connected and operate within living fields of thought and connection,’ he had said to me.” Joe Jaworski

5. The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe - Lynne McTaggart (1st edition, 2001)

At issue is the zero point field, the so-called "dead space" of microscopic vibrations in outer space as well as within and between physical objects on earth. These fields, McTaggart asserts, are a "cobweb of energy exchange" that link everything in the universe; they control everything from cellular communication to the workings of the mind, and they could be harnessed for unlimited propulsion fuel, levitation, ESP, spiritual healing and more. Physicists have been aware of the likelihood of this field for years, McTaggart writes, but, constrained by orthodoxy, they have ignored its effects, which she likens to "subtracting out God" from their equations. But, McTaggart asserts, "tiny pockets of quiet rebellion" against scientific convention are emerging, led by Ed Mitchell, an Apollo 14 astronaut and founder of the Institute for Noetic Sciences, an alternative-science think tank.

6. Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future

by Peter M. Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers (2004)

“Ultimately, we came to see all these aspects of presence as leading to a state of “letting come,” of consciously participating in a larger field for change. When this happens, the field shifts, and the forces shaping a situation can move from re-creating the past to manifesting or realizing an emerging future. Through our interviews, we’ve discovered similarities to shifts in awareness that have been recognized in spiritual traditions around the world for thousands of years…. Each tradition describes the shift a little differently, but all recognize it as being central to personal cultivation or maturation."

7.  Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything - Ervin Laszlo (2004/2007)

“Mystics and sages have long maintained that there exists an interconnecting cosmic field at the roots of reality that conserves and conveys information, a field known as the Akashic record. Recent discoveries in vacuum physics show that this Akashic Field is real and has its equivalent in science’s zero-point field that underlies space itself. This field consists of a subtle sea of fluctuating energies from which all things arise: atoms and galaxies, stars and planets, living beings, and even consciousness. This zero-point Akashic Field is the constant and enduring memory of the universe. It holds the record of all that has happened on Earth and in the cosmos and relates it to all that is yet to happen.” Ervin Laszlo

8. The World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter – Juanita Brown & David Isaacs (2001 dissertation/2005)

What if context is like the banks of a river through which collective meaning flows? “Our goal was not simply to have members feel good about each other. We wanted people to shift their consciousness from thinking ‘I am separate’ to thinking ‘we are one.’ " (reported by Sharif Abdullah)

9. The Great Field: Soul at Play in the Conscious Universe by - John James (2007)

Therapist John James, PhD, draws on nearly twenty years of therapeutic practice to present elegant and sometimes startling conclusions about the nature of the universe and its implications for the human experience. Drawing on the established scientific wisdom of biology and astronomy, he shows that everything that exists has been created out of and within the vast domains of energy that form the Great Field, and that soul--that energetic part of us that connects with the universe--is as powerful a creative factor in our physical and psychic development as DNA.

10. Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges - C Otto Scharmer (2009)

(first published 2007 by Society for Organizational Learning)

“The principle of whole implies that, because all human beings are connected, what happens to other people also happens to oneself. This is

not only because we share the same ecosystem and are connected through multiple interdependencies, but, most important, because we are directly connected to one another, as becomes manifest when we enter the deeper states of the social field.” “To access and activate the deeper sources of social fields, three instruments must be tuned: the open mind, open heart, and open will.” Otto Scharmer

11.  The Living Universe: Where Are We? Who Are We? Where Are

We Going? — Duane Elgin (Foreword by Deepak Chopra) (2009)

In The Living Universe, Duane Elgin marshals evidence from cosmology, biology, physics, even his participation in NASA-sponsored psychic experiments to show that the universe is actually a living field of existence and that we are always in communion with that field of aliveness whether we are conscious of it or not. This is a worldview that, as Elgin explains, is shared by virtually every spiritual tradition, and the implications of it are vast and deep. In a living system each part is integral to the whole, so each of us is intimately connected to the entire universe. Elgin eloquently demonstrates how that identity manifests itself on a whole series of levels, from subatomic to galactic. We are, he writes, far more than biological beings; we are beings of cosmic connection and dimension.

12. The Power of Collective Wisdom: And the Trap of Collective Folly by Alan Briskin, Sheryl Erickson, Tom Callanan, John

Ott, Foreword by Peter Senge (2009)

“Collective wisdom as a worldview…is an expression of the belief that there exists a field of collective consciousness – often seen and expressed through metaphor – that is real and influential, yet invisible. Collective wisdom is an orientation embedded in nature, the nature of the physical world and our own human nature. It is therefore dependent on a keen sensitivity to the natural world and our powers of observation, mediated through our senses: touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste. Yet it is also a commitment to an open-ended inquiry and understanding found beyond the established modes of conventional perception, beyond ordinary sensory experience.” Alan Briskin