We are living at a crucial and very dangerous time, a period unprecedented in human history. The Earth has not undergone anything comparable to the order of devastation and destruction on the scale witnessed today — with disturbance and even termination of its geo-biological architecture — since the global redefinition 67 million years ago. Nothing since approaches the current extent of the mass extinctions, alterations of climate, toxicities in the biosphere, or geological imbalances. Rather than strive at any cost to reverse our devastation of natural systems, we continue to exploit most of the world in the name of a 'progress' no longer commensurate with human and planetary survival. We face worldwide starvation, gruesome wars and rampant terrorism; we witness addiction, violence and suicide among children and adolescents in epidemic proportions. Like proverbial canaries in coal mines, our children are telling us that much is terribly wrong.

In the US, corporate industry, government, education and media possess our consciousness and evoke compulsions toward limitless consumption. Transnational corporations control natural resources of vast regions of the planet yet shun their proportionate responsibility for public welfare. Much education is impoverished and imprisoned in institutional hierarchies while our families and communities disintegrate. We live oppressed by impenetrable bureaucracies that usurp our time and energy while we deny ourselves the wisdom and inspiration to be found in great music and the arts.

These emergencies call for nothing less than a planetary transformation in consciousness — the greatest in human history — and a realization that short of such global transformation, the societies of humankind and most bio-systems of the planet are in grave danger of annihilation. The burning question is how we might awaken an experience of our world and each other which is ethical, non-exploitative, compassionate and mutually enhancing.

The transformation of the myriad devastating crises we face will be envisioned and implemented, as transformation always has been, by gifted people with creative solutions. Our terrifying dilemma is that: a) Our educational institutions and societal networks systematically ignore the unique needs and passions of often tormented gifted young people; and b) We fail to nurture in our schools and universities the creativity and humane priorities that will empower young people to envision and bring about a unifying 're-genesis' in humankind: a resonant existence in and experience of the world. Those of this rising generation must become global citizens of the new millennium: prophetic, visionary leaders, prepared to peacefully and powerfully re-create the institutions with which they will work, awakening in them a new perception of existence.

Reversing these crises in education is perhaps the greatest challenge facing humanity. Most urgently this desperate situation creates crucial mandates for institutions of higher learning, which presently prepare and train young people to enter into, maintain and advance the very corporate/industrial and government institutions fostering the exploitation of nature and cultural vibrancy. The prevailing spiritual bankruptcy of our systems of education, misguided media, dehumanized technology and destructive lifestyles conspires to destroy the inspiration and humanity of young people. Neither are often rekindled in college age students and they remain unprepared to transform and guide — unprepared to accomplish what they must to assure human and planetary survival. To transform education and the incredible damage being inflicted therein, we must access the most fundamental core elements of human consciousness and catalyze the underlying and intuitive dynamics of the creative process. Music and art can be the key.

Music, perhaps most powerfully, enhances the organically interwoven dimensions of creativity, improvisation, vision and intuition, as it fulfills our yearning and reflects the very core of our beings. It has the power to significantly curtail the addictions, suicides and violent dysfunctions suffered by our children, and it enhances every mode of cognition we know how to measure. Music also touches the fundamental and universal aspects of our souls and therefore has an unmatched power to nurture and guide the creative inspiration we need to assure our survival as planetary beings. Furthermore, as the art and science of the vibration, music mirrors the waves and vibrations underlying the most fundamental causative principles found in nature and the very life-forms we are struggling to save.

Profound mysteries are unlocked through music; in it we (like its sublimely inspired composers) glimpse a transcendent, ineffable vision of absolute beauty and truth, the ultimate ground of being spoken about in so many mystical traditions. Music reflects these glorious patterns and topological foldings of crystalline perfection upon which the great mathematical concepts, graphic tessellations, innate improvisatory archetypes, and other fluid abstract structures of creative giants are shaped. In other words, the universe and the fabric of our minds are shaped the way they would sound. It is through music that we may most readily touch and gain access to the implicate order of the cosmos. Yet, music may be most important because, as John Blacking pointed out in How Musical is Man?, "it prepares us for the task of learning how to love."

What the world needs now, in schools but as much so in universities, is what we can only call 'visionary education'. Visionary education would provide an experience of how one enters the realm of the sacred, awakening capacities to re-imagine a world where we live in harmonious being with ourselves, others, and the universe. It is thus that the world we see hurtling towards social and ecological ruin can be renewed; universities must prepare innovators able to communicate their visions in ways which might awaken those enabling and endorsing non-sustainable modes of being. As a reflection of nature's vibratory patterns and causative principles, it is music that contains the blueprints of planetary vitality and the heights of human revelation and ecstasy. Such a foundation for 'visionary education' can empower its students (soon our leaders in government and industry) to access this harmonic wisdom within to guide their work in global transformation. To speak about the crises facing the planet, we have long used terms such as 'disharmony' and 'discord'. This is not merely metaphor; our industrial, governmental and educational institutions have long been out of resonant alignment with needs and aspirations of its people and the cycles and vibrations of nature.

We must go beyond empowering creativity — we must inspire creative prophets, poets and visionaries. Yes, there is music everywhere that dulls our spirits or excites only our sensual, primal or even animal natures; but it is music transcendent with beauty, splendor, and glory that uplifts us and can ignite creative vision. Learning, improvising and performing sacred music written of divine contemplation and compassionate solace liberates and awakens talents to inspire and transform, and is our greatest hope for a future generation committed to global healing and social renewal.

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