The life and spiritual journey of a woman who saw humanity awakening to its place in a living universe
Before Barbara Marx Hubbard became known as a futurist and advocate of conscious evolution, she was a young woman troubled by a question she could not put aside: what was humanity going to do with its extraordinary power? Her search for an answer took her from a privileged childhood into marriage, motherhood, spiritual exploration and public life. Along the way, she sought something more intimate than a theory of civilisation. She wanted to understand why she was here, and what she could contribute.
Born in New York City on 22 December 1929, Barbara was the daughter of the successful toy manufacturer Louis Marx. She grew up surrounded by material abundance, but abundance did not settle her questions. In Conscious Evolution, she recalled recognising, even as a child, that having more toys would not make her happier. Her family’s Jewish agnostic outlook left her without a settled religious framework. She would have to discover meaning for herself.
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, when she was fifteen, made that search urgent. Humanity could now unleash forces capable of destroying entire cities. Scientific achievement alone could no longer serve as a reassuring measure of progress. She began asking what positive purpose could match this enormous capacity. The tension between technological power and spiritual maturity became a defining concern of her life.
As a student at Bryn Mawr College, Barbara spent time studying in Paris. There she explored philosophy and tried to embrace the existentialist atmosphere around her. In her later recollection, the cigarettes and red wine did little to ease her unhappiness. A universe without an inherent purpose offered her too little to live towards. She felt hopeful, yet could not explain what justified that hope.
In her book Conscious Evolution, she places a decisive encounter in a small Left Bank café in November 1948. An American artist, Earl Hubbard, sat opposite her, and she eventually asked him her persistent question about the good that might come from humanity’s new powers. His answer connected art with the search for a new image of the human being. He believed that cultures needed meaningful stories to guide them. Barbara felt she had found someone who understood what she was seeking.
They married in 1951, the year she graduated from Bryn Mawr. They had five children and built a life in Connecticut, sharing conversations about humanity’s future. Barbara helped with Earl’s writing and supported his artistic work. Yet the life she had entered with love gradually became insufficient as an expression of her own capacities. She described becoming deeply depressed while fulfilling the roles expected of a wife and mother in that period. Her commitment to her family coexisted with an increasingly insistent need for a vocation of her own.
The psychologist Abraham Maslow helped her recognise that need. His work on self-actualisation suggested that fulfilment could emerge through meaningful, absorbing activity. Barbara contacted him and invited him to lunch. He shared a network of people interested in human potential, opening doors into a wider intellectual community. She began writing to thinkers and innovators, asking about the next constructive step for humanity, and circulating their responses through her Center Letter.
A meeting with Jonas Salk in September 1964 strengthened her confidence. In her account, she told the polio vaccine pioneer about the qualities she feared were wrong with her: her fascination with the future and her desire to connect everything. Salk regarded these as capacities worth developing. Being recognised by someone she respected helped her move from uncertainty towards purposeful work. Her later insistence that people need encouragement to discover their contribution was rooted in this experience of being seen.
During these years, Barbara found intellectual and spiritual companions in the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo. Their work helped her understand her own longing as a movement of the creative spirit within life. In this evolutionary spirituality, consciousness was unfolding through the universe, and human beings could participate more knowingly in that unfolding. Her desire to grow and contribute began to feel connected to something much larger than her individual personality. Buckminster Fuller offered a complementary practical vision: humanity could apply its ingenuity to meeting everyone’s needs. Together, these influences helped her bring spiritual purpose into relationship with the possibilities of science and social change.
A profound turning point came during an afternoon walk in Connecticut in February 1966. In Conscious Evolution, Barbara remembered the bare trees against the winter sky and the scarf wrapped around her face. She had been reading the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr on community, including his reference to Saint Paul’s image of many members belonging to one body. As she walked, she wondered what story could transform humanity’s understanding of itself as deeply as the story of Christ’s birth had done.
Her thoughts grew quiet. Then, she recalled, her inner sight seemed to move beyond Earth into the darkness of space. She saw the sweep of the planet’s history unfolding before her and experienced Earth as a living presence. She felt herself to be a cell within this vast planetary body, intimately belonging to its life. What she had previously approached through reading and questioning now became an overwhelming experience of relationship.
At first, that relationship brought her into contact with suffering. She described feeling hunger, war, torture, disease and the loss of species as pain within the one body to which she belonged. Earth seemed to be struggling to breathe and to coordinate its many parts. In her vision, a shared awareness of this pain drew humanity’s attention towards the whole. Compassion became the beginning of awakening: the suffering of others could no longer be felt as entirely separate from oneself.
Then the vision changed. She described a light brighter than the sun surrounding the planet, while empathy moved through humanity. The inner barriers dividing people dissolved. Each person encountered Spirit through their own inward language and images, yet all were participating in a common experience of connection. The different functions of society, including health, education, energy, justice and spirituality, began to work together like organs within a living body. She heard a resonant tone accompanying this sense of planetary harmony.
At the heart of the experience came words she heard inwardly: “Our story is a birth. It is the birth of humankind as one body.” The message linked the teachings of Christ and other great spiritual beings with humanity’s awakening to its unity. It also carried a personal invitation: “Go tell the story of our birth.” For Barbara, the experience illuminated a vocation. She would help communicate the possibility she had felt so vividly.
One of the most tender images in her account is of humanity opening its collective eyes and smiling. She compared it to the first smile of a baby recognising its mother. Through that image, her experience of motherhood became a language for spiritual belonging: humanity might awaken to the life that had brought it forth and discover itself at home within the universe. The vision remained deeply alive in her memory. Recounting it, she wrote, felt almost like remembering something that had already happened.
Barbara Marx Hubbard's own words about her vision from 1966.
I have chosen to let Barbara Marx Hubbard herself tell about this “birth”. She had what she called «an expanded reality experience». Here is the background for her experience, the experience itself and some thoughts she made afterwards. (the excerpt is from the book Birth 2012 and beyond, published by The Shift Network):
Our crises is a birth
In 1966, I was reading Reinhold Niebuhr, a Christian philosopher and theologian, on the subject of community. He was quoting St. Paul: «For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.» Later that day I took a walk behind my home with those words ringing in my ears. It was a freezing winter day in Lakeville, Connecticut. As I contemplated that idea, I felt a deep frustration. The early Christians had a story to tell - no one knows the exact details of Jesus’ nativity – but it was one simple story that changed the world: that a child was born. Everyone from kings to peasants could understand this story. Suddenly a new question burst forth in my mind. I spoke it out loud, raising my eyes to the icy white sky: «What is our story? What in our age is a story comparable to the story of the birth of Christ?» I stopped my walk and listened with a poised mind. And the universe responded to me.
I refer to it as an «expanded reality experience». My mind’s eye suddenly was in outer space like an astronaut, while at the same time I was aware of myself as a member of the planet. I felt the Earth struggling to coordinate while the mass media was communicating pain through the nervous system of the planet. Our earth felt like a living organism. It was running out of nonrenewable energy and being polluted, and was torn apart by our overgrowth in the womb of Earth. I felt pain and suffering of hunger, wars, prisons, the destruction of other species and nature, just as if it were happening in my own body. I felt the whole Earth as one organic whole of which all of us are living members.
The movie of creation that was being presented to me kept unfolding. I then was able to see a few frames ahead into the future. In some mysterious way, it was a forecast of the story of our «birth» on the planetary scale. Empathy started to spread throughout the whole planet. The pain of one was being felt by all. We were connecting with each other, feeling with each other as members of one body.
As empathy increased, spirituality started to emerge from within us. This was not God coming from above or outside us telling us what to do or be. Instead, it was the Spirit within, rising up in each person like a great tide of love, inspiration, and oneness with the source of our being, activating us by the millions. I felt the great light that the mystics speak of radiating outward from within us all.
Then, in a flash, I felt all people on Earth, and the earth itself, being healed, spontaneously. We felt alive, excited, loving one another, filled with expectancy, and anticipation. And along with all this, the mass media began to pick up stories of people loving each other, of people being healed, people being creative. The media itself, our global nervous system, was being transformed as it communicated the real good news of our breakthroughs.
In that flashing movie-like experience, I saw that when enough of us are connected, there would be a shared feeling of joy and global coherence. In that moment of revelation, I felt waves of unconditional love for the whole planetary body and all Earth-life spreading through millions of us.
Then, something entirely different was yet again presented. I was somehow quickly taken back to the creation of the universe, to the great flaring forth. Out of «no thing at all» came forth «everything that was, is and will be.» It was like a great flash of light unfolding in a brief second that then provided a sped-up movie of creation – like the time laps films of a plant from the bulb to the stalk and then to the sudden, unexpected bloom of the flower. I tumbled through the whole 13.7 billion years of evolution, from the formation of energy, matter, Earth, primitive life, animal life, human life, to us going around the next turn on the spiral of evolution.
The universe had indeed responded to my question. Finally, the vision ended when, deep in my heart, I heard these words: «Our story is a birth. It is the birth of humankind as one body. What Christ and all the great avatars came to Earth to tell us is true. We are one, we are good, we are whole, we are being born… Go tell the story of our birth, Barbara!»
I was completely galvanized and excited by this experience. I ran home and told my husband and five children what had happened. I told them that I felt called to go forth and tell the story of the birth of ourselves as a universal humanity. As you might imagine, they were shocked by my sudden announcement of a new life mission, and they feared that I might even abandon them.
Later, while putting his small arms around me, my nine-year-old son Wade said, «Mom, you are doing what mothers should do. You are creating a future for your children. I know you love us.»
I kissed him, holding him in my arms. I told him, «Darling Wade, I love you so much. Your mother’s a pioneer and I want you all to come with me… let’s be pioneers together.»
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Almost everything I had seen in my peak experience is happening now. As we enter the period of 2012 and beyond, a growing awareness of our global crises is intensifying, especially with respect to climate change and the possible destruction of our whole life support system. We are in what philosopher Ervin Laszlo calls a «chaos point.»
Laszlo states, «A Chaos point is the crucial tipping point in the evolution of a system in which trends that have brought the system to its present state break down and it can no longer return to its prior states and modes of behavior. It is launched irreversibly on a new trajectory that leads either to breakdown or to breakthrough to a new structure and a new mode of operation.» (The Chaos Point: 2012 and Beyond, p. vii). In his essay later in this book, «Global Bifurcation: The 2012 Decision Window,» Ervin presents our choice in stark terms.
What I have also discovered since 1966 is that we cannot right the current situation by restoring or reforming old forms and structures, including governmental and religious institutions. As I pointed out earlier, they simply can’t handle the crises we are facing which, in many ways, they are still causing. We must seek new forms, new structures, and new ways of living that are vital, sustainable, and just – for all Earth life.
Fortunately, these new forms and structures are now emerging. Young «universal humans» are waking up. They are connecting and communicating at the speed of light through cell phones, Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of social networking. Systems theory shows us that small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos can jump a whole system to a higher order. This kind of quantum leap in society is a real possibility now.
Those who is part of this coherence is everyone on Earth who is waking up to greater love, purpose, compassion, connectivity, and the desire to cooperate – all those cultural cocreatives throughout the world who are committed to a better future. It also includes all believers in any faith tradition on the planet who are to go beyond the limits of their beliefs and see what resonates as true in their hearts.
What’s emerging is far more than a new religion, political party, or enterprise. I believe it’s an evolutionary breakthrough of consciousness and creativity with as great a potential as the sudden appearance of self-aware humans fifty thousand years ago. So, are we approaching a planetary birth in real time? It could happen when enough people on Earth feel interconnected and coherent as members of one planetary body. This book is a special call to the pioneering souls.
What I do believe is this: We have the resources, technologies, and know-how right now to make the world work for everyone. In fact, we may be just one small fraction of an evolutionary second away from this experience of our «birth» as a universal humanity. But do we have the will and the courage to make it happen?
The image of birth became central to her understanding of both personal and collective transformation. She saw the human family developing capacities for a more conscious participation in life, with love and responsibility guiding its growing power. The future she sensed called for people to discover their gifts and place them in service to the whole. She called this possibility conscious evolution. The vision of 1966 gave that idea a spiritual centre: the recognition that each person’s awakening could contribute to the awakening of humanity.
Following that calling also changed her personal relationships. Her marriage eventually ended as her independent public life developed. Working with John Whiteside, she pursued projects that brought people together around shared possibilities for the future; their connection became a personal partnership as well. His death in 1981 brought profound loss. Later, she shared her life with Sidney Lanier, who died in 2013. Her expansive vision unfolded alongside the attachments, separations and bereavements of an individual life.
Barbara increasingly became an organiser as well as a writer. As a founding board member of the World Future Society, she helped create spaces where long-term possibilities could be discussed. Through the Committee for the Future and the SYNCON process, she and her collaborators brought people with different interests into conversations about common goals. She wanted participants to discover what they could accomplish together, and to experience themselves as active contributors to the future.
In 1984, her name was placed in nomination for the United States vice-presidency at the Democratic National Convention. She did not become the party’s nominee, but the campaign gave her an unusual platform. She called for an Office for the Future and a Peace Room in the White House, designed to identify and connect constructive initiatives. Her account of the convention includes delegates scarcely listening as she spoke. Even so, she experienced reaching that stage as evidence of what a small, determined group could achieve.
The Peace Room gave practical expression to the living unity she had experienced in 1966. It would make constructive initiatives visible and help people discover where their gifts and resources could meet the needs of others. Her Wheel of Cocreation similarly pictured the different functions of society as parts of an interdependent whole. Within this vision, a teacher, scientist, artist or healer could contribute to the health of the larger human family. Barbara’s spiritual insight continually led her back to relationship and participation. She wanted people to experience cooperation in their communities and institutions, giving daily form to the deeper connection she believed already united them.
Through her books, teaching and Foundation for Conscious Evolution, Barbara invited people to explore their own inner calling. Her spiritual approach centred on discovering the creative impulse within and learning to express it through a meaningful contribution. She understood the movement towards greater love and awareness as something that could become personal: a prompting to grow, a recognition of purpose, a desire to serve. In her view, the sacred could be encountered through the work of helping life flourish. This gave her vision an intimate quality, even when she spoke about the future of civilisation.
One of her most ambitious later projects was Birth 2012, organised with Stephen Dinan and The Shift Network. Held on 22 December 2012, her eighty-third birthday, it linked gatherings around the possibility of a more cooperative humanity. The event carried forward the invitation she had felt during her walk in 1966. Afterwards, she wrote openly about feeling depressed and wondering what had actually been born. As she reflected, her understanding deepened: the birth she had envisioned was an unfolding process, expressed through many awakenings and acts of connection. She came to recognise its beginnings within herself and the people gathering around this shared purpose.
Barbara Marx Hubbard died on 10 April 2019, aged eighty-nine. Colleagues remembered her energy and her ability to bring people into conversations about possibilities larger than their immediate concerns. Her life had carried her far from the young woman who could not explain her own hope, but the original search remained recognisable.
Her life gives personal depth to the relationship between inner and outer change. The young woman searching for meaning gradually discovered a way to place her longing in service to others. The mother of five carried the language of birth into her understanding of humanity. The spiritual seeker became a communicator who invited people to recognise their creative participation in a living universe. Her vision of 1966 remained a source of inspiration through decades of work, love and loss.
What she offered was a sense of possibility rooted in belonging. For Barbara, humanity’s future began wherever a person listened deeply enough to discover what was seeking expression through their life. The invitation she heard on that winter afternoon continued to shape her journey: to tell a story in which we could recognise one another as members of one living whole, and to help that recognition become a way of living.
The images below are about Barbara's vision of a peace room, or what we have also called the Global Solutions Center. We stand behind this proposed center in Barbara's spirit.
