Spiritual Partnership:

The New Human Relationship Dynamic

by Gary Zukav

This is a book about change, the biggest change possible or
imaginable—change bigger than the discovery of fire, bigger than the invention of the wheel, bigger than the origin of cultures, the birth of religions, the rise of nation-states, and the impacts of science. It is bigger than anything that has come before and so big that it is not possible to envision what could come after or when.

This is a book about possibilities. Experiences, insights, motivations, and creations beyond our ability to imagine only a few years ago now call to us, beckoning us to new destinations and yet more new possibilities. All is new and fresh, like a blank page awaiting words, a canvas inviting the first brushstroke. In the past others have glimpsed, and sometimes explored, these new possibilities, but now everyone is beginning to see or sense them. We have crossed a threshold and there is no turning back. There is no way to turn back.

This is a book about power. The old kind of power—the ability to manipulate and control—now produces only violence and destruction. This is a real surprise, because the old power enabled us and our ancestors to survive. Like good medicine suddenly turned bad, it is now poison. We used to take it to stay alive. Now we need to avoid it to stay healthy. A new kind of power—authentic power—has become the new good medicine, and we need it to become healthy, nurturing, and whole.

Change, possibilities, and power that we could not have imagined are reshaping the entire human experience. New values, goals, and intentions are everywhere appearing like grass in the spring. This grass is growing quickly, and wherever it grows, beauty appears. With it come fields of flowers and vast forests. A new and surprising world is emerging in new and surprising ways. We are all students in a new school, explorers in new territory, and pioneers in a new human experience.

This unprecedented transformation in human experience has two parts. We can call them Process A and Process B. Process A is happening automatically, so to speak. No one needs to do anything to make Process A happen. Process A is occurring in millions of individuals, and soon Process A will occur in all humans. Process B is a different story. It requires choice. Specifically, you must choose to make Process B happen or it will not happen in you. Even if others choose to make Process B happen in themselves, Process B will not happen in you until you choose to make it happen. In short, (1) Process A is happening to everyone, or soon will, and there is nothing that you or anyone else can do about it; (2) Process B is happening only to individuals who choose to make it happen in themselves; no one else can make it happen in them; and they cannot make it happen in anyone else.

Let’s give Process A and Process B names. Process A is the expansion of human perception beyond what we can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. It is a very big deal. Process A is seeing for yourself that the world is larger than you thought—much larger—and also different than you could have imagined. Before Process A occurs, your perceptions of the world are confined to what your five senses tell you about it. After Process A occurs, your five senses continue to tell you about the world and, in addition, you experience more. The “more” is sometimes difficult to describe to individuals who have not yet experienced Process A, but actually, millions of individuals have already experienced Process A or are experiencing it and haven’t realized it yet.

Process A allows you to know things about others that your five senses cannot tell you, for example, that someone is going to call you just before she calls, that your daughter in another city has been in an accident, that your grandparent is passing on, that you should avoid driving until you check the brakes on your car, and so on. In other words, Process A involves intuition in a big way. Process A also allows you to experience yourself in new ways, for example, as more than your mind and your body. It reveals your life as purposeful and calls you to your purpose like water calls a thirsty man. Process A allows you to encounter meaning in unexpected ways, for example, a brief experience that everything is perfect, or a feeling of connection with a stranger. Process A allows you to see from an impersonal perspective. From that perspective, all of your experiences—even the most painful—serve—your spiritual development and the spiritual development of those around you. They provide exactly what you need to develop the strength, compassion, and wisdom to give the gifts that you were born to give.

Process A is an expanded awareness that includes not only the perceptual system of the five senses but also a second system that detects intelligence, compassion, and wisdom that are real but not physical. This system allows you to experience nonphysical reality in many ways, including those just mentioned. Process A is multisensory perception. This is the great transformation in human consciousness that is currently emerging throughout the human species. Within a few generations, all humans will be multisensory. They will experience not only the domain of space, time, matter, and duality that has been the totality of experience for most humans since the origin of humanity, but also nonphysical domains and dynamics that affect us and that we affect.

This brings us to Process B. Process B is bringing the new potential that comes with Process A into your life. Multisensory perception (Process A) changes your perception, but it does not change you. It shows you things that you could not see before, but it does not make you use your new knowledge. It illuminates dynamics that you could not see—dynamics that you can apply to change your life and world permanently for the better—but it does not require you to apply them. It reveals your creative power, but it does not make you create wisely. On the contrary, you will continue to create as you have in the past until you choose otherwise. If you are angry, for example, Process A (multisensory perception) will not make you less angry. It also will not create different consequences for you than acting with anger has created in the past. People will still avoid you, still be intimidated by you, still refuse to be vulnerable with you, and you will still be isolated, lonely, longing for meaningful relationships, and angry.

Process B is experiencing and changing in yourself the interior sources of your painful emotions (such as anger, jealousy, vengefulness, and so on), obsessive thoughts (such as judging others or yourself, longing for someone or something to change your life, and so on), compulsive activities (such as workaholism, perfectionism, and so on), and addictive behaviors (such as overeating, smoking, drinking alcohol, using drugs, watching pornography, gambling, and so on). It is also experiencing and cultivating in yourself the interior sources of your pleasing emotions (such as gratitude, contentment, appreciation, and awe of Life). In short, Process B is creating the fulfilling and joyful life that is calling to you.

This takes work, but choosing Process B can produce almost instantaneous results in your life. In other words, choosing Process B can fundamentally change your life in a very short time. This does not mean that you become a radically different person the first or second time you engage in Process B. Process B is not that simple or easy. However, each change that you make in yourself as you engage in Process B is fundamentally transformative. The first change is fundamentally transformative, no matter how small it may appear. The second change is fundamentally transformative, and so forth. Process B is incremental. It happens choice by choice, and each choice that you make moves you in a new direction toward a new and healthy goal—a personality—whose experiences are so dramatically different that you cannot always foresee what they will be.

Process B requires you to choose words and deeds, moment by moment, that will create joyful and constructive consequences even when painful or violent emotions roar through you. Process B is changing your life with the force of your own will, guided by your own awareness, with intentions that you consciously choose, assisted by the compassion and wisdom of the Universe experienced in personal and meaningful ways. This transformation is more than change toward a better or more healthy life. It is transformation toward the highest, most noble, healthy, and grounded part of you. That is your soul.

In other words, Process B is finding and changing all the parts of your personality that do not intend what your soul intends, and finding and cultivating all the parts of your personality that do intend what your soul intends. Your soul intends harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for Life. Each time you create with one of these intentions, you create authentic power—a life of meaning, fulfillment, gratitude, vitality, creativity, and joy. Process B is creating authentic power.

Without Process A (multisensory perception) happening to everyone, Process B (creating authentic power) would not be possible for anyone. Process B is aligning your personality with your soul, but your five senses cannot detect your soul. The soul is an interesting idea to some five-sensory individuals, but it is not experientially meaningful to any of them. Now millions of individuals are experiencing multisensory perception (Process A), and they are changing their lives because of it (Process B). You are experiencing multisensory perception or you would not find this book interesting or valuable. The ideas in it have no appeal to intellects that are informed by the five senses alone, but they call to all hearts that are informed by multisensory perception.

Multisensory perception and authentic power are the two defining characteristics of the transformation in human consciousness that is now under way. The first emerges without effort, affects all perception, and reveals new dimensions of experience. The second awaits your commitment, courage, compassion, and conscious communications and actions to bring it into your life. The first is a wondrous gift from the Universe. You must create the second.

Multisensory perception does not impair your choice. Multisensory individuals are as free to pursue external power (the old kind of power) as they are to create authentic power, but the choice to pursue external power now leads only to violence and destruction—emotional violence and destruction between individuals (at the least), and physical violence and destruction between religions, cultures, and nations. There are no redeeming benefits to the choice of external power. There are no benefits to it at all.

Five-sensory humans evolve by surviving. Multisensory humans evolve by growing spiritually. This dramatic difference requires dramatically different relationships. The new type of relationship for multisensory humans who are evolving through creating authentic power is spiritual partnership. A spiritual partnership is a partnership between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth. It attracts multisensory humans who are creating authentic power as much as old-type relationships attracted five-sensory humans who were pursuing external power. The purpose, nature, and function of spiritual partnerships are different. The dynamics of spiritual partnerships and the experiences that spiritual partners cocreate are different. This new type of relationship is as inseparable from emerging multisensory humans who are creating authentic power as old-type relationships were from five-sensory humans who pursued external power.

Creating authentic power requires relationships of substance and depth. You cannot grow spiritually until you have the courage to enter into meaningful and significant relationships. In other words, spiritual partnerships are a necessary part of Process B. Every encounter provides you an opportunity to create authentic power, but when your encounters include others who are also using their experiences to create authentic power, the potential for a spiritual partnership comes into being. Potential spiritual partners recognize the commitment, courage, compassion, and conscious communications and actions of one another. They naturally strive to support one another in creating authentic power and to receive the support of one another in creating authentic power. They journey toward the same goal, recognize fellow travelers, and learn from one another. Evolution now requires you to create a fulfilling and joyful life—to give the gifts that you were born to give—and spiritual partnerships bring you into cocreative interactions with others who are doing the same.

All of the books that I have written, or coauthored with my spiritual partner Linda Francis, are about authentic power. The first was The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, although I did not know it at the time. This book is about quantum physics, relativity, and quantum logic for people with no interest in science, but writing it introduced me for the first time to some experiences of authentic power. I did not know how to identify or articulate them, but I recognized these experiences as remarkable and wonderful, and I opened myself wide to them. The book won many awards and much praise as a popularization of science, but I believe that many of the people who read it (and still read it) are drawn to the connections between physical reality and consciousness that are unavoidable in some of the interpretations of the quantum theory, including the one that is used by most physicists. The Dancing Wu Li Masters was my first attempt at writing and my first inquiry into science, but more than that, it was my first gift to Life, and I am still receiving gifts in return.

The second book was about authentic power but without any vehicle, such as science. It shares all that I discovered about authentic power while and since writing The Dancing Wu Li Masters. It began as a three-volume product of the intellect called Physics and Consciousness, but ten years later it had become another gift of the heart, The Seat of the Soul. Some readers expected me to write a sequel to The Dancing Wu Li Masters about another pioneering field of science, such as genetics. I had reservations about disappointing them, but I could not remain in integrity without sharing this wonderful book. Like The Dancing Wu Li Masters, it changed my life, but in ways that I could not have imagined.

At the time I thought that I understood authentic power, but I had not yet realized that my understanding was not as deep as it would become and that understanding authentic power and creating an authentically powerful life are not identical. Eventually, Linda, whom I met after The Seat of the Soul was published, and I coauthored books on two of the tools for creating authentic power (The Heart of the Soul: Emotional Awareness and The Mind of the Soul: Responsible Choice). I also wrote two light-reading books with vignettes and examples of multisensory perception and authentic power (Soul Stories and Soul to Soul: Communications from the Heart), but in my heart I continued to long for another book to explain the creation of authentic power in clearer and clearer ways, to illustrate it, and to give readers concrete as well as conceptual examples of multisensory perception and how to create authentic power.

This is that book. The Seat of the Soul and Spiritual Partnership are both about Process A and Process B. The Seat of the Soul is about evolution, cause and effect, intuition, intention, responsibility, and trust, among other things, but it emphasizes Process A. It focuses on the electric experiences of becoming multisensory, cocreating with always-present nonphysical Teachers and guides, and partnering consciously with the compassionate and wise Universe. Spiritual Partnership is also about multisensory perception and authentic power, but it emphasizes Process B. It shows the Why, What, How, and Who of spiritual partnership and, therefore, of creating authentic power. Spiritual partnerships and creating authentic power are as inseparable as wisdom and patience. Without creating authentic power you cannot have spiritual partners, and without spiritual partners you cannot grow spiritually.

Creating authentic power is a process, not an event. It is the purpose of your life and the opportunity of your interactions. Authentic power is a journey, not a destination. It is a journey that few have taken before and that all of us are now required to complete as humanity transits from a five-sensory species that evolved by surviving into a multisensory species that evolves by growing spiritually. This book is a road map to creating authentic power. Refer to it at any point along the way. Read it to prepare for what lies ahead, and review it to understand what lies behind. Practice it to live joyfully wherever you are at this moment on the journey.

I am grateful to be on the journey with you.