My Years With Ayn Rand

Psychologist and philosopher Nathaniel Branden, Ph.D. is a founding member of Integral Institute and author of twenty books on the psychology of self-esteem, romantic love, and the life and thought of Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand. His work has been translated into 18 languages and has sold over 4 million copies, and includes such titles as Taking Responsibility, The Art of Living Consciously, A Woman's Self-Esteem, and the 1969 classic, The Psychology of Self-Esteem.

MyYearswithAynRandpt1.mp3

In a joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month-Club, the #1 book that has made a difference in people’s lives is, no surprise, the Bible. But the #2 book is Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. And #5? Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. In other words, two of the five most influential books written are from the hand of Ayn Rand. Meet the man who Ayn Rand considered to be the living embodiment of the principles of her Objectivist philosophy; in other words, meet Nathaniel Branden.

Nathaniel begins his story at the beginning: a boy of fourteen who stumbled across a copy of The Fountainhead lying on the coffee table. "I disappeared from this earth for the next two days, until the book was finished. It was an electrifying experience." Little did he know then that as a young man, a shade under twenty, he would actually meet Ayn and soon begin one of the most passionate and turbulent romantic relationships of his life, the effects of which would touch the lives of thousands.

As Nathaniel recalls: "I could hardly believe that this person who I had regarded as a goddess since age fourteen, saw me for all practical purposes as the apotheosis of everything she was writing about." Ayn and Nathaniel began an intense, romantic (and largely secret) relationship—she in her forties, Nathaniel in his twenties—that has become the stuff of legend and at least one movie. It is rare that any influential movement begins in such a way; rarer still to have an eyewitness report of one of the two involved parties.

Of course, when the relationship did end, it ended in an enormously difficult way. So difficult that in certain circles of Rand’s followers, Nathaniel’s contributions to the movement have been denied or ignored. But Nathaniel played an instrumental role in helping form and popularize Objectivist philosophy as a world-wide movement. Having founded the Nathaniel Branden Institute to help educate interested students in Objectivism, he was responsible for teaching distance learning courses in over 80 cities world-wide. To this day, Rand’s books sell over 400,000 copies per year.

We are fortunate to have this opportunity to listen to Nathaniel’s account of the life and times of one of the twentieth century’s literary giants. He was on the ground floor of a philosophical revolution still being felt today. (Example: it has been said that the most powerful man in the world is the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. That position was held by Alan Greenspan, one of a dozen members of the early circle with Ayn and Nathaniel.)

But there is a reason that Ayn invested so much in Nathan, as she called him, and it is that, in a peculiar way and from the beginning, Branden was his own man. He brought as much to the movement as he got out of it, as his long and distinguished career demonstrates. The Nathaniel Branden Integral Life presentation is the story of that astonishing career that has now lasted five decades, from age 23 to 73.

This wide-ranging conversation deal with the Ayn Rand years—utterly important, formative, movement-creating, and earth-shaking, certainly for a young man. But, as they say, go ahead and listen to the Ayn Rand years, but keep in mind, you ain't heard nuttin yet....

T-Shirt of the Month Club

Paradigm, Oh Paradigm...

As a hypothesis, I propose that humanity may be undergoing a rapid transition from the biological to the psychic phase of species evolution in the next few years. The inertia of physical forces, chemical processes and cellular mechanisms, precisely coordinated over billions of years, has brought us to this make or break point. In order to continue our evolution, we need to reach a deeper level of species consciousness and self-awareness, transform our planetary culture and social systems so they serve the entire community of life, and integrate and anchor psychic capacities as part of a new paradigm and mythological substrate. This shift would also require a different approach to technological progress. We would use technology to create long-term benefits for people and planet, rather than shortsighted profits for individuals and corporations.

As individuals, we have the choice to contribute to this process in essential ways. We can shift from passive spectators to active participants, taking full responsibility for our own development and the unfolding of the whole. Currently, the first wave of individuals who are part of this tipping point phenomenon are learning to observe themselves as participators within the cosmos, and to act in our earthly realm with impartiality and compassion.

According to this hypothesis, as this level of presence crystallizes among the few, it will become increasingly available to wider circles of humanity, until it encompasses the entirety. We will supersede the confusion and destruction caused by the modern process of individuation by establishing new models of inclusive collaboration. As one aspect of this phase shift in consciousness, we will see a shift from hierarchic to holarchic models of social organization, and the melding of masculine rationality with feminine intuition. The form of the modern nation-state, obsessed with defending its own insecure boundaries, will be outmoded by a global direct democracy in which local communities realize themselves as fractal expressions of the whole, like healthy cells of the planetary organism.

Many mystical traditions propose that what we experience as reality is actually a kind of waking dream, projected from an infinite source of consciousness. According to this hypothesis, each of us can identify with our personal ego -- the dream character in the dream play -- or switch our center of identification to the projecting source. While the ego is trapped in limitation, the projecting source is infinite and free. Given the right marketing campaign, the awareness of our connection with this infinite creative source could permeate the global mind in the same way a new pop song or advertising jingle insinuates itself into the collective subconscious.

The uncertainty that many of us feel right now is, in itself, part of this transitional process. Whether we like it or not, the responsibility for the future of the species has now been placed in our hands. If we don't answer this call, our species will experience traumatic outcomes and cataclysms as the negative feedback loops of climate change, species extinction, resource depletion, fundamentalist violence and overpopulation create hell on earth, perhaps leading to our own extinction.

As I have discussed in previous works, there are good reasons to think that the positive feedback loops could also come together and self-reinforce to create a successful outcome -- what Buckminster Fuller described as a "win-win" situation for global humanity. It appears that successive transformations of human civilization happen at exponentially faster rates of linear time: while the agricultural revolution took thousands of years, the industrial age took under two hundred years, and the knowledge or information age required only a few decades. By this model, as Peter Russell has suggested, the next revolution in human society could happen in two or three years. This would be a revolution of wisdom, of consciousness, that could, potentially, open the gates to the psychic phase of our development.

More and more people appear to be experiencing psychic phenomena -- synchronicities, intuitive realizations, telepathic episodes and even occasional phenomena such as sudden manifestations or telekinesis. Anecdotally, I also encounter many people now undergoing classic Kundalini experiences, which were once extremely rare. A number of scientists have proposed that the solar system and the earth are undergoing a transition to a higher energy state. The level of electromagnetic activity may be increasing on our planet, accelerating and intensifying our psychic evolution. We may find that there is a non-dual relationship between changes in our lives on earth and processes happening throughout our solar system and the galaxy.

The correlations between ancient mystical traditions and the discoveries of quantum physics and other modern scientific disciplines could be firmly established, and presented in popular media so that they become socially accepted. The empirical tools of modern science could be repurposed to facilitate the development of psychic awareness, while our communications technologies transmit a new understanding around the planet in an extremely concentrated timeframe. At the same time, we could use the mass media and the Internet to disseminate the best techniques for growing food locally, for producing renewable energies, for reinventing industries and creating complementary currencies, and so on.

Of course, I don't know if this hypothetical outcome will come to pass. However, I see no reason why it couldn't. The tools are there for us. All that is required is the individual and collective will to make use of them.

Singularity University

Is the world ready for an academic institution based on an event in history yet to come? NASA and Google think so. They teamed up to launch the interdisciplinary institution Singularity University. It's mission is to "assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to addresshumanity’s grand challenges."

The Singularity denotes the theoretical future point of unprecedented technological progress, when advances in computer hardware, molecular nanotechnology and biotechnology, and artificial general intelligence ignite an "intelligence explosion," total integration of communications and information, mass societal change, and, potentially, self-improving technology.

Located on NASA's Ames Campus in California's Silicon Valley, Singularity University officially opened its doors in January 2009. Though it is not an accredited year-round university, it will offer an annual nine-week postgraduate summer course beginning in June 2009 (now accepting applications!). Students can choose from ten different academic tracks, including future studies and forecasting, networks and computing systems, biotechnology and vioinformatics, nanotechnology, medicine and neuroscience/human enhancement, AI/robotics and cognitive computing, energy and ecological systems, policy/law and ethics, and finance and entrepreneurship. Singularity U will also run three- and ten-day executive programs eight times per year.

But is SU itself prepared for the coming Singularity? After all, their webserver crashed within mere hours of its launch due to their failure to post usage limits - an amateur mistake in the eyes of the "blackbox" programming elite. But its all-star faculty lineup and promising opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration are reason enough to keep an eye on its future progress. As faculty member and Stanford Media-X Research Network leader Paul Saffo writes: "The vast challenges facing us require new institutions capable of understanding and responding to the new technological hazards, and opportunities, that we face. Singularity University is just such an institution."