I offer an inquiry into the fundamental nature of reality, and the present human situation. This draws from the sense of evolutionary accretion and the significance of the Axial Age in Religion in Human Evolution (Bellah), and the dialectical sense of Western history from the Axial Age onwards variously explored in The Passion of the Western Mind (Tarnas), The Master and His Emissary (McGilchrist) and Debt: The first 5,000 years (Graeber). It also draws on Sheldrake’s theoretical position of morphic resonance as a scale-independent principle of formal causation, and Penrose’s sophisticated effort to derive an adequate yet physical route to consciousness. I begin with an open question as to the nature of consciousness, and the possibility of the evolution of consciousness. I further identify two canonical ‘signatures’ of self-similarity and self-reference (in both reality and knowledge, identified as flux and totality), and the ‘anti-signature’ of duality. Informed by ecofeminist and Buddhist perspectives, I develop a relational perspective of duality and non-duality, and of experience and meaning, and thus an initial apophatic view of consciousness. I further develop an evolutionary perspective of complexity (physical and biological and social) and consider Western cultural history in this context. This in turn allows me to derive a metaphysical statement, motivated by a position that accommodates complexity (physis) and consciousness (psyche) that is beyond ’emergence’ or ‘inherence’. This first cycle of argument is then subject to implicit deconstruction at a level of the nature of knowledge itself. The second cycle of argument recapitulates the first, and commences with a detailed exploration of scientific knowledge, including the significance of mathematics to the view of complexity already developed, and challenges to mainstream scientific knowledge (including astrology). With a reflexive position on scientific knowledge established, the significance of some of the earlier evolutionary arguments are considered in the context of ecology (including economics) and epistemology, to derive a fundamental critique of Western culture. The earlier observations of consciousness are then elaborated in the context of psyche and power. These offer ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ theories of change respectively. Finally the question of the nature of consciousness — which may now be considered in terms of all of the these perspectives — is revisited, the present human situation considered briefly in terms of the evolutionary perspectives offered, and a third ‘theory of (being) change(d)’ offered. This essay does not offer a conclusion, and rather represents a process of seeking (or being lead to) a canonical statement through a mandalically structured archetypal expression. It offers the barest sketch of a possible understanding of reality and consciousness and the present human situation. While its speculation reaches far beyond what can be sustained herein, it is offered into the boldest fight for life that the terminal disfunction of the human situation demands.