This is the thirty-sixth issue of my free newsletter. Your feedback is most welcome!
Happy Spring Equinox! May you walk in balance and bring forth the Powers that are within you!
This is a summary of the last six parts of Brian Swimme’s DVD series, “Powers of the Universe”: Cataclysm, Synergy, Transmutation, Transformation, Inter-relatedness, and Radiance. The series is available via www.brianswimme.org.
Cataclysm means breakdown. Every 100 million years there is a vast die-off of species, a “mass extinction spasm.” Entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, is the most fundamental law in physics. We see birth and death in forests and in stars. After a star burns for 10 million years, it implodes and is gone in 2 seconds. 250 million years ago, a cataclysm wiped out 96% of marine species and 87% of land species. Trilobites were a successful form of life for 100 million years, but now they are extinct.
A third of marine species are now on the edge of extinction. Millions of children die needlessly due to lack of clean water. We can hide in Disneyland, but we feel trapped as we see everything falling apart. Can we identify with the power that is destroying us? If we embrace the power of cataclysm consciously, we will see that many structures of our lives are maladaptive. What can survive the cataclysm? Not consumerism, but love. We can surrender to letting the power of cataclysm tear down our maladaptive institutions, such as our educational system which only teaches people to destroy the earth instead of living in harmony with it. All systems will collapse: church, economy, education. Denial will not give us the energy we need to build the new. And yet, after a mass extinction there is always a cycle of rejuvenation. The qualities of human consciousness in alignment with cataclysm are: keen sensitivity to tension; ability to amplify the tension, bringing what’s hidden to the surface; and keeping a balance between polarities.
Synergy refers to mutually enhancing relationships. The Baldwin effect describes major changes in evolution which begin with a change in behavior; cooperative interaction enables survival. For instance, plants need nitrogen, so they form synergistic relationships with nitrogen-fixing bacteria in nodules on their roots. Pollinating insects work synergistically with plants; both are meeting their own needs through the interaction. Squid works with bioluminescent bacteria, which convey invisibility and thus allow them to hunt. A neutron needs a relationship with a proton in order to survive. This entire universe requires relationships.
Each form of life faces two challenges: getting energy (e.g., food) and reproducing itself. In the 4 billion year history of life, there have been many breakthrough moments when new ways of getting energy emerged. One was when photosynthesis first took place, as a way to use solar energy. Now, 99% of life on earth uses photosynthesis; this form of life out-competed other forms. “Life rewards creativity with survival,” says Swimme. Another such moment was when life learned to use oxygen. Prior to that time, prokaryotic life took hydrogen from water and left oxygen, which was toxic. Eukaryotic life then took over. Sexual reproduction is a fairly recent arrival (only 1.5 billion years old, compared to 11 billion years of life on the planet).
Neanderthals did well for 200,000 years, but 30,000 years ago, we replaced them by doing better at getting energy and raising offspring. Later, hunter-gatherers were crowded out by agriculturalists, who obtained more food and thus increased their reproduction rate. Now, industrial civilization is crowding out other forms.
How might the planetary human evolve?
1) We must re-symbolize our concept of human-ness in terms of our biological kinship with all life, .discover our core identity as earth. A new society must reward those with a planetary consciousness.
2) We must bring in all the other voices we have excluded: indigenous peoples have wisdom which we need; the fish can teach us how to build a vibrant ocean.
3) Warfare must be replaced with working together to deal with a planet in collapse.
A person embodying the quality of synergy is optimistic, visionary, mystical, a dreamer. She can see how close we are to a breakthrough, the emergence of a more synergistic society, one based on mutually enhancing relationships, on creating abundant life for all children of all species. The dominator paradigm will be replaced by partnership, and conscious self-awareness leading to a greater circle of compassion.
Transmutation is defined as the process of natural selection, as things evolve through time. “The processes that developed the universe are at work in us,” says Swimme, adding that we are not just determined by those forces, but can work with them. Teilhard de Chardin once said, “We are the universe reflecting on itself.”
Elementary particles became atoms; primal stars became stellar systems with planets. Molten rock became a living planet; prokaryotes gave way to eukaryotes. These were major moments of transmutation. And yet, transmutation is a process that is present in each moment. How might we best participate in the transition from the Cenozoic era to the Ecozoic era? Any major transition is characterized by three forces: constraint, judgment, and resistance. When continents collide (a constraint) mountains arise. Resistance occurs when the desires of different beings are in opposition. Birds are a constraint on the grasshopper population. Their destinies are linked: the slow do not survive in either species. The quickness of each depends on the other. Natural selection is a process of transmutation. Birds co-evolve with the trees; a certain beak evolves to deal with a certain type of bark. That’s intimacy! Each bioregion has its unique beauty, maintained by constraint, judgment, and resistance.
Humans have quickly taken the whole system towards collapse. While every species seeks its own advantage, we got out of the discipline of the whole. Our challenge now is, through conscious self-awareness, to become the power of transmutation, by bringing forth constraints on human activity.
These can be laws, customs, and disciplines which will allow the whole community of life to prosper. The Endangered Species Act is positive evidence that we are capable of thinking of the integrity of the whole.
A person embodying the power of transmutation would feel cut off, rejected, excluded from this society. The universe has judged the Cenozoic era as over. Human activity must be constrained, in order for the universe to flower again. As we embrace the feeling of rejection and opposition, we must ask what we are to relinquish (consumerism). We must ask why the planet is withering. It is because we have accepted too small a context. Instead of feeling wounded, unseen, we must stop blaming others and reveal our true selves in all our power.
The context for transmutation of the human is the universe. Decisions we make now influence the far distant future. How can we evolve? We can choose to co-evolve with other species, letting our guides be the great moments of beauty that enable the whole to flourish.
Transformation is the change wrought by the individual upon the whole, while transmutation is the change of the individual. The universe “folds back upon itself: in the center of a star, the birth of the universe is re-lived. Protons have held their structure over time. Life has a way of holding the memory of an event, structuring matter to bring back that memory. Memory is passed from one cell to a daughter cell, or to a nearby cell. With sexuality, two beings can fuse their memory in a new way; shuffling of genes gives rise to the possibility of new combinations. All life systems carry within them the ancient events. Genetic mutation favors adaptive qualities. Squirrels that move to a higher altitude will have some offspring who are better adapted to it and will reproduce, so their DNA is carried forward.
Humans invented language, thus bringing in symbolic representation. We wandered into excess consumerism. Now we are in a destructive moment of cataclysm, and the illusions can fall away. We see the need to change our self-image, shedding consumerism, militarism, and competition. A metamorphosis of unlearning and new vision is taking place. A great television show can influence the culture; the producers will be influenced by its success, to alter their criteria. Thus, “cultural DNA” can change! Even one person’s experience can become the source of the re-coding of the planet; DNA carries memory forward, via language. Re-coding the human means re-coding of the planet.
Inter-relatedness: Care, devotion, service, and nurturance grow out of awareness of our deep connection with other beings. When parents began to care for their offspring, it made survival more likely, so natural selection favored such caring. Even certain fish care for their offspring (although others eat their fry). Mammalian moms may care for their children for a lifetime. How do we relate with other beings, outside our species?
The dominant paradigm of our consumer culture states that other beings and aspects of creation are here “for our use”. The average American generates one ton of waste per week, due to our extractive economy. This would include the waste from coal, iron, and uranium mining. Even if we recycled 100% of the recyclable products we use, that would only account for 2% of our waste stream. Manufacturing, education, economics are all based on “use”; the school system is a factory forming the raw materials (children) into finished products. The paradigm of use assumes there is no intrinsic value in a life.
In mammals, the female picks the male who has the best genes, thus increasing the likelihood of the offspring’s survival. Female baboons chose the male who was the most tender, not the most macho. So tenderness is increased in the gene pool.
When a mother sea lion licks her newborns, this act evokes her motherliness, activates her caring. How can we humans activate our own caring? From elementary particles, care emerged on this planet. Our task is to activate the sensibility that can feel and be aware of care. We have the power of empathy, which is experiencing from another being’s perspective, even another species’ perspective. We are capable of vast compassion, through conscious self-awareness. The universe is like a great mother. We are like a new phylum in search of a role. Perhaps instead of consumerism, or militarism, care could become the dominant value that we live by.
Humans have become “a macro-phase power with micro-phase consciousness, like a monkey with an Uzi.” We are like teenage boys who can drive cars and impregnate girls before having much awareness of the risks involved. Our great question is, how do we activate what is within us? The choices we make and the actions we take will have effects for the next 10,000 years! (Much more than seven generations.)
“Radiance is the primary language of the universe,” says Brian Swimme. “Everything gives off light at all times, even if we can’t see it.” Human perception, however, has become distorted. Now, robots can store data that humans never even see. We identify with computers and that leads to the image of the universe as a mechanism. Our way forward is to counteract this superficial self-image as machine and activate the depths of human perception.
The sun–greatest source of radiance that we know--creates helium in its core by compressing hydrogen, with a release of light. Light emanates as waves, then collapses into photons; the sun also gives off messenger particles called “gravitons,” mass-less particles that deeply penetrate Earth, and produce gravitational attraction. The moon, too, has radiance; it’s not just the sun’s photons bouncing off it, but rather, photons come from the interaction of sun and moon. The moon also sends gravitons, and the earth responds with the tides.
Human perception has two aspects: surface (the immediate level) and deep (causal level). Because of our preoccupation with machines, we tend to identify with the surface; we mistake the part for the whole, as we give more credence to economists than to poets in our decision making.
Bachelard, a French philosopher, wrote that when we enter into resonance, that energy can fill the being deeply, causing us to reverberate to our very core. He himself had a life changing encounter with the radiance of the universe when he listened to Beethoven’s 5th symphony during a thunderstorm.
The human manifestation of radiance requires a sensitive, subtle spirit that can be a container to hold such beauty. “Every being contains 14 billion years of radiance, compressed into it.” We miss the radiance around us by our belief in only the material. Responding to the depth of things is our true, intrinsic nature, despite our cultural programming. The archetype for such depth perception is the mother beholding her beautiful child. When we look deeply into another’s eyes, what radiates forth is the person’s essence, both light and depth, joy and sadness. There are moments when we can still be awestruck by the stars, feel deeply at home in ways we cannot explain. The radiance of fireflies, who flash in their mating ritual, could be dismissed with the mechanistic paradigm, or it could open us to wonder. Precious stones within the earth sparkle and gleam, reminding us of our true nature. The magnificence of nature calls forth depth perception from us.
People with the personality trait of radiance would resist authority, since it is usually built around a distorted perception of the world. They would follow their own authority. Such people do the minimum amount required to survive, since they crave and need time alone, for contemplation. In knowing one’s own divine essence, there is an attraction to jewelry, pageantry, display. “Resonance is the primary form of prayer and reverberation is the primary form of sacrament in the universe.” In reverberation, one becomes the radiance that floods the world.
All the other powers of the universe attempt to bring forth radiance; indeed, all the powers are present seamlessly in all things. What holds us back from the experience of radiance?
- Self doubt. If centration has not brought us to our full power and self-confidence, we are less than radiant.
- If the power of allurement hasn’t drawn us into depth, we focus on superficial consumerism.
- Homeostasis may hold us in that materialist worldview.
- Unless we release ourselves to the powers of transmutation and transformation, we stay locked into the small world of anger, revenge, and cynicism.
All the powers attempt to bring forth humans who respond to radiance and are capable of expressing it! Swimme concludes: “We are emerging into a time when radiance is possible. The barbaric practices will evaporate as a new culture focuses on bringing forth the sheen on every child’s face.”
Cathy Holt
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