5. SEED OF THE COSMOS

 

Who among us has not been awed by the splendor of dazzling stars on a clear night? At the immensity and grandeur of that small portion of the Universe which one can see with the naked eye? The visible stars: so regular, so permanent, and so reliable. I remember one dark, cloudy summer night when I was 10 years old, helping Dad and a neighbour drag out a poached deer that Dad had shot that afternoon in a wilderness forest area owned by the neighbour. [I should mention that in those days game was plentiful and Dad frequently augmented the family’s larder – and those of his neighbours – through his tracking and hunting skills.]  All we had for light was a fading flashlight and although both men were familiar with the terrain in daytime, after locating the deer and starting to drag it out in the pitch dark through the windfalls and rough terrain to the logging road, they soon became quite confused and we repeatedly found ourselves back in the same location. The night was sultry and the mosquitoes were quite bad, and the thought of sitting down to await the dawn was not appealing.

Suddenly the overcast clouds cleared, the stars blazed forth, and Dad took bearings on Polaris and the Mariners’ Rule, and we headed in a direction that we knew would bisect the road, and ultimately we located the old truck, and transported the carcass to our neighbour’s barn where it was sectioned and divided.

 

Two years later in Grade 9, I came upon a book on astronomy by Sir James Jeans, and thus commenced my life-long interest in the stars and cosmology. And to this day, one of the delights of Marnie and I when we go out tent camping – whether here in the north or through the States and Mexico – is to leave the protective ‘fly’ off the mesh roof of the tent, so as to lie back in our sleeping bag and watch the nightly light show progression of the constellations.

 

 

Observation of the stars on a clear night – say in Autumn when there is a flicker of the veils of the aurora borealis and the stars are so vibrant that one can almost hear the music of the spheres – inevitably gives rise to questions of ‘what does this all mean?’ and ‘what is my relationship in the order of things?’ And somehow in that moment one feels both connected with the cosmos, yet singularly alone and apart from it. Somehow both transient yet eternal.

 

The Cosmos. How have others come to see the beginning of the cosmos, and for what purpose is creation, and for what ends? Let’s see:

 

 

 

“Everything flows, in and out; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum swing measures in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.”

 

“The universe begins to look like a non-mechanical reality – like a great thought rather than a great machine. And mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter but as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.”

 

Hoyle indicated that there were many reasonable ways in which the background radiation effect (that many cosmologists claim proves the Big Bang) can be produced. For instance, the light of galaxies could be absorbed by iron whiskers expelled from supernovae and these whiskers then emit the background microwaves.                           

Hoyle saw Life as a universal phenomenon, and that the Life form of consciousness has a fundamental role in the cosmos. He saw that consciousness actually creates the Universe, forcing reality into being out of a quantum mechanical haze of possibilities. It is we who make the microscopic world real. We decide what the universe has already done by observing it, and the universe that we look at is an intellectual structure, not mere chance.

Hoyle said that a little bit of God operates in all of us. We are His observing instruments, and He observes the universe through us. The implication of Hoyle’s theory is that of an immensely old universe that pulsates, alternately expanding and contracting like a giant heart but becoming a little larger at each oscillation.

 

 

Vivekananda asserted that it is God. The whole series of evolutions is but one life. In the end, the perfect man, so in the beginning it must have been the same. The protoplasm was the involution of the highest intelligence. This involved intelligence is what is uncoiling itself until it becomes manifested in the most perfect man. All is only a question of change and manifestation.

Applying the same reason to the whole of the universe, intelligence itself must be the Lord of creation, the cause. What is the most evolved notion that man has of this universe? It is intelligence, the adjustment of part to part, the display of intelligence, of which the ancient design theory was an attempt at expression. The beginning was, therefore, intelligence. At the beginning this intelligence becomes involved, and in the end this intelligence becomes fully evolved. The sum total of the intelligence displayed in the universe is the involved universal intelligence unfolding itself. This universal intelligence is what Vivekananda called God, recreating Himself over endless cycles.

 

Russell describes the way in which the 10 billion galaxies in the universe are so organized by Gaia that living systems could evolve. The universe even appears to be intentionally organic: beginning from a unity of pure energy, the universe is progressively evolving through matter, life consciousness, Gaia and galaxies toward ultimate reunion – perhaps in an ‘entity’ such as the Indian Brahman. From an earlier unity of total non-differentiation the cosmos would have evolved through diversities to a unity of total integration. From Brahman to Brahman. And then commencement of the next cycle – a fresh experiment. Brahman reincarnated in each fresh cycle, each time becoming a more perfect universal being. Conceivably the ultimate goal may be the enlightenment of Brahman: the perfect cosmos.

 

In Teilhard's view, discoveries in the sciences in the twentieth century had dramatically altered man’s understanding of the cosmos. For instance, physicists had split the atoms and broken them down into innumerable sub-particles infinitely more mysterious than the alchemists had ever imagined:

 

“The stuff of the universe, examined as a close texture, resolves itself into a mist in which reason can no longer possibly grasp – in what remains of phenomena – anything but the forms that it had itself imposed on them. In the final issue, mind finds itself once again face to face with its own reflection.”  

 

Teilhard asserted that nature is moving – erratically and haltingly perhaps, but nevertheless moving – toward higher and higher forms of consciousness. Humanity in particular has the greatest potential for a clear concept of nature and nature's inner workings.

 

 

Miniaturization is the essence of any seed. In the case of sentient creatures with developed brains, without the re-transmittable enormous complexity entailing miniaturization, life would not be possible. In the case of humans, our brain with its compactness and short communication links for information processing and creative visualization is seen as a ‘way-station' to ultimate ‘omega seed’ miniaturization and complexity.

To Soleri, Life requires the energizing of the physical universe, wherein spirit consumes matter.  Space, time, mass and energy are consumed in the process of creation and growth of spirit.  Matter is but the ‘medium' evolving into pure spirit, the ‘message’. The aggregate omega seed comprises the universe's contraction to a singularity within which is the ‘seeded’ pattern for the next cosmic cycle. In Soleri’s vision, the Omega Seed at ‘resurrection’ contains the totality of all that has previously been.

 

·         His Holiness, The Dalai Lama – in conversation with physicists David Bohm and Rene Weber – stated the Buddhist position that there are times when the entire universe forms, remains for a certain period, and then disintegrates and remains empty for a certain period. Buddhism speaks of the formation of a world-system, the abiding of a world-system, the destruction of a world-system, and then again a state of emptiness. These four repeat over and over again. In Buddhism, there is no explanation of some original beginning; all phenomena that depend on causes are always in flux and changing – for example, in the case of particular things, there is a beginning and an end, but each requires a cause to appear.

 

 

“we inhabit a vast ocean of energy which is outside the reach of our senses and our measuring instruments.”

                                                                                      - and he indicated that the phenomenal world that we observe in our ordinary state of consciousness represents only one aspect of reality – the ‘explicate’ or unfolded order. Its generative matrix – the ‘implicate’ or enfolded order – exists on another level of reality and cannot be directly observed, except possibly in episodes of non-ordinary consciousness, such as in deep meditative, mystical or psychedelic states. He noted that the ‘ implicate domain’ could be viewed as an ocean of energy or an ocean of light – light being the fundamental activity in which existence has its ground. To Bohm, the separation of matter and spirit is an abstraction – the Ground is always One. He indicated that matter – while having some relative stability and being manifest – is like a small transient ripple on the tremendous implicate ocean of energy.                                              

Bohm further reported that the findings of physics indicate that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.

 

 

·         Theodore Roszak in “the Voice of The Earth”, stated that life could have come into existence only within a certain interval of cosmic history. Lacking an inventory of heavy elements to build with, no life could have been possible. But heavy elements can come into existence in the necessary abundance only after at least two generations of stars have lived, died, and poured their substance into the void of space. The appearance of life demands a certain period of cosmic expansion during which the universe can cool and the galaxies achieve stability – the size and age of the cosmos thereby are seen as intentionally life sustaining. The Anthropic Principle is grounded in the important cosmological concept that time, matter, life and mind are intertwined together historically.

 

·         Phillip Kapleau, again speaking from the Buddhist perspective, observes that human consciousness arises and is indistinguishable from pure consciousness – which itself is the Void – the universe. An individual’s life is linked to this pure state through the Formless Self. Kapleau observes that -

“Man’s life is like a wave of the ocean, apparently separate from it, but having arisen from the sea, will return to it again to become the sea, then to emerge again as a new life in the next birth.”

 

·         Lee Smolin, of the current generation of physicists, suggests that there appears to be a reproductive "natural selection" of universes. And in some sense the universes that allow complexity and evolution reproduce themselves more efficiently than other universes. The cosmos itself is thus evolving in some complicated way.

 

For example, when stars die they sometimes form black holes. Inside a black hole it's possible for a small region to – as it were, sprout into a new universe, seemingly inflating into some new dimension. The laws of nature in the new universe are related to those in the previous, parental universe. Universes big and complex enough to allow stars to form, evolve and die, thereby producing lots of black holes, would have more progeny, because each black hole can then lead to a new universe; whereas a universe that didn't allow stars and black holes to form would have no progeny. He suggests that the ensemble of universes evolves not randomly but by some Darwinian selection favoring the potentially complex universes.

 

Smolin also proposes that something like natural selection acts on the very laws of physics. The basic idea is that black holes give rise to new regions of space and time, and that at these events, which resemble the so-called Big Bang, the laws of physics can change; space itself is the result of spontaneous processes of self-organization. He says -

 

“Perhaps for the first time in human history we know enough to imagine how a universe like ours might have come to be without the infinite intelligence and foresight of a god. Although it is difficult to conceive that the universe is as we find it to be because it has made itself, nevertheless the order, structure and beauty seen at every scale may be the manifestation of a continual process of self-organization, of self-tuning, that has acted over very long periods of time.”

 

In discussing these views with Norm, retired chemist and much older and wiser friend, it was his opinion that –

“- - ‘our’ mind/consciousness was there from beyond ‘the beginning’, creating the eternal now of which the sensed present is only a phenomenal reality. Mind creates its own platform – the material elements and forces now experienced in the present are construed as our life.”

 

There is another principle given in the Kybalion – the Principle of Correspondence, stating succinctly -

“As above, so below – as below, so above.”

- from which – beyond the context of this essay – one can see an analogy between the material cosmological emergence processes and ends to those experienced in an individual’s own emerging awareness. The Microcosm reflects its Macrocosm. As there is change and evolution around us, so there is change and evolution within us. Nothing in creation is mechanical nor frozen in time; one’s existence is pervasively fluid and organic from the beginning to the end. We take in experience and over time distill and crystallize out of our experiences those aspects of wisdom that will – like Swami Vivekananda’s cosmic seed - serve our continuing evolution – whether on the morrow, or on the next cycle.

And, lest this be thought as being ‘mere imagination’, one recalls that Einstein observed:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

 

Concluding, one recalls the words of Olaf Stapleton, from his novel ‘Star Maker’:

 

“…This final creature...embraced within its own organic texture the essences of all its predecessors; and far more besides. It was like the last movement of a symphony, which may embrace, by the significance of its themes, the essence of the earlier movements; and far more besides…

 

“And the Star Maker, that dark power and lucid intelligence, found in the concrete loveliness of this creature the fulfillment of desire. And in the mutual joy of the Star Maker and the ultimate cosmos was conceived – most strangely – the absolute spirit itself, in which all times are present and all being is comprised.”

 

Lucky are those who have found each other – and both still see their reflective images pulsing as stars in the beloved’s eyes. These are the blessed ones who have intentionally traveled from their separate worlds so as to again dance together in life to the music of the spheres.

 

 

                                                                                                          Illustrations by Marnie

 

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