by Duane Elgin
Does Aliveness Make a Difference?
What difference does it make if the universe is dead or alive? When children are starving, climate is destabilizing, oil is dwindling, and population is growing, why is it important to put our attention there? So what if we live in a living universe—why should that matter? Below are a few of the core reasons why it makes a profound difference whether we regard the universe as dead or alive. I’ll present these polarities in stark terms to make the contrasts clear.
Is the universe indifferent or welcoming? How we feel about the surrounding universe has an enormous impact on our experience of life. If we think of the universe as dead at the foundations, then feelings of existential alienation, anxiety, dread, and fear are understandable. Why seek communion with the cold indifference of lifeless matter and empty space? If we relax into life, we will simply sink into existential despair. However, if we live in a living universe, feelings of subtle connection, curiosity, and gratitude are understandable. We see ourselves as participants in a cosmic garden of life that the universe has been patiently nurturing over billions of years. A living-universe perspective invites us to shift from indifference, fear, and cynicism to curiosity, love, and awe.
Are we forgotten or remembered? A non-living universe is without consciousness at its foundations so it is indifferent to humanity and our evolving creations. Nothing we do will ultimately matter. All will be forgotten. A dead universe has no deeper purpose or meaning. It does not matter whether it is a person or an entire world civilization, the same principle applies: a dead universe tells no stories. A living universe is itself a vast story continuously unfolding with countless unique characters playing out gripping dramas of awakening. The essence of these stories and the learning from them is remembered and conserved so that an evolving universe has wisdom to pass along to her offspring.
Pull apart or pull together? If we see the universe as mostly barren and devoid of life and our time on Earth as primarily a struggle for material existence, then it makes sense that we humans would pull apart in conflict. However, if we see the universe as intensely alive and our time on Earth as a journey of discovery into that aliveness, then it makes sense that we would pull together in cooperation in order to realize this magnificent potential.
Consumerism or conscious simplicity? Materialism is a rational response to living in a dead universe. In a material universe, consumerism offers a source of identity and a measure of significance and accomplishment. Where do I find pleasure in a non-living universe? In things. How do I know that I amount to anything? By how much stuff I have accumulated. How should I relate to the world? By exploiting that which is dead (the universe) on behalf of the living (myself). Consumerism and exploitation are natural outcomes of a dead-universe perspective. However, if we view the foundations of the universe as being intensely alive, then it makes sense to minimize the material clutter and needless busyness and grow in the non-material riches of life—nurturing relationships, caring communities, creative expressions, and more.
Are we separate or inter-connected? If we are no more than biological entities and we are fundamentally separate from one another, then it makes sense to see ourselves as disconnected from the suffering of other living beings. However, if we are all swimming in the same ocean of subtle aliveness, then it makes sense that we would each have a direct experience of communion with, and concern for, the well-being of others. If we share the same matrix of existence, then the rest of life is already touching me, co-creating the field within which I exist.
Who and what are we? Are we no more than a collection of elements that are experiencing a series of chemical and neurological reactions? Is there more to ourselves than our material-biological components? In a dead universe, the boundaries of our being are defined by the extent of our physical body. However, in a living universe, our physical existence is permeated and sustained by an aliveness that is inseparable from the aliveness of the universe. If we are beings whose consciousness can extend beyond our biological bodies and into the reaches of the living universe, then our physical bodies comprise only the smallest fraction of the full scope of our being.
These are just a few of the fundamental ways that our approach to life can be radically different depending on which of these two perspectives seem most real. Everyday life, of course, is not so clear-cut as these polarities suggest. The important point is that, whether we regard the universe as dead or alive at its foundations has enormous consequences for our future, both individually and collectively.
Overall, I do not believe that the human community can come to a new relationship with one another and the Earth unless we also come to a new relationship with the universe. Life-changing consequences flow from this new perspective.
Part One
Where Are We?
Chapter 1
The First Miracle
Nature is incomprehensible at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on,
There are divine things well envelop’d,
I swear to you there are divine beings
More beautiful than words can tell.
—WALT WHITMAN1
American Indian lore speaks of three miracles. The first miracle is that anything exists at all. The second miracle is that living things exist. The third miracle is that living things exist that know they exist. As human beings conscious of ourselves, we represent the third miracle.2
In celebrating ourselves, it is important that we not overlook the first miracle: the natural world which is our home. When we overlook the first miracle and do not feel at home within the larger universe it is impossible for us to feel at home within ourselves or with one another. The journey home, reconnecting with the first miracle of the universe around and within us, is a theme woven through this book.
In our long evolutionary ascent toward the third miracle of knowing ourselves, we have been pulling back from our connection with nature and the first miracle. I believe this has been a natural and purposeful process. The human family is on a collective journey to awaken and, in the initial phase, our evolutionary task was to separate ourselves from nature and to develop our sense of individuality and empowerment. We have now succeeded so well and become so empowered that we are disrupting the climate, depleting precious resources, spreading weapons of mass destruction, and overpopulating the Earth. We are hitting an evolutionary wall and being pushed by necessity—and pulled by opportunity—to make a great turn in our evolutionary journey. How do we find our way back to the living universe? How can we visualize ourselves at home in the universe?
To expand our appreciation of the universe, let’s consider four observations from science that set the stage for a more systematic inquiry in the following chapter. These four insights always fill me with awe.
We Are Giants
When we gaze at the enormity of the universe, with its billions of swirling galaxies, it seems natural to conclude that we are very small. When we see a universe that extends trillions upon trillions of kilometers, it is reasonable to think we are insignificant in the cosmic scale of things. However, this commonsense view of ourselves is radically mistaken. We are not small creatures. In the overall scale of the universe, we are giants!
Imagine you have a ruler that measures from the largest scale of the known universe to the smallest. At the largest, we see hundreds of billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars like our Sun. At the smallest, we travel deep within the core of an atom to the world of quarks, and then farther, to the foundations of existence and what is called the “Planck distance.”3 If we were to place humans on that ruler, we would fall roughly in the middle zone.4 Actually, we are a bit on the larger side, as shown in the accompanying illustration. The stunning insight from science is that there is more smallness within us than there is bigness beyond us.
In the cosmic scheme of things, we are actually enormous creatures who live in the middle range of the spectrum of cosmic existence. Thinking we are small represents a prof
ound mispercep-tion. Just as we are stunned by the immensity of our universe, we should be equally amazed to learn of our own enormity. The universe reaches into unimaginably minute realms within us. We think of the realm of atoms as small, but there is a vast distance from the size of atoms to the truly infinitesimal realms at the foundations of existence. It seems likely that a vast amount of harmonizing activity is occurring in the immensity that lies between the realm of atoms and the realm of the truly small.
The Size of Humans in the Cosmic Scale
Scientists consider our size as humans to be optimal for who we are. If we were significantly smaller, we would not have enough atoms to become the complex and intelligent creatures we are. If we were significantly larger, our nervous system would not operate fast enough to support rapid communication within our bodies. In the cosmic scale, we seem to be just the right size.5
Because we are giants, living in the mid-range of the cosmic scale of existence, we should not be surprised that we overlook much that happens on the smaller, more refined scale of the universe. As giants, it is easy for us to fail to notice the intense activity at the ultra-microscopic scale of the universe.
The Nearly Invisible Universe
Scientists long assumed that visible forms of matter and energy make up the universe. Recently, they were stunned to discover that an overwhelming preponderance of the universe is invisible. It is a scientific fact that we don’t know what 96 percent of the universe really is. Scientists currently describe two major kinds of invisible energies in the universe. One is a contractive force called dark matter and the other is an expansive force called dark energy. They are called “dark” because they cannot be seen and measured by any direct means. Dark matter is thought to comprise roughly 23 percent of the universe.6 The invisible mass of dark matter provides the gravitational field needed to keep whirling galaxies from flying apart as they spin. Dark energy is thought to comprise roughly 73 percent of the universe. This invisible visible energy permeates the universe and is causing it to inflate or expand from within at an increasing rate.7 The remaining 4 percent comprises the entire visible universe of planets and stars.
The Composition of the Universe
If nearly all the universe is invisible, undetectable, and currently unknown, then we must expand our everyday understanding of the word “universe” accordingly. It is important to remember that, throughout this book, the word universe refers to much more than the familiar ingredients of matter and energy, because they constitute only a small fraction of a much larger reality.
If 96 percent of the known universe is invisible, then how much of ourselves is invisible and not detectable by material technologies? How far do we extend into the deep ecology of the invisible universe? Because we are an integral part of the universe, a large part of ourselves may well be connected with and operating in these invisible realms. The roots of our being reach deep.
Just Getting Underway
For centuries people looked at the world around us and assumed that it was a place of only three dimensions. Roughly a hundred years ago Einstein identified the fourth dimension—time—and the fabric of the universe came alive as a dynamic field. No longer is there such a thing as space, there is only space-time. A century later, cosmologists are further expanding the fabric of reality with string theories of eleven dimensions and more.8 Indeed, many cosmolo-gists now assume that the universe may have a countless number of additional dimensions. This is a stunning insight because each progressively larger dimension seems to offer dramatically new levels of freedom for life to express itself.
Although we may seldom think about dimensions, they are basic to the way reality works. Dimensions are far more than dry mathematical concepts—they are the invisible organizing substructures within which we exist. The miracle that anything exists at all depends upon dimensions to provide the organizing framework within which things can manifest in a coherent manner. Despite the pervasive dynamism of the universe, it holds together and presents itself as the stable, predictable world we see around us. Dimensions provide an invisible framework that keeps everything in its proper place and time (space-time), and bring coherence to the dynamism of the universe.
We can infer the presence of additional dimensions in the expansion of the universe. The popular image of the Big Bang is that of an explosion hurling matter out in all directions. This is misleading because it evokes the image of a pre-existing empty space into which matter is expanding. A more accurate image is that our universe is growing from the inside out, everywhere at once, with galactic islands using their gravitation to hold themselves together against the opening flow. It is the growing “roominess” of the universe, as the fabric of space-time expands, that produces the growing separation of galaxies. Because the fabric of space-time seems able to expand indefinitely, it points to the presence of even more spacious dimensions to accommodate this elasticity.
Assuming cosmologists are correct that there are an enormous number of additional dimensions, it is both important—and humbling—to recognize that we are not living in the 3,000th dimension or 300th dimension or even 30th dimension. We live in the third and fourth dimensions, at the very beginnings of existence, just a few steps above a black hole, or the collapse of reality into a single dimension. We live in a highly constricted reality, with an immensity of freedom and evolutionary opportunity beckoning us from more spacious dimensions. We thought we were at the culmination of evolution, and we are now discovering that we are only at the beginning. We are just moving out of the zone of collapse of matter into a black hole, and moving into the zone where life can encounter itself, know itself, and evolve itself. Vastly larger ecologies of life and learning likely exist in the spaciousness beyond our few contracted dimensions. Instead of the end of our journey, we seem to be at the very beginning of a voyage into infinity. It is a theme we will explore throughout this book.
Our Intuitive Connection with the Cosmos
Another remarkable discovery emerging from science is that we are not cut off from the rest of the universe. A core theme throughout this book is the idea that we each have an intuitive connection with the cosmos, even though it may be largely unrecognized and undeveloped. The respected author and researcher Dean Radin did an exhaustive analysis of psi research involving more than eight hundred studies and sixty investigators over nearly three decades.9 After weighing the collective evidence from all these studies, he concluded that we do participate in a subtle field, or ecology, of consciousness where we can both “send” and “receive.” These results are borne out in people’s everyday experience. For example, surveys of the American adult population show that two-thirds say they have had an experience of extrasensory perception such as an accurate intuition about the well-being of someone who is far away.10 In addition, about 40 percent report having had a “mystical” experience such as seeing the universe as alive and feeling a sense of great peace and safety within that aliveness.11 In keeping with these findings, a recurring theme of this book is that consciousness is not confined within the brain but is an infusing presence throughout the universe that enables us, in cooperation with the brain, to connect meaningfully with the world beyond our physical body.
Bringing these four areas of insight together already begins to awaken the possibility of a new sense of ourselves, the universe, and the human journey. We thought we were small creatures living in a vast material universe. We believed that our capacity for thought put us at the peak of the evolutionary wave, but we have now been offered a very different view: We are giants, living in a mostly invisible universe, who are just getting underway in our evolutionary journey, and can reach with our consciousness into the larger universe. These freeing insights liberate us from thinking we are small and insignificant. Not incidentally, they also free us from the arrogance of thinking that we occupy the leading edge of evolution’s wave.
Imagine Building a Universe
Imagine what would be required to create a cosmic system lik
e ours. One of the most striking things about our universe is the extraordinary precision with which it is put together. The fine-tuning of dozens of key factors is essential because the most minute variation would have resulted in no universe at all. For example, had the rate of expansion after the Big Bang been even slightly faster, the universe would have evaporated—and no stars or planets would have formed. Alternately, had the rate of expansion been even slightly slower, the universe would have collapsed back upon itself long ago—and the Big Bang would have quickly become the Big Crunch! There are at least several dozen relationships in the universe that need to be precisely just as they are if life is to exist. From the strength of gravity to the charge of an electron—if any of these were different by even small amounts, life as we know it would not be possible. The extraordinary degree of fine-tuning in our universe indicates that a profound design-intelligence is at work (not to be equated with the theology of “intelligent design,” which negates evolution).12
So what might be required to build and maintain, in good working condition, a universe like ours? Consider this: What if you are well known for your creativity and skill, and the Mother Universe says to you, “I really like your work. Would you like to build a cosmos? Think about it.” Then the Mother Universe hands you nine design and construction requirements.13 Consider these playfully as a way to stretch your imagination and prepare for the inquiry ahead.