The Connected Universe: From Dead Mechanism to Living Process

Rob Marsh
Rob Marsh
Sep 6, 2018 · 6 min read

Tao (The Way) that can be spoken is not the Eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the Eternal Name.
Nameless, it is the origin of Heaven and Earth;
Named, it is the Mother of all things.
Thus, the constant void enables one to observe the true essence.
The constant being enables one to see the outward manifestations.
These two come paired from the same origin.
But when the essence is manifested, It has a different name.
This same origin is called “The Profound Mystery.”
As profound a mystery as It can be, It is the Gate to the essence of all life...
…Tao is so profound and yet, it is invisible.
It exists in everywhere and anywhere.
I do not know whose Son It is,
It existed before heaven and earth.”

The concept of nature as discrete and discontinuous did not arise until the 15th century, and did not come to shape man’s world significantly until the 16th and 17th centuries. With the discovery of “De Rerum Natura” by Poggio Braccionelli, and its subsequent errant translation, the spell of the separated world was cast into history.

Developments in technology in the 17th century led to the conception of nature as a machine, a word originally associated with engagement and responsiveness. Over the course of the century, the meaning shifted to signify something inert, regular and predictable. On the sails of the idea of reality as disconnected and discrete, a reductive brute mechanism came to predominate the thinking of men of science.

What possible agency or intelligence could inhere in a cosmos which by its very nature is disintegrated and mechanistic? The image of the universe we came to inherit by the early 20th century was that of a cold, dead, clockwork universe, determined to obey immutable laws set out before the beginning of time and space; in which the phenomenon of life was a tragic fluke in a vast, hostile sea of chaotic randomness. Mankind was thrust into this nightmare a separate being, a meaningless blip in the blind and deaf infinity of space.

It is obvious to most people who keep somewhat abreast of scientific progress that this model of the universe is almost as mythic as the Old Testament. It says more about the contours of the minds that thought it than it does about the fundamental nature of the universe we inhabit. Still, it is surprising indeed to see how many behave as if this were the case, who conduct their affairs with this kind of outmoded nihilism as a basic assumption. It has become fashionable among groups of people who see themselves as hard-headed realists and skeptics to conflate intelligence with a reductive characterization of the universe as some kind of an awful mistake, to repeat this early 20th century standpoint as if it were the epitome of our modern understanding of reality.

Those who believe themselves to understand often don’t, and as a result are found occupying positions in the geography of the mind which by and large have been deserted for decades if not centuries. The aforementioned put-down view of the universe is one of these abandoned posts. We are now coming to form an image of nature based on the best science of the day which is that of a self-generating order, a patterned process of transaction emerging from a positive void. Our world of form is the excitation or fluctuation of this vast cosmic ocean, continuous and interconnected throughout.

If we ask what possible agency or intelligence could inhere in such as cosmos as this, we can make some simple observations which may suggest a tentative hypothesis. We find in our experience of life and others qualities of love, compassion, equanimity, joy and altruism. Alongside these we find qualities of hatred, indifference, ignorance, misery and selfishness. In every experience, there is suffering. We find a world in which there are extremes of cold and heat, light and dark, high and low. We never find mountains with only one side, or waves lacking peaks and having only troughs. There is mutual interdependence in every corner of this vast happening.

The intelligence we find here is the kind of intelligence big enough to encompass all of the above. A positive void holds all possible things. Behind all the excitations of the field, there is the field. Undifferentiated awareness, the unborn, unmanifest potential energy of the universe. Of course, the Tao which can be named is not the Tao, so perhaps you will take my words not as objects but as signposts, and follow their pointing.

This new image of nature as living (imagine that), as intelligent, responsive and creative is being articulated not only in physics, but in biology. Recent work in evolutionary theory on “niche construction” describes the ways in which organisms shape their environments, which in turn reshape them through natural selection. New research in epigenetics is examining how organisms can transform in response to their environment in heritable ways. Life is not a static structure, imposed upon from outside by some blind organizing principle. It is a dynamic transactional relationship, an active process with agency. Nature self-generates order from the inside out.

The great Tao is ever present.
It can adjust Itself to everything.
All things live by It, and It does not deny them.
When Its work is accomplished, It does not claim possession.
It gives great love to nurture all things and all lives, but dominates not.

Lucretius and Lao-Tzu both saw the universe as a continuous and interconnected whole. Lucretius spoke not of atoms and particles in his “On the Nature of Things,” but of continuums. They were not alone in their holistic views, most cultures in mankind’s history have had traditions of non-dual thought or images of the universe as a continuum. The best science of our day echoes these sentiments, from the exactitudes of physics to the generalities of sociology. We find ourselves in an unprecedented position in history, where our rational, empirical understanding of the world mirrors our deepest felt sense of it.

But what if we don’t have that felt sense?

Another quirk of our present position in time and space is our access to novel states of consciousness. The traditions out of which the interconnected view of the universe grew have left us a wide variety of techniques for altering consciousness, from meditation to mantra to the use of psychedelics. By practicing these techniques, we can reliably enter into these novel states of consciousness and experience the continuum directly.

Recent studies on meditation and psychedelic states of mind have shown that both decrease activity in the brain’s default mode network, responsible for ruminative self-consciousness, unstructured daydreaming, remembering and imagining. This coincides with increased connectivity across regions of the brain, suggesting a deflation of the ego and a movement towards direct and responsive participation with the facts of experience. In other words, using meditation and/or psychedelics, an individual can arrive at the felt sense of themselves as interconnected with a continuum, as “one with all things.”

It is as Christ said, “Ye must become again as little children, lest ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” The Kingdom of Heaven is this present moment, our own nervous systems, this interconnected continuum of being; and with the help of sophisticated techniques of consciousness change, we can all experience it for ourselves. No longer do we have to languish in the belief that we are separate beings thrust into an insensitive and meaningless universe, and no longer must we accept on faith the proclamations of those who claim to be representatives of the divine. We can simply turn our gaze and look directly into the nature of things.

If we consider ourselves to be scientifically minded, interested in discovering truth, we ought to get our feelings and our perceptions in line with the best knowledge of reality available to us. What that means for us today is perhaps clearer than it has ever been, as are our methods for achieving it. We all stand to benefit from transitioning from a conception of our lives as meaningless chaos to one where we are an integral expression of a living and intelligent universe.

Rob Marsh

Written by

Rob Marsh

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