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A
friend, who is a very open-minded Episcopalian priest, asked
me, as an open-minded evolution biologist, for suggestions
in regard to his efforts at redefining God in our profoundly
changing times. Now, that is a subject I actually think
about a great deal, and one that I love, so I sent him my
thoughts as follow:
In my
dialog with Willis Harman, published as Biology Revisioned
(North Atlantic Publishers, Berkeley 1998), I reversed the
scientific story I was taught from seeing consciousness as
the end product of evolution to seeing consciousness as the
source of evolution. In other words, the universe, to me, is
fundamentally Consciousness -- alive, aware and intelligent.
This Consciousness is non-local, i.e. everywhere, and is
what different cultures variously personify as God, under
many names. It is also what physicists now call "zero
point energy" -- the infinite energy existing at every
point in space. They are discovering that it is conscious
and that it non-locally records all information ever
produced in the universe. This Conscious non-timespace
energy is vaster than our local universe. It can and does
transmute itself into electromagnetic energy, and, in turn,
matter, in the creation of universes such as ours, though it
can also create itself into other pure energy patterns in a
myriad ways (they include angelic realms, for example, and
all the "worlds" we exist in between lives, and
eternally).
This
All-That-Is God Source is perceived as I-Am from the
perspective of the local consciousness created in beings
such as you and me, when we go into meditation, expanding
our little consciousness into the Great One we are all part
of. In this state we not only perceive union with God, we
transcend our local selves such that we recognize ourselves
as God.
Our
universe appears to be a learning universe. I like to say
its basic principle is "Anything that can happen, will
happen," and so it learns what works well and what
doesn't. Evolution is an improvisational dance, keeping the
steps that work and changing those that don't. As I cannot
separate God-as-Cosmic-Consciousness from
God-transmuting-into-material-universes, I believe our
learning universe implies a learning God -- God learning to
know the nature of Self through exploring its possibilities
and learning to reflect on that Self. Exactly as we, God's
human reflections, learn to do! In other words, Cosmic
Consciousness begins as Unity and divides into Complexity a
stage at a time -- at least from our human linear time
perspective -- as it embodies itself in vast varieties of
energetic and material forms. In non-timespace, which
physics now knows to be the more fundamental nature of the
universe, all possibilities exist together in complexity
inconceivable to us humans.
I
believe we exist as non-physical beings which incarnate
intentionally, according to particular intentions for
learning in each life, but that our "higher
selves" are present non-physically throughout our
lives. We weave our birth-to-death lifelines through the
endless possibilities by the choices we make from moment to
moment, each constraining the succeeding choices. From the
perspective of non-timespace, all our lives together are
like a kind of lotus flower, with each life one petal, one
way of playing out a theme chosen by our soul entity or
higher self. Some of our incarnations may be simultaneous in
the linear timeframe, others are a historical sequence. Each
"petal" is in soul communication with each other;
thus our many lives can influence each other. Recall that
early Christianity included the belief in reincarnation; I
believe the Church changed that to gain more control over
people's lives, just as Jesus told us we could reach God
directly and the Church made priests not assistants but
necessary channels to God.
All
nature is thus conscious in my worldview, and all of it has
access to non-timespace; all of it is an aspect of God. The
acorn knows the oak tree it will become. Only we humans of
western culture have played the game of cutting ourselves
off from the Great Conversation that our very cells can
still hear! Soils, waters, organisms, ecosystems, Earth,
even DNA itself, all know their composition and that of the
Whole as the cells of our bodies know each other and our
whole bodies, behaving intelligently to maintain themselves
and that whole (that's why our bodies work!).
Our
human task now is to wake up and recognize ourselves as
parts or aspects of God-as-Nature and behave accordingly.
All are One, all harm harms each of us, all blessings bless
each of us. What a guideline for choice! The ancients knew
it and taught it. But God, through us, is trying out the
most dangerous game of all -- the game of truly forgetting
our nature. A great risk, but it had to be done to try all
possibilities!
On a
recent Sunday, I gave the sermon at three services in a
Unity Church, for a minister friend who needed a break. I
urged the three congregations to remind themselves
occasionally to see themselves as the creative edge of God
(a phrase I learned from a dear friend) -- as God looking
out through their eyes, acting through their hands, walking
on their feet, and to observe how that changed things for
them...
I
concluded my letter to my priest friend, hoping this would
be of some use to him in his own deliberations. After all, I
can only describe the worldview/Godview that makes sense to
me at this point in my lifetime of exploration. We have only
our stories to go by, and each must necessarily be at least
somewhat, if not radically, different -- for God has become
very complex, though an eternal Unity! I pray that all the
religions will recognize the importance of the uniqueness in
each story and the unity of All That Is. I pray that
scientists, who have been given the role of priesthood --
the right to tell us "how things are" -- will soon
officially recognize that there is one alive, intelligent
universe in which spirit and matter are not separable. I
pray the indigenous people who never separated science and
spirituality will be honored for that. It is time for the
true communion which alone can save our species and all
others, which alone can bring about the perfectly possible
world we all dream of -- a world expressing this
understanding of ourselves as the creative edge of God!
Elisabet
Sahtouris, Ph.D. is an internationally known American/Greek
evolution biologist and futurist, author, speaker and
consultant on Living Systems Design. She has taught at the
University of Massachusetts and M.I.T., was a science writer
for the HORIZON/ NOVA TV series, a United Nations consultant
on indigenous peoples and is a member of the United
Religions Initiative. Her current focus is on evolution
biology as a model for organizational change; her recent
books are Biology Revisioned, co-authored with Willis
Harman, and A Walk Through Time: From Stardust to Us. |
