The Sacred Universe

This was a period of wonder and creativity. Everything possessed its own life principle, its own distinctive mode of self-expression, its own voice. Humans, animals, plants, and all natural phenomena were integrated within the larger community. As we are told by Henri Frankfort (1897-1954), in his treatise The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man:

The fundamental difference between the attitudes of modern and ancient man as regards the surrounding world is this: for modern, scientific man the phenomenal world is primarily an “It”; for ancient—and also for primitive—man it is a “Thou. . . . ” The ancients . . . saw man always as part of society, and society as embedded in nature and dependent upon cosmic forces. . . . Natural phenomena were regularly conceived in terms of human experience and human experience was conceived in terms of cosmic events.¹

This continuity between the human and the cosmic was experienced with special sensitivity in the Chinese world. Human activities and court rituals were carefully coordinated with the cycle of the seasons. If summer music was played in the winter, the entire natural order was considered to be disrupted. The supreme achievement of the human personality in this context was to experience one’s own being as “one body with Heaven and Earth and the myriad things.” In the vast creative processes of the universe the human was “a third along with Heaven and Earth” as a primordial force shaping the entire order of things.

In these examples, a sense of the sacred dimension of the Earth is involved, a type of awareness less available from our traditional Western religions. This lack of intimacy with the natural world was further extended when Descartes proposed that the living world was best described as a mechanism, because there was no vital principle integrating, guiding, and sustaining the activities of what we generally refer to as the living world.

Yet, strangely enough, a new sense of the sacred dimension of the universe and of the planet Earth is becoming available from our more recent scientific endeavors. The observational sciences, principally through the theories of relativity, quantum physics, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the sense of a self-organizing universe, and the more recent chaos theories have taken us beyond a mechanistic understanding of an objective world. We now know that there is a subjectivity in all our knowledge and that we ourselves, precisely as intelligent beings, activate one of the deepest dimensions of the universe. Once again we realize that knowledge is less a subject-object relationship than it is a communion of subjects.

We can now begin to appreciate the limitations of the analytical processes of our inquiry into the natural world. If formerly we knew by reductive processes that considered the particle as the reality and the whole as derivative, we now realize that we cannot know particles and their power until we see the wholes they bring into being.

If we know carbon simply as one of the 117 elements, then we have only minimal knowledge of what carbon is. To understand carbon, we must see its central role in molecules, megamolecules, in cellular life, organic life, sense life, and even in intellectual perception, because carbon in a transformed context lives and functions in the wide display of all the gorgeous plants and animals of the Earth as well as in the most profound intellectual, emotional, and spiritual experiences of the human. There is a latent spiritual capacity in carbon, just as there is a carbon component to our highest spiritual experience. This we experience within our own being as we become more conscious that the universe process, the Earth process, and the human process constitute a single unbroken sequence of transformations.

While the ancients had more highly developed sensitivities regarding the natural world in its numinous aspects and in its inner spontaneities, we are not without our own resources, which, properly appreciated, can lead us into a mode of intimacy with the natural world. If for a while we lost the poetry of the universe, this significantly changed when the astronauts came home stunned by the immensity and beauty of what they had experienced. Especially overwhelming was their view of the planet Earth from the regions of the moon, almost two hundred thousand miles distant. A new poetic splendor suddenly appeared in their writings, a poetry that emerged from the Earth. Astronaut Edgar Mitchell tells us:

Instead of an intellectual search, there was suddenly a very deep gut feeling that something was different. It occurred when looking at Earth and seeing this blue-and-white planet floating there, and knowing it was orbiting the Sun, seeing that Sun, seeing it set in the background of the very deep black and velvety cosmos, seeing—rather, knowing for sure—that there was a purposefulness of flow, of energy, of time, of space in the cosmos—that it was beyond man’s rational ability to understand, that suddenly there was a nonrational way of understanding, that had been beyond my previous experience.²

This experience, with all its romanticist overtones, which burst forth so spontaneously at the apex of our scientific-technological expertise, seems to arise out of a long repression, as if this cry of delight had been stifled over the past centuries. That this experience was so widely shared by the other astronauts speaks to the validity of the experience. Yet even such a dramatic episode would not be so impressive unless we knew that these men were deeply aware of the extensive scientific knowledge that we have gained of the universe and were speaking not out of simplistic emotion but out of an awareness of the fourteen billion years needed for the universe to bring into being the wonders they were seeing.

This sensitive experience of the universe and of the planet Earth leads us to appreciate the ten billion years required for the universe to bring Earth into existence and another four billion years for Earth to shape itself in such splendor. For our present Earth is not Earth as it always was and always will be. It is Earth at a highly developed phase in its continuing emergence. We need to see the sequence of earthly transformations as so many movements in a musical composition. In music, the earlier notes are gone when the later notes are played, but the musical phrase, indeed the entire symphony, needs to be heard simultaneously. We do not fully understand the opening notes until the later notes are heard. Each new theme alters the meaning of the earlier themes and the entire composition. The opening theme resonates throughout all the later parts of the piece.

Thus the origin moment of the universe presents us with a stupendous process that we begin to appreciate in its magnificence as it unfolds through the ages. The flaring forth of the primordial energy carried within itself all that would ever happen in the long series of transformations that would bring the universe into its present mode of being. The original moment of the universe in its primordial energies contained the undetermined possibilities of the present, just as the present is the activation of these possibilities. This primordial emergence was the beginning of the Earth story as well as the beginning of the personal story of each of us, since the story of the universe is the story of each individual being in the universe. Indeed, the reality inherent in the beginning could not be known until the shaping forces held in this process had brought forth the galaxies, Earth, its multitude of living species, and the reflection of the universe on itself in human intelligence.

After the universe’s origin moment, a sequence of other transformational moments took place: the shaping of the first-generation stars within their various galaxies, then the supernova collapse of first-generation stars. These creative moments brought into being the entire array of elements. These in turn made possible the future developments throughout the universe, especially on the planet Earth, where the expansion of life needed the broad spectrum of elements for its full development.

The gravitational attractions functioning throughout the universe gathered the scattered stardust into this second-generation star we call our sun, and surrounding this star, its nine planets. Within this context, Earth began its distinctive self-expression, a groping toward its unknowable and unpredictable future, yet carrying within itself a tendency toward greater differentiation, a deepening subjectivity, and a more intimate self-bonding of its component parts.

Such wonder comes over us as we reflect on the Earth finding its proper distance from the sun so that it would be neither too hot nor too cold, shaping its radius so that it would be neither too large and (thus make the Earth more gaseous, like Jupiter) nor too small (and thus make the Earth more arid and rocky, like Mars). Then the Earth-moon distance was established so precisely—the moon was neither so close that the tides would overwhelm the continents nor so distant that the seas would be stagnant and life could not emerge.

Profound mysteries were taking place all this while, the most mysterious of which was this setting into place of the conditions required for the emergence of life and human consciousness. Principally through the work of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, we now understand in some detail that the story of life is so bound up with the story of Earth’s geological structure that we can no longer think of Earth as first taking shape in its full physical form and then life somehow emerging within this context. The simultaneous shaping of its physical form and the shaping of its life took place in intimate association with each other. The living forms that appeared in the early history of Earth were among the most powerful forces shaping the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and even the geological structures of the planet.

But while we need to understand the shaping power of living forms in the sequence of Earth’s transformations, we must understand that living forms themselves were brought into being by the shaping power of earlier Earth development. Always there is this integral relationship between the earlier and the later. In the larger arc of this transformation process, the simpler forms are earlier, the more complex forms later, just as the simpler atomic elements took shape in the earliest moments of the universe and the more complex elements came later.

Much else might be said about this early phase of Earth’s development, yet it is sufficient to note that each of these early occurrences in the life development of the planet were decisive. Each had to happen at precisely the opportune moment in the sequence of Earth’s development for the planet to be what it presently is.

While perhaps incomplete, the narrative as given here presents in outline the story of the universe and of the planet Earth as this story is now available to us. This is our sacred story. It is our way of dealing with the ultimate mystery whence all things come into being. It is much more than an account of matter and its random emergence into the visible world about us, because the emergent process, as indicated by the geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975), is neither random nor determined but creative, just as in the human order creativity is neither a rational, deductive process nor an irrational wandering of the undisciplined mind but the emergence of beauty as mysteriously as the blossoming of a field of daisies out of the dark Earth.

On Earth we find the fulfillment of the primordial tendency of the universe toward clearly articulated and highly differentiated entities. Earth astounds us with the vast differences between itself and the other planets. Each of the planets has its own distinctive mode of being, but these other planets are all much more like one another than any of them are to Earth.

This unique mode of Earth-being is expressed primarily in the number and diversity of living forms that exist on Earth, living forms so integral to one another and with the structure and functioning of the planet that we can appropriately speak of Earth as a “Living Planet.” This term is used neither literally nor simply metaphorically but as analogy, somewhat similar in its structure to the analogy expressed when we say that we “see,” an expression used primarily for physical sight but also used to connote intellectual understanding. A proportional relationship is expressed. The eye is to what it experiences as the intellect is to what it experiences. The common quality is that of subjective presence of one form to another as other. In this experience, the identity of each is enhanced, not diminished.

So in using this term “living” in speaking about a tree as a living being and in speaking about Earth as a living being, we are indicating that some of the basic aspects of life, such as the capacity for inner homeostasis amid the diversity of external conditions, are found proportionately realized both in the tree and in the comprehensive functioning of the planet. In the tree, as the primary analogue, we have the basic functioning of the life process through its beginning as a seed with its identifiable genetic coding, its absorption of the energies of the sun, and the flow of nourishment from its roots through its trunk to its leaves. Then there is the process of self-reproduction through its seeds. This process produces a certain continuing transformation of the surrounding atmosphere, whereby the presence of the life process can be discerned.

So too Earth comes into being. Not, however, with an identifiable genetic coding guiding Earth through its stages of development to its maturity nor through birth from a prior Earth or living organism with the capacity to continue this generative process. Earth cannot reproduce itself. Yet notwithstanding, there are similarities that justify the use of the term “living” to describe Earth in its integral functioning, especially in its capacity for inner self-adjustment to the diversity of external conditions to which it is subject. This “feedback” process is so remarkable that, along with the capacity of the planet to bring forth such an abundance of life forms, Earth can be described not simply as living but as living in a supereminent manner.

The use of metaphor and analogy does not diminish the reality of what is being said. The more primordial realities can only be spoken of in a symbolic manner. To indicate that Earth is not exactly a living reality in the sense that a bird or a flower is a living reality is not to diminish the significance of Earth as a living being. It is rather to heighten the significance of what we are saying. Earth makes possible all those multiple forms of life upon the planet, not simply some single life form. Earth “flowers” into the immense variety of species, not simply into another Earth.

The deepest mystery of all this is surely the manner in which these forms of life, from the plankton in the sea and the bacteria in the soil to the giant sequoia or to the most massive mammals, are ultimately related to one another in the comprehensive bonding of all the life systems. Genetically speaking, every living being is coded not only in regard to its own interior processes but in relation to the entire complex of earthly being. This is to be alive and to be the fertile source of life.

Earth’s fertility in bringing forth life is found in our reference to Earth as Universal Mother, as Gaia. Earth is Mother who gives birth to all the living forms that exist on Earth. However, these living forms have influenced the shaping of Earth, and they themselves derive from the period prior to the appearance of organic life on the planet. Thus it is Earth itself that is the subject most deserving of a maternal designation, not the biosphere. Earth is the larger subject that activates its being in the total complex of spheres that constitute Earth: the geo-sphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, and the biosphere. None of these has existence or function apart from its unity in Earth.

We need to think of the planet as a single, unique, articulated subject to be understood in a story both scientific and mythic. Just as a tree is a unified subject capable of coordinating the vast diversity of activities involved in its emergence from a germinating seed, sending roots down into the soil, raising up its trunk, branching out in all directions, sprouting leaves, and finally scattering seeds for the further expansion of its life, so also Earth is a subject capable of coordinating the variety of activities whereby the various species come into being. In both instances, we are dealing with realities that need scientific and mythic modes of understanding.

The great benefit of the Gaia hypothesis is that it is an effort at a larger pattern of interpretation. It might be suggested, however, that the Gaia designation does not go far enough in this larger sense of the planet Earth as a “living” reality. Neither biological nor chemical studies alone can deal adequately with the superb achievement of Earth in its self-shaping from the beginning. Nor, apparently, do these give adequate consideration to the prior conditions for the appearance of life, which Earth, in its primordial phases, brought into being. As with so many basic concepts in the array of human knowledge, the concept of Gaia is multivalent, giving rise to an extensive range of development in a variety of disciplines. Here we are concerned with the insight into the dynamism of Earth as this appears within a more comprehensive cosmology.

The planet Earth might well be the most unique reality in the universe precisely in its capacity for bringing forth in the unity of a single being all those various modes of physical structure, organic life, and consciousness that presently constitute the reality of the planet. It also seems that Earth has the status of a privileged planet not simply within our solar system but possibly throughout the entire universe. This privileged status is especially evident in the conviction of some scientists that the universe is as old as it is and as big as it is because it takes a universe this old and this big to produce a planet such as Earth, which has the requisite conditions for the emergence of life and the human form of consciousness.

In this more comprehensive understanding of Earth we might recall the primordial tendency of the universe toward the communion of every being with every other being in the universe. Ultimately this brings us back to the curvature of space, the primordial expression of the comprehensive bonding force of the universe. This bonding, expressed in gravitational attraction, is a primary psychic-spiritual as well as a physical ordering principle of the universe’s larger dimensions. Gravitational attraction keeps the divergent forces of the original emergence within the limits needed for the creative processes that have taken place over the centuries.

These two opposed forces, divergent and convergent, associated with the original emergence give us the curvature of space, a curvature sufficiently closed to hold all things together in an ordered universe yet sufficiently open to permit the creative process to continue over the centuries. It is this curvature that brings every component of Earth into intimate association with every other component. Everything within this curvature has not only its individual mode of being but its universe mode of being, since the universe is integral with itself throughout its entire extension in space and throughout the full sequence of its transformations in time. Indeed, nothing can be itself without everything else. Everything exists in multiple dimensions. A tree is a physical being, a living being, an Earth being, and a universe being.

For the human especially, these multiple modes of our being require both the activation of the physical and biological modes of our being and the activation of the psychic mode of our being. We have our individual self, our biological self, our Earth self, and our universe self. It is through attraction to the larger modes of our self that we are drawn so powerfully toward our experience of the Earth. We seek to travel throughout the Earth, to see everything, to experience the grandeur of the mountains, to plunge into the sea, to raft the rivers, to fly through the air, even to go beyond Earth into space. We seek this for the expansion of our being, even more than for the physical thrill. In all these experiences we come to know the further realms of ourselves and experience the deepest mysteries of existence—what might well be considered the numinous origins whence the Earth and the entire universe derive, subsist, and have their highest mode of fulfillment.

Thus the scientist seeks to understand Earth in all its geological and biological forms, to examine the inner realms of the atomic and subatomic worlds. Even recent concerns for understanding Earth as a living organism arise not from an arbitrary feeling that it would be an interesting venture of the human mind. We are, rather, impelled to this inquiry through our efforts at our own self-discovery. It is a mystical venture, for its ultimate purpose is to achieve a final communion with that ultimate reality whence all things come into being. The dedication of personal effort, the life discipline, the excitement of the discoveries made, the differences, the identities, the coherences, the moments of intellectual impasse—all these reveal a new form of religious enchantment and a quest for further revelatory experience. For the universe whence we emerged is constantly calling us back to itself. So too Earth is calling us back to itself, and not only to us but to all its components, calling them into an intimacy with one another and to the larger community within which all earthly realities have their existence.

Thus the larger explanation of any part of the universe is the cosmological explanation. So too it is with Earth. We need a Gaia hypothesis. But we also need a cosmological context for understanding the meaning of Earth as Gaia. This cosmological context is especially important for any consideration of the religious implications of the Gaia hypothesis.

Indeed, our scientific inquiry in this direction establishes the basis for a new type of religious experience different from but profoundly related to the religious-spiritual experience of the earlier shamanic period in human history. Since religious experience emerges from a sense of the awesome aspects of the natural world, our religious consciousness is consistently related to a cosmology that tells us the story of how things came to be in the beginning, how they came to be as they are, and the role of the human in enabling the universe in its earthly manifestation to continue the mysterious course of its creative self-expression.

From a religious perspective, we might consider that because of the diversity of life expression that is held together in such intimate unity, the Earth is a special presentation of the deep mysteries of existence whence religious consciousness arises. Thomas of Aquinas refers to “difference” as “the perfection of the universe.” The reason is that the divine could not imagine itself in any single being, so the divine brought into being an immense variety of beings. Thus the perfection lacking to one would be supplied by the others. “Consequently the whole universe together participates in the divine goodness more perfectly, and manifests it better than any single being whatever.”³

We could adapt this passage by simply saying that the deep mysteries of existence are manifested more perfectly in accord with the greater diversity held in the greater unity. This provides us with a way of dealing with the special role of the Earth as revealing the deepest realms of existence with a perfection unequalled in any other mode of being we know of. For in the Earth we have our most magnificent display of diversity caught up into the coherence of an unparalleled unity.

In this context, we can understand the special numinous quality attributed to the Earth. In its own self-manifestation, the Earth is also a revelation of the ultimate mystery of things. The sense of awe and mystery that was evoked in the earliest human awakening to the universe is beginning to awaken once more within this new context of scientific understanding. We have indeed lost contact with the world of the sacred, as this sacredness was experienced through a spatial mode of consciousness in which time was perceived to move in eternally recurring seasonal cycles. Yet we now begin to experience the sacred dimension of our new story of the universe as an irreversible emerging process.

No longer are we celebrating simply the seasonal renewal of the living world. We now are experiencing in the world around us the primordial emergence of the universe in the full surge of its creativity. We are integral with the process. We experience the universe with the delight of our postcritical naiveté.

Never before have any people carried out such an intensive meditation on the universe and on the planet Earth as has been carried out in these past few centuries in our Western scientific venture. Indeed, there is a mystical quality in the scientific venture itself. This dedication, this sacred quest for understanding and participation in the mystery of things, is what has brought us into a new revelatory experience. While there is no need for us to be professional scientists, there is an absolute need for us to know the basic story of the universe and of the planet Earth as these are now available to us by science.