Read an Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
A MIRROR OF THE UNIVERSE
Evolution as a principal part of creation is a force or impulse to overcome any limitation or constraint that might arise in created beings—such as us. Further, there is no evolution except through creation, and no creation except through evolution, and no life at all without both.
In the early half of the twentieth century, scientist Arthur Eddington pondered how it was that this three- or four-pound clump of jelly in our skull could have discovered, come to understand, manipulate, and even control so many secrets of the universe in so short a time as we have.
Eddington mused that “Man’s mind must be a mirror of the universe.” Engrossed in writing my first book, The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, I was delighted with Eddington’s imagery, which verified a principal pillar of Crack (begun in the late 1950s). “Why of course!” I mused in turn, as I worked out Eddington’s issue. “Man’s mind is a mirror of a universe that mirrors Man’s mind.” Each, I claimed, brings about and sustains the other.
Place two mirrors opposite each other, I suggested, and observe the “infinite regress” resulting, as the endless series of reflections unfolds, stretching toward an infinite nowhere point. To ask which mirror reflects first, giving rise to such replication regress is as fruitless as the issue of mind and its reality. For there is no beginning or ending of such processes or the minds musing on them. Their reflecting beginning is in their reflecting ending and vice versa.
In spelling this out, I claimed that a scientist, in his passionate research leading to a great discovery out there, has, unbeknown to himself or his scientific community, entered into that discovery, as an indeterminable but integral part of the creation itself. While we do not “create” our reality or world, there is likewise no ready-made world-out-there awaiting our discoveries or creations within it. Mind and its world-creation give rise to each other, just as do creator and that-created.
My second argument has been that creation is not just an intelligent process; it is intelligence itself, as is its vital counterpart, evolution. Just as this creative-evolution doesn’t “have” intelligence but is intelligence, whatever is created therein is equally an expression of that intelligence (as will be picked up again in chapter 7).
Creation is an endless process stochastically exploring every possibility of being. Stochasm is from a Greek word meaning “randomness with purpose,” and to deny a random factor in creation-and-that-created is an error, as is denying purposefulness behind that randomness or its creation. Evolution is an ever present pressure or urge within any and all created phenomena or living events to move beyond any limitation or constraint within such event-phenomena.
So evolution is the transcendent aspect of creation, rising to go beyond itself, being the response of life to its own ever unfolding evolution. And every living phenomenon or event reaches, at some point, its eventual limitation and constraint. There could, in fact, be no creation that is final, because even the concept of finality would indicate limitation against which evolution, as is its nature, would, perforce, move to creatively rise and go beyond.
To move beyond limitation and constraint is a twofold process: first, to generate such movement itself, and second, to create that which lies beyond and manifests through that movement. And that which lies beyond the limiting constraints of something created, comes about only by the movement of transcendence “going-beyond” itself.
“Where” transcendence might go in “moving beyond” is determined by the going itself, as we will further explore in chapter 11. Our “going” enters into the nature of that which we enter into and brings about by our going—which is the very definition of the strange loops rising within this “mirroring” process. And herein lies the central thesis of this little argument of mine, as it did in my first book, Crack in the Cosmic Egg, well over half a century ago.
By its nature, evolution reveals all “points of constraint-limitation” in creation, and creation takes place stochastically in response. Stochasm’s purposefulness acts to select, out of that profusion, what is needed or what works. Like water, evolution seeks out, through means that come about through this seeking-out, a level that lies beyond its present state. Because evolution’s “present state” is always the moment of its stochastic movement to selectively go beyond itself, that “moment” is ever present and all there is. As Robert Sardello points out, in that Moment, the future will flow into our present, “making all things new,” if allowed.
Enter Death: The Ever Present Third Factor in the Mirroring of Evolution-Creation
Not death itself, but the fear it engenders, is the greatest of constraints. Moving to overcome this limitation is complex, because abolishing death (were such possible) would change the very ontological constructs of reality as it has evolved. So even the notion of abolishing death, as proposed in some Eastern philosophies, is counterproductive and would stop creation in its tracks. Fear involves the complexities of our ever changing emotions. Emotion involves our capacity to relate and interact, which is a cultural issue, not ontological, and tackled later in this book.
In the meantime, consider that cosmos and person (you and me) are of the same order, the same essential creative function, regardless of the size or measurements involved (light-years or micrometers). We were that creative function on its “micrometer scale” until we invented the electron microscope, which calls for even finer gradations, or “scalar measurements,” cumbersome refinements we can do without here.
For clarity at this point, however, a certain “biological” complexity is involved. Remember that bio simply means “life,” while the logical way it works is our knowledge of this life process. And this process has a very logical “way it works,” though not some machinelike or precise way. Wandering or meandering stochastically through its endless branching ways is more true-to-life as it happens.
