(This article is extracted from the author's forthcoming book Spiritual Intelligence )
Science tells us that the universe began suddenly, for no apparent reason, and that nothing existed before this sudden beginning, not even time. We are also told that life, too, emerged by chance and that it has no intrinsic meaning except to replicate itself. As if this were not enough, we are asked to accept that we did not exist before conception and that we cease to exist altogether at the moment of death. In other words, according to science, we inhabit a universe devoid of meaning and purpose. It hardly needs adding that such a belief probably has a profound effect on the way some people behave. It is little comfort to reflect that if the universe is indeed meaningless, then the statement that it is so must be equally meaningless, given that all statements are parts of the universe.
The irony is that science itself would not exist if the universe were without intrinsic meaning, because, if it were, it would be inherently unknowable. If something has no meaning or purpose, then nothing can be known about it. We can only know anything about anything if it has some meaning. Even if we are talking about an amorphous, colourless blob floating somewhere in space, there must be a reason, a meaning, for its being that particular blob, and being colourless, and being in that particular location in space and time. Since we can say something about everything, no matter what it is, it follows that everything is intrinsically knowable and meaningful. Science, a form of knowledge, owes its very existence to the fact that the universe is knowable.
It should be self-evident that we can only get to know anything about the universe because it has the potential to be known in the first place. The universe undoubtedly has qualities which make sense to us. Collectively, we call these qualities order, since order is that which gives anything the potential to make sense to us, now or in the future.
There are good reasons for believing that the universe is wholly ordered and meaningful, and that what we think of as disorder, randomness, and chance are only in the eye of the beholder. To begin with, human knowledge has always been on the increase, and there is no a priori reason for believing that this process will ever stop. We are sometimes led to believe that the facts of the late Twentieth Century are sacrosanct, and that we are close to knowing most, if not all, of the important things there are to know. The impression is given that we are discovering a new class of facts which will remain virtually unchanged until the end of time. If this were true, we would eventually reach the point at which there is no more for us to discover and learn. This would be the ultimate boredom, the ultimate stasis. Quite apart from anything else, it does not ring true. It sits ill beside the daily diet of human affairs. If as a species we cannot even live in peace and harmony with each other and the planet, claims that we shall soon know nearly everything about almost everything sound hollow indeed. In any event, history teaches us otherwise. The history of science is littered with the corpses of "hard facts" which have had to give way to newer "hard facts" as new discoveries were made. What we know about ourselves and nature and the universe is almost certainly greatly outweighed by what we do not know. As Karl Popper put it, our knowledge is always finite, but our ignorance is always infinite. It is surely reasonable to believe that human knowledge will continue to grow so long as there are human beings around to make discoveries and to think. Having said this, it is important that we make provision for the growth of knowledge. One way of doing this is to ensure that we have concepts in which there is room to grow. Our concepts can only ever be as clear and useful as we are capable of making them. However, our capacity to conceive is capable of growth. As it grows, there is a corresponding growth in that which we can conceive and comprehend. If you like, a little more of the depth, richness, mystery and complexity of the world becomes available to us. Yet we can be sure that however much we understand anything today, our understanding will be different in the future. Much of what we are convinced is true today will be replaced by broader, deeper, more accurate knowledge. This should help to put our current knowledge into its proper perspective. We are all familiar with the amused astonishment we feel when we look back and recollect how limited our understanding of something was in the past compared to our current understanding of the same thing. We would do well to recognise that the same process operates forward in time as well as backwards. Our current understanding of anything, which we may well feel to be adequate if not complete today, will almost certainly come to be regarded in time with the same amused astonishment with which we regard our past efforts. Humility is in order as well as excitement when considering our achievements.
Our concepts should therefore be larger than our present state of knowledge. So long as they are, knowledge has the opportunity to expand within them. But once our concepts become fixed, and thus unable to accommodate new knowledge, they act as barriers rather than as facilitators. If, however, we were able to evolve wider, more flexible concepts, then new knowledge could be accommodated rather than being excluded or distorted. It could be added to the existing base of knowledge, thus enlarging and enriching the base itself. We would then be able to view the world from an ever loftier vantage point, i.e. the enlarged knowledge base. From this higher standpoint we get a wider perspective on the world, such that we are able to acquire still more knowledge, making the base even larger, and so the process goes on. But the evolution of knowledge can proceed in this way only if our concepts are sufficiently wide and accommodating in the first place.
The second reason for believing that the universe is wholly ordered and meaningful is based on our own experience. We ought by now to have learned that what may have at first seemed disordered and incomprehensible eventually turns out to make sense after all, once we have become familiar with it and have reflected upon it. The inherent order which was present all along eventually becomes apparent to us. At the same time, the "disorder" just disappears. Many things seem at first sight to be incomprehensible and disordered, but our inability to understand something is no reason to say that the thing is inherently incomprehensible. To state that something is inherently incomprehensible or chaotic may be to abrogate our responsibility to attempt to understand it. In more psychological terms, if we say that something is inherently incomprehensible, we may unconsciously be saying that if we cannot understand it, then no one else is allowed to. So we try to convince as many others as possible to share in our belief in the existence of inherent disorder and chaos. It is as if we fail to learn from experience. How often we have found ourselves confronted by something new and strange. At first, it will seem disordered and confusing, sometimes even hostile. Arriving in a strange town, for example, we need time to get to know the layout. Eventually, we work out where things are in relationship to each other. We become familiar with the place. The order that was always there has simply become apparent.
Similarly, if we look at the night sky as if for the first time, all we see is an apparently random collection of points of light of varying degrees of intensity. But we know that what we are really looking at is part of the remarkable order of the heavens. Even now we are just beginning to know this order. Although many aspects of the cosmos still seem disordered and incomprehensible to us, the likelihood is that we will eventually know and understand them. We will see the order that was present all along. Disorder is simply the measure of the inability or unwillingness of the observer to perceive the order already inherent in whatever is being observed.
Disorder is to be distinguished from chance. What we really mean by chance is lack of knowledge. The outcome of the toss of a coin, for example, is a matter of mechanics, fairly complex mechanics, but mechanics nonetheless. The "chance" element lies in the fact that, for all practical purposes, it is impossible to predict with certainty the outcome of a single toss because we do not have the detailed data required to make the calculation. But there is a clear distinction to be made between our inability to predict, on the one hand, and the existence of inherent chance, on the other. The former is our common experience, but the latter probably does not exist.
Randomness is different yet again. We speak of "random" events as if they were totally cut off from the rest of the world. This is an impossibility. There is always a reason for something to happen, otherwise it simply would not happen. A truly random event, were such a thing possible, would have no causal origin, nor would it have any relationship with anything else. So whence would it spring, why would it occur at all, and whither would it go? What we normally think of as randomness, chance, disorder, and chaos, are not inherent qualities of whatever we are observing. Rather, they are qualities of the observer. We think something is disordered only because we cannot perceive the order already present in it. A chance occurrence is one whose outcome we cannot predict in practice. And randomness is a name we give to a situation whose cause we do not know or understand. In each case, the state of mind or knowledge of the observer is of the essence. What we think of as disorder or chaos or chance are simply reflections of our own human limitations, rather than being inherent qualities of the universe.
Now, if the universe is wholly ordered, for the reasons just given, then it must be wholly meaningful. What this universal meaning is remains to be discovered. However, we can at least say that since each one of us is an part of the universe, our own individual meaning must have some relationship with that of the universe. In the words of Marcus Aurelius:
"Whether the universe is a concourse of atoms, or nature is a system, let this first be established, that I am part of the whole which is governed by nature; next, I am intimately related to the parts, which are of the same kind with myself." (1)
This suggests that what we know of ourselves may be able to tell us something about the universe as a whole. If, as it seems, part of life's meaning is to get to know the world and ourselves more fully and more deeply, then an equally important part of the meaning of the universe may be to be known more fully and deeply. At some exalted level, at present far beyond our comprehension, the universe may exist to be more fully known.
Meanwhile, how do we know what we know? What is it that is in us which enables us to know something? There are many ways of approaching this question. One way is to say that to know is to resonate, that the act of knowing something is to resonate with it, as if we are somehow on the same wavelength. It is as if we have something inside us which somehow corresponds to - and thus can resonate with - its counterpart in the world around us. We, the microcosm, resonate with the macrocosm of which we form part.
Everything is part of something larger. Indeed everything is part of many larger somethings. Arthur Koestler coined the term "holarchy", and he called its members "holons". Everything in the universe is a holon, a part of many larger holons, and composed of many smaller holons. Every holon is complete in itself, and has an "integrative" and an "assertive" aspect. What Koestler means by this is that every holon is a member of all the higher holons in its holarchy, and thus has to comply with, or integrate with them. At the same time, every holon consists of all the smaller holons within it, and thus able to assert its order on them.
Everything in the universe is enfolded within all the higher levels of order (i.e. holons) of which it forms part. Conversely, everything owes its very existence to the smaller constituent holons of which it is composed. In political terms, we are all unique and to some extent free and independent, yet we are all part of something greater than ourselves and must therefore cooperate and be interdependent.
We are all part of the macrocosm. Each of us is a member of many greater holons. We are all members of the human race. Without its parts, ourselves, there would be no human race. In turn, the human race as a whole is a member of a larger holon, Nature - the totality of all living things. Nature in turn is part of this planet, which is part of the solar system, and so on, through successively larger holons until we reach the largest possible holon of all, the universe itself.
Universe (everything in existence) | Local group of galaxies | Milky Way | Solar System | Earth | Nature (the totality of all living things) | Vertebrates | Primates | Human Race | Human Being | Organ | Tissue | Cell | Chromosome | Molecule | Atom | Electron | Quantum (the smallest thing conceivable)
This particular holarchy is merely illustrative. It makes no claim to be comprehensive. We have no idea, for instance, how many levels of order there are between a star and the galaxy of which it is a member, nor between a galaxy and the universe itself. There are probably many levels of order that we have yet to discover. In addition, we have illustrated only one of many possible holarchies. Not every molecule forms part of organic life, and not every star has its own solar system of planets. These and other similar considerations suggest that the universe may consist of a very large number of parallel holarchies. The concept of the holarchy is not new, but it is potent. As Joseph Needham wrote in 1936:
"The hierarchy of relations, from the molecular structure of carbon to the equilibrium of the species and ecological whole, will perhaps be the leading idea of the future." (2)
Each of us is a part of something larger, the human race. This much is obvious. Much less obvious is the fact that each of us is imbued with the "essential nature" of the human race. What does this mean? It means that each of us has those qualities which distinguish human beings from all other forms of life, and which make us recognisable as humans. The totality of these qualities is the essential nature of the human race.
It does not end here. Each of us is part of the larger levels of order of which the human race itself forms part. Thus, each of us is part of the whole of Nature. As such, we share, with all other forms of life, the essential qualities of Nature. As with all other forms of life, we are born, we mature, we adapt and develop, we reproduce, and we die. This is the cycle of life through which all living things appear to go. This is the essential nature of Nature. Yet, although this quality is apparent in us, it is only apparent at a very general level. At a more particular level, we are vertebrates. At a more particular level still, we are primates. At an even more specific level, we are human beings. And at the most particular level of all, each of us is unique. We are all very similar, yet at the same time very different.
We are of course talking here about the principle of unity in diversity. There are countless examples of this throughout Nature, and at higher levels of order too. Perhaps the best known is the snowflake. All snowflakes are undoubtedly snowflakes, with their familiar hexagonal patterns, yet every snowflake there ever has been, and ever will be, is unique. It is an awe-inspiring thought, and a testimony to the creative potential of Nature. Yet what applies to snowflakes applies equally to fingerprints, starfish, black cats, oak leaves, people's faces - the list is endless. To link this with Koestler's thoughts on the holarchy, diversity reflects the assertive aspect, while unity reflects the integrative aspect.
There is, incidentally, no a priori reason to suppose that the principle of unity in diversity ceases to operate at some arbitrary point, yet this is implicit in current scientific thinking. All the atoms of any particular element, and all the constituents of that atom, are believed to be identical wherever they happen to occur. An atom of iron, for example, found on this planet is assumed to be indistinguishable from an atom of iron found on Mars, or indeed anywhere. Yet the idea of unity in diversity suggests that although they may indeed be indistinguishable to our imperfect perception, this is not to say that they are identical.
Continuing up the holarchy, so to speak, Nature herself is imbued with the essential order of that of which she forms part. In our simplified holarchy this is planet Earth. There can be little doubt that life, at least as we know it, is clearly conditioned by this planet's uniqueness. Life here has adapted to,and been formed by, all the many characteristics of this planet, the strength of its gravitational field, its mean surface temperatures, its magnetic fields, the many forms of radiation which affect it, the relative proportions of its chemical elements and compounds, as well as to all the many other unique conditions which we know about or have yet to discover. In all these respects, Nature on this planet is imbued with the unique order of this planet. Moving on a stage, Earth is in turn the child of the Sun in so many similar ways, and so it goes on. Each level of the order of the macrocosm is part of, and determined by, the level above it, and by the levels above that. As members of the Milky Way galaxy, for example, each of us is imbued with its essential order, whatever this turns out to be.
One way of visualising all this is to imagine that we consist of layers of successively deeper order, rather like the layers of an onion. The greater the level of external order of which we form part, the deeper will it be expressed within us. At our deepest core lies the least apparent, and most remote, level of order, that of the universe itself. All things, including ourselves, are imbued at the deepest level with the essential order, the essential intelligence, of the universe. Perhaps this is what has been referred to as the "divine spark" in everything.
Some of the layers of order and intelligence hidden within us seem to be coming to the surface, and manifesting as levels of awareness. We are privileged to have witnessed in our lifetime the emergence of what we might call "human race consciousness", "Nature consciousness", and "planet earth consciousness". We have become aware of the idea of the human race as a whole, as a single entity. This awareness has taken many forms, such as the emergence of the United Nations, the concept of the human family, and so on. Similarly, we have developed an awareness, a consciousness, of Nature as a whole, as a single entity. This has taken the form of our interest in wild life, in threatened species, in the environment, in ecology, and in the fact that we are all part of these things. Last but not least, and thanks to pictures of Earth taken from space and to writers such as James Lovelock, we are beginning to think as a planet does, and see things from its point of view. We think of the planet as a single entity, and some of us even think of it as an intelligent, living being.
The point is that each of these three forms of consciousness were probably always there within us, waiting to be lit and fanned at the right moment. The likelihood is that, at some time in the future, even greater forms of consciousness, corresponding to even greater levels of order in the macrocosm, will also awaken within us. What it will be like to have "Sun consciousness" and "Milky Way consciousness" remains to be seen. Meanwhile, we might note that to grow in consciousness may be one and the same as gaining access to the higher levels of order and intelligence already present within us.
We should not be surprised that we are so intimately connected to the macrocosm. There is a lot of evidence that the universe is interconnected and that we are part of this interconnectedness. Although we have become accustomed to thinking of the universe as a huge empty space, a vacuum, in which planets, stars, and other sundry things move around, Ervin Laszlo reminded us in The Creative Cosmos (3) that the universe is not a vacuum, but rather a plenum, in the sense that there is no such thing as empty space. Every cubic millimetre of what we think of as empty space is packed with a bewildering variety of fields, all interpenetrating each other. At any point in the universe, including any point on or in our own bodies, there are an incalculable number of gravitational and electromagnetic fields.
Admittedly, from our own limited perspective, the universe does appear to be largely empty. Even on the most star-studded night, there is more dark than light up there. Yet, were it possible for us to see things from the point of view of, say, an electron, our own bodies, undoubtedly solid as far as we are concerned, would appear to consist largely of empty space, in just the same way as the universe appears to us, such is the vast difference in scale. Continuing this comparison, the universe, when viewed from its own perspective, will appear to itself to be a single solid body, difficult though it may be for us to imagine this. In this case, it is we who have become the equivalent of electrons.
We find it easy to comprehend the integrity, the unity, of relatively small things, such as a frog or a watch. This is no doubt because we are able to see the whole of them at once. We even experience ourselves as single units in which all the parts are somehow interconnected. The problem arises only when we attempt to adopt a perspective higher than our own, and try to see much larger entities - the whole human race, for instance - as single units. As it happens, we can probably stretch our minds far enough to be able to recognise the integrity of the human race as a whole, as a single unit. Although it becomes increasingly difficult to do so, this process can be repeated up the scale, seeing things from ever higher perspectives. If we do so, the unity of larger and larger things becomes apparent. We learn to recognise that each is, in its own terms, a single entity, a single solid body. Eventually, we arrive at the greatest possible perspective of all, and we see that the universe, too, is a solid, unified entity from its own point of view. The following description of the solar system seen as a solid body beautifully illustrates this line of thinking:
"There will then appear an extraordinarily complex and beautiful figure. The planetary paths, drawn out into manifold spirals of various tensions and diameters, have now become a series of iridescent sheaths veiling the long white-hot thread of the Sun, each shimmering with its own characteristic colour and sheen, the whole meshed throughout by a gossamer-fine web woven from the eccentric paths of innumerable asteroids and comets, glowing with some sense of living warmth and ringing with an incredibly subtle and harmonious music. This figure is not in one detail fantastic. The width of the planets' orbits will determine the size of each enveloping sheath: the diameter of the planet the coarseness or fineness of the thread of which it is spun: the planet's relative curvature its refractive index or colour: the number and distance of its moons its sheen or luminescence: while the speeds of planetary rotation will the cause the totality of sheaths to emit a magnetic or living emanation." (4)
Now, if the universe is indeed a single unified body, this lends weight to the contention that it is wholly interconnected, such that its every aspect, whether object or process, however small or transient, is connected to its every other aspect, regardless of distance. We know, for instance, that all matter is connected to all other matter by means of gravity. Although the influence of gravity weakens with distance, it nonetheless continues to extend indefinitely. This surely means that every fragment of matter in the universe - including those fragments of which our bodies are composed - is connected to every other fragment. But there is even more to it than this:
"Mach's Principle says that the mass of a body is generated by forces originating in all the matter of the universe, including distant matter. This means that the resistance offered by a particle to changes in its position or movement is the result of the effects of the whole universe on the particle. In other words, the universe exerts a form of social pressure on the particle to maintain the status quo, and it is this pressure that we call the mass of the particle." (5)
This suggests that not only is all the matter of the universe wholly interrelated, it actually owes its very existence to this interrelationship. As Koestler pointed out, the metaphysical implications of this are profound:
"....for it follows from it not only that the universe as a whole influences local terrestrial events, but also that local events have an influence, however small, on the universe as a whole." (6)
As with gravity, the effect of light also weakens with distance. To be more precise, it diffuses across larger and larger volumes of space, in all possible directions. Yet, as with gravity, light continues forever. We know that the light from distant stars and galaxies reaches us hundreds of millions of years after it has been emitted. If it can endure that long, it can surely do so forever. Now if this is true for light, a particular band of electromagnetic radiation, it must surely be true for all the other myriad forms of electromagnetic radiation with which fill the universe. Thus the universe is interconnected, not just as a plenum of gravitational fields, but also as a plenum of electromagnetic fields.
Non-locality is the term used to describe the relationship apparently retained between two particles after they have interacted in some way. However distant from each other they become, there remains an instantaneous relationship between them. Whenever something happens to one of the pair, the other is immediately affected, regardless of distance. The normal limitations of the speed of light do not appear to apply. One of the logical implications of Mach's Principle is that non- locality is not restricted to sub-atomic activity, but that it is a characteristic of everything in the universe. The reasoning behind this is straightforward. Gravity is clearly at the heart of Mach's Principle, and, so far as we are aware, the effect of gravity is instantaneous. Although it weakens with distance, the gravitational effect is nonetheless instantaneous regardless of distance. Thus it is a form of non-local connectedness.
If non-locality does apply to everything in the universe, and not just to the sub-atomic level, then clearly we are included in this. This has significant implications for the way we understand things and for the way we conduct our lives because it surely means that each one of us has a relationship to everything that is going on the universe, no matter how big or small that might be, and no matter how near or far. It means that we are affected, however remotely, by everything that is going on in the universe. And it means that each of us, through our actions, and perhaps through our thoughts, has an effect, however slight, on everything else in the universe, including each other.
In contrast to what science has been telling us, we may inhabit a universe, a macrocosm, which is wholly ordered and meaningful. Whatever this meaning turns out to be, we can at least be sure that we are part of it. We can also say that our capacity to get to know the macrocosm, and it capacity to be known, may derive from the possibility that one is a reflection of the other - we are in the Divine image, if you like. It is because we are similar to the macrocosm that there can be a resonance between us and it. This resonance is one and the same as knowing.
Last but not least, our relationship with the macrocosm and all its parts, including Nature and this planet, may be much deeper and more intimate that we ever imagined.
1. The Sayings of Marcus Aurelius
2. Joseph Needham: Order and Life (1936)
3. Ervin Laszlo: The Creative Cosmos
4. Rodney Collin: The Theory of Celestial Influence
5. Percy Seymour: Astrology: The Evidence of Science (1988)
6. Arthur Koestler: Janus: A Summing Up
© Christopher Thomson 1998