The Living Universe by Duane Elgin Read Free Book Online Page B

only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down . . . for this barrier does not exist. 16
    Physicist John Wheeler has used the following analogy to suggest how, upon closer inspection, the fabric of space-time comes alive with motion. He imagines an aviator flying several miles above the ocean who looks down and sees what appears to be a flat and uniform surface. When he flies lower, he begins to make out rolling waves moving across the surface. Diving still closer to the water, he sees smaller waves and crests forming on the swells. Looking even closer, he sees the surface of the water boiling with foam. In asimilar way, the closer we look into the fabric of space-time, the more it appears as a complex symphony of waves and patterns; the smooth fabric of reality breaks down into “quantum foam” and our usual ideas of space and time disappear.
    When we put the complete dynamism of matter together with the dynamism of space, it seems astonishing how stable and utterly dependable is the fabric of reality. We don’t have to worry about “space-time storms” that might create rips and tears in the fabric of reality. It is extraordinary that complete dynamism at the microscopic scale manifests as a stable and unwavering reality at the human scale.
    Given the dynamism of both matter and space, the universe is, in the words of David Bohm, “an undivided wholeness in flowing movement.” 17 In this view, the entire cosmos is being regenerated at each instant in a single symphony of expression that unfolds from the most microscopic aspects of the subatomic realm to the vast reaches of billions of galactic systems. The cosmos taken altogether is the basic unit of continuous creation.
    Scientists sound like poets as they attempt to describe our cosmos in its process of becoming. The mathematician Norbert Wiener expresses it this way: “We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves; whirlpools of water in an ever-flowing river.” 18 Imagine water flowing over rocks in a stream. If we look at the flow over a particular rock, we can see a persisting pattern despite the continuous streaming of water. We, and the rest of the universe, are a persisting pattern that, as physicist Brian Swimme tells us, “emerges out of an all-nourishing abyss not only 14 billion years ago but in every moment.” 19 All flows comprise one grand symphony in which we are all players, a single creative expression—a uni-verse.

Sentience at Every Level
    The word
consciousness
derives from the root “con-scire” and means “that with which we know.” Some level of consciousness is basic to life; therefore, if the universe is alive, we should expect to discover evidence of consciousness operating at every level of existence. This does not mean that we should expect to encounter
human
consciousness. We humans embody the third miracle, the capacity to see ourselves in the mirror of our own self-awareness. Our scientific name as a species is
Homo sapiens sapiens
. In other words, we are the species that is not only “sapient” or wise, but “sapient-sapient” or doubly knowing or doubly wise. 20 In contrast, the consciousness that we find at the foundations of the universe could be called “primary perception,” or basic sentience. This refers to the capacity for knowing, but without the ability to reflect upon the knowing process itself.
    When we look along the spectrum of existence, what do we find? At the most fundamental levels we find evidence of primary perception. The respected physicist Freeman Dyson wrote the following about consciousness at the quantum level: “Matter in quantum mechanics is not an inert substance but an active agent, constantly making choices between alternative possibilities . . . . It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every electron.” 21