|
|
America
Meditations
Cosmic Pointlessness or Infinite Immanence?
By Martin LeFevre Contributing Writer
 | Creek | The creek along the edge of town, dry half the year, is running full again after the winter rains. Sitting on the bank as the sun slides below the leafless tree line, passive awareness quickens attention, and the watcher ends in the watching. A mallard pair, feeding in the sedges along the opposite bank, slowly makes their way upstream. The brown-feathered female leads, and the multi-colored male follows her, keeping a close eye on the human sitting on the bank a few meters away. Despite trash in the creek and along the banks, and cheap apartments blocks going up across the stream, thought yields to effortless attention, and a meditative state ensues. Spontaneously, the chattering mind falls silent. In that state of stillness, one again feels, beyond words, the all-encompassing intelligence of the universe. It isn¡¯t imagined, since all faculties of thought, including imagination, have ceased. Meditating in nature doesn¡¯t lead to worshipping nature, but to experiencing the undeniable actuality of beauty and essence. Time stops as the sun hangs, in a cloudless sky, like a brilliant orange ball on the horizon. Sunset is a recapitulation of death every day. Allowing oneself to emotionally experience that actuality, one fearlessly gains a deepening insight into death. And with it, the mind and brain are renewed. At the end of his book, ¡°The First Three Minutes,¡± the Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg wrote, ¡°The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.¡± As a reviewer noted, ¡°Weinberg paints a picture of our universe as a vast purposeless place in which we can see no evidence of a point for ourselves as human beings.¡± Such a view, all too commonly accepted these days, contrasts with religious believers, who see ¡°the universe as inherently purposeful, and humanity¡¯s role as central.¡± Looking at the universe from a personal perspective, they imbue it with meaning. More sophisticated religionists, such as Father George Coyne, a Jesuit priest and astronomer, intone, ¡°When I hold the hand of a dying friend, and see the expression of hope and joy – even at the moment of death – in that friend¡¯s eyes, I can see that there is a meaningfulness to existence that goes beyond scientific investigation.¡± Notably with the Jesuit however, meaning and purposefulness are still found in the contexts of our experience as human beings living in the world. And that provides an opening for strict atheists like Weinberg to make a facile link between science and religion. Though science paints a picture of a ¡°chilling, cold and pointless universe,¡± Weinberg also insists ¡°we human beings give the universe purpose by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art.¡± ¡°Faced with an unloving and impersonal universe, we can create for ourselves little islands of warmth and love and science and art.¡± That view is not dissimilar to religious believers. In any case, both the pointless universe and the human-centered purposeful universe are projections of thought and self. Another scientist, Avi Loeb, the head of the Galileo Project and founding director of Harvard University¡¯s Black Hole Initiative,¡± further complicates matters by conflating the supposed pointlessness of the universe with loss of 65 of his relatives in the Holocaust, as well as the hundreds of thousands of soldiers lives wasted in the trenches of World War I, and war generally. He adds, ¡°The reason I seek a higher intelligence in outer space is because I do not find it on Earth.¡± None of these worldviews accord with meditative states and experiencing immanence. Humans project the pointlessness of our own fragmented and conflict-ridden world onto the universe, just as we see in the predator-prey dynamic of life on Earth a justification for man¡¯s barbarity. During elevated states of consciousness, when attentiveness brings about the stillness and vacancy of the mind-as- thought, one experiences the wholeness and holiness of life on Earth, and the universe that gave rise to it. The domination in the human brain of thought, with consciousness based on the symbols and memories, prevents the awareness and experiencing of the intrinsic and inseparable cosmic mind. There is no thought without memory, words and images, but there is Mind. Therefore the idea that the universe is pointless and purposeless is just the flipside of the idea that it is personal and human-centered. And the notion that ¡°we human beings give the universe purpose by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art¡± does not resolve the existential crisis of a purportedly cold and pointless universe. However randomly and rarely, the universe evolves brains with the capacity to be fully aware of the intelligence that inseparably suffuses the cosmos. The evolution of ¡®higher thought¡¯ is both the last threshold and a tremendous impediment to realization. Given this is true, why is directly experiencing the sacredness that suffuses nature and the universe so rare? Martin LeFevre
Related Articles Cop28 and Man¡¯s War On the Earth Fluidity of Thought Is a Far Cry From ... Time Is Elastic, But Timelessness Is Fantastic Slaughter and War Spew from Time and Memory The Universe Is in a State of Meditation. Why ... Two Kinds of Metaphysical Movement? Resolve Contradictions, Revere Paradoxes The Human Brain Is Exapted for Insight Narratives or Insight? Oppenheimer, and ¡°I Am Become Death¡± Doing Philosophy In America Regarding Nihilism and Negation Providence, the End of Man, and the Emergence ... Awakening Intelligence Within Teilhard Got It Backwards Awakening a Proprioception of Thought Human Being Is Not a ¡°Very Small Phenomenon¡± Finding False Comfort In Impermanence Has the Retreat Industry Contributed to Human ... Letter to a Friend about Meditation A Birthday Wish from America for Humanity on ... Our View of Nature Is the Cornerstone of Our ... Three Kinds of Singularity An Explanation, Though It Won¡¯t Change the ... When Did Progressives Become Warmongers? AI¡¯s Quantum Leap Demands a Quantum Leap in ... The Ending of Psychological Thought Concerning Discernment and Difference Mystical Experiencing Is Our Birthright AI, AI, AI, or I, I, I? What Is Art, and an Artist? Canaries in the Coal Mines of Consciousness Cardinal Errors Concerning Stagnancy, Demography and Vitality Mind, Brain and Consciousness The State of Insight The Religious and Scientific Mind Q Craziness and Unaddressed Evil Localism Increases Fragmentation of Earth Collapsing the Distinction Doesn¡¯t Resolve ... The Silence of Being Heightened Senses In Nature Opens the Door to ... The Inter-National Order Is Dead and Gone Polarization Isn¡¯t the Problem Enlightenment Isn¡¯t Personal Human Beings Can Meet This Moment Nagasaki and the Incorrigibility of Man There Is No Evolution of Consciousness Imagining ¡®Umwelts¡¯ Is Unnecessary Expansion or Negation of Self? Intelligent Life, Meditation and Transmutation The Source of Evil Is Not a Person or a Nation The Dialogue Buffet at the Death Café Higher Thought: Threshold and Impediment to ... Is Universality a Western Idea? What Is Your View of Human Nature? Defeating Evil Without Violence A Recipe For World War Beyond Thinking Machines There Is No Such Thing as "Personal ... Time Is a Tremendous Illusion Breakthrough Infection, or Inflection? Requiem for a Meditation Place Fragmentation and Wholeness Did Evolution Go Wrong With Man? The Urgent Indifference of Enlightenment Death Isn¡¯t After Life; It¡¯s Inseparable ...
Martin LeFevre, a contemplative, philosopher and writer in northern California, serves as a contributing writer for The Seoul Times. His "Meditations" explore and offer insights on spiritual, philosophical and political questions in the global society. LeFevre's philosophical thesis proposes a new theory of human nature. He welcomes dialogue. lefevremartin77@gmail.com
back
|
|
|
|
|