Consciousness
and the outer world are inextricably tied to one another. How we treat the
world is a reflection of how we treat ourselves. If we see the world as
essentially soulless, as lifeless matter to be used without consideration, then
that is also how we treat ourselves and each other: as units of economic
productivity, to be tossed aside once we are of no use.
I suppose I’d
trace it back to Science, with its tendency towards materialism; to Protestantism
and its work ethic – good units of economic productivity go to heaven; and to the
Old Testament God, who enjoined mankind to rule over all the animals.
So the
environmental crisis is really an inner crisis. The environment is suffering
because people are suffering; we have become split off from our natural
relationship to the world, with its respect and its give and take, and split
off therefore from a natural relationship to ourselves.
And I think
this broken relationship is also reflected in the scientific view of the
macrocosm, a place that is 99.99% chilly and lifeless, and whose destiny is to
become increasingly that way, the eventual ‘Heat Death’ of the universe. Give me Armageddon any day!
I don’t see
science as the objective art it claims to be, i.e. that it is simply discovering
what is ‘out there’. It can easily seem like that if you’re not very reflective.
The world so impresses us with its hard, separate reality that it can be hard
to experience it as intermingled with, and conditioned by, consciousness.
Quantum physics has known this truth for over 100 years, that you can’t
separate the observer from the experiment. But it is subtle.
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| Eurynome Creates the World |
So I don’t
see the largely lifeless scientific universe and its eventual Heat Death as
objective. It is an idea that reflects our broken consciousness, and we have
found the evidence to support the idea, something that humans seem to be very good at! I think it takes a balanced human being to be
‘objective’, to see the universe in a way that reflects its real nature, which
is one of aliveness: and there are many ways to do this, many Creation Myths,
which are true to the extent that they reflect a living universe in which
people have a balanced place (i.e. not ruling the animals!)
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| The Hunt for Dark Energy |
From this
perspective, the hunt for ‘Dark Energy’ seems to me quixotic. We may or may not
find the stuff. But to say that 99% of the universe is missing and
undetectable, that it can only be inferred, is also a way of saying that the
universe we have in a sense created is woefully narrow.
We need to
think mythologically, because that allows room for the part consciousness plays
in generating views of the universe. Science is a myth, a story, that does not recognise
itself as such. Its mythological nature is repressed, and when you repress
something it comes back at you in demonic form: a chilly, lifeless universe
that is 99% beyond our ken.
Truth lies
more with the intuition, with direct experience, than it does with the
intellect, which needs to have a supportive rather than a commanding role. I
see an idea as true if it is imaginatively appealing, if it ‘rings true' in my
experience, more than whether I can find hard evidence to support it. That way
my experience of myself and my view of the world are not at odds.
