Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
Craig Hamilton
The Next Big Bang
The Next Big Bang.
July 4th, 2008
*(Adapted from a talk at the Collegiate Peaks Forum, Buena
Vista, Colorado)
Tonight what I want to speak about is very
near to my heart. It’s been the focus of much of my life over the
past decade-and-a-half and is the subject of a book I’m now
working on.
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The issue I
want to address has to do with where religion and spirituality are
headed at the dawn of the Third Millennium. It is also about where
humanity is headed, about the evolution of the very way we define
what it is to be human, or more specifically, the ultimate meaning
of human life.
Here at the beginning of the 21st century,
we at the progressive edge of culture find ourselves in an
interesting predicament. Never before in human history have we had
so much complexity, uncertainty, and change to deal with.
Even a couple of generations ago, most of us
knew our place in the world, what work we would do for our entire
life, and had a kind of stability that we no longer have. Most of us
will live in many different cities over the course of our lives and
be recreating community and social relationships many times over.
Half of us will get divorced and remarried. The nuclear family no
longer provides a meaningful context for many of us. 50% of adults
now live alone. Many of us only see our parents or children once a
year. We are all dealing with unprecedented diversity in our
workplaces, people with very different worldviews, beliefs,
attitudes and preferences.
At the same time, the speed of technological
change is requiring adaptability we’ve never known. Our paleolithic
ancestors used same set of stone tools for 1.5 million
years. And even 150 years ago, the technology was relatively static, with no significant
changes to adapt to in a single lifetime, if anything changed at all. Unless you
happened to be there for the invention of the plough or the printing
press. But look at your own lifetime. How many
new sets of tools have you had to adapt to? Look at
the last five years. Most of us know that things are changing
fast, but how many of us are aware that the rate of change itself
is accelerating? This is a hard concept to get our
minds around, but what techno-futurists call “The
Singularity” is near.
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The honest truth is
that we have no idea what the world will be like in ten or even
five years. And before long, we’ll live in a world where we won’t
know what it will be like next week. So, we are being stretched to
develop a kind of flexibility and adaptability we’ve never known
to be able to be resilient in the face of so much change.
We’re also confronted by global scale issues
with global scale uncertainties attached to them. Overpopulation,
modernization of the third world, terrorism, the potential for a
worldwide epidemic, the rapid deterioration of the biosphere which
sustains us. We’re being challenged by climate crisis (which is only
the most visible iceberg tip of the environmental crisis) to
consider some potentially radical lifestyle changes. We are being
stretched to think and feel beyond ourselves, our families, and our
communities. Humans have never had to think on a global scale
before.
But the biggest challenge is that we’ve lost
our collective compass. Religion used to tell us how to navigate
life. But those of us who have close religious affinity are often
left wanting because religions evolved in a different time, and are
now challenged in their ability to adequately equip us to deal with
the complexities of the lives we’re living. What prophet of the
past, no matter how enlightened, could have told us how to relate to
a global climate crisis?
To compound the issue, for most of us, the myths of
the past no longer inspire us as reliable accounts of reality on which
to base our lives.
One was the Western Enlightenment,
the scientific revolution.
We realized we could understand reality
directly, discern the Truth for ourselves without the mediation of
the church. This marked what is known as “the Modern era” and this
has allowed us to come out from under religious dogma. Freeing us
from the idea of “private revelation” into one of “public
revelation.”
Second was Postmodernism’s insight
that even in our inquiry into truth, we are seeing through cultural
lenses that may always be invisible to us.
We are all biased, and even our
science is operating under many presuppositions. This was the great
death of Truth with a capital T, in the recognition that our
capacity to Know is limited. We can never know everything.
Losing the dogmas of the past has been a good move. I’m
glad that we now have the freedom to live our lives
without kowtowing to a church hierarchy or needing to believe in a God defined
as an old man with a white beard on a
throne. In the absence of a unifying context, we’ve done a good
job of finding ways to create our own personal meaning.
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But what many of us
are discovering is that this freedom to think and feel and value
as we please has come with a price. Because we have also lost, by
and large, a larger unifying context for our lives. A unifying
moral context. A unifying sense of meaning and purpose. A unifying
myth.
This is why so many of us feel a sense of
fragmentation and isolation. In a world where truth is relative,
meaning and purpose are subjective, we are all ultimately alone in
our own universe.
In the midst of this great shaking off of
religion, I feel that we have also, by and large, lost the
sacred—that which used to bring us to our knees.
So, in looking at the Future
of God, the questions I’m trying to answer are:
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how can we resurrect
this sense of the sacred within a scientifically enlightened,
post-mythic, postmodern world? How can we discover a unifying
context of meaning and purpose? How can we find higher guidance
for how to live our lives within the realm of public
revelation?
Just because we no longer have a shared
belief in a revealed “good book” to give a sense of meaning and
purpose to our lives, do we have to leave the sacred behind? In our
enlightened, scientific age, can we find a new myth that imbues life
with a sense of higher meaning, of a meaning beyond ourselves, even
beyond humanity itself? Or, more to the point, is there a story we
can locate within a scientific worldview that is captivating enough,
compelling enough, spiritual enough to magnetize us toward the
highest human possibilities?
You see, although it may be true that we
cannot ultimately know everything, and we cannot be entirely certain
that our filters aren’t distorting our perception of what’s “out
there,” we have learned a lot in these last few
hundred years of scientific inquiry that we can pretty much agree on. And,
it is my opinion that, if we look at it closely, a profound pattern
is starting to emerge that contains all the elements we need to
begin to find a new, universal and even sacred context of meaning
and purpose for human life. And that can also teach us a lot
about how to live in the face of the chaos
and uncertainty of modern life. That pattern, in a
word, is evolution.
So, my talk tonight is going to explore:
what does this emerging knowledge of evolution tell us about the
meaning and purpose of human life? And what does it tell us about
how we should be living?
Indeed, if we take what’s known as a
“Deep Time” perspective, and look at what has been
unfolding for the last 13.7 billion years since the big bang, it
starts to look like a great epic story of evolution that trumps any
of the great epic creation stories the religions have given us. And
what makes it all the more significant is that this story is not
just one that was delivered to us by a prophet or the dream of a
village elder. It’s based on what we’ve collectively been able to
discern about reality through science.
So, what is this epic story? This new myth?
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I like the way
cosmologist Brian Swimme sums it up: Take a great cloud of
hydrogen gas and leave it alone, and it becomes rosebushes,
giraffes, and humans.
A Tale of Nested
Creativity
To go into a little more detail, to the best
of our knowledge, 13.7 billion years ago, we were a singularity.
Then out of nothing, the universe exploded into being. Out of an
apparent nothing emerged a miraculous something. It only took about
a million years for that initial firestorm to calm down, but from
there, it began a stunning display of tireless creativity that has
continued to unfold its miracle to this day. An amorphous
cloud of hydrogen gas gradually coalesced into a hundred billion
galaxies, which became perhaps the first artisans producing
balls of hydrogen gas that began to burn with great intensity.
Now, looking at it at the time, it probably
all seemed rather meaningless, given that there was no one around to
observe it anyway. But something very important was happening.
Inside those primal stars, as they went supernova, the heat grew so
intense that higher elements were born, like carbon and oxygen, and
in these explosions which were as brilliant as the combined light of
a billion stars, they scattered those elements across the galaxy.
And out of those higher elements came the building blocks of a
planet called Earth, which, in the blink of an eye begins to
generate life. 4.6 billion years of Earth. 4 billion years of life.
Now, I want to point out that it didn’t have
to be this way. The conditions for life were by no means inevitable.
As it turns out, the universe appears to be set up in just such a
way that life could exist.
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In his book Just
Six Numbers, British Royal Astronomer Sir Martin Reese
explains that if any one of six basic constants or laws that
define our universe were only slightly different, life would not
be possible.
For example:
a) If the nuclear
strong force were only slightly stronger (by as little as 1%)
hydrogen would be rare in the universe, and elements heavier than
iron would also be rare. If it were slightly weaker, hydrogen would
be the only element in the universe.
b) If the nuclear
weak force were only slightly larger, neutrons would decay more
readily and be less available and no helium would have been produced
by the Big Bang. If the nuclear weak force were only slightly
smaller, the Big Bang would have burned most or all of the hydrogen
into helium, for a subsequent overabundance of heavy elements made
by stars, and life as we know it would not be possible.
c) If the nucleon
to nucleon interaction were even .4% different, there would not be
enough carbon in the universe for life as we know it to exist.
So, here you have
this universe finely tuned for life, and then what happens? In what
we might call the second big bang, the big bang of
life, this dazzling display of creativity known as cosmic
evolution morphs into an even more brilliant display of creativity
in the form of biological evolution. From bacteria to plants to
animals, this explosion of biological diversity gives rise to some
50 million different species.
Now, when we look
at life, it also didn’t have to be this way. It’s feasible that we
could have just accidentally gotten life and it would have remained
at the bacterial level for eternity. But it didn’t. It has been a
creative flowering of immense beauty and diversity. Now, one reason
evolutionary theory has been knocked by religionists is that it
seems to imply that it all unfolded randomly and meaninglessly.
The late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay
Gould was famous for his assertions that evolution was a random
event, which he would illustrate by saying that if we were
to rewind the tape back to the beginning and start over, the story
would unfold very differently
than it did this time.
Yes and No.
Sure, we wouldn’t have the same exact
species, but if we look at what’s known in evolutionary biology as
Convergence, it turns out that where biological evolution is
concerned, some very particular developments were in the
cards from the beginning.
For instance, wings to fly evolved
independently in flies, birds, pterosaurs and bats. The hydrostatic
penis, which inflates through an infusion of fluid, evolved
independently in mammals and turtles. Image-sensing eyes
evolved independently 60 different times.
And there are
hundreds of other examples of traits that evolved independently.
Given the fact that it followed certain progressions, we can be sure
that we would have something very much like what we have now. So we
can see that the laws of Life were set up such that the creativity
of the Universe would evolve eyes to see itself one way or another.
So, this creative unfolding of life is trucking along for about
4 billion years. Then, about 4 million years ago, one of these
creatures descended from trees, and stood up on two feet.
Now,
initially, things didn’t speed up all that much. Our hands made tool
use possible. But there was no flourishing of innovation. hominids
made a number of the same stone tools over and over for a million
and a half years. And the striking thing is that they just kept
making it, without innovation.
And about 50,000 years ago, something
dramatic occurs. The mind goes through a dramatic mutation. Some
evolutionary scientists call it “The Mind’s Big
Bang.” This is the moment when we start seeing dramatic
artwork on the cave walls, ornate beads appear, people begin placing
flowers on the dead. Human creativity is born,
and with it the capacity to
reflect on ourselves and our place in the Cosmos.
This is the birth of culture and with the
advent of the human, the evolutionary dynamics that have been
unfolding since time began suddenly begin to express themselves
through the evolution of culture. From hunter-gatherer to agrarian
to industrial to the information age, from the cave paintings to the
pyramids to Shakespeare to rap music (Okay, maybe I should have left
that one off the list). From family to clan to tribe to city to
state to nation to global village (still working on that last one).
From papyrus to the printing press to the telephone to the internet.
From the hand axe to the plough to the crane. From the horse and
buggy to the automobile to the space shuttle.
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So, evolution has
been on this upward spiral, first on a cosmological level, then on
a biological level, then on a cultural level.
Cooperating groups of
self-replicating molecular processes formed the first cells.
Cooperating groups of individual cells formed larger and
more complex cells. Groups of these cells combined to create the
first multi-celled organisms. Groups of multi-celled organisms, like
us, combined to form clans, then tribes and eventually societies.
And those societies have continued to reach toward ever-widening
circles of cooperation. Ultimately to the global
village.
So, with the
emergence of the human, something new is afoot under the sun. Not
only does evolution move into the realm of culture, but with the
advent of human consciousness, the universe has begun waking up to
its own creative power. For the first time since that
primordial fireball burst forth its light, the living universe has
developed the eyes to look back in awe on its own unfolding.
The miraculous evolutionary dynamics that
created and continue to create the universe have now become
conscious. And you know what their name is? YOU. We are the
conscious, reflective organ of the universe. And what’s more, we
have now managed to look back to our beginnings and begin to
understand the creative evolutionary dynamics that have been playing
themselves out all along.
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And we’ve also even
seen where they’re going. So, not only are we conscious, we know
we’re conscious. Not only are we evolving; we know we’re evolving.
And not only are we headed in a particular direction; we know
which direction we’re headed.
So, from almost
nothing came something, and the laws of that something were such
that it would trend eternally in the direction of
cooperation and unity. So, we are the conscious reflective
organ of a living universe that is on a path toward greater
cooperation and unity.
Beyond the Flat Earth
Most of
us have gotten on board with the idea of evolution by now. But, as
with any new worldview, there are many holdovers from the old
paradigm that remain intact. For instance, one holdover from
flat-earth cosmology is the notion that when we look toward the
night sky, we are looking up into the universe. We sort of imagine
ourselves on a flat plane looking upward into the sky. Whereas it’s
equally true that we could be looking down or out. Yet do you see
how hard it is to imagine that right now we are on the bottom of the
world looking down, pasted on by gravity?
Now, this holdover from the flat earth days
doesn’t have any import. The fact that we still haven’t adjusted to
the new paradigm in this way isn’t impacting how we live our lives.
But, in the case of evolution, there is one holdover within all of
us that is profoundly influencing the way we conceive of ourselves
and how we relate to and live our lives. For although evolution as
an idea is something we accept, we still tend to think of ourselves
as static entities.
That
we just showed up. Therefore, deep in our psyche is the conviction
that a human being is a fixed thing. That human beings have always
been and will always be the same. When we think back a few thousand
years to ancient Egypt we imagine they were people like us just in a
more primitive context.
But this is not the case. Within a deep time
context, we know that human beings grew out of other animals and
emerged gradually over a series of small and large changes over
millions of years. And that, even in the brief period that modern
humans have been around, our experience of being alive has
been developing and unfolding gradually as the dynamics of
evolution moved into the realm of consciousness and culture.
Even a few hundred years ago, the experience
of being human was radically different. Developmental psychologists
tell us that the sense of interiority, of self-awareness and
introspection, and particularly the sense of being autonomous,
self-authoring individuals able to choose and create our lives is an
extremely new development. A person in the middle ages did
not have a sense of self like we do.
The implications of this, if you really let them in, are
profound. You see, what it means for us is that we are not static
entities but transitional beings. The human is not a fixed thing but
an unfolding process. We are on our way somewhere. We are not there
yet. If you draw a line, an arrow of human evolution, let’s say a
100,000 year line starting with the emergence of the modern human
roughly 50,000 years ago, where are we on that line? Right in the
middle. Make it a 500,000 year line starting in the same place, and
where are we? Just getting started. Make it a million year line . .
.
To put this in a deep time perspective, if the history of the
universe were being measured on a 24-hour clock, the human brain
would have been around for about one minute.
Now, imagine
humanity as a single human being in a process of development from
infancy to old age. Looking at our overall behavior, where would you
say we are on that developmental spectrum? We’ll go in reverse. How
many would say “senior citizen”? How many would say “mature adult”?
How many would say “adolescent”? How many would say “child”?
Toddler? Infant? This is a question Duane Elgin has been asking his
audiences for years and the typical answer is “adolescence.” What’s
most interesting about the exercise is that when we put our
attention there, we all know this about ourselves.
But have we
really integrated this knowledge? Do we really live our lives in the
knowledge that we are this adolescent species that is just getting
started, and that we have a big job to do, which is to grow up?! Not
usually. And why? Because from the beginning of time, we lived in a
creationist worldview, and therefore are deeply conditioned to see
ourselves as static.
So far, although I’ve said a lot,
I’ve basically made two points.
First is that we are the eyes of the universe, the reflective
organ of the evolving whole. Second is that we are beings in transition, and are really
just getting started at figuring out what we’re supposed to be doing
here.
So, my
question is: how would we live if we took these two truths to heart?
Now, before we look at some possible answers to this question, I
want to point out that in terms of our current stage of evolution,
it’s important to recognize that we are the first generation in
history to have the luxury to ask them. Not only are we the first to
really understand our place in the cosmos. But we’re the first to
have the luxury to not be concerned with survival, and to actually
have the freedom on a mass scale to think about higher things and
consider what our larger role really is. We are at a unique moment
in history.
So, how would we live if we knew that we were
transitional beings and that evolution was now in our
hands?
Let’s look at what options are available to us.
1) We could accumulate more stuff. This is
what a lot of us have done, right? And, if we are the conscious
organ of a living universe, it should come as no surprise that
accumulating more dead things to surround ourselves with doesn’t
ultimately satisfy.
2) We could
accumulate more experiences. Travel the world, climb mountains, sail
the seas, try new things. This is perhaps a bit more interesting,
but those of us who have done a lot of that also know that it
doesn’t really ultimately satisfy our deepest longing. There’s
something too passive about it. And also a bit too self-focused.
Just taking it all in.
3) We could express
our creativity. Take up painting, write the great American novel.
This feels a bit warmer, right? At least it’s more generative, we’re
participating in the creative unfolding. Which is why it is a more
deeply satisfying experience than mere accumulation. But if the
context of that creativity is mere self-expression for
self-expression’s sake, again, it tends to fall short of the
mark.
4) We could pour
our energy into service, either helping those in need, or trying to
save the environment. Now, if our goal is to become planetary
citizens, this one clearly feels warmest of all.
But, again, I would bring us to the question of context.
What is the context in
which we’re serving? Are we simply patching up holes in a sinking
ship or are we building the Ark that will carry humanity forward on
its evolutionary journey?
You see, what I
think we need to be doing is using our powers of consciousness and
creativity to help move evolution forward, consciously participating
in the great work of furthering what Andrew Cohen calls “The
Universe Project.”
In a very real sense, humans are the growing edge of the big bang, of
evolution as far as we know. And now, with our unique power of
choice, we can consciously evolve.
So, we need to do it—and
fast.
So, what do I mean by conscious
evolution? Is it still going to be biological evolution? Are we going
to consciously grow a second set of arms to make us more productive?
Or x-ray vision? Not any time soon... No, with the human,
evolution has now moved into the realm of culture and consciousness.
And so, when I talk about moving evolution forward, that’s what I’m
referring to. Evolving our own consciousness. Our interiors. And
evolving culture.
Now, what do I mean by evolve our
consciousness?
This is a huge topic, which I go into in
tremendous depth in my classes and workshops. But, for the purposes
of my talk tonight, I will give a brief introduction to what I’m
calling
Evolutionary Spirituality.
You see, apart from all of the social
functions it has served, at the heart of religion has always been
the mystical quest. Defined in many ways, at its essence is a belief
that humans, as the conscious, aware part of the creation, have a
potential for holiness, an immense transformative potential to
become something extraordinary. And at the same time, we have an
innate lower nature, call it original sin in Christianity or the
five poisons in the East. And the goal of the spiritual path
is to transcend our smallness,
our lower nature, and become a pure
reflection of the perfection of the Creator or the source of all
that is.
And in light of our new understanding of
evolution, I would like to modify that perspective a little. I would
say that the traditions are correct that we do have an
extraordinary, even cosmic potential that we are evolving toward.
And we also have a “lower nature.” But that it probably
wasn’t Adam and Eve’s fault. In an evolutionary
context, we’ve come to understand that these are our inherited
proclivities left over from our evolutionary past.
Human beings evolved over long tracts of
time when life was unimaginably different than it is today. Like it
or not, we are saddled with programming that evolved over millions
of years. We have a reptilian brain, a mammalian
brain and a primate brain all hardwired with instincts that no
longer serve us.
Indeed, as a scan of any day’s
news reveals, much of it is incredibly destructive to ourselves and
others if allowed to express itself unabated. So, we have a lot of
evolutionary baggage we need to overcome or transcend.
But the most important piece in terms of
what it means to consciously evolve is that
(1) we inherited a tendency toward
short-term self-interest.
And (2) we inherited an intense resistance
to change.
A fear of the
new and unknown. Because from a perspective of survival, change
meant risk of death. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to care
about someone else when your own needs aren’t being met, or are
being threatened? Have you ever noticed how hard it is to
change?
And if we agree that the purpose of Life is to get on
board with the evolution project, can you see how both of these
tendencies are major obstacles in front of us?
If we’re going to be fit to be conscious agents
of evolution, we need to:
1) transcend our
resistance to change, our fear of the unknown, our rigidity of mind
by becoming fluid, adaptable, flexible
2) transcend
egocentrism and ethnocentrism, tribalism and nationalism to become
true planetary citizens.
And, so, just as in
the old religions, the highest calling was for a radical
self-transcendence and purification so that we could know God
directly, I think that in the new evolutionary spirituality, we also
have a great mystical task before us as human beings.
Which is threefold:
(1) to face the
reality of how primitive our current evolutionary stage is compared
to where we can go. To face this both for the race as a whole and
also to see it honestly in ourselves in all of its particulars.
(2) to give our
hearts and souls to the deep spiritual work of rising above our
lower nature.
(3) to stretch to
think and feel, and most importantly act as global citizens. In all
that we do to stretch beyond self-interest, tribal interest,
regional interest, and national interest, to realize that evolution
is seeking unification, and it is our job as conscious agents of
evolution to help to bring that into being.
So, how are we
going to go against the momentum of evolution up to this point? How
are we going to overthrow the tyranny of eons of conditioning and
embrace change, and expand our sphere of identity to embrace the
whole?
Is it a
matter of pure effort and will, onerously working against
our own proclivities driven by a sense of mission and vision? I
won’t say this isn’t part of it.
But fortunately,
evolution gave us a shortcut. When confronted with
the unknown, with chaos, with change, although we have a lot of
resistance, there is a part of us that gets excited. Despite our
resistance to change, we nonetheless long for it. Statistics show
that what keeps employees working at a company is not better salary,
not more benefits, but a growth-oriented environment where people
feel like they’re being provided an opportunity to continuously
evolve.
You see, I think
it’s no accident that we feel most alive when we’re growing and
evolving, when we’re confronted with challenges that require us to
develop new capacities, to stretch beyond the known into the
undiscovered land of our emerging self, of who we are becoming. That
is when we are most in touch with that evolutionary impulse at the
heart of creation.
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It is my conviction
that at the heart of every human being is a spark of that initial
impulse that has been driving the whole event. And, if we can
align ourselves with it, ground ourselves in it, it will give us
all the inspiration, strength and perspective we need to do its
bidding.
Remember where we came from. You see, we
are, after all, the eyes and hearts of the Big Bang. We were there
before it all began. And the creative evolutionary dynamics that
have given birth to this entire universe in all its glory and
diversity are now alive in us. And, in a very real sense, they are
only now attaining the peak of their power. Because, in us, these
powers now have attained consciousness. They can be directed.
You see, although
this universe has been going for 14 billion years, the action is
really just getting started.
So far, we’ve had three big bangs.
The cosmic big bang that brought it all into
existence in the first place.
The big bang of life.
And the mind’s big bang that brought forth
the miracle of human consciousness.
And it’s my conviction that if enough of us
take the leap I’m speaking about, before long, we will find
ourselves in the midst of a third big bang.
As we free
ourselves from the shackles of our animal nature, from
short-term thinking, from self-interest, from rigidity and
narrowness and fear, and step up to our true creative roles as
conscious, enlightened co-creators of the Future, we will witness a
creative flourishing that will make the first three big bangs seem
puny by comparison—then the Word will have truly become flesh, not
just in one. But in the many.
On a personal level, this will be our
salvation, our liberation. On a collective level, I think we will
have not only come into maturity as a species, we will have found
our place in the universe.
And the Earth and the Heavens will rejoice
in the Glory of what we can express.
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