The Living Universe (26 page)

8.
See: Ted Peters,
Cosmos as Creation
, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989, pp. 82-83.

9.
It is important to differentiate between creationism and continuous creation because they differ in fundamental ways.
Creationism
focuses on a one-time event with no evolution, whereas
continuous creation
focuses on a continuous process that includes evolution as an integral aspect of its self-transforming dynamic. Creationism is a one-time event and thus static, whereas continuous creation sees the universe as dynamically regenerating itself and creatively unfolding through time.

10.
A living-universe perspective brings new insight into the Last Supper where,
in a sacred ritual of remembrance, Jesus proclaimed that bread and wine were his body and blood. This makes literal sense when the universe is viewed as a living and continuously recreated entity: all things
are
the literal body of God—manifestations of a divine life force. Jesus could be providing a ritual for remembering that bread and wine are, both symbolically and literally, tangible expressions of a living universe and are infused with the sacred life force that sustains the entire universe.

11.
See, for example, D. B. Macdonald, “Continuous recreation and atomic time in Muslim scholastic theology,”
Isis
9 (1927): 326–44; also, Majid Fakhry,
Islamic Occasionalism and Its Critique by Averroes and Aquinas
, London (1958). The Islamic view of occasionalism is more inclusive than the Western philosophy by the same name that was developed by the Cartesian school (which saw mind and body as absolutely separate; therefore, bodily motion was dependent on the co-operation of God).

12.
Samuel Umen,
The World of the Mystic
, New York: Philosophical Library, 1988, p. 178.

13.
See, for example, Coleman Barks,
The Essential Rumi
, San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1995.

14.
A. H. Almaas,
The Inner Journey Home
, Boston: Shambhala, 2004.

15.
Huston Smith,
The Religions of Mankind
, New York: Harper and Row, 1958, p. 73.

16.
Sri Nisargadatta Majaraj,
I Am That
,
Part I
(trans. Maurice Frydman), Bombay, India: Chetana, 1973, p. 289.

17.
Heinrich Zimmer,
Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization
, Joseph Campbell (ed.), Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series, 1972, p. 152.

18.
Zimmer, ibid., p. 131.

19.
Satprem,
Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
, Pondicherry, India, 1970.

20.
Swami Prabhavanada and Frederick Manchester,
The Upanishads: Breath of the Eternal
, New York: New American Library, 2002.

21.
Ibid., p. 131.

22.
Huston Smith,
The Religions of Man
, New York: Harper and Row, 1958.

23.
The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality
, New York: Morgan Road Books, 2005, p. 81.

24.
Govinda,
Creative Meditation and Multi-dimensional Consciousness
, Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1976, p. 207.

25.
Govinda, ibid., p. 9.

26.
Namkhai Norbu,
The Crystal and the Way of Light: Sutra, Tantra, and Dzogchen
(compiled and edited by John Shane), New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986, p. 64.

27.
D. T. Suzuki,
Zen and Japanese Culture
, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970, p. 364.

28.
Ibid., p. 257.

29.
Alan Watts,
The Middle Way: Journal of the Buddhist Society
, February 1973, London, p. 156.

30.
Robert Linssen,
Living Zen
, New York: Grove Press, 1958.

31.
Lao Tsu,
Tao Te Ching
(trans. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English), New York: Vintage Books, 1972.

32.
Mary Evelyn Tucker referenced in Samuel Snyder, “Chinese Traditions and Ecology,”
Worldviews
, 2006.

33.
Luther Standing Bear, quoted in Joseph Epes Brown, “Modes of Contemplation Through Actions: North American Indians,”
Main Currents in Modern Thought
, New York: Center for Integrative Studies, November December 1973, p. 194.

34.
Malcolm Margolin,
The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area
, Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1978.

35.
Ibid., pp. 142-43.

36.
David Maybury-Lewis,
Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World
, New York: Viking, 1992, pp. 197-202.

37.
David Abram,
The Spell of the Sensuous
, New York: Vintage Books, 1996, p. 169.

38.
Sam Keen,
Your Mythic Journey
, New York: Tarcher/Putnam Books, 1989, p. 90.

39.
Richard Nelson,
Make Prayers to the Raven
, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983, p. 14.

40.
Plotinus, quoted in: John Gregory,
The Neo-Platonists
, Kyle Cathie, 1991, selected passages from the Enneads, 4.4.32.

41.
Evelyn Underhill,
Mysticism
, New York: Meridian Books, 1955, p. 28.

42.
Heraclitus, quoted in Timothy Ferris,
Galaxies
, New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1982, p. 87.

43.
Alexander, “Space, Time and Deity,” quoted in Underhill, op. cit., p. 29.

44.
Bergson, ibid., p. 191.

1.
Thomas Berry,
The Dream of the Earth
, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988, p. 132.

2.
Yervant Terzian and Elizabeth Bilson, eds.,
Carl Sagan's Universe
, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 148. Also see the highly regarded physicist, Alex Vilenkin, who writes: “At the heart of the new worldview is the picture of an eternally inflating universe. It consists of isolated “island universes,” where inflation has ended. . .” op. cit., p. 203. Also see, for example, Marcus Chown, “Into the Void,”
New Scientist
, November 24, 2007, who explores whether a giant void in the universe could be the imprint of another universe.

3.
Wheeler, quoted in Renee Weber, “The Good, the True, the Beautiful,” in
Main Currents
, p. 139.

4.
Ibid., p. 140.

5.
Joseph Campbell,
The Power of Myth
, with Bill Moyers, New York: Double-day, 1988, p. 217.

6.
Stephen Mitchell (trans.),
Tao Te Ching: A New English Version
, Harper & Row, 1988, Chapter 25.

7.
The quote by Shao is taken from: Garma Chang,
The Buddhist Teaching of Totality: The Philosophy of Hwa Yen Buddhism
, University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971, p. 111.

8.
Rumi, quoted in Andrew Harvey,
The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi
, Berkeley: Frog, Ltd., 1994, p. 189.

9.
Yung-chia Hsuan-chueh was a scholar and a monk who lived in the years 665 to 713 and was one of the most gifted teachers of the Ch'an (Zen) school during the T'ang Dynasty of China.

10.
Lankavatara Sutra
, D. T. Suzuki, trans., Boulder: Prajnñ Press, 1978, p. 8.

11.
Underhill,
Mysticism
, op. cit., p. 101.

1.
Brian Swimme, op. cit., p. 112.

2.
Russell Targ was the co-founder of the psychic research program at SRI in the early 1970s and would later write, “We are not a body, but rather
limitless, nonlocal awareness
animating or residing as a body.” [emphasis in original] See: Targ,
Limitless Mind: A Guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness
, Novato: CA: New World Library, 2004, p. xii.

3.
Bernard Haisch,
The God Theory
, op. cit.

4.
David Bohm, op. cit., p. 45.

5.
James Robinson, ed.,
Nag Hammadi Library
, 1st edition, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977, p. 123. Elsewhere in the Gnostic sources, Jesus is quoted by the disciple James as saying: “Search ever and cease not till ye find the mysteries of the Light, which will lead you into the Light-kingdom.”

6.
See, for example, the article: “The Quakers: Children of the Light,” at the Quaker site:
http://www.fum.org/about/friends.htm
Also see a discussion of inward light at:
http://www.quakers.org/inwardlight.php

7.
Robert Cummings Neville (ed.),
Ultimate Realities
, New York: SUNY, 2001, p. 52.

8.
See, for example: Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee,
Alchemy of Light
, Inverness, CA: Golden Sufi Center, 2007.

9.
Quoted in Andrew Harvey,
The Way of Passion
, op. cit., p. 138.

10.
Most Buddhists do not deny the existence of a soul as a life stream of luminous consciousness; instead, they deny the soul is an unchanging, autonomous entity. In turn, meditation is seen as a vehicle for discovering ourselves as an ever-flowing life stream and relaxing directly into the flow of self-luminous knowing.

11.
Harvey, ibid., p. 160.

12.
Robert Bly (trans.),
The Kabir Book
, Boston: Beacon Press, 1977, p. 21.

13.
“Love” is described in the
Encyclopedia of Religion
, 2nd edition, Wood-bridge, CT: Macmillan Reference, December 2004.

14.
Quoted in Matthew Fox,
Creation Spirituality
, op. cit., p. 28.

15.
Ibn al-Arabi, quoted in Robert Ellwood, Jr.,
Mysticism and Religion
, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1980, p. 92.

16.
Jesus quoted in The Gospel of Thomas, Nag Hammadi Library, James Robertson, general editor, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977, p. 124.

17.
An Arabic inscription on a city gate of Fatepuhr-Sikri in India.

18.
See, for example, Tsele Natsok Rangdrol,
The Mirror of Mindfulness: The Cycle of the Four Bardos
, E. Kunsang (trans.), Boston: Shambhala Press, 1989.

19.
Rangdrol, Ibid., pp. 8-10.

20.
HH the XIV Dalai Lama,
The Heart of Compassion: A Practical Approach to a Meaningful Life
, Wisconsin: Lotus Press, 2002.

21.
Robert Bly (trans.), op. cit., p. 24.

1.
Scientists are now expanding their description of “life” in recognition there may be life forms thriving on another planet but living in a sea of liquid methane instead of water or living on hydrochloric acid instead of energy from the sun. See, for example, Douglas Fox, “Life in the Deep Freeze,”
New Scientist
, August 12, 2006, p. 35. Bacteria have been found buried kilometers deep in the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, with temperatures as low as—40 degrees centigrade, living for hundreds of thousands of years in a film of water at little as three molecules thick.

2.
There are complex, self-organizing processes going on even at the scale of entire galaxies. Our Milky Way galaxy, with its several hundred billion stars, had been assumed to be no more than a simple, whirling disk of matter. Now, our galaxy is being described by scientists as a “dynamic, living object” that is “breathing—pushing out gas and then pulling it back in, as if exhaling and inhaling.” (See: Bart P. Wakker and Philipp Richte, “Our Growing, Breathing Galaxy,”
Scientific American
, January 2004.) Our enormous galaxy is a complex ecological system that is nurturing star systems that are in turn producing planets that grow our forms of life. Galaxies are cosmic gardens comprised of billions of stars in a complex, ongoing partnership with streaming gases and energy, all necessary to create the conditions for growing a rich diversity of life within a galaxy.

3.
See: Note 20 in
Chapter 2
, page 208.

4.
Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, Erik Pema Kunsang, trans.,
The Mirror of Mindfulness: The Cycle of the Four Bardos
, Boston: Shambhala, 1989, pps. 10-11.

1.
Joseph Campbell,
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
, New York: Meridian Book Edition, 1956, p. 30.

2.
See
Chapter 2
of Elgin,
Awakening Earth
, New York: William Morrow, 1993.

3.
See:
http://www-geology.ucdavis.edu/~GEL134/ambrose.pdf
.

4.
For a more extensive exploration of driving trends, see Elgin,
Promise Ahead
, op. cit.,
Chapter 2
: “Adversity Trends: Hitting an Evolutionary Wall.”

5.
Robert Bly (trans.), op. cit., p. 11.

6.
See: Karen Thompson,
The Great Transformation
, New York: Knopf, 2006.

7.
D. H. Lawrence,
Apocalypse
, 1931.

8.
These three stages are explored in depth in Elgin,
Awakening Earth
, op. cit., Chapters 5, 6, 7.

9.
See, for example, Chang,
The Buddhist Teaching of Totality
, op. cit., p. 39.

10.
It is important to differentiate the flow consciousness described here from the far more restricted definition of flow experience described by Mihaly Csikszenthmihalyi in his book,
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
, New York: Harper & Row, 1990.

1.
Mihail Nimay,
Book of Mirdad
, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971.

2.
Quoted in: Stephen Oates,
Let the Trumpets Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr
., New York: New American Library, 1982, p. 226.

3.
Pitirim Sorokin,
The Ways and Power of Love
, Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1967 (orig. 1954), p. 71.