The Living Universe - Duane Elgin [37]
An Integrative View
What is the nature of the generative ground or life force that is able to hold our cosmos as a living system? Regardless of what the Mother Universe is called (God, Brahman, the Tao), all wisdom traditions agree that she is ultimately beyond description. Nevertheless, many attempts have been made to describe the cosmic womb that gives birth to and sustains our universe. Combining insights from both science and spirituality, here are six key attributes of the Mother Universe:
• Present everywhere. The clear life energy of the Mother Universe is present in all material forms as well as throughout empty space. The Mother Universe is the “ordinary” reality that is always present around us, the sea in which we swim.
• Non-obstructing. The Mother Universe is a living presence out of which all things emerge, but her aliveness is not itself filled in or limited by these things. Not only are all things in the Mother Universe, she is in all things. There is mutual interpenetration without obstruction.
• Utterly impartial. The Mother Universe allows all things to be exactly what they are without interference. We have immense freedom to create either suffering or joy.
• Ultimately ungraspable. The power and reach of the Mother Universe are so vast that they cannot be grasped by our thinking mind. As the source of our existence, the Mother Universe is forever beyond the ability of our limited mental faculties to capture conceptually.
• Of unconditional love. To experience the subtle and refined resonance of the Mother Universe is to experience unconditional love. An ocean of joy and love is her essence.
• Profoundly creative. Because we humans do not know how to create a single flower or cubic inch of space, the power of the Mother Universe to create and sustain entire cosmic systems is a miracle and mystery.
Contemplating these extraordinary characteristics of the Mother Universe is a way to awaken ourselves to the profound miracle of the living universe within which we are immersed.
Growing in the Mother Universe
We live within a “daughter universe” that for nearly 14 billion years has been living and growing within the spaciousness of a Mother Universe. The Mother Universe has existed forever, holding countless daughter universes in her grand embrace while they grow and mature through an eternity of time. This perspective not only transforms the description of the world in which we live, but also the way in which we regard the human journey: We move from a secular journey in a fragmented and lifeless universe that is without meaning or purpose into a sacred journey through a unified and living universe whose purpose it is to support, in freedom, the growth of self-reflective and self-organizing entities and communities at every scale.
Our universe and everything in it are expressions of the life energy of the Mother Universe. We are embodiments of the first miracle. We express directly the life force of the Mother Universe. Through our experience and learning, our celebration and sorrow, the Mother Universe also experiences, learns, celebrates, and grieves. We are sensing, feeling, thinking, and knowing beings, the living expressions of the Mother Universe. The Mother Universe yearns to give birth to her creative potential and, since her creativity is infinite, her creations will be infinite—including an infinite number of universes. The Mother Universe actualizes her infinite potential through our evolving experience. Our experience is her