The Living Universe - Duane Elgin [38]
Chapter 5
The Soul’s Body and Our Cosmic Identity
Once the journey to God is finished,
the infinite journey in God begins.
—ANNAMARIE SCHIMMEL
A striking new image of humans is emerging: We are far more than biological beings—we are giants living in a universe that is almost entirely invisible to our physical senses, that is emerging as a fresh totality in every moment, and that is sustained by the flow-through of stupendous amounts of energy. Because the totality of our universe is being continuously created anew, we ourselves are being regenerated along with everything else. Cosmologist Brian Swimme explains that the intimate sense of self-awareness we experience bubbling up at each moment “is rooted in the originating activity of the universe. We are all of us arising together at the center of the cosmos.”1 We thought that we were no bigger than our physical bodies; now we find we are beings of cosmic connection and dimension who are part of the continuous re-creation of the entire cosmos.
The Size of Our Soul
To explore the nature of our soulful identity, let’s consider insights from psychic research. As I described in Chapter 2, in the early 1970s I was involved in futures research at the think tank SRI International, reporting on changing trends and how they might impact government agencies and corporations. At the same time, in another part of this sprawling think tank, the engineering laboratory was conducting psychic research for NASA. Although I do not consider myself as possessing any special abilities, experiments at SRI gave me unique opportunities to learn about the intuitive capacities we all possess by being a part of this extraordinary universe.
Before participating in these laboratory experiments, I had assumed that my “being” was defined by my physical body and its ability to receive and send information (seeing with my eyes, touching with my hands). After nearly three years of experiments, with precise feedback from a wide array of scientific instruments, my understanding of the scope of my “being” expanded enormously. First, the remote viewing experiments demonstrated that we all can “see at a distance,” receiving meaningful information through intuitive nonlocal connections. Second, the psychokinesis experiments showed we can all “touch at a distance,” interacting meaningfully (and measurably, with scientific instruments) over a distance ranging from a few yards to several miles or more.
Through exploring these receiving and sending capacities in a wide range of experiments, my biologically encapsulated sense of self was subtly, though profoundly, transformed. At a deep energetic level I gradually understood that if my ability to send and receive information extends beyond my physical body, then my body is the gateway into a larger field of aliveness, a portal into a vastly larger being. In stages, I progressively discovered that the scope of my identity is equal to the scope of my conscious participation in life. These experiments demonstrated that we are boundless beings whose participation in the deep ecology of the universe is limited only by the scope of our conscious awareness.2 Our being is as big as our perception, and our perceptions are constantly expanding or contracting, depending on our thinking. When we think that awakening happens only within our physical bodies, then the universe becomes no more than a passive backdrop to our lives that lies dormant, unexamined and unexplored.
This expansive view of myself did not emerge easily; I resisted what the experiments were telling me about the permeable nature of my self. Again and again, I found myself unconsciously invested in keeping a concrete, well-defined, bounded, and permanent sense of self. A harsh critic of my own experience, I did not come easily