The Living Universe - Duane Elgin [5]
2. Who are we? Having looked at the universe in which we live, we can now ask: Are we beings limited to our physical biology or do we somehow participate intimately with the larger universe? Our collective self-image as a species has yet to form, but it will emerge vividly within the next few decades as the communications revolution intersects with the perfect storm of an unyielding, whole-systems crisis for the Earth. This unfolding crisis will force us to take a hard look at ourselves in the mirror of our collective media and ask “Who are we as a species?” Are we no more than bio-physical beings in a struggle for material survival—or do we have a cosmic connection and purpose that calls us to awaken to a vastly larger potential?
3. Where are we going? Is there a discernible direction to life and evolution? Without a dramatic change in direction, humanity is headed toward catastrophe. The changes required for humanity to live sustainably on the Earth are so broad, so deep, and so far-reaching that if we are to avoid a global calamity it is crucial that we discover “great stories” that can align and orient our journey into the future. Is there a story of our awakening as a species with such compelling promise that it overcomes our fears and our historical inertia?
A Personal Perspective
To bring a more personal perspective to these questions, I want to share a few experiences that have been important threads in the tapestry of my life. Connecting with the miracle of aliveness has been a passionate interest since growing up on an Idaho farm in the 1940s and 1950s. I was born prematurely to my mother, a nurse, and my father, a farmer. We lived in the country with my brother, two dogs, a half-dozen cats and assorted farm animals a couple of miles outside of a small town of about five hundred people. Growing up in the big sky country of Idaho, I felt myself a small creature against a vast landscape. Because I worked on the farm until my early twenties, my roots are in the land, and I feel as much a sense of identity as a farmer as I do a scholar, educator, or activist.
Some of my earliest recollections are of lying on the living room floor and watching sunbeams pouring through a window and moving across the rug, their golden rays bringing a living presence and nurturing aliveness into the room. As a young man, farm life brought me the gift of deep silence in a setting where subtle ecstasies would regularly blossom: the smell of freshly mown hay, the fragrance of dry earth moistened by a brief summer shower, the Sun setting over distant mountains. When alone, I would sometimes lie down in a furrow to experience the earth and the sea of flourishing crops. I recall lying down in a field of lettuce, nearly covered by its abundant leaves, and absorbing the humming aliveness of the earth, the fields, and the sky above me. Irrigating crops, pruning apple trees, tending farm animals—these were regular invitations to celebrate nature’s miracle of luminous aliveness. Like water seeping into a dry sponge, over many seasons a nameless and palpable presence gradually permeated me.
In my early twenties I moved to the city, where I felt a deep separation from the familiar aliveness of my farming days. In 1971, I was working in Washington, D.C., as a senior staff member of a joint presidential-congressional commission on the American future. Thoughts about the aliveness of nature were set aside as we focused on the next thirty years and issues of population growth, urbanization, and the shortage of critical resources like water. Although intuitions of a living universe still resonated within me, in the intense world of politics they seemed a soft sensibility to be disregarded. Still, I was conflicted. Was the living presence I experienced on the farm in Idaho just my imagination? Or, did the invisible aliveness permeate even the coarse world of Washington politics? How important was something so hard to grasp and yet so rich with felt experience?
After two years in Washington and disillusioned with the politics of power,