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The Living Universe: Where Are We? Who Are We? Where Are We Going?

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Is the universe a smattering of objects and gases in a vast, lifeless void? Or is the universe a living organism with its own consciousness and purpose?

In The Living Universe, Elgin articulates the concept that the universe is a living being. He documents current scientific knowledge alongside core beliefs from the world's spiritual traditions to illustrate that wisdom from these disparate arenas points to a shared impression that the universe is alive.

With an understanding garnered over decades of research and profound personal experience, Elgin contends that the basic nature of the universe is a creative force giving birth to self reflective systems at multiple levels. He presents the exciting possibility that the cosmos is a purposeful learning system. Humanity plays a vital role in the process as the universe manifests its creativity and develops its consciousness through us.

Elgin explores the significance and implications of a shift in how we see ourselves as part of a living universe rather than a dead one. This change in perspective brings new meaning to humanity's struggles. Elgin considers who we are as a species, playing out our collective story as cosmic, heroic, maturing, or witnessing species beings. In mythological terms, he poses the question, what if the crises we face on Earth right now constitute humanity's initiation process? At this stage of our developing maturity and growing consciousness, we have opportunities for transformation. Elgin names six vital tasks for the journey, and offers meditations and conversation initiators to engage us in co-creating our story of awakening.

Writing beautifully, the author employs an expansive array of jubilant descriptors to convey the awesome phenomenon and beauty of the universe. Words of others - from Rumi to Sagan, David Bohm to Walt Whitman - elaborate and supplement Elgin's descriptions.
Containing seeds from Elgin's earlier works and expanding on his life's passion, The Living Universe is rich with insight from this wise, well-informed, and caring man.

Already known as a researcher, writer, teacher, visionary leader and media activist, Elgin - through The Living Universe - reveals himself to also be a healer.

In this remarkably potent and highly accessible book, Duane Elgin lays out a compelling argument for what is surely one of the most critical insights we as a collective humanity must come to know, and soon: life on earth isn't the only life in the universe...indeed, the universe itself is alive! And, knowing this, our entire way of seeing, being and doing is transformed, and made meaningful. One of the things I liked most about this book is that it goes beyond concepts and makes the notion of a living universe relevant in our individual, daily lives. If you want a book that is clear and profound, and are ready to have your worldview stretched to accommodate the universe itself...read this. Very highly recommended.

I was led to this book by Tom Atlee, whose earlier book, The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All completely redirected my thinking in positive directions, and whose new book on Reflections on Evolutionary Activism (soon on Amazon, now at the Public Intelligence Blog) pointed me toward this book as well as Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Holistic Darwinism: Synergy, Cybernetics, and the Bioeconomics of Evolution and other books on cultural evolution.

In the face of the almost complete collapse of the post-World War II political, economic, and social paradigms (see my free chapter on Paradigms of Failure at the Public Intelligence Blog or within Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography), I feel POSITIVE, and this book and the many human minds and hearts this book represents are the reason I am confident that Conscious Evolution: Awakening Our Social Potential and Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution are on the immediate horizon.

Paul Hawkin's captures the spirit of WHY this book on the Living Universe matters--his most recent book, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming is the tip of the iceberg.

The greatest value for me of this book is that it is a superb overview of many different concepts from both science and the world of religion--this is a sense-making book not a simple book.

Now for my notes from this 199-page double-spaced quick read that I strongly recommend for anyone who wants to be part of the tsunami of human evolutionary activism that is upon us.

+ Foreword by Deepak Choprah makes two points useful to me:

---Humanity is a very special emergent property of the living universe, serving as its emergent nervous system with the potential to radically expand the consciousness of the living universe

---Humanity fights over 20% (its differences) while ignoring the 80% that is common ground, and I have a note to myself about the urgent need for broad reconciliation across all boundaries.

+ 1992 "Warning to Humanity" by 1600 scientists was a modern starting point for deeper reflections

+ Science and spirituality are converging. I add my own note from Holistic Darwinism, the social sciences are retarded--they are not making a significant contribution.

+ An "ecology of consciousness" is both emergent and has always been around, we are just starting to understand consciousness in both plant and animal life outside our own species

+ Different paradigms of perception are converging

+ Humans are virtually in the center of the universe in terms of size, with the cosmos being 10 to the 30th power and the tiniest known entity being 10 to the negative 33rd power.

+ Author provides a compelling two page table comparing the dead and living universe options

+ The author was a pioneer in the SRI investigations into both remote viewing and psychokinesis subsequently classified into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), my former employer, and I note the author's conclusion: both are real and they REDUCE his acceptance of paranormal intermediaries; and my own conclusion: governments should not be allowed to classify stuff like this (or extra-terrestial intelligence).

+ The author provides a brilliantly concise summary of multiple religions and their views of God and the universe, here are some tight notes:

---Overview: God as a "boundless spiritual presence that infuses, sustains, and transcends the universe.

---Catholic: Continuous creation

---Hindu: One relentless force

---Buddhist: inter-dependent co-arising

---Tao: life force with chi energy, dance of becoming

---Confucian: Heaven as life force, Earth as nature, Humanity as social architecture

QUOTE: The Mother Universe actualizes her infinite potential through our evolving experience."

QUOTE: In stages, I progressively discovered that the scope of my identity is equal to the scope of my conscious participation in life. These experiments [remote viewing and psychokinesis] 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.

QUOTE: Matter and consciousness support one another in their mutual ascent toward an ever-wider scope of integration and differentiation, unity, and diversity.

+ Three stages of consciousness (focus on one line only): Witnessing to Connecting to Co-Creating. This is meaningful to me because my personal view is that the sooner we give each of the five billion poor a free cell phone, the sooner we create infinite stabilizing wealth for all.

+ Humanity is a halfway house, a place where "culture and consciousness co-evolve," where "soul and society tend to grow together."

+ Humanity's separation from nature was its weaning period, the first half of the journey, now we must re-integrate ourselves with nature to create a conscious unity and acquire a "strong sense of bio-cosmic self."

The book concludes with a marvelous discussion of six vital tasks and six reconciliations that I only list here.

Six vital tasks:

1. Co-creating our story of awakening

2. Cultivating reflection and reconciliation

3. Living simply and sustainably

4. Creating new kinds of community

5. Becoming media-conscious citizens of the Earth (this means demanding intelligent media, not the CNN-FOX idiocy we have now)

6. Bringing our true gifts into the world

Six reconciliations:

1. Religious reconciliation

2. Racial, ethnic, and gender reconciliation

3. Economic reconciliation

4. Ecological reconciliation

5. Generational reconciliation

6. Species reconciliation

This is a really excellent book that will positively provoke anyone.

See also:
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
Unspeakable Truths: Facing the Challenges of Truth Commissions
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents (Hardcover))

Whether we are living in an unconscious universe of dead matter or a universe that is genuinely alive and intelligent is a question that lies at the core of the intellectual transformation we are undergoing, and few writers speak to these issues as deeply and competently as Duane Elgin. Elgin has been ahead of the curve of our collective awakening for decades, and he continues to push our edges in this beautiful and powerful book.

Elgin's survey of the scientific evidence for a living universe is both compelling and accessible, a hard combination to pull off. Going beyond science, he draws out the existential implications of living consciously in a living universe, demonstrating the parallels with elevated spiritual teachings from multiple cultures and bringing it down to the nit and gritty detail of the choices we make every day. This synthesis of science, philosophy, spirituality, and ethical reflection is a powerful combination that will stretch the reader's mind and heart. Both the novice and the advanced student will be rewarded.

There are some books that have the rare capacity to actually trigger the awakening to which they are pointing. The Living Universe is one of these. It is a book for the years ahead.

I read a lot of metaphysical type books and I can tell you this is one of the most inspiring books that I have ever read. What this wonderful man has, over a period of many years, managed to integrate within himself and materialize in this book is a huge contribution to all of us looking to get to the core of things. If you are looking to broadening your understanding of who you are, what you are and why you're here - you will be delighted with this book and will likely reread it many times.

I love this book, am touched by it. Inspired. Informed.

I don't think I've read another one quite like it. Here's what I mean:

What if all of the trouble the world is experiencing right now actually has a purpose, a direction?

What if rather than a financial and ecological collapse in our near future because we simply can't get our act together, it's an inflection point?

And what if an author could explain, in a way one could trust, where we are in that inflection process and why where we're going is very much worth our attention and effort?

Duane Elgin has done just that in 200 pages using the best science available, a science that's big enough and confident enough to include the world's wisdom traditions, to show that the universe is alive, and so are we.

But not only has he accomplished this near impossible task - a task of a lifetime - by pulling so much together and integrating it into one approachable text, he has somehow been able to make his point through the quality or resonance of his words as well as their meaning.

What I'm saying is that this book gets under your skin. You actually feel the aliveness in the world, in yourself, that Duane speaks of after you've read each chapter.

It's hard to say exactly why . . . does it come from Duane's personal experiences, his use of certain experiments or evidence from science, or simply the way he crafts a paragraph? Not sure, but the way I felt after reading the book (twice now) was as important to me, as convincing, as the information in it.

If we're really going to turn the corner in these times we live in, the things that Duane so elegantly brings to light in "The Living Universe" are going to be part of the solution. Ultimately, it makes you want to get up and go.

This book inspires the kind of thinking that our generation needs to come to terms with our place and time in the Universe. Once again, Duane Elgin offers some of the clearest thinking on the human evolutionary process, backed with solid scientific evidence, and balanced with a relevant approach to meaningful living. The Living Universe inspires hope that we as a species can indeed rise to the heroic journey that lies before us in order to create a sustainable future.

Elgin (page 19) writes: "American Indian lore speaks of three miracles. The first miracle is that anything exists at all. The second miracle is that living things exists. The third miracle is that living things exists that know they exists. As human beings conscious of ourselves, we represent the third miracle." Elgin`s universe is alive, where the vital substance that permits life and consciousness is found hard wired deeply in the fabric of reality.

Elgin likes to use the expression "mother universe," and his detractors might label his views as New Age. But Elgin is no New Ager, his views integrate our spiritual traditions more fully. He (page 80) writes, "Within each major tradition - Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, Indigenous, and more - we can find remarkably similar descriptions of the universe and the life force that pervades it: Christians and jews affirming that God is not separate from this world but continuously creates it anew, so that we live, more, and have our being in God; Muslims declaring that the entire universe is continually coming into being, and that the entire universe is continually coming into being, and that each moment is a new occasion for Allah to create the universe; Hindus proclaiming the entire universe is a single body that is being continually danced into creation by a divine life force or Brahman; Buddhists stating that the entire universe arises freshly at every moment in an unceasing flow of interdependent, co-origination where everything depends upon everything else; Taoists stating the Tao is the Mother of the Universe, the inexhaustible source from which all things rise and fall without ceasing."

Elgin uses the discoveries of science to justify his world-view. He (page 22) describes an innate tension on the cosmic scale: "Scientists currently describe two major kinds of invisible energies in the universe. One is a contractive force called dark matter and the other is an expansive force called dark energy." He (page 25) later writes: "We are just moving out of the zone of collapse of matter into a black hole, and moving into the zone where life can encounter itself, know itself, and evolve itself."

Elgin (page 26) writes: "We are giants, living in a mostly invisible universe, who are just getting underway in our evolutionary journey, and can reach with our consciousness into the larger universe. These freeing insights liberate us from thinking we are small and insignificant. Not incidentally, they also free us from the arrogance of thinking that we occupy the leading edge of evolution`s wave."

Elgin (page 46) writes: "Because we find evidence of primary perception or some form of consciousness operating at the level of atoms, molecules, single-cell organisms, plants, and animals, we should not be surprised that sentience is a basic property of the universe. It is when we move to the human realm that we find the most direct evidence that consciousness is not confined within the brain; it is, instead, a field property of the universe itself." Elgin then treats "psi" abilities, and rediscovers the archetype (my word) that underwrites all communication: "receiving potentials" and "sending potentials." What holds sending to its receiving is now a middle-term (for lack of a better word), and it is here we rediscover a doorway to beyond; e.g., something Kant called "noumena."

A close look at Elgin analysis shows that science has been unable to get beyond the three-fold archetype (receiving, sending, and middle-term), and it is this archetype that hints at Elgin`s conclusion. Elgin gives the false impression that most scientists will welcome his conclusion (or rediscovery). No, only some will have the level of maturity to find something significant in Elgin`s work. Many will accuse Elgin of being pseudo-scientific, but they are wrong. True, Elgin`s account is less about science as it is known traditionally, but his interpretation of the evidence is the correct one (in my view). Elgin presents a philosophical and spiritual treatment that recognizes the scientific evidence that is found beholding to the three-fold archetype. And this is not to say that all presented evidence is valid enough to give its support to Elgin`s thesis. For example, Elgin (page 103) mentions sting theory: "the particle nature of matter gives way to unimaginably small, vibrating loops of non-material strings." But string theory remains a wild speculation, and it adds little value to Elgin`s worthy insights.

Where does Elgin see our evolution going? A three-fold transition becomes apparent (chapter 7), a transition that necessarily mirrors the noted archetype: from "reflective consciousness" to "oceanic consciousness" and to "flow consciousness." Elgin (page 154) writes about flow consciousness: "when our flow of awareness comes into precise synchronization with the arising of the universe, then the world suddenly becomes very quiet and our passage through life becomes calm and easeful. When we are aware of the stillness within motion, we are in the center of the flow of continuous creation. In flow consciousness, we experience a deep harmony as the personal and the universal move together in mutual synchrony."

My understanding is that flow consciousness relates to a heightened awareness of the now stark archetype that represents receiving, sending, and the middle-term. We learn to receive and send freely, and there is no resistance to this activity that implies imbalance or blockage. For example, in receiving Elgin`s book I react by writing a review.

Elgin (page 193) writes, "with mindfulness, everything we do provides an occasion for observing consciousness: driving, walking, playing, eating, or washing the dishes. Flow consciousness is no different, except that it elevates attention to a much higher level or precision, openness, and continuity, enabling us to ride the regenerative wave of the ever-arising universe."

Elgin (page 194) writes: "We are also a body of resonance, or music. All that exists is vibrating with its unique resonance. We can listen for the hum of existence. In meeting another person, we can listen for the unique song of their soul. In each new situation, we can open to the feeling-tones and qualities of resonance people express. We can discover subtle feelings of harmony or disharmony and express our unique songline as we move through life."

The Living Universe is a brilliant summary of an emerging world view embraced by millions of people. Duane Elgin shows us the confirmation modern science has brought to indigenous wisdom.

Since other reviewers have covered this book in depth, and well, I will just add that I found The Living Universe to be an immensely readable, and riveting, book. It presents a profound "theology" in understandable terms, and presents a new (really, very old) spirituality that diverse people will, I imagine, find enlightening and supportive. I am an ordained clergyperson, and Elgin's book has just moved my own theology along by light years. I give this book as a gift whenever I can. It certainly was a great gift to all of us. Thank you, Duane Elgin.Thank you.