Not Knowing

Before the longing to know in human nature, came the deep need to explore.  One only needs to look at babies and small children to recognize this.  A toddler will climb up and down stairs repeatedly to experience this interesting physical phenomenon.  Or adventure all sorts of objects into their mouths exploring the thing’s dimensions, as well as tastes and textures.  Once the newness of something is ‘known’, we move onto other adventures.  And so it goes.

As ego develops in human beings (thanks in part to all this acquiring of skills and knowing), the focus shifts from exploring to knowing.  The culture at large supports this.  The value of not knowing falls to the wayside.   What is the value of not knowing?

The knowing state is a static state (usually).  It tends to be fixed, inflexible, not expansive.  It also tends not to be open, is incurious and often prejudicial or biased.  One’s sense of identity (ego again) is often wrapped up nicely in what we know.  This is a comfortable place to be.  And the basic human/animal organism’s main thrust in life is to find and maintain comfort in all things.

So, what is the value of not knowing?

To the basic part of myself, not knowing is of no value, in fact should be avoided at all costs (even at the cost of ignorance or denial of not knowing).  Possibly why projection is such a powerful and forever present aspect of daily living.  We project onto others who we believe ourselves to be, who they are, our desires… everything.  Distortion is inevitable.  Our reality is of our own creation. This is a way of cementing our knowingness.  Projection, like ego and knowing is always with us.  An awareness and interest in how it is manifesting is to slip into the curious, requiring another type of attention.

To the other part of myself, the part or parts that have more possibilities, not knowing is of value.  This is the (more conscious?) part, the aspect of ourselves that separates from the enmeshment of engagement, that isn’t buried in the past or future.  It’s an acquired state, being in the unknown.  Outright uncomfortable, almost painful at times, not knowing throws out most of what I thought I knew and leaves me feeling stranded in an unfamiliar abyss.  Most of me fights hard to leave this disruptive place.  If I am lucky enough to gain some experience there, it becomes less and less awful the more I allow myself to experience it.  Something in me recognizes the value of that kind of bearing.

So, when I am in front of an octogenarian failing in memory or a three year old having a melt down, sometimes bearing witness, being with, is a more useful act than supposing the reason to the unreasonable behavior (and god help me, if I attempt to fix it).  I stand with them in not knowing.  I only know what is, right now.  And I am with them in that unknown place.  Wonder flows, tensions fall away.  We’re only human after all.

Welcome to the Anthropocene

"Anthropocene is an informal geologic chronological term that serves to mark the evidence and extent of human activities that have had a significant global impact on the Earth's ecosystems. The term was coined recently by ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer, but has been widely popularized by the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist, Paul Crutzen, who regards the influence of human behavior on the Earth's atmosphere in recent centuries as so significant as to constitute a new geological epoch for its lithosphere." --Wikipedia

I've been almost halted in my tracks as of late with the perception of the incredible dysfunction and seeming corruption this planet, this world and nation are currently suffering.  Everything appears upside down with a grim trajectory imminent.  With the statistical research having prompted the video Wealth Inequality in America - YouTube  to go viral, pointing out the illusion of the public as to how bad the inequality is and the general consensus of the broad sampling, to be a country unlike its current state. This along with the ongoing, endless polarization and lack of sense (but a lot of maneuvering) exhibited by our government which will only negatively impact the already desperate poor, and the seeming lack of ownership of that responsibility (when one is oppressed, we're all oppressed).  My alarm isn't so much over the chaos (there will always be that) but the ongoing and continual fracture that continues to divide us, the smoke screen that keeps us passive despite a practically unanimous understanding (amongst the diverse sampling in the mentioned research) of what is fair and equitable.  There appears no awareness in the relationship of environment to health to inequality, to prejudice and manipulation; only a frenzied barreling toward divisiveness.  Where is the long view?  Where is the world community awareness?

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

--MLK  "Letter from Birmingham Jail," April 16, 1963

After looking at the research for the above mentioned video (where from were the statistics gleaned, how was the research carried out, what was the sampling?), I was introduced to some material on Anthropocene and a study being done on alternative business practices created from a larger perspective.
 
"The Anthropocene calls to us to recognize that we are all participants in the ‘becoming world’, where everything is interconnected and learning happens in a stumbling, trial and error sort of way. In the spirit of this participation, many offer the experiment as the only way forward: the only way to approach such a period in which uncertainty is high and one cannot predict what the future holds, is not to predict, but to experiment and act inventively and exuberantly via diverse adventures in living." (Dumanoski 2009, quoting C.S. Holling)

"At the core of J.K. Gibson-Graham’s feminist political imaginary is the vision of a decentralized movement that connects globally dispersed subjects and places through webs of signification. We view these subjects and places both as sites of becoming and as opportunities for belonging. But no longer can we see subjects as simply human and places as human-centered. The ‘arrival’ of the Anthropocene has thrown us onto new terrain. Feminist critiques of hyper-separation are pushing us to move beyond the divisive binaries of human/nonhuman, subject/object, economy/ecology and thinking/ acting. The reframing of our living worlds as vast uncontrolled experiments is inspiring us to reposition ourselves as learners, increasingly open to our interconnections with earth others and more willing to intervene in adventurous ways. In this article we begin to think about more-than-human regional development and regional research collectives that have the potential to perform resilient worlds. For us the project of belonging involves both participating in the vast experiment that is the Anthropocene and connecting deeply to specific places and concerns."

"2013 ingredients of a new world-shaping movement: 1) assemblages that are experimenting with new practices of living and being together, 2) the ubiquity of these assemblages, and 3) the potential global compass of a new discourse of ‘belonging’ linked to a more than-human regional development imaginary. Our working definition of regional development is: how ‘we’ (that is, all the human/nonhuman participants in the becoming world) organize our lives (or how life organizes us) to thrive in porously bounded spaces in which there is some degree of interconnection, a distinctively diverse economy and ecologies, multiple path-dependent trajectories of transformation and inherited forms of rule."

Following are some examples of business practice in relation to this decentralized movement.

"Our first adventure is an experiment in regional development led by individuals and institutions that are motivated in part by an ethic of caring for place and environment. Capturing and democratizing wealth to care for people and environments in place.  The Evergreen Cooperatives are a set of new employee-owned businesses, based on the cooperative model, that hire local residents and contribute to environmental sustainability. In the Greater University Circle of inner city Cleveland, Ohio, investment flows easily into world renowned cultural, educational and health institutions that were originally established by philanthropic industrialists of a past era. Up against these well-endowed institutions are run-down neighborhoods housing some 43,000 residents whose average median household income is under $18,500 per year (Evergreen video 2010). Little of the massive institutional investment in salaries, procurements and real estate development stays within these inner ring neighborhoods. According to Bob Eckhardt (2009), senior vice president of the Cleveland Foundation, each institution acts ‘as if the world ended at its respective property line’. The Cleveland Foundation, established as the ‘world’s first community foundation in 1914, decided in the mid 2000s to concentrate funding and capacity building activities on the Greater University Circle to make sure that ‘as the big institutions grow and prosper, the neighborhood prospers as well’ (Ekhardt 2009). Its mission was to create jobs for local residents in green industries and to generate wealth that would circulate within and help stabilize the neighborhood."

"The Evergreen Cooperative Laundry was the first experiment to get off the ground. It is an ‘industrial-scale, environmentally advanced, state-of-the-art, commercial laundry providing services to area hospitals and assisted living centers’ (Yates 2009). A feasibility study showed that commercial laundries could pay reasonable wages if they were not under pressure to generate profits for owners and shareholders.  Making the employees owners through a cooperative meant that an employee-owned laundry could immediately offer jobs paying a little better than the going rate for such work, offer better benefits and also be a wealth-builder for employees over the years." (Yates 2009, 17) Gender, Place and Culture."

"We draw here on a video report on the rise of peer-to-peer exchanges by the Wall Street Journal’s tech reporter Andy Jordon.  Jordon presents a series of interviews that begin with young corporate executives who trade in Ven, a virtual currency used to ‘buy, share and trade knowledge, goods and services’ (Jordon 2010). Tamara Giltsoff, a sustainable business consultant, is one of the ‘urban influentials’ who are members of Hub Culture, one of many meshworks that have grown out of the social networking capacities of the internet. In selected world cities Hub Culture members flock to Hub Pavilions where they can book space to work, meet, trade non-tangible value and recreate (bookings can be made for a personal chef for 10 or more people, a personal trainer, or a reflexologist/reiki/polarity therapist). Giltsoff describes using Ven: ‘It begins to put a value on intangible exchanges, I guess. I have gained Ven by making introductions to other people or doing favours for people in the network.’ Dan George, a promoter for international music recording stars says: ‘With fluctuating exchange rates you know that if you have a certain amount of Ven you can, sort of, count on it when you are working between countries.’ According to the Hub Culture website (2010): The price of Ven is made up of a weighted basket of currencies, commodities and carbon futures and trades against other major currencies at floating exchange rates. Ven is the first currency to include carbon externalities in its pricing factor, making it the first environmentally linked currency in existence."

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.  -- MLK,  Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10, 1964

These ancient/new assemblages that experiment with new practices of living and being together,  and the potential global compass of a new discourse of ‘belonging’ linked to a more than-human regional development imaginary is a relief to what we live with now.  It provides hope for a new paradigm of operating.  It gives breath to more of what matters than is currently acknowledged, in the markets and systems currently in place.  Both for health and well being, these sorts of changes are essential for putting into place justice and equality for the masses.

The world is changing.  Environmentally and health-wise it is not tenable for there to be the magnitude of inequities existent in the world (in this country), as there is.  Both the French and Russian Revolutions are historical indicators to this; the Occupy movement is a heads up in our own time.  The paralyzation of governments holding to this untenable way of operating, resistant to a more equitable shift of power, money and influence has only one cataclysmic outcome.

Raising Up: Children and Parenting

I've had a few requests in the last  month to write a post on children, the act of "raising" them, what "method" is reliable, what books to read, what tact to take.  In no way do I assume a child expert role in this endeavor.  But I have a huge affinity for the young person through their amazing and varied continuums and I have considered them in many respects, my most important teachers.  So, here goes.

Children are an important influence because they are unrelenting models of the truth that everything changes all the time.  As a new parent, you think you've got it down (ie: an eating or sleeping schedule), and right when you start to feel like you have your bearings in relation to them, it changes.  Life as far as children go, is pretty much complete chaos (even if you are the organized type).  Once this has found an acceptance in your solar plexus, you might as well relax and find your sense of humor (kids are excellent mentors in this area).  Children help us to see we rarely know what we are doing, and that is as it should be. How could it be otherwise?  You never parented an infant, three year old, pre-teen, teenager or young adult before. And if you did, all others following the first are incredibly different and require different responses to similar situations.  It's always new.  Because of this, we are given the gift of humility.  The young challenge us in all ways to move/act/think/feel quicker than we ordinarily would like and give us an opportunity to get a view from another's almost continually open perspective.  In a conscientious adult, children inspire us to wake up, grow up and be better human beings.  Because of this, the act of  parenting/mentoring others, becomes the act of parenting oneself.


Children naturally seek relationship.  Their curiosity with the inside and outside world and the beings that surround them is unquenchable.  They deeply observe, listen, imitate everything.  They put things in their mouths to discover more about the object. (an incredibly interesting approach!).  As I have seen it, it is the adult's job to keep them safe (without being overprotective) and to respect them, their current development arc (again, constantly changing) and who they are evolving to be.  The bond we naturally have with them as a parent, complicates this basic approach and sometimes mires the process of their (and our own) evolution.  Hence, the imperative need for other adults and models to be major influences in their life (and in our process).  It does indeed, take a village to raise a child.

In children, we are reminded of our own possible resiliency and a life force that is insistent, hopeful and frequently present in Joy. In this awakening, the notion that we are supposed to be their life-model is turned on its head and it becomes apparent, it is the other way around.

In all this topsy-turvy unknown that goes hand in hand with being in the sphere of a child, how is a practically-fixed adult supposed to survive?  Many of us take the dictatorial approach, attempting to control the chaos, becoming master-director, feigning a knowing to manage the raw energy ever present in the young.  This approach secures our "adult" role and our ego's sense of omnipotence. It also occasionally is useful in a crisis. As a general modus operandi, it can be suffocating and repressive to the young who are naturally seeking autonomy, self reliance and self governance.  Another common parenting approach is to ignore or deny manifestation, letting children raise themselves (emotionally) while abdicating this responsibility to them.  Children demand (and deserve) attention; how one gives it determines the lesson learned, determines the relationship made between you.

As adults in the role of mentoring the young, we sometimes become fixed in the habit of directing and are swallowed by the conditions of too little patience (or being), too little time to support their self-discovery.  We become almost completely reliant on structure and schedules to maintain some semblance of equanimity. Structure and direction are both ways that teach self-discipline, accountability and consequences of actions taken.  Or they could be.  For consequences to be a rich experience, there has to be an empathic feeling present in the adult; a knowing intelligence in this realm which proliferates despite the outcome of the consequence (that doesn't turn into sentimentality or variations of rescuing).  Many times the structures and direction are put into place for the adult's benefit and comfort, but when the consequence reveals itself, the empathic feeling isn't present because the young person's well being or arising wasn't considered primary. Hence, the consequence falters, slides and becomes fodder for something else other than accountability.  As was said previously, the presence of children urges us adults at all times to grow up and be better human beings.

In my post Violence: a Cautionary Truth, discipline is mentioned:  How do we differentiate violence from say, discipline?  Respect of other is always at the base of discipline and fully absent in violence.  Also, there is an integrated intelligence which is responsive and not reactive in discipline.  Energetically, violence is raw and ungrounded, usually unpredictable and ego driven.   Whereas, discipline is a focused and aligned energy that serves as a guide without an agenda.  Domination is an impulse born of fear; it is a basic animal instinct present in one degree or another, always.  The more we bring a larger attention and awareness to our daily actions, the more we will  know ourselves, become more available to our fuller humanity, the less this impulse will be tolerated in oneself, the less weight of myself violence will usurp.   It would be noteworthy here to include violence as being sharp tones and language, withering looks as well as physical strong arming.

So, it may seem respect (without fear) is the cornerstone of relationship with children.  Respect can exist only in the void of the perception of "otherness", that children are somehow less than us, we being their older (not necessarily wiser) counterparts.  This sameness perception can be difficult to sustain in light of their diminutive size, dearth of experience, minimal maturity, limited vocabulary, lack of financial viability and cognitive weakness (frontal cortex of brain is not fully mature until age 26) which is the child's (partial) reality.  An appreciation and value for humanity in all its guises is the root of respect we have for children (and all people).

Despite all the child-rearing expert literature (which changes regularly), we generally don't know what we are doing as parents/mentors.  And we are in good company, because children don't know what they are doing either (they are visceral responders).  This relationship is an exercise in exciting exploration.  The great thing about kids is their forgiveness factor; it's easy for them.  They thrive in making mistakes (until they learn otherwise), falling down and getting up again is an impulse for another adventure.  They are completely cognizant of our weaknesses, frailties and shortcomings.  And they forgive and even love us anyway, (even when they are testing us).  They are fully aware of our adult sufferings, our struggles, our not knowing (even when we pretend otherwise).  And they are unfailing in their compassion for this, and are appreciative when borne for their sake. They learn respect not from being fearful but seeing respect modeled. There is no hiding from children.  You might minimize arguments and hostilities in a household, but they are extremely sensitized to the tensions that exist. Modeling non-violent communication for them (and yourself) would be a gift.

So, how do we navigate this impossible physical, emotional, mental task of a layered support for another being to adulthood? Understanding the objective developmental curve of the different phases or challenges in human growth would be good.  Having this knowledge under your belt would help you recognize the phase when it is exhibited and give you a heads up in preparing how you want to deal with it when it happens.  If I had known at the time, that part of an eight year old's development is about fitting in, mutual identification, not being wildly different from their social peers, I would have never put two different colored yellow socks on my son on a bleary, late-for-school morning.  (Now 28, forever mischievous, he still occasionally reminds me of the peer harassment he received.)  At 4 years old, this fitting in identity issue was not problematic (not part of that age development); when his shoes had been left home 200 miles away, we tied on to his feet bright yellow "grippy" rubber gloves and brought his antsy self to a playground full of kids to swing on the swings.  I'm pretty sure the other parents were mortified at this half boy, half Daffy Duck, but I had gotten past that parent developmental hurdle by that time. (Fingers crossed, yellow is not a PTSD-inducing color for him today.)  Knowledge about child (and parent!) development is helpful.

The "time out" concept was particularly helpful to me as a parent of young children; not only to allow a break in a mini-crisis for them, but a breathing space for myself to regroup my own energies and wits.   Directives, negotiations, strategies, reasoning.... they all fail at one time or another.  The only constant is relationship and the mutual respect that has been built; it is the foundation of who you are together.

Shared History

“The cosmos is within us, we’re made of star stuff.  We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” --Carl Sagan

We have a profoundly deep relationship with the cosmos we inhabit.  Literally.  It is a 3.5 billion year shared history, a mutuality, a related existence, a symbiotic occupation.  Our DNA, cells, organs have a relationship with fish and pools of algae, as well as rocks, and are related to the grand "othernesses" of the cosmos at large.  These 'outer' thing's stories are our own brilliant truths.  The things that shape our bodies are the things that have shaped this planet and the entire universe.

Farish Jenkins and Neil Shubin, decades-long colleagues, explored the zoologist and paleontologist/ evolutionary biologist's point of view in finding the relationship to our ancestors (the fish and rocks).  As they have found, we have a shared history. "The sun burns hydrogen. Others stars burn oxygen and carbon.  The fundamental atoms that make our hands, feet, and brains serve as the fuel for stars.  It isn't merely the atoms in our bodies that extend across the far reaches of the universe: molecules that make our bodies are found in space. The building blocks for the proteins and larger molecules that make us--amino acids and nitrates--rain down to Earth in meteorites and lie in the rocky crust of Mars or on the moons of Jupiter.  If our chemical cousins are in the stars, meteors and other heavenly bodies, then clues to our deepest connections to the universe must lie in the sky above our heads."*  These are extraordinary suppositions.  As Sagan indicates above, the cosmos needs to know itself and the universe is its playground to do so.  That each of us and all matter would resonate with the energy of 
itself and other both makes sense and is simultaneously mind boggling.  When we have the occasion to admit we are but grains of sand in a vast desert is also to admit that we are surprisingly unique (see photo image) and related in that uniqueness.

Wholeness; the thrust of our inner and outer cosmology.  This fact is, in all this relatedness which Jenkins and Shubin speak about.  How is it possible we are able to evade this truth on an ongoing and unrelenting basis?  That we speak and act from a lack of relationship to almost anything and everything.  It is so astounding, it almost feels like a joke is being played on humankind.  'You will be placed on this planet in a universe that is made of a complete and perfect cosmological order, but it will appear like it is in utter and complete havoc, practically at all times.  Confusion and misperceptions will reign.  And you will have a time of making sense of it.' And we make sense of it by grappling with the effort of gaining as much control (and power) over what is possible, assuaging the buried terror we have of not understanding, not knowing, not being in relatedness.  It's a good joke, right?!

“Learn how to see.  Realize that everything connects to everything else.” 
 --Leonardo da Vinci

This is not a new concept nor from one scholar's point of view.  This actually is common knowledge (science, art, math, philosophy to mention a few disciplines that have heralded this).  Then, why does it sound so fresh and new and borderline shocking?  Possibly, we are usually so invested in separateness and individuality.  Possibly, we don't view things on a large scale, but from our minuscule point of view, our built in limitedness.  Possibly, it's a frightening notion, our minds can't wrap around it, know it or allow it to impact our being.  I've recognized at times when a huge schema comes along, it can't be received because it is so "other".  It just doesn't fit into our normal understanding of how things work.  What could it mean to include this type of information into our daily life?  How do we/could we integrate it?  How would this mega-relatedness factor impact me if I could take it in?

"Imagine what it would be like if there was no sense of otherness when you were with other people [or material objects]. How would it feel if there was no trace of self-consciousness, and no preoccupation with superiority, competition, fear, mistrust, or unworthiness? Dare to consider, just for a moment, the possibility of being so at ease in the company of others that there was nothing to hide, nothing to defend—only the fear-less transparency of egoless awareness and the ecstatic urgency of the evolutionary impulse. That is what it feels like when we awaken to the Authentic Self, together."

--Andrew Cohen, shared by Richard Siebels 19 August 2012

*The Universe Within: Discovering the Common ... - Amazon.com

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body

Talks and Publications by Neil Shubin

In a two-part video (part I and part II), Shubin discusses the planning and research that lead up to the discovery of Tiktaalik.

His book, Your Inner Fish, explores the connection between paleontology—in particular, the anatomy of fossil life forms—and present day human anatomy. It delves into the subject of how humans are shaped by their ancestors and what it means for who we are today.

Science Set Free

As is everything else, science is changing.  Scientists are now recognizing their playground has been constricted by assumptions that have hardened into dogmas.  Should science be a belief-system, or an exploration?  Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D (Rupert Sheldrake Online - Homepage). is a biologist and author of more than 80 scientific papers and 10 books, including  Science Set Free (September 2012), is one such scientist who is turning the dogmas of science into questions, opening up startling new possibilities.   For example, he extrapolates about several basic science beliefs:  the “laws of nature” may be habits that change and evolve. The Fundamental Constants may not be constant. Minds may extend far beyond brains. The total amount of matter and energy may be increasing. Memories may not be stored as traces in our brains.* 

For many of today’s foremost scientists, the world is a strictly material place, made up of dead matter, with no intrinsic purpose, value or meaning. Consciousness is seen as solely a physical function of the brain. Sheldrake demonstrates that these principles are not incontrovertible truths, but rather assumptions that have become dangerously constrictive to the progress of real scientific discovery. With a skepticism characteristic of true scientific inquiry, he sets his sights on ten fundamental dogmas of the science, dismantling each to make room for startling new possibilities. Sheldrake is pro-science, stating, “I want the sciences to be less dogmatic and more scientific. I believe that the sciences will be regenerated when they are liberated from the dogmas that constrict them."*   

Sheldrake compellingly argues that long-held assumptions are now limiting scientific progress and preventing us from effectively meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century. The belief system governing conventional scientific thinking has become an act of faith. His recent book points the way to a return to true science, a system based on inquiry and skepticism not blind acceptance. Some of these "blind acceptances"  he explores:

Are Memories Stored as Material Traces? Repeated failures to find physical evidence of memories etched on the brain suggest another approach is needed. Seeing memory as a resonant phenomenon, which explains the observed phenomena of collective, cultural, and generational memory, belies the idea that memory decays at death, and has profound implications for both teaching and evolution*

Are the Laws of Nature Fixed? Making universal assumptions on the basis of pre-evolutionary philosophies limits our capacity to understand change and evolution. The “laws” of nature are really more like habits—for example, crystals grow as they do because they have grown that way before.

Is the Total amount of Matter and Energy Always the Same? In the last 30 years the total amount of matter and energy recognized by physics has increased more than 20-fold. Dark matter and dark energy, whose nature is literally obscure, are now believed to make up more than 96 percent of reality. Can any of this newly-discovered energy be tapped, with revolutionary effects on the world economy?

Deepak Chopra, who published this last book of Sheldrake's, speaks warmly of his work in his blog (Deepak Chopra - Science Set Free):

"Sheldrake's essential point is that science needs setting free from ten blind dogmas. These dogmas embrace a true belief system as much as Roman Catholicism or any other faith. Behind the daily activity of gathering data, science assumes certain things about reality that, according to Sheldrake, are unsupportable. The first dogma, for example, holds that the universe is mechanical. If that is so, then everything in the universe is also mechanical, including human beings - or to use a phrase from the noted atheist Richard Dawkins, we are "lumbering robots." From a scientist's perspective, to understand everything that you need to know about human beings, you only have to tinker with all the mechanical parts of genes and the brain until there are no more secrets left.

Clearly such a view leaves no room for the soul, which becomes a wispy illusion that needs to be swept away. But then, so does the self, because there is no region of the brain that contains "I," a person. As long as "I" is a hallucination formed by complex neural circuitry, one can throw out - or reduce to mechanical operations - love, beauty, truth, compassion, honor, devotion, faith, and so on, the whole apparatus that makes a person's life feel valuable. A random universe has no purpose; therefore, giving lumbering robots a purpose is dubious."

Chopra makes a wide swing to the other pole in the above statement. Would it be possible that there lies a paradoxical truth; that is, the universe is consumately automatic in every way AND also has a mostly undisclosed potential for a resonating, full intelligence?  The impending possibility that there is no fixed "I", only the potential of one-- and truth, compassion, devotion can be as mechanical as anything else, but again, because of this universal possibility contained in consciousness, it could be otherwise.  Perhaps we are coming to: these conflicting truths exist simultaneously in all and everything. We and the universe as "systems",  embody both mechanicality and an extremely sensitive organism with a layered consciousness.

Chopra continues, "The second dogma he overturns is the belief that matter is unconscious. The whole universe is filled with atoms and molecules that have no connection to intelligence, creativity, or meaning. The problem here is that nobody can explain how atoms and molecules learned to think. No matter how closely you examine the water, glucose, and electrolyte salts in the human brain, you can't find the point where these molecules became conscious. How come the sugar water in a can of Coke isn't thinking and feeling while the sugar water in your cerebral cortex is? For science to brush this problem aside as mere metaphysics doesn't make it go away.

The third dogma is that the laws of nature are fixed and haven't changed since the Big Bang. The fourth is that the amount of matter and energy in the cosmos is always the same. And so the list grows, building toward a shocking conclusion: Science has been explaining a mirage and calling it reality. Sheldrake isn't speaking as a mystic or an enemy of science - far from it. He has kept up with the most current findings in physics and biology. Among these findings are some shattering discoveries, as far as rigid dogmas are concerned:

- The universe operates more like a living organism than a machine.
- The existence of dark matter and dark energy topples the conservation of matter and energy. Because the "dark" dimension operates outside the visible universe, the notion of fixed laws of nature suddenly looks wobbly, too.
- Purpose-driven evolution may explain life better than the random mutation of classic Darwinism.
- Genes, far from being fixed and deterministic, are involved in a far more fluid interaction than anyone ever supposed.

Sheldrake works with many more intriguing discoveries; he has a delightfully inquisitive, penetrating mind. He also seems unflappable in the face of the howling protests he has raised for thirty years, beginning when none of the above findings was even suspected. If science weren't a dogmatic belief system, there would be rational responses to his challenges rather than scorn from true believers. But a major shift is occurring. Under its title in the UK, The Science Delusion (playing off Dawkins' best-selling The God Delusion) Sheldrake's new book is getting positive reviews in high places. Even more promising, a new generation of younger scientists, who are trained (unlike Dawkins) in the shifting new realities of physics, biology, and genetics, is actually intrigued by a universe permeated with consciousness, intelligence, and meaning.

Sheldrake is merciless when it comes to dogmas being preached as if they were truths, but he has a special gentleness that rises above controversy and ill-tempered arguments. "Science is more free, more fun, and more interesting," he says, "when we turn dogmas into questions instead." Can anyone seriously disagree? The beautiful part of reading Science Set Free is the Aha! moments that come unexpectedly. All of us are living with dogmas that we accept as truths. When one of these is overturned, there's an initial gasp, soon followed by a rush of exhilaration. The point of life, as Sheldrake shows so well, isn't to set science free but to set humans free, because we are more precious than any of the false gods we have created."

 Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. is a biologist and author of more than 80 scientific papers and 10 books, including  Science Set Free (September 2012). He was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge University, a Research Fellow of the Royal Society, Principal Plant Physiologist at ICRISAT (the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics) in Hyderabad, India, and from 2005-2010 the Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project for research on unexplained human abilities, funded from Trinity College, Cambridge. His web site is www.sheldrake.org

Much of the above material was gleaned from Science Set Free *book releases.  His book can be found: 

Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery: Rupert Sheldrake ...