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The timeless search for the source of All That Is,
ultimately found to be within, and paradoxically,
everywhere and at all times.
Yet still the door lies within and ever leads to the One.

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REVOLUTIONS IN CONSCIOUSNESS
from, Leaping Without Words: Cultivating and Exploring the Sacred through Writing and Reading, pages 206-222.

One of the most fascinating aspects of being human is how it is possible to be so completely convinced that one is a separate identity, a construct that is distinct from everything else that surrounds and interacts with the self. This is a totally false assessment of the way things are — nothing is disconnected or separate from anything else.

The facility that allows human beings to so completely identify with the notion of the separate self is the ego-mind. The ego-mind is a particular way of thinking that operates, relates, and interacts with reality from the basis of separation, or separativeness. From a conceptual standpoint, one acts, plans, reacts, from the understanding that everything is done for and on behalf of the self. From a purely material viewpoint, this translates into a capitalistic notion of self-directed enterprise — the advancement of the self, the benefit of the self, the safety of the self, the survival of the self.

There is nothing at all wrong with any of these notions. The problem that occurs is where such notions exist or are carried out to the exclusion or avoidance of the realization that all that is there, is one. All that is, is one.

The notion of the separate self and the cultivation of relationship with reality from that view at the exclusion of the recognition of unity, leads to an ever-deepening malaise of interrelationship with the Universe — using Universe with the very wide sense that the word implies. The separate, self-interested, self-identified identity gradually undermines and destroys the fabric of reality that it depends on for its very existence.

A self that does not recognize continuity with what it sees as the external reality has no means of self-regulating its behavior so that its ‘Universe’ retains harmony, sustainability, and stability. There are no self-inhering boundary marks that allow such a self to discover the amenable boundaries of the self-sustaining harmony that truly exist. The only understandable and therefore pursued state of being is to bend all activities, no matter how trivial, into an aggrandizement of the sense of self — everything bent and inverted towards the self. Anything that cannot be bent or inverted towards the self is considered irrelevant.

The crucial boundary of awareness for all sentient beings is the recognition that there are boundaries of sustainability. Any entity that does not, or is incapable of recognizing such limits of sustainability is on the path to extinction. Humanity is presently on such a path.

The boundaries of extinction that human beings are now flirting with have to do with the failure or inability to recognize that there is no self-standing island called ‘humanity.’ Humanity is a particular species expression encoiled within and among other bio-unique expressions of life, though located on a singular planetary being that human beings call Earth. At a more intricate level, something which a vast majority of human beings still fail to recognize, human beings are a specific expression of existence within the one expression of life called Earth.

From the wider view, that any species could take the notion of separativeness and self-interestedness to the extent that human beings have is quite astounding. Human beings have shown an incredible tenacity for self-survival and self-development even to the extent of being willing to sacrifice the very basis of their own existence for the sake of the perpetuation of such principles. This of course is an oxymoronic stance to take. What happens when a being, or beings, are able to pursue the concept of self-survival to the extent of destroying the basis for their very existence? Simple — the particular species only succeeds in destroying itself. This is an answer that is crystal clear and immediate to children. But as a collective species, human beings have shown an incredible reticence to avoiding this impending reality.

There is no future for a species called humanity without a reorganization of its species consciousness. The current expression of humanity’s species consciousness has a limited shelf life. It has served its purpose in cementing and solidifying the species and its social structures and sense of identity, but it cannot be sustained. The reason is quite simple — there are limits to the contextual reality that humanity is expressing its existence in.

The notion that humanity in its current state of species consciousness will somehow be able to develop time/space travel and therefore be able to avoid or sidestep the need for dealing with the limits of sustainability presented by its present spatial context, is to say the least, an utter pipe dream. The ability to carry out any species travel in space requires and demands an ability to operate from the realization and expression of unity. Separate, self-directed species that are unable or are unwilling to embrace the inherent reality of unity find all attempts to expand their notions of separativeness into the Universe to be self-limiting and self-sabotaging. The Universe, like any life-sustaining and life-bearing organism, is a living being that has an inherent prescience that recognizes and supports activities that nurture and enhance its reality of unity. In short, the Universe, of which Earth is a miniscule expression, is able to self-regulate its own life by keeping destructive activities that threaten its own existence in check.

There is no universe future for humanity in its current state of consciousness. The species consciousness of humanity must transform to embrace universe relationship, that is, the recognition, awareness, and practice of organic connectedness. The boundary mark that humanity has to deal with in order to surmount the destructive arc that it is currently set on is the ego-mind. Imagine for a moment a world in which everyone lives in a long cardboard box of refrigerator size. The process of relationship in such a world would be for these cardboard boxes to bump into each other in order to verify self-existence and other-existence. Very elaborate processes of relationship can develop from this scenario. Complex laws, regulations, communities and societies can potentially arise from this imaginary context.

Although a cardboard box mentality can be quite functional, it is nevertheless an awfully limiting perspective and means of experiencing the reality of the world. As individuals, and gradually communities, begin to poke holes out of their cardboard boxes, even though at first it may appear frightening to these pioneers, eventually, the true world begins to come into view. As these pioneers acclimatize to the new reality — which in effect would be the true reality — it becomes obvious to these pioneers that the way forward involves cutting through the cardboard boxes and having the real person step out of the box into the real world. But before that can take place, an important milestone or threshold must be crossed by the cardboard box enclosed individual. It amounts to this realization — I am not this cardboard box that I have erected and that surrounds me. The truth of who I am is the expression of being that is moving inside this cardboard box.

As simple as this realization of the true nature of the individual and the nature of the cardboard box that they are operating in may be, that is the kind of threshold that human beings, individually and collectively as a species, will need to surmount.

You as an individual are not the ego-mind personality that you have erected around the true identity that is moving and providing energy to your human identity. Though this fact may not be as clear as the example of the cardboard boxes, the symbolism of the interrelationships involved is similar.

The ego-mind personality is a flimsy, material construction that you have erected around your being so you can participate in and navigate the life stage and social existence that human beings have organized. The ego-mind personality is not who you are. Who you are is the source of energy that is providing apparent movement to the flimsy construct, the cardboard box, the ego-mind personality. In truth, the ego-mind personality only appears to act, think, and move. Even in such movement, it is a very poor representation of the intentions of the occupier of the container.

Although your intention to run or jump while trapped inside the cardboard box would be very clear, and in your conception, very easy, translating this intention and producing the intended movement via the apparatus of the cardboard box would be a perpetually frustrating and impossible task, no matter what techniques of motor movement are applied to it. In order to truly express the intention, the occupier of the cardboard box must first tear down, open up, or cut through the box and step out of it. This is easier said than done.

After thousands of years of evolutionary experimentation and expression, human beings have developed a very strong sense of identification with the apparatus that surrounds their true identities. This is unfortunate because it creates the need for cathartic fractures of such identification before the true identity of the individual can begin to be accounted for and expressed. Even though catharsis is the general approach through which human identity is slowly beginning to make an appearance on Earth, such mental, spiritual, and psychological crises are not necessary. What is necessary is the cultivation of the realization that you are not the ego-mind that you have used to navigate and operate your relationship with the world. Your true identity is the presence that occupies the personality construct, the identity that is able to step away from the personality construct and observe it as it operates.

But how does one step away from the personality construct that, for all intents and purposes, appears to be who one is? Barring some form of catastrophe that awakens one to the false equation of identity, how can someone become cognizant of the misidentity and thereby take a step towards reorienting the sense of identity? The prospects of a simple process for making the adjustment seem very bleak. Human beings have been exposed to this kind of admonishment for eons through various religious and philosophical teachings. Hearing about it or reading about it does not seem to do the trick.

From the various examples of those human beings who have made the adjustment and recomported their center of identity, the only viable approach is to use that very individual sense of identity as a springboard and landscape of experimentation. This involves a series of tests concerning what one identifies as the self. The testing and experimentation can be pursued from different angles.

The personality identity is prodded and tested for its limits of truthfulness — how accurate is the sense of personality that I identify as myself? The question can be formulated mentally, emotionally, or psychologically. It can also be recreated physiologically through substance ingestion, environmental and sensory recreations. All these approaches are designed to create cracks in the facade of identity so one can peer at the true reality that one is moving in and creating one’s sense of identity in. As all methods go, there isn’t one that is a surefire approach and that would yield results for each and every person. The crucial goal is how the individual responds to the insights that are created from the forms of experimentation.

Certain approaches will and can only illumine particular approaches of the hypothesis. It is very important that this is borne in mind so one does not make premature conclusions about the true center for human consciousness and identity. That said, the central theme that is arising and has arisen from diverse excursions into self-experiments about human identity can be represented by one phrase — humanity is in coextensive unity with everything else. This is a truth that’s arrived at through a personal and individual realization.

The individual expression of the realization of one’s coextensive unity with reality generally involves some expression of the dissolution of one’s sense of identity into the larger reality. This involves the sense that what one sees as the self is only a drop in the wider ocean of true being. What lies around the self is also the very being, expression, energy, that is organizing this self. The boundaries dissolve, if only momentarily, so that the individual becomes only this — all that already is and is also sensed to always have been and to always will be. No matter what the actual individual circumstances and experience may be, this is the undertow of the realization.

The problem that obtains from coming to this realization through different approaches is the tendency to then equate the realization with the method, or rather, to think that the realization is somehow an expression of the method used to obtain it. The true nature of identity, and consequently of reality, transcends any methodology even if that expression of the insight may only be obtained by the particular methodology. Ideally, the method must be laid aside so one can go on to the more important task of reorganizing one’s sense of identity based on the new insight that one has uncovered. Again, because of our desperate need to want to erect boundaries around events and experiences, the tendency is to turn around and construct elaborate systems around the methodologies rather than highlighting the insight that the methodologies are uncovering.

The insight isn’t new, it has been and will continue to be expressed simply as this — who you are is what is, what is is who you are. Whether this is expressed in the parlance of Hindu philosophy: thou art that, or Buddhist philosophy: samsara is nirvana, nirvana is samsara, or the sudden realization of the insight through the resolution of a rationally insolvable quandary, the insights yielded are the same because all are participating in what is, whether with or without acknowledgement of such participation.

It is easy enough for an individual to find entrance into an experience that can only be uncovered on a personal basis, but how do we translate this realization into a species consciousness. Other than providing the context in which other individuals can come to the realization themselves, there is little that we can do to overlay the new sense of consciousness onto the species. It is individuals that will transform and transpose human consciousness and this will happen as each previously confined identity symbolically steps out of the cardboard box and enters the true reality, which essentially, is the realization that the experience of identity and expression is much wider, deeper, richer, and more vivid, than one had previously experienced it.

So what changes? What are the salient and to a large extent, silent forms of the new consciousness? One way of understanding the new, out-of-the-box consciousness, involves the dispersion of one’s centers of identity. No longer is the center of identity organized around the ego-mind — what I am, who I am, what I want — but rather, on what is, being expressed and observed from the vantage point that is both inside and outside the experience. One sees and observes the expression and experience of life, not so much as someone who is experiencing it, but rather as someone who is witnessing it as it is happening. Life is no longer something to be grasped at. Life has its own trajectory and particular ways of movement and momentum which are somehow revolving around a silent, still center that remains unmoved and unchanged by the turbulence of experience.

This silent, still center is not necessarily static. In other words, it is responsive not reactive, the latter being the primary activity of the false ego-mind identity. The silent, still center of the new identity shifts and morphs and yet remains always centered, no matter how large or how small, how significant or trivial, the activity being experienced may be.

Expressively, it looks like an active and dynamic Mandelbrot set. The new center of identity is as comfortable moving from the center of identity of a blade of grass, an ant, a bee, the Earth, the Sun, the galaxy, or the center of all that is in expression. There is no difference in the quality of the expression of the centers that are now experientially accessible. The question of scale is no longer a factor, nor does such an apparent difference in scale create a hierarchical sense of importance, from the small to the large. The center of identity within the ant is of the same import as the awareness of the center within oneself. That new center is realized to be the one center within everything else.

There are certain obvious practical reorganizations of behavior that ensue from this, and that become, if not required, almost imperative.

From the center that is within the self, reach out and touch anything, and you’re touching the same center that is giving expression to your own identity. Reach out and touch anything, and you are touching only one center — there is nothing else. Put another way, the center within whatever seems to be other than you, is the very same center that is within you.

As human beings gradually come around to this realization, this will become the focus of a new human ethics, or perhaps to be more accurate, in humanity’s case — earthics. Earth is the context in which human beings will have to recomport to the new true nature of reality. It is the open playground that all discover as they step out of the symbolic box of the false self onto the vista of the One Self. This is the human context in which the new understanding will have to be played out, understood, and more importantly, given practical and livable expression.

Once uncovered, it is crystal clear to the individual who has uncovered the true reality that it is something that, most crucially, has to be lived. Being able to discuss it, write about it, teach it, express it, is not as crucial or important as living it. It is this practical dimension that will be of crucial importance for all humanity. The form of the consciousness of the One Self will gradually make an appearance and slowly and surely acclimatize human beings to a new form of earthics based on the realization of the one center expressing within all beings, animate or inanimate.

It is painfully apparent what issues the new form of human ethics will have to address, the primary one being humanity’s relationship with the planet upon which its own existence finds expression. All other secondary forms of ethical behavior will ensue from this and will be derived from this primary planetary sense. The collective species will give expression to its own planetary wisdom without coercion or judgment. It will be a natural, dynamic, and organic process that would germinate from within the species and then given mutual expression.

The methods for obtaining the One Self consciousness, just hinted at, are already being given expression in human society. At present they are very erratic, especially the newer ones, although some of the older ones are well established. What is lacking is the mutual reinforcement that emanates from the realization that each of the methods are viable approaches to uncovering the one consciousness that, in essence, is found around all forms of expression of what human beings call life.

As the different methodologies more obviously yield the same results, it will become clearer that it is not so much the methods that are fueling the discoveries but rather the expansive consciousness itself. In other words, the channels of exploration are etched and grooved by the one center and are then made available to individuals based on their preference of exploration.

This means emphasis must be placed on the results rather than the methods. Positive gains will be obtained by comparing the results and not the methods. As the territory of the results obtained is examined, it will become obvious what aspects of the results are being illumined by certain methods and not by others. Gradually, the arch of methodological approaches will be laid out and understood. Redundant and repetitive approaches will also become clear and the most successful ones will come to the forefront.

What this comparative approach to aspects of the expansive awareness of consciousness will do is make it easier for human beings to explore and come to terms with the new consciousness. As the methodologies are properly understood as precisely that, methods of approach, it will become easier for individuals to peer at the expansive consciousness from the different vantages and perspectives afforded by these different methodologies without being cemented into any particular method. More importantly, the perspectives obtained will no longer be judged on the basis of what they reveal but will rather be comported and fitted into what is seen as aspects of the wider spectrum of humanity’s view into the expansive consciousness. Each method will therefore be precisely viewed on the basis of its particular contribution towards a view of the whole spectrum of consciousness that human beings will be able to peer into. Until this collective awareness of the contribution of the methodologies is organized into a circular view of the perspectives they afford, it will appear as if the methods are competing or as if the results they are revealing are contradictory.

Is the new form of human consciousness that is now finding expression among human beings, revolutionary? Until one cracks the door open, peers inside, and then steps through the threshold, it will appear as if life is simply what it has always been — a battle of wits between me and you, or him, or her, or it, or them; of us against you, or him, or her, or it, or them. Such equations are part of the malaise of the false ego-identity. There is no them, or it, or her, or him, or even you, there is only one expression of existence particularized into whatever form of expression is appearing before you. Each individual is free to call this singular, sensed, and experienced expression of existence, whatever name seems to fit. Names do not provide organization to the reality, only a means of providing viable resonance with what is already sensed to be the case.

The new form of consciousness humanity will uncover and is already uncovering will be seen to be both revolutionary and ordinary. To someone who is still caught up in the maladies and peculiarities of the ego-mind personality, there is nothing at all special about what is the purported to be an awareness of the expansive consciousness, especially when considering someone who has mustered enough courage to give outward expression to the new form of consciousness. In fact, it will appear arrogant for anyone to claim that there is any other way of giving expression to the self other than what appears to be the sensible stance of me against everyone and everything else. To such a person, it would still seem consequential and sequential, that the moment one is identified as a human being, they would therefore and are therefore operating from the basis of the ‘self and other-thanself’ understanding. There is little that can be said to convince anyone about this erroneous assumption.

For someone, who through whatever means or experience, has had a glimpse into the expansive awareness in which all awareness is imbedded, it will seem as if there are two worlds being given expression on Earth. This is not far from the truth. To someone experiencing or expressing the One Self consciousness, the disease of the false human personality becomes that much more apparent. One has stepped out of the cardboard box mentality and can now see its quirky operation at play. Such a person develops understanding because it will be painfully obvious how the ego-mind’s expression of self-understanding comes into being and how it is expressed. Part of the wonder to oneself is the horror of how one could have lived inside the cardboard box mentality and still have been called a normal human being.

To someone who has encountered it, the new form of consciousness is revolutionary. It changes everything. It does this, not by initiating or inciting what human beings have generally called ‘revolution,’ but rather through a revolutionary internal reorganization of what the individual understands as the self. This internal reorganization essentially creates a new form of human being. It is the reorganization of the beingnesss of the individual that is revolutionary. There is no direct way of examining this reorganization, although there can be telltale signs. The most obvious is the external expression of behaviors that indicate that something within the internal character of the individual has changed. Still, sometimes there are no obvious and immediate signs. What could take place is a gradual realization among those close to the individual that the person must be operating from a new sense of being. Unless the individual chooses to verbalize what that new sense of being is, others will be left to guess at what the change could have been and where it may have come from.

The revolutionary nature of the new form of human consciousness now underway will only become widely apparent as more and more individuals begin to give outward expression to it. At some stage, the momentum of the transformation into the wider society will begin to accelerate, and as a result, become more readily accessible for others.

There is every indication that the gradual appearance of the expansive consciousness onto the human stage is part of a wider evolutionary unfolding. In other words, the rising incidence of the accessibility of the One Self consciousness is part and parcel of the evolutionary unfolding of life on planet Earth. This means that it is not something that has to be created by force. Like the dawning of the Sun, the light and heat of sunlight warms and lightens the environment without undue efforts from that environment. Still, like plants, human beings have to avail and position themselves properly to make viable use of the appearance of daylight. The germination, growth, and propagation of our species is dependent on doing so.

Human beings are not an exclusive species upon the wider landscape of life forms in the Universe. The gradual appearance of an expansive form of consciousness will make this apparent. We, like all other species, will have to find viable ways of defining for ourselves what the One Self consciousness means for us and what it entails. Human culture will then be reorganized to reflect and support this new awareness and understanding.

Reflecting on the reality of connected unity is the place to start. The insights of connected reality emanating from science, for example quantum physics, will go a long way in cementing the new awareness and also removing any lingering vestiges of superstition as human beings gradually embrace evidentially supported ways of organizing human life. This does not mean that the new awareness will mainly be an extension of rational argumentation. It will rather be a participative form of human knowing and not merely an issue of intellectual assent based on rational logic. In other words, it will be both scientifically sound and emotionally resonant.

In whatever small way we have begun to recognize the reality of the essential unity of all life, especially upon the local context of planet Earth, to that extent have we begun to embrace the true nature of an abiding and sustainable consciousness. It is only this kind of consciousness that will allow human beings entrance onto the stage of Universe existence. We have a basis for extension into Universe existence only as we have reorganized our way of life and cultural expressions towards the awareness and practical expression of the reality of unity.

How far are we? Judging from the daily catastrophic near misses that human beings seem bent on playing out, it may appear as if we are very far, but that is not the case. The planetary context and spatial environment that Earth is already existent in is a reflection of the impending consciousness. There is no turning back or going back. In this sense, it is Earth that is delivering its human and other species cargo onto the shores of the new consciousness. We are not far, the new consciousness is already dawning. The tones and reports coming from different arenas of human enterprise may be sounding discordant at present, but as the themes come into focus and are subsequently overlaid for greater understanding, the shift in awareness that is taking place will be clearly acknowledged.

There is no legitimate reason to wait for the larger sections of human society to come to terms with the impending contextual reality that human beings now need to carve their existence in. Every person will have to make the transition only because there is an interior and exterior component to the embrace of the new consciousness. The internal reorientation has priority over the exterior. This means no matter how widespread the new awareness will be seen to be, it will still need to be grasped and embraced by the individual himself or herself. Still, the gradual amassing and saturation of the new consciousness among significant portions of the human species will make it easier for subsequent groups to take up and express the growing awareness.

Overall, what will this new consciousness mean for human society and culture? There is no way to tell because so much depends on the limits and boundaries that humanity itself will decide to outline and embrace. Still, let it be said, there are practically no limits other than those imposed by sustainable bounds of existence. The sustainable boundaries are not static, but rather dynamic and based upon the species sense of what is seen as the most comfortable way of expressing the newly birthed context of the organic and universal sense of connectedness. It is up to humanity to decide how it will express this sense of organic connectedness. The pace of the chosen form of expression will also depend on what humanity decides.

Although these aspects of response are squarely in humanity’s court, so to speak, the Universe context in which humanity is embedded and planted in, is organized around the reality of unitive expression, no matter how diverse and widespread that expression is. This is the inside orbit that beckons all planetary species into outward expression. The ever-deepening and widening spiral of evolutionary existence has to do with the slow, gradual, but definite, livable expressions of this reality of unity. It is this impending horizon that is inescapable for humanity.

Clouds may disrupt the apparent appearance of sunlight, but the sun is shining nonetheless. In short, the evolutionary spiral that is now caressing the shores of humanity within the contextual locus of planetary existence was already in place before humanity made its first footprints upon the planet. We may choose to ignore or overlook this reality, but the planet itself will continue to unfold the evolutionary spiral, beginning with organic and physiological expressions of evolution and, now within reach, an evolutionary form of consciousness based upon the awareness and reality of connected existence, both interiorly and externally.

The combination of these two dimensions, the outward form of evolution and the inward unitive form of evolution begin by making their appearance at what seem to be separate stages, but in truth, they are related. How the synthesis of these two aspects will eventually be expressed is still quite far into the deeper horizon that guessing at it might not be fruitful. Much will depend on the choices that humanity will make as well as the boundaries of self-definition that humanity will define and embrace. The result of that synthesis will be unique to the planetary species that calls itself human beings.

True revolutions are not necessarily events, but rather livable shifts of the way that societies choose to organize themselves and their modes of existence and expression. The same can be said of personal forms of revolution. A revolution has succeeded where it has become part and parcel of the mode of organizing and understanding self-existence and expression. Although the impending form of human consciousness is already finding viable expression among certain individuals and is being seen by these individuals as a true revolution, this recognition, for humanity as a species, is still very much in process. By the time that human beings will be able to stand back and reflect on the shift and identify it as ‘revolutionary,’ it will long have cemented itself among human societies. Still, you as an individual do not need to wait for that species acknowledgement to be broadcast before you embrace it. A species is only the outward and collective expression of its members. The new awareness is already present, accessible, and beckoning.

Christopher Dube, “Revolutions in Consciousness,” Leaping Without Words: Cultivating and Exploring the Sacred through Writing and Reading, pages 206-222.

SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY
from, Leaping Without Words: Cultivating and Exploring the Sacred through Writing and Reading, pages 39-51.

Science presently occupies the most influential methodology for formulating the modes in which human beings carry out inquiries into the context and nature of our locatedness in the universe. If approaches to inquiry being suggested by the new understanding of spirituality are to have any staying power, they somehow have to find a basis on which to contend with and speak to scientifically accepted norms and conventions, or alternatively, indicate some basis on which those conventions need to be modified or laid aside.

There is an ongoing questioning of conventional science by spirituality and a recognition that if there is going to be a wider evolution of human consciousness, both science and spirituality need to create a new mode of human inquiry and understanding. What is ironic is that, in many ways, the questioning of science through spirituality is something that arises from scientific discovery more than it does from the discovery of something new emanating from the study and practice of spirituality. Science, after coming face to face with its own shadow, is discovering that this shadow is a territory that has already been occupied by Homo religiosus.

i. The Quantum Question

What happened in science was the expansion of scientific discovery arising from the shift in scientific thinking, from Newtonian physics to Einsteinian physics. Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity (special and general) had the profound effect of shattering Isaac Newton’s mechanistic, static clockwork view of the universe, thereby distilling its attendant sense of absolute time. With the advent of Einstein’s relativity theories, space and time were now seen as conjoined dynamic concepts formulating the functioning of the universe. This was the retrospective impact. The prospective impact, perhaps more profound, were the resulting advances in quantum theory. Quantum physics is very central to what is in view here, so an overview of its development deserves attention.

Conventional wisdom at the turn of the nineteenth century maintained that light and energy existed and traveled in wave form. However, discoveries in radiation science showed that the wave theory of light did not account for all the properties of radioactive emission, mainly because observation did not fully support the wave theory of light which, as understood then, essentially suggested infinite levels of radiation at high wave frequencies. Actual observation showed that the energy emitted from radiation at different frequencies was finite, and took roughly the shape of a bell distribution curve. The person who provided the basis for solving this quandary was Max Planck.

In 1900, Planck theorized, by way of calculation, that the graph that can be supported by actual observations of radiation experiments can only be accurate if radiation energy is emitted in discrete quantities he called quanta, quantum for singular. In effect, Planck posited that radioactive emissions are non-randomly quantitized, that is, they are composed of distinct and discrete units whose energy component was in direct proportion to the frequency of the wave, multiplied by a constant (Planck’s constant). The higher the frequency, the higher the radioactive energy emitted up to a maximum point when it would begin to require more energy than is emitted to generate that frequency. With this view, theory and observation were made compatible.

No one fully appreciated the import of Planck’s theory until Albert Einstein demonstrated, in 1905, that Planck’s hypothesis accounted quite precisely for the widely demonstrated photoelectric effect — the effect of the emission of electrons from certain metallic surfaces when light was shone on them at various frequencies. Einstein suggested that this could only be accounted for if light is composed of and travels in distinct energy units (photons) in much the same way as Planck had theorized. The significance of this is it now seemed that light should be regarded as having both the already demonstrated quality of waves (interference) and the quality of particles (photoelectricity), and so indicating a dual wave/particle nature. What was not clear was how these contradictory qualities were related and how they interacted.

Concomitant developments in the early 1900s, mainly through the work of Ernest Rutherford (1910–1913) and Niels Bohr (in 1913), had shown that matter was made of atoms, and that these atoms were composed of particles, namely electrons and protons. It was only a matter of time therefore, before someone extended the interpretation of the wave/particle duality of light to sub-atomic particles and this is precisely what Louis Victor de Broglie argued in 1924.

As usually happens in scientific discovery, Broglie’s theory was physically confirmed in a 1925 laboratory accident (subsequently re-created) which showed that electrons seemed to favor certain trajectories of movement while completely avoiding others. The effect of this demonstrable tendency seemed to confirm a wave quality to the behavior of electron particles.

By 1927, Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg had separately worked out the mathematical representations of the wave/particle aspects of sub-atomic particles. In Heisenberg’s case, it precipitated his famous 1927 ‘uncertainty principle’ which states that the precise position and momentum of a subatomic particle cannot be simultaneously determined. That is, the increasingly precise determination of one measurement leads to the increasing attendant imprecision of the other.

With these demonstrations, quantum theory was well on the way. The final and demonstrable effect of the coming together of these quantum theories is quite unnerving, although it has been demonstrated over and over in experiments matching the basic format described below.

Imagine electrons traveling in a container from an electron source to an electron detector, with detector and source separated by a wall with only two openings. Electrons are then made to travel, one at a time, so only one electron is in the whole apparatus at any moment. With only one door open, the distribution of where the electrons are detected confirms that electrons behave like particles, since they congregate in the center area of the detection region and fan out from there. However, with two doors open, again with only one electron traveling from source to detector at any one time and with only that particular electron in the apparatus, the distribution pattern of where the electrons are detected shows an image that indicates that the electrons were interfering with each other. But how could the electrons be interfering with each other, a wave characteristic, when they are not traveling, or being detected, or occupying the apparatus simultaneously? That, is the quantum question.

ii. Implications of the Quantum Question

The implications of the quantum nature of electrons (sub-atomic matter) are enormous. First, it suggests spatial non-locality in that the electrons are somehow able to occupy a space that they are not physically present in, thus interfering with the physically present electron, what some physicists have called, ‘spooky action at a distance.’ Second, it distorts our conception of time as having a past, present, or future. As far as quantum physics demonstrates, time seems to be a singular simultaneity that does not separate events into past, present, or future. These two deductions seem to verify Einstein’s theory of general relativity in that they postulate a dynamic space–time continuum, but one that seems to transcend both of those categories. As can be imagined from these implications, the demonstrable quantum nature of reality was going to cause an endless sequence of head-scratching among physicists and lay people alike.

Two basic interpretations of quantum physics have surfaced, one represented by the Copenhagen school of interpretation as argued by Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and others. The other, considered maverick, is represented by the theories put forward by David Bohm and should be seen as a continuation of Einstein’s guarded stand against the Copenhagen group of interpreters.

In brief, the Copenhagen interpreters argue that quantum reality is a direct result of the observation process. In other words, we cannot postulate that this is the way things are, only that this is the way things are as we observe them. Reality, from this sense, and all that can be understood, is what exists in the presence of observation.

Einstein’s response to this was a guarded no. According to Einstein, the inherent uncertainty and probability effects demanded by quantum theory and physics should not be seen as precluding an underlying, though as yet unverifiable, objective order. Einstein tried valiantly, in the last thirty years of his life, to formulate such an objective unifying order but ultimately confessed failure. However, what he seems to have succeeded in doing was impressing the reasonableness of his idea of an all-inclusive though unobserved underlying reality to David Bohm, a contemporary physicist and colleague of his at Princeton.

Bohm had written a textbook on quantum theory, much after the Copenhagen line of interpretation. In subsequent discussions about the book with Einstein, Bohm revised his understanding and interpretation of quantum theory. Bohm’s revised argument basically postulates that the only way to satisfactorily account for the quantum nature of reality is through the recognition of an implicate order that is parallel to our own explicate physical reality. Bohm viewed this implicate reality in much the same way we think of a hologram.

Bohm’s ideas go much much further than this so most physicists simply dismissed or discounted him. In most quantum texts propounding the Copenhagen line of thinking he does not even get a mention, and yet his ideas are the ones that have faced up most openly to what the quantum nature of reality seems to suggest, essentially that, as suggested by Einstein, a bottom aspect to reality does exist. The quirky nature of sub-atomic particles is a representation of their participation and interconnectedness to this bottom aspect of reality. The only problem is that it is something that can only be accounted for by being posited in a ‘beyond space–time’ category, which essentially means a unifying theorem cannot be constructed merely from objective observation and deduction, but rather through another category of thought that supersedes the observational and the objective.

What we can objectively say, although most scientists do not, is that quantum particle behavior suggests the presence of a wavelike reality that is spread out through space–time. At the very least, this basic scenario has to be consented to. From this reflection, the only way in which quantum particle behavior can then be accounted for would be to remove the speed of light limitation posited by general relativity. On the other hand, since this sub-quantum wave reality would be in a ‘beyond space–time’ category, perhaps one need not think in terms of spatial locations from and to which light would need to travel. With that sense, there would be no need to think of a speed of light limitation because the ‘beyond space–time’ category would have no distance, no here or there, and no now or then.

It is totally mind-boggling of course, and humbling, but this is what our physical reality suggests itself to be grounded in and to be emanating from. The surprising thing is that this logical process of thinking has not at all been the scientific convention. Science, it seems, has opted to not follow its own inherent logic, and has largely refused to take the leap into the non-objective reality that demonstrations in quantum physics seem to demand.1

iii. Art and the Science of Uncertainty

No single text has done as much as Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in establishing the fact that scientific discovery and bases for inquiry move by fits and starts, the now clichéd ‘paradigm shift.’ Thus, within the frame of scientific enterprise, the sheer force and impact of a fresh idea can force the shedding of old ideas and the embrace of newer, more accurate representations of reality. So far so good.

When paradigm shifts occur within the context of a largely singular ideological context, the shift from one paradigm to the next comes handily enough. However, when new scientific paradigms involve not just changes of scientific bases but shifts of ideological bases as well, things get more dicey. It cannot be far-fetched to postulate that science has never been faced with as great a potential revolutionizing impact as the one advanced by the changes required by both the ideological and procedural approaches of the new physics of quantum reality. Perhaps only the Copernican and Galilean revolutions are in the same vein.

The key here is that contemporary scientific interpretations emanating from quantum physics constitute a major ideological shift (still in motion), from an objectivist ideology whose last shining brilliance was perhaps produced by Albert Einstein, to the genus of a new scientific frame of mind that requires a wholly different mode of inquiry. It is clearly apparent that objectivist frameworks are simply not adequate to account for the thoroughly involving nature of reality at the subatomic level. The ideal of an objective observer analyzing an uninvolved separate object is, to say the least, completely illusory, simply because there does not seem to be, anywhere, a separate stand-alone aspect to reality. Objective idealism does not exist, only the results of an interconnected and therefore participative mode of knowing.2

The problem however is that this realization requires such a profound change in the ways we think and conduct inquiry, speak and live our lives, it is unlikely that we will ever stop or change until we are obliged to. The changes involved are simply too radical. The irony of this is that by perpetuating (contrary to Kuhn’s model) what now appears to be a false model of reality (conventional objectivism), science has itself become irrational. Even though the alternative modes of discovery and inquiry are still in flux, it is fair to say that many of the changes entailed by the new view of reality have simply been ignored or shelved. The nuances of this kind of dereliction have been clearly expressed by Michael Polanyi. He writes:

“We cannot truly account for our acceptance of such theories without endorsing our acknowledgement of a beauty that exhilarates and a profundity that entrances us. Yet the prevailing conception of science, based on the disjunction of subjectivity and objectivity, seeks — and must seek at all costs — to eliminate from science such passionate, personal, human appraisals of theories, or at least to minimize their function to that of a negligible by-play. For modern man has set up as the ideal of knowledge the conception of natural science as a set of statements which is ‘objective’ in the sense that its substance is entirely determined by observation, even while its presentation may be shaped by convention. This conception, stemming from a craving rooted in the very depths of our culture, would be shattered if the intuition of rationality in nature had to be acknowledged as a justifiable and indeed essential part of scientific theory. That is why scientific theory is represented as a mere economical description of facts; or as embodying a conventional policy for drawing empirical inferences; or as a working hypothesis, suited to man’s practical convenience — interpretations that all deliberately overlook the rational core of science.”3

The ‘rational core of science’ is of course what proceeds precisely on the position that what one can discover is a direct postulate of what one has already discovered. One proceeds on the basis of committing to an already suggestively present vision of reality even though one is not yet able to fully comprehend or explain it. This is the fuel and urging passion of a truly objective scientific inquiry.4

Following from this, the present general scientific scenario is tantamount to a refusal to remain rational and according to Polanyi, therefore constitutes a “pseudo-substitution . . . used to play down man’s real and indispensable intellectual powers for the sake of maintaining an ‘objectivist’ framework which in fact cannot account for them. It works by defining scientific merit in terms of its relatively trivial features, and making these function then in the same way as the true terms they are supposed to replace.”5

What is needed is no less than the acknowledgement and means of embracing and practicalizing the suggestibility of the universe as fundamentally non-predictable and non-determinative, that is, at least not along the usual ways we have sought to construct what we call objective truth. The developments of quantum theory and physics indicate that we cannot proceed from the premise that truth is derived only from exactitude, but rather, from the mutual complementarity of things. Therefore a new, but also old, way of understanding truth is needed, namely that of truth as art. The strange thing is we already know this, and yet somehow, we have fooled ourselves into believing the truth of determinative certitude exists and can be attained. What appears to us to be a precise knowledge is actually founded and grounded upon what Jacob Bronowski, arguing from Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, calls a region of tolerance:

“We cannot ask the world to be exact. If an object (a familiar face, for example) had to be exactly the same before we recognized it, we would never recognize it from one day to the next. We recognize the object to be the same one day to the next. We recognize the object to be the same because it is much the same; it is never exactly like it was, it is tolerably like. In the act of recognition, a judgement is built in — an area of tolerance of uncertainty.”6

All knowledge, according to Bronowski, is therefore limited. We cannot attain God’s point of view, ours is and always will be, a perspectival view built upon the best of what suggests itself to be true, among, all true, multiple possibilities within the region of tolerance. Intolerance, in all its ill-affected ways, emanates from the insistence that there supposedly is a bull’s eye view to truth. Truth — all truth — is derived from a mutuality of representation; it is artistic. What quantum theory impresses on us is that even when it does not appear to be so, when you dig deep enough, you still will find truth to be artistic. In this sense, Albert Hofstadter’s approach of exploring truth as a continuum that always and must culminate in spiritual truth, is quite insightful:

“Truth about is not the only sense of truth, nor is it the ultimate sense of truth. Truth-about is the first in a sequence of forms of truth on which man must build in order to attain to the truth of his own being. . . . The last stage is . . . truth of spirit. Truth of spirit is no longer a truth that belongs merely to cognition, when cognition is thought of as distinguished from will and from the concrete being of man. It is no longer something only knowable. Truth of spirit is first of all a truth of being, where “of” occurs in the possessive, not the objective, case. It is essentially something livable. . . . Spirit includes cognition, and hence truth in the first sense, as truth-about, is included in truth of spiritual being. But truth of spiritual being goes beyond cognition to the actuality of being itself.”7

The truth of art, of which the writing of spirituality is part, must be based on the mutual affirmation of spirit. That is, it must partake in and be partaken by spirit if at all it is to succeed. As the post-Einsteinian years accumulate, it seems more and more the case that there may be no objective unifying formula to reality. In other words, what is being forced upon us is that we must always live with the terror of the power of being creators and artists, that whatever the unifying aspect of reality is, we are in it and of it. Reality has proved to us that nothing is predictively deterministic, that the universe is a web of interrelated realities. This connectivity, it seems, allows us room to breathe, and to choose, and to create. This may be the only unifying formula we are being offered — to be co-creators. Such power, of course, is tremendous, because it entails the possibility for destructiveness.

As we continue to unravel the mysteries of reality and of our own being, there is a foreboding that we may not be ready to wield such power. Physically, we not only have the power to create things, but it seems now, beings. We are only realizing, perhaps too late, that with every creation, we are implicitly also creating a myriad of other realities. Every creation of something re-creates something else — our lives, the way we live, our environment, our future. Nothing is untouched because everything is conjoined and interrelated. More fundamentally, we cannot predict with absolute certainty how one act of creation will determine the outcome of another measurement of reality. What we have to live with is that there will always be a region of uncertainty and therefore a concomitant need for tolerance to the myriad possibilities of effect built into reality. Objective determinism does not exist. If it really did, life would be a prison, but as it is, life is vulnerable, fragile, exposed, but, also vital, and full of a mysterious depth that hints that anything is possible, that we are co-creators.

There is only one condition — we do not know and cannot know the full extent of what we are creating with absolute certainty. We cannot afford to be co-creators with bullheaded, single-minded determination. We must learn to think in patterns of interconnectedness. This creativity requires humility and humbleness. Buddhists call it karuna, compassion. It is not just a personal determination to be humble, but rather a totally encompassing way of life grounded in the recognition that all reality is a single fabric, that the best and greatest wisdom for life is to do no harm. This also means we cannot live compassionately and then turn around and create something, no matter how valuable in the short term, that in the end does violence to the fabric of reality, because in that same movement, it would involve doing violence to ourselves.

The manner and approach of our creativity must parallel the suggestibility of the nature of reality, which, as we continue to explore, is suggesting that it is something deeply rooted in the principle of the interconnectedness of all things and of the attendant need for tolerance and tentativeness to the way we stake things to be. This is the spirit that the writing of spirituality, along with all artistic creation, must deeply absorb and represent.

References:

1. For detailed analyses of the development of the ideas of quantum theory, see the following:
Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, second ed. (Boulder, Co.: Shambhala, 1983), 52–81,150–160, 208–223,309–321; Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (London: Bantam Books, 1988), 59–76, 171–193; David Lindley, The End of Physics: The Myth of a Unified Theory (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 62–100; Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 1–55; Christian von Baeyer, Taming the Atom: The Emergence of the Visible Microworld (New York: Random House, 1992), 20–56, 163–178, 194–211.
2. See, Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, 68-69; 141–142.
3. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Toward a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 15–16.
4. Ibid., 64.
5. Ibid., 16–17.
6. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man (London: Futura Publications, 1981 [1973, BBC]), 230–31.
7. Albert Hofstadter, Truth and Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), vii–viii.

Christopher Dube, “Science and Spirituality,” in, Leaping Without Words: Cultivating and Exploring the Sacred through Writing and Reading, pages 39-51.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE “TAO TE CHING”
from, The Book of the Way and its Way, pages 11-17, by Jarcq Terra.

One of the most challenging tasks a writer may undertake is to try and describe the ineffable. The ineffable, by its very nature, is difficult to capture and circumscribe in words. It refuses to yield to direct elucidation. Another approach is called for —one that gestures towards the mystery and yet leaves it intact. The language and the words have to partake of the nature of what they are trying to describe. They have to become artifacts of the mystery, effectual vehicles of the presence of the ineffable.

The Tao Te Ching is an examination of the ineffable and of the requisite approach that the ineffable calls for, if it is to be uncovered. It is a masterful textual description of the elusive qualities of the ineffable and a lucid guide on how to approach and mirror those qualities in one’s life and affairs.

Within the Tao Te Ching, the way of approach to the ineffable is ‘the way’; the ineffable is ‘the way’; and the inherent nature and characteristics of the ineffable are ‘the way.’ These three pivots dance around in the text like a precipitous tripod and yet remain perfectly balanced. They become the means through which the writer gestures at ‘the way’ without revealing its final locale, for there is none: “The way is everywhere and in everything” (Thirty-Four. See also, Forty-One).

The place to begin searching for the way is within the present moment and context (Fourteen). In order to get on the trail of the way, one has to begin mirroring the nature of the way within one’s immediate character and person. According to the philosophy of the way, the way is uncovered and discovered by those who live it (Thirty-Two). This circuitous logic is not the only one presented within the text. One could argue that the whole approach of the text is to examine the multiple paradoxes that ensue from considering the nature of the way and how to mirror it in one’s life. In this sense, the philosophy of the Tao Te Ching could be viewed as paradoxic, that is, as derived from seeing the world, and reality in general, from a ‘down side up’ perspective. From the writer’s vantage, the true way of seeing comes out of a perspective that considers lowliness a greater state than elevation. True greatness is lowliness according to the writer (Sixty-One). The focus of the writer is on restoring this truer perspective to things, which, in view of the text’s undergirding philosophy, is inherently demanded by the nature of the way (Thirty-Four; Sixty-Six). That is, the emphasis of the writer is not on turning things ‘up side down,’ but rather on revealing what is weak, yielded, humble, lowly, as precisely what best mirrors the nature of the way.

A vivid example of this approach may be seen in the writer’s use of the imagery of water (Eight; Seventy-Eight). Water is soft, gentle, pliable, and limpid, the very qualities that are inherent to the way. Similarly, those who embrace and reflect the qualities of water within their character begin to partake of the nature of the way. One aspect reflects the other; the qualities that reflect the way are similarly the qualities that endure in the pursuit of the way, namely, gentleness, compassion, lowliness, and yielding. The writer seems to have been painfully aware that this perspective was not the general world view of his or her contemporaries, and so repeated several times throughout the text, is the need to recognize the gentle, pliable, soft, and yielding, as far outlasting the hard, strong, and unyielding (Thirty-Six; Forty-Three; Seventy-Two; Seventy-Eight). This contrast is not merely a reflection of strategic advantage, of the proficiency of one approach over the other, but rather a recognition of mutual participation in the nature of what grounds reality, namely, the way and the real.

According to the Tao Te Ching, the source of all things is the way. The way, in turn, is the inseparable companion of ‘the real’—the unspeakable beyond, the emptiness, the nothing (One; Twenty-One; Twenty-Five; Seventy-Three). The real is the source of the paradoxical nature of the way. It is the still, unmoving centre that does not act, request, speak, or contend, and yet accomplishes, receives, answers, and overcomes (Seventy-Three. See also, Sixteen). The real is the basis for the nonacting action which those in pursuit of the way cultivate and come to embody. A way of doing this (or rather, not doing), is to metaphorically place one’s finger on the heartbeat of the way, which simultaneously, turns out to be the heartbeat of the world. Once the rhythm of the way has been attained, seekers of the way begin to live according to its flow, doing through non-doing and acting through non-action (Forty-Three; Forty-Seven; Sixty-Three. See also, Twenty-Six). That is, they only do what is needed and therefore accomplish everything (Thirty-Eight).

It is important to note that the seeker’s stance of inactive action is not passive. This is because the seeker is consciously engaged with the world without seeking escape from it. The conscious aspect involves the syncing up of the heart of the seeker with the heart of the world, and therefore with the heart and flow of the way, emanating from the fathomless centre of the real. Perceptivity, sensitivity, and nuance, become the indispensable qualities of the seeker of the way. They act like an internal barometer that indicates the emphasis and non-emphasis with which things should be entered into.

Outwardly, the seeker of the way may appear to be what is classically known as ‘the fool.’ This view seems to have been the perceived self-portrait of the writer, at least according to poem Twenty. Such an outward description is misleading though, since it only serves to mask the fierce grasp that the seeker has on the rhythm of the way, which once uncovered, is never again relinquished. The seeker begins to navigate the myriad contexts of life using this rhythmic flow, perceiving within it, the elusive presence of the way, leading him or her to seek harmony, simplicity, humility, naturalness, and yieldedness (Multiple references: see, for example, Five; Ten; Sixteen; Twenty-Two; Twenty-Three; Fifty-Five; Sixty-Four). Seekers who uncover the way therefore acquire an inner awareness that clues them to what the way of the way is and how to yield to it. They begin to tread lightly upon the world, for within it, they now discern the true nature of the real, lurking behind the apparent reality. To the outside observer, the seeker of the way appears tentative, gingerly, humble, limpid, lowly, natural (Fifteen).

What the Tao Te Ching achieves, quite phenomenally, as displayed in the preceding philosophical sketch, is present these ideas through an economy of words that is astounding. Not only does the text manage to address the needs of the individual, its reach extends to the social and the political. Leaders, rulers, teachers, and guides, are re-measured and re-examined using the yardstick of the way and the primary quality of humility that those who serve should, according to the writer, embody (Sixty Six; Sixty-Eight; Seventy-Eight. See also, Thirty-Nine).

The Tao Te Ching also hints at and points to the themes of awakening and enlightenment. Although these themes are not centrally dealt with, the writer makes it quite clear that there is a parallel relationship between the pursuit of the way and the realization of awakening and enlightenment. That is, there are certain attitudes within the pursuit of the way that are a synthesis of the attitudes that are essential for the attainment of enlightenment and awakening. One of these attitudes relates to the awareness of the unitive nature of reality: “The truest enlightenment is one which does not separate,” (Twenty-Eight); (See also, Sixteen; Twenty-Seven; Thirty-Three; Fifty-Two; Fifty -Five; Seventy-One). Another attitude relates to the uncovering of the nature of the real, which at the same time, turns out to be the discovery of one’s true nature, and simultaneously, the uncovering of the nature of the way (Sixteen).

The Tao Te Ching is a very far-ranging and far-reaching text, especially given its brevity. It does two things that its title portends very well—it furnishes a lucid description of the inherent nature of the way, and paints a clear picture of the attitudes and characteristics that must be embraced on an individual, social, and political scale, if the nature of the way is to be mirrored in reality. This, according to the writer, is not merely one suggestion among many other ways of living, but rather, a way of living that mirrors the nature of the source from which reality emanates (Twenty-One). Peace, rest, and true contentment, are discovered only from within the locus and echo of ‘the real.’

Although the Tao Te Ching clearly has thematic focus, it is very likely the work of more than one author, or the work of one author with several secondary contributors. The traditional ascription of authorship is to Lao Tzu, supposedly, an older contemporary of Confucius (551–479 BCE). Very little is known about the historical figure of Lao Tzu, and much of this is clearly based on legend, for example, the story that Lao Tzu composed the text at the behest of a crossing guard. The allusion of this story may have been in reference to the brevity of the text coupled with the sharpness of its vision.

What this version of the Tao Te Ching does is present a hermeneutical extraction of the central philosophical themes of the text, rendering them into clear, lucid statements. The whole text now reads resonantly, and presents itself as the work of one voice, issuing from a singular vision. The title that this version bears is a reflection of this refocusing. The rendering of the text is the result of cross-lateral work straddling several versions and the redaction of the thematic focus of each individual poem. The primary process of focus was to ask, what in essence, was being communicated within the poem, or within the several poems in each numbered strata. The result of this hermeneutical redaction is a clearer text, easily accessible to first readers.

My hope is that this version will make the ancient text of the Tao Te Ching understandable to a wider audience. There is something beautiful, wonderful, and sacred, that is achieved through this visionary work by Lao Tzu. To read these poems is to witness the luminous beauty of the spirit of humanity.

Jarcq Terra, “The Philosophy of the Tao Te Ching,” in, The Book of the Way and its Way, pages 11-17.