Participating with the Universe: An Interview with Brian Swimme

SML: I want to start with the basics. What is cosmology?

BS: Cosmology is the study of the nature of the universe, in particular the origins and development and even some speculations about the depth of the universe as a whole. Historically, cosmology was more a wisdom tradition, part of the philosophical and religious traditions. But science has discovered its own way into these big questions and it’s fascinating to compare the scientific story with the more traditional one. And then there’s the question of how the human relates to the universe as a whole.

SML: Which is something not too many scientists look at.

BS: For centuries we were trained to separate the human out. The whole idea was to try to understand the universe as it was in itself. Rocks? What are they really like if you take out the human, with all the human intuitions and poetry and all the rest of it? So scientists have been slow to get to the question about the nature of the human. The first scientist who made a massive contribution in this area was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He was trained both in geology and theology and he realized that the geological story of Earth was an amazing arena for reflection on the nature of the human. I very much feel my own work is in his tradition.

SML: I really loved your first book The Universe is a Green Dragon. It was accessible to someone like me who really isn’t scientifically inclined, and it was so magical. You were able to communicate what I felt inside. As I read it I was like yes, yes, yes!

BS: (Laughs.) I know. I remember feeling all that when I was writing it. It’s great to hear that it came across.

SML: It didn’t feel like I was reading science. It almost felt like a fairy tale. But then that’s the story…

BS: I think that fairy tale is an appropriate way to think about it. There’s something so magical about the universe that you can’t express it easily and so you almost feel compelled to say things that are reminiscent of fairy tales. In the modern period we became so deadly serious about the nature of matter, we robbed it of all its magic. I’m not putting the magic back in, I’m simply thinking about what we’ve discovered. From my standpoint, it’s the scientists who have discovered the magic of matter. I feel like I’m just reflecting on it. And it still astonishes me.

SML: Expressing it the way you do gives people permission to see rocks or soil or stars as alive – you use the word “numinous” – as opposed to dead matter that doesn’t make any difference except for what we can do with it.

BS: After I wrote that book Thomas Berry said, “Well, you’re done.” I said, “What do you mean? I can’t wait to write my next one.” He said, “Don’t even bother. You’ll never get anything near as good as this.” (Laughs.)

SML: One of my all-time favorite pieces is your “The Resurgence of the Cosmic Storytellers”. I’ve read it out loud to people, I even got permission to print part of it in the first issue of Gaian Voices. Every time I read it I can see it clearly: the old woman sitting in a circle of children, like it’s happened before and will happen again. In one of Thomas Berry’s books he wrote about the Omaha ceremony introducing newborns to the Universe and that’s another one. Between that and your story it would be like the children would become part of the Earth in a different way.

BS: Yes, I love that Blessing Ceremony. And you’re exactly right. We’re in the midst of developing these cultural practices that would awaken different sensibilities that would help counter the consumer culture in which the supreme activities of the human are pushed aside in a mad rush to consume.

SML: How can we participate in the Universe?

BS: Think about it: the universe has been at work for 13.7 billion years. If you can get some kind of feel for what the universe is about then you can ask the question, “How can I as a human participate in it”? Different scientists have reflected on this. I mentioned de Chardin as one of the first scientists to reflect on the universe in a meaningful way. Another was Alfred North Whitehead, who was around at the same time as Teilhard and just as significant. Where Teilhard approached the universe from the perspective of theology and biology, Whitehead’s approach was through physics. He became convinced that the universe was about several things. I’ll name two.

First was depth experience. What he meant by this is the universe is bringing more and more aspects of itself together in a particular place. For example, a lizard eats and digests and it can do this because a billion years ago microorganisms invented the process of digestion. The information was stored in the DNA so today the lizard has the benefit of all those previous moments. In other words, those moments in the past are brought back to life in the present with the lizard. Whitehead saw this type of movement as the desire of the universe to actually feel itself in a deep way everywhere. (Laughs) Isn’t that great? So how can the human participate in that? Well one way is actually by learning. So that not only do we have all these billions of years of life present in our bodies, but we also have the possibility, through deepening our consciousness, to bring in what was going on with, for example, the ancient Greeks or Egyptians. It can be brought into one’s consciousness. So, learning for its own sake, as opposed to just preparing us to do something – which it does of course – is participating with the movement of the universe.

Second, Whitehead believed the universe is about bringing forth ever greater beauty. Beauty of course is a mysterious word, but he was speaking here about the way in which the universe complexifies. It complexifies in a way that is elegant: the more complicated it gets, the simpler it becomes. Humans can participate in this aspect of the universe by giving shape to our habitat, to our towns and cities, so they merge almost seamlessly with the complexity of the natural world. The ideal would be for our architecture, economics, chemistry, all of these, to become enhancements of the elegant complexities of the universe in which we find ourselves.

SML: Rather than trashing everything.

BS: Precisely. When we have a society based on accumulation, which is the great goal of our system – to accumulate capital – and we base a civilization on it, we end up creating systems that work against the universe.

SML: I think one of the most important things we can do is to open people to a different way of perceiving the universe and our role here. However, you have to do that. Like a trickster, I guess.

BS: Yes. We find ourselves in a world that is woven with these various forms of distortions and pathologies. How can we become so awake that we can become tricksters and participate in unveiling these distortions?

SML: One of the things you suggested in your book is to give directions to your home using just the Earth as opposed to human made constructions. Driving home from work the other day I thought about that. It forced me to notice things differently. Would something that seems obvious to me be noticeable to someone else? It was an interesting experiment to not pay attention to the signs or buildings. And yet when I was a kid, I used to think about it that way because I’d tell people how to find something in the woods.

BS: Yeah. We have names for particular trees who are part of our community.

SML: You talk about the generosity of the sun and the joy of trees. And it doesn’t seem to me that you’re talking about the joy that you might take in the tree, rather you’re talking about the joy experienced by the tree. Is that how you mean it?

BS: Absolutely! Definitely the joy experienced by the tree. With regard to the sun, I would say it’s the generosity displayed by the sun. Some people get upset because they think I’m suggesting the sun is like a person, which I’m not. The sun is radiant energy, and we talk about the sun using terms such as fusion reaction or the second law of thermodynamics. And these are very particular and wonderful ways to talk about what’s going on with the sun. When we talk about a human bestowing a gift on another we say “generosity”. It’s good to have different words for different things.

But I’m amazed by the differences between the sun and the human as well as the similarities which we’ve tended to ignore. This goes back to scientists being driven to understand what things were like separate from any connection to the human. In a way scientists conducted an experiment in consciousness where they stripped away all their human qualities. They learned a lot, but it was skewed coming as it did from the perspective that the human is ontologically separate from the rest of the universe. The incredible thing is, now we know that the stars actually gave birth to us. How incredible is that? Whatever we are is somehow a further development of what the star is. This is where Teilard is so great. His point of view is that whatever the human is, is the development of powers and dimensions and qualities that were present in a different form in earlier beings like stars. So, when I say that the sun is generous I mean that there is a power in the sun that will, over time, be developed into a generous human. A primal form of generosity is the sun radiating light. It’s not aware of it but it is manifesting it.

SML: I want to talk about timing. You’ve written how things happen in the right time. If something is off just a little bit it’s not going to happen. And yet when it’s right nothing will stop it. Thomas Berry talks about timing in the context of evolving into the ecozoic era and reassuringly tells us that we should not doubt that we have been given what is needed to do this. I believe him but given the realities today it can be a hard sell and doesn’t even seem logical given how much is to be done on such massive scales. But my sense is that there’s powerful magic (for lack of a better word) in the universe, and humans, being a part of this magic, can wake up and participate with it which will help us transcend the logic and make it possible.

BS: That’s what I believe but my way of saying it is different.

SML: I’d love to hear your way because people roll their eyes at me.

BS: (Laughs). Well, they might roll their eyes in the other direction after listening to me. Timing is one of my favorite topics. I go into it in show ten of Canticle to the Cosmos. Timing is one of those areas where the magic of the universe comes out so strongly. You can choose different moments, but my favorite is the birth of the galaxies. In the early, early universe it wasn’t possible to create galaxies – and it’s not possible today either. The very early universe was too dense and now it’s not dense enough. But there was that one moment when the density was just right, and a trillion galaxies came into existence.

When did that happen? The estimates are around 400 million years after the birth of the universe. Well, how did the universe know the time was right? There’s a cosmological dimension of time that expresses itself in creativity. The universe, in some mysterious way, knows when it’s time to create galaxies – and the same thing happened with the birth of life. There is an intrinsic sense of time in the universe which is absolutely in us because everything about us is universe. We’re made of the universe and so that intrinsic sense of timing is in our atoms, way, way deeper than consciousness. I believe this sense of timing is deep in the marrow of everything in the universe, deep in the marrow of what humans are about.

SML: Then there are people who take the perfect timing idea to say that if everything is perfect then I don’t have to worry or make any special effort, everything is unfolding the way it’s supposed to. Enlightened contentment, you could call it.

BS: That’s the amazing thing. I think it’s a coincidence of opposites. We live in a situation so disastrous. In literally millions of years this is the worst time on Earth to be alive. And yet what’s so bizarre is that it’s also the greatest time. It’s so exciting and dwarfs anything that I’m aware of in the history of humanity. The very fact that I’m excited and many of us are so excited about being involved with this work, tells me that it is simultaneously the best and worst time. There are all kinds of responses, and one is to just think, “Well everything is as it should be and I don’t have to do any- thing”. But at the same time, there is this deep urgency we feel and that, too, is evidence that things are as they should be. Here we are feeling this deep urgency and we know we must pour all our energy into it. I believe that all humans know in a deep ineffable way exactly what is required of us. Even down to being called to do very specific things. We don’t get a printout or specific instructions, but we do know what gives us a deep sense of joy, and that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. However discouraging it can be, laced right into the discouragement is this sense of power that comes from contacting the deepest energies of the universe.

SML: And part of that is finding and doing what brings you joy.

BS: Exactly. That’s what the human is supposed to do. And finding ways to support each other. That joy is really our ultimate source of energy. Otherwise there’s burnout. Obviously we need things — water, shelter, etc. But we’re not ultimately working for these things, we’re working to participate in this cosmic creativity. And we need a situation where our creativity can be poured out. It’s not the money that supports us, it’s ultimately the joy that comes from being part of this ancient community and this living community today.

SML: The theme of the last issue of Gaian Voices was “the space between”. In Hidden Heart of the Cosmos you wrote about the expansion of the universe and how, for instance, I’m not moving but everything is getting farther away. And I thought, “There’s more space between! This has got to be important at the level of consciousness and awareness and timing and all that, but how?”

BS: (Laughs) If I had to pick one discovery to call the most mind-blowing it would probably be about the nature of space. For centuries during the scientific period we thought of space as empty. Then we discovered that space is actually teeming with activity. For instance, molecules of air and particles of light are soaring about, and what’s even more bizarre is particles are actually foaming into existence. Where are they foaming out of? Well, they’re just foaming out of space. They’re foaming out of the in-between. They’re not coming out of a molecule of air or a bit of energy like a photon of light, they’re coming forth out of the in-between. There’s no way to say it to make it seem reasonable. It’s just not reasonable.

SML: And if what’s happening to the universe is happening to the human then . . . it’s hard to put words on what I’m trying to say.

BS: David Bohm talks about the space between. His word to describe it is the implicate order, which is a very powerful idea. Implicate meaning that it’s not there the way a molecule of nitrogen is there, rather it’s in between. The implicate order contains both the essence of all that has happened in the universe and the ocean of possibilities that might yet happen in the universe. It’s all there. And in this understanding of the universe even the particles that are explicit are vibrating. They vibrate out of space into existence, and then they melt away into the implicate order. As opposed to the Newtonian idea that an atom shows up and doesn’t change. Bohm’s idea says that the atom is constantly coming forth. And that would be true of all our bodies. They’re vibrating out of this deep realm. Bohm’s interpretation of our moment would be that right now humans are coming forth out of a ground that is different. It is different because it contains all the experience of the past up until now. Humans today are aware of global warming, of the suffering of the animals, and aware of the possibilities of building ecocities. We’re beginning to become aware. And it’s a moment for actually giving birth to a new form of humanity. Thomas Berry says the challenge of our time is the reinvention of the human at the species level which makes it clear that we’re called to do something so monumental and magnificent. That’s why it’s so great to be alive. I mean, reinvent the human – wow! Compare that to building a steam engine.