33. ANCIENT ANTECEDENTS
WHEN WE CONNECT TO THE SOURCE … PERCEPTION
ARISES “FROM THE WHOLE FIELD.”
– Eleanor Rosch
Long before Western scientists acknowledged the field of active information, the zero-point field, or the implicate order, ancient scholars and indigenous healers described the “web of creation” in the words of their traditions. The Hopi spoke of the “web that unites the universe.” Many of the earliest creation myths invoke a primordial state or ground out of which all nature emerges. This is at the heart of John Milton’s teachings in his Way of Nature passages Brian Arthur introduced me to. The prayers of the Tibetan Buddhists, dating to the fourth century, speak of a field that unites all things. Throughout history, scientists, mystics, poets, and artists have attempted to describe aspects of the creative Source.
As civilizations developed, myth gave way to natural philosophies, which, in turn, ultimately gave way to modern physics. Bohm defined the implicate order to me as “the unbroken wholeness out of which seemingly discrete events arise. All of us are part of that unbroken whole, which is continuously unfolding from the implicate and making itself manifest in our explicate world.” David Peat devoted an entire chapter in Synchronicity to the subject of “The Creative Source.”
Eleanor Rosch named the attributes of primary knowing: “timeless, direct, spontaneous, open, unconditional value, and compassionate.” She said all of these attributes go together and constitute one thing, what some in Tibetan Buddhism call “the natural state” and what Taoism calls “the Source.” “When we are connected to that Source, things become more integrated … with intention, body and mind coming together….” When we connect to the Source, she said, perception arises “from the whole field. The notion of ‘field’ was the closest thing I could come up with in our current sciences to describe this phenomenon.”
Rosch’s reference to Taoism led me to read all I could find on the subject of the Source as described by the Taoists. For me, the Tao Te Ching was the most accessible and informative; and the translation by R. L. Wing, The Tao of Power, was, by far, the most revealing and useful.
Wing says that no one actually knows where the Tao Te Ching came from; but this slim volume of about five thousand words forms the foundation of classical Chinese philosophy. According to legend, the book was written by Lao Tzu, a gifted scholar who lived twenty-six centuries ago and worked as the custodian of the Imperial Archives during the reign of the Chou Dynasty. Lao Tzu presented to the ancient world a collection of strategies and attitudes designed to bring true influence and power to leaders and personal freedom to those whom they led. The Tao Te Ching – The Tao of Power – has remained in print for 2500 years and has been translated more frequently than any other classic except the Bible.
According to Wing, the Tao Te Ching explores an evolving force called Tao that operates throughout the universe and lies latent in every individual. Tao, precisely translated, means “the way the universe works.” Te is a term that refers to the potential energy that comes from being aware of and aligned with the forces of nature – from being in the right place and in the right frame of mind at the right time. Te describes the personal power that comes from being in step with the Tao. The Tao can be thought of as an evolving force that operates throughout the universe.
Another translator of the Tao Te Ching, Lionel Giles, says:
Never, surely, has so much thought been compressed into so small a space. Throughout the universe there are scattered a certain number of stars belonging to a class known as “white dwarfs.” They are usually very small, yet the atoms of which they consist are crushed together so closely that their weight is enormous in relation to their size, and this entails the radiation of so much energy that the surface is kept at a temperature vastly hotter than that of the sun. The Tao Te Ching may fitly be called a “white dwarf” of philosophical literature, so weighty is it, so compact, and so suggestive of a mind radiating thought at white heat.
I read passages from Wing’s book over and over again, coming to appreciate the way the Tao Te Ching hinted at the nature of the universal energy, Tao, by describing what it is not. Awareness of this universal force cannot be reached through the ordinary senses – it cannot be seen or heard or felt. It resides in the realm of the intuitive mind and can be perceived only through its effect on the physical environment and on ideas, events, and social transformation.
Wing notes that Lao Tzu believed that intuitive knowledge was the purest form of information:
In the Tao Te Ching, he compels us to use intuition as an equal partner with logic, and encourages us to combine our cognitive understanding of the world around us with a strong personal vision…. In this way, we gain a holistic and precise view of reality because we are also perceiving mood, change, and possibility – the mood of the times, the changes as the society evolves, and the possible future we might create. It is the view of the artist, the philosopher, the visionary – a view that has always carried with it the power to influence the world.
As I sought to understand the more subtle aspects of knowledge creation, I found the symmetry between what Lao Tzu said and the words of the theoretical physicists I had encountered over the years to be extraordinary and deeply satisfying. The philosophy that Lao Tzu left behind suggests an experiment, one that individuals undertake when they are ready to enter the next phase of human evolution – that of fully conscious beings who are directing their own destiny and the destiny of the world around them.
It began to dawn on me that I was also seeking a verification of my own direct experience of these subtle realms – most often experiences that occurred in nature.