An emergent cosmology of evolutionary consciousness, on increasingly compelling evidence, is finding that everything in our Universe is in dynamic and collaborative relationships with everything else. [1]

Part One

A long time ago, when I was in my early twenties, every week I visited a young woman who had contracted a strain of polio that left her almost entirely paralyzed, very weak and unable to do anything for herself. My heart ached for her as I considered her great loss and the bleakness of her future. At the time, while I understood that we live our lives in profound mystery and that one’s meaning, depth and value are not circumscribed by health and well-being, I wanted to be able to say why this is true. I longed to discover a satisfactory explanation showing that at the core of existence we are all the same – not limited by illness or any other circumstance. This quest has persisted over the years, intensifying as my knowledge and experience of random suffering, injustice and inequity has grown. I am always seeking, wanting to understand more thoroughly what can be known about existence in a universal sense. At the same time, I have known moments when I feel illuminated, when my soul is in resonance with an aspect of truth not previously known. Sometimes this happens through studying the work of others and sometimes it happens through my own experience.

I will share here some of these moments and how they interface with my wonderings, particularly in relationship, both to life’s wounds and life’s possibilities for regeneration and healing.

For a number of years I followed the work of philosopher Terry Patten through his podcast entitled Beyond Awakening. I found his ease with being present to the moment that was unfolding very attractive and worthy of exploration and practice. I discovered that past happenings continue to reveal new meaning; in a sense, I think, past events are still unfolding now in the present. 

Through Terry’s interviews I met many outstanding thinkers whose work I have continued to follow. Then when Terry’s book, A New Republic of the Heart, was published I was enchanted. I was particularly drawn to his references to wholeness. He did not define wholeness in exact terms, referring to “the mysterious wholeness that is already our condition” (p.141),  realizing I think that there are perceptions of the nature of existence that do not lend themselves to neat definitions. The way Terry spoke of wholeness seemed reverent and of the moment. Going back over his work, I see now that as a philosopher, he was touching into quantum physics, acknowledging an interior realm beyond our capacity for exact observation and measurement.

Terry led me in two directions, back to an earlier interest in the work of the quantum physicist David Bohm, and his understanding of the implicate order as the wholeness from which everything flows, and forward to the related work of the contemporary cosmologist Jude Currivan and her grasp of “a unitive narrative of wholeness and innate belonging.” 

Bohm’s work and style had great appeal to me. I was drawn by the fact that as a scientist of great intellect, he enthusiastically engaged in conversation with philosophers, spiritual leaders and Indigenous authorities; open to being illuminated by their insights. This strikes me as significant because it honors the inner realm of human knowing across time as it coincides with contemporary scientific thinking. 

It is Bohm who first imagined the Holomovement, in which people and groups of people everywhere, from the strength of their common origin in wholeness, would support each other, moving into an era of conscious participation in shaping humanity’s future for the health and well-being of the whole Earth.  

Likewise with Jude Currivan. Her work is in sync with Bohm’s but more developed because of the cosmological breakthroughs of recent decades. Also, Jude’s character is warm and engaging, easily drawing others into a sense of wonder at our common background, at our belonging together as in a family. Like Bohm, she has traveled and continues to travel widely sharing her knowledge and insights enthusiastically, garnering in return the wisdom and affection of people from many countries, cultures and social conditions. 

Jude’s central message is that all that has emerged and will emerge is bound in wholeness, initiated in one breath, and sustained in one love through countless manifestations. She describes beautifully aspects of this that I found most captivating. What most drew my attention was her reference to HGT, or horizontal gene transfers. Succinctly said, scientists are finding that evolutionary opportunities can be accessed outside of the vertical inheritance lineage of DNA, increasing the opportunity to survive and thrive (although not known yet in humans). With Jude, I see the possibilities for someday being able to apply HGT to people who have debilitating illnesses or disabilities, giving them a chance for a fuller life.

As Jude sees it, the sense of wholeness means belonging and binds all of us together. It is the ultimate nature of the Universe and the reason why we experience our fullest sense of being through love and compassion, stretching ultimately towards well-being for all. This generative understanding is profoundly hopeful.

Part Two

Musing over the above brought to mind the memory of several experiences I had years ago in which the innate sense of belonging was touchingly manifest. This happened when newborn abandoned babies I knew seemed to choose or know their true parents. I will relate here the stories of two babies that lost their biological parents but found their true parents. These experiences complement the importance of a child’s environment while highlighting a deeper element, an infant’s recognition of where it belongs, the place where mutual love will flourish. 

I was working in Cochabamba, Bolivia, at the state-run hospital when I received a telephone call from a couple in Boston who had done volunteer work in Bolivia. This was before the advent of mobile phones and when traditional landline phones were scarce, so the fact that the couple easily reached me was worth noting. The couple had married late and did not expect to have children. However, the wife became pregnant but miscarried. This painful experience opened within her a profound desire to nurture a baby. The couple particularly wanted to know if by any chance there was an abandoned baby in Cochabamba that they could adopt. I asked them to give me a bit of time to look into this and get legal advice. I knew that by law adoption by foreigners was not permitted. They said they would call me again the next day. Unbelievably, by the next day I had been able to get a court order allowing the couple to adopt a child in Bolivia. They were ecstatic and for the next few weeks called me regularly, always hoping that “their” baby had been found. Then, a beautiful, healthy baby girl was born at the hospital but immediately abandoned. The birth mother could not be found and all the personal information she had supplied turned out to be false. She had simply walked out of the hospital immediately after safely delivering the baby. The couple in Boston was filled with hope that this was their baby. However, in such cases the law required a waiting period of three months before allowing adoption procedures to begin. In compliance with this policy, the baby remained in the hospital nursery. The couple remained in Boston keeping vigil from there. 

Exactly as the waiting period ended, the couple flew to Bolivia. Previously, they had arranged to rent a house to stay in while putting everything in order for the adoption process to be advanced and finalized. 

The day after their arrival, I took them to the hospital to see the baby. While generally I am not a camera person, I thought to grab the camera that belonged to my office just as I left to pick up the couple. I hoped to get a shot of the new mother as she saw the baby for the first time. By the time we reached the waiting room of the hospital nursery, the couple’s anxious yet hopeful anticipation was utterly palpable. Fortunately, after just a few minutes, a nurse arrived with the baby and placed her in her new mother’s arms. At that precise instant, the baby reached up and touched her new mother’s face. I have never forgotten that moment. And, fortunately, I had the presence of mind to snap a photo that stunningly captured it, preserving something of its ineffability. 

In the years that followed, the love and affection between mother and child so visibly displayed on that first day only deepened. Needless to say, the baby flourished and ultimately loved generously as she had been loved. The adopting father who was never lost for words, on that day when he first saw his new daughter, became speechless, seemingly lost in the grace that had found him. He adored her from then on and never stopped talking about her.

Something similar took place with a newborn baby boy. This time a medical student approached me at the hospital and asked if he could give me his three-day old baby boy. The student was not married and the birthing mother, a young Indigenous girl, was despondent and unable to nurture the baby. She was a long way from home and could not return to her family with a baby. Neither could the father seek help from his family. Worried that the baby might not survive, I told him to meet me at the bus station the next day with the baby and the mother.

Just prior to this, a social worker assigned to a nearby village advised me of a childless couple that desperately wanted to adopt a baby. I called her immediately and told her of the situation with the medical student. Not knowing how things would work out but feeling hopeful, she agreed to meet me the next day at the bus station. Meanwhile, we would prepare the papers for the parents to sign in handing over the baby.

The next day the student, the mother and the baby were waiting for us at the bus station, and all went as planned. I felt great sadness for the young mother, who was indeed despondent. After receiving the baby from her, the social worker and I watched as the student helped her board a bus beginning the long journey back to her family. He then returned to school. I did not see him again.

Then, while I drove to the village of the couple that had expressed a desire to adopt, the social worker sat next to me in the front seat holding the baby. When we turned into the village from the highway, the social worker suggested that I pull over and park a ways from the house of the couple. Since they did not have a phone, she wanted to visit them first and tell them about the baby to be sure that they truly wanted a baby immediately. After I parked, she handed the baby to me; then she walked in front of the car toward the house. The baby nestled against my chest facing the rear, sound asleep.  After a few moments the baby’s little heart made a sudden leap and he awakened. When this happened, I looked up and saw the baby’s new father running pell-mell down the middle of the road toward the car. When he got to the car, he reached in through the open window and lifted out the baby saying “my son! my son!” kissing him and dancing jubilantly. 

When the adopting mother arrived her happiness too was boundless, doubled, I think, by the joy of her husband and the undeniable feeling that the baby had recognized them as his parents. Immediately, they went to the municipal offices and registered the baby as their own, as he truly was. Needless to say, not only did the baby survive his hopeless beginning, but he came to be the joy of all his extended family, unbelievably smart and happy.

Part Three

While I lived in Bolivia, I ordinarily attributed the differences in ways of perceiving to differences in culture and worldview that correspond to a less evolved developmental stage. This may be true in some respects, but over time I have come to see more broadly: I realize that I have been shaped culturally and intellectually by unquestioned assumptions of the Modern Age. Having been exposed to other ways of thinking and knowing, I now think that the Modern Age, while making enormous contributions to the well-being and ease of countless people, in its very progress and materialistic cast has lost its sensitivity to ways of knowing arising from a deeper, unmeasurable realm, the realm of wholeness. Perhaps the unitive Cosmology that Jude presents will help the human spirit in all places reconnect with the fullness of its possibilities. 

Conclusion

I feel grateful that my experiences living in parts of the world beyond the industrialized, technological West confirm what I understand as I pour over Jude’s work: Love and belonging are the definitive characteristics of the Universe, ours to know and experience through endless means and manifestations.  

I end with a few questions:

1. Is the Modern Age now evolving toward a more expansive and inclusive philosophical view of life?
2. Will the contemporary decline in traditional main-stream religious forms now give rise to spiritual articulations that recognize wholeness as our common ground?
3. Can we make conscious human decisions to be a healing presence to each other?
4.   Will the United Nations’ vision of One Earth Community take hold?
5.   Are these questions a manifestation of the Holomovement already present among us?

[1]  Jude Currivan, Ph.D., The Holomovement, p 62.