Part One

This blog piece refers to the recent State of Emergence podcast of the conversation between Terry Patten and Jude Currivan about Jude’s work regarding the Cosmic Hologram as it relates to the social experiment project of the New Republic of the Heart initiated by Terry.

There is so much to explore in the podcast conversation between Jude Currivan and Terry Patten on the topic of Cosmic Hologram, that my mind and heart are swirling. When I first listened to the podcast, memories from the distant past began to arise within me and seemed to be in friendly competition for a role in reworking the way I understand my life and thread it together. I immediately felt enlivened by the challenge that this presents. Since then, I have read Jude’s book, Cosmic Hologram: In-formation at the Center of Creation and reviewed other related material. I looked at the beautiful new film, Infinite Potential, regarding the life and work of the scientist and philosopher David Bohm whose work attracted me years ago because of his quest to integrate spiritual insight and experience with scientific evidence. I was interested to see a reference to Bohm on Jude’s website as well as in the first chapter of her book.

Jude Currivan PhD is a cosmologist and futurist with advanced degrees in physics and archeology. She is grounded in mysticism and has vast experience of the wisdom of Indigenous People around the globe. She speaks with authority and warmth. I admit that while I am very drawn to Jude’s work, I remain a neophyte in my attempts to grasp its scientific underpinnings. I like dabbling with significant scientific theories and explorations and am attracted to the notion of a theory of everything, or finding a way to bind what is on the minute quantum scale with what is on the grand cosmic scale. However, I am often exhausted by the struggle to keep things straight. I am grateful to those who do the tedious work that supports the ideas that entice me, of wholeness and unity, of understanding life more fully.

Precisely, Cosmic Hologram refers to a model for understanding the entire unfolding Universe in a unified way. The model rests on recent evidence pertaining to the capture of the most ancient light, now stretched into micro-wave lengths that can be analyzed. In 2017 scientists found the patterns within this ancient light that are exact signatures of a cosmic hologram within the cosmic microwave background that fills the whole of space. The hologram exists and evolves as a unified field wherein every aspect reveals the whole. Crucially, the whole is IN-FORMATION manifesting holographically and is the reality that we know in our day-to-day lives.  

I have struggled to be able to say the above, and feel absolutely out of my depth. Nevertheless, I sense that it is of supreme importance to make an effort to articulate the fundamental ideas that Jude writes and speaks of because of her brilliant capacity for extending what is known through scientific evidence about the Cosmos to human life and philosophy. Succinctly, she is about recognizing the scientific undergirding of a new worldview rooted in wholeness. This means that one’s fundamental way of apprehending life is from the perspective of wholeness and unity. Jude speaks of wholeness as drawing everything into a coherent stream that moves away from separation, competition, and conflict. Its direction is toward the expression of ever greater complexity and diversity held together in the bond of unity. This means that human self-understanding on the species level based on Darwinian principles gives way to seeing life and its purpose in terms of consciously being unity and collaboration in all life expressions.  

I like Jude’s formulation of what is implied in the nitty-gritty of life. For her it means seeing others as true reflections of herself, seeing them at the eye level, not looking down upon them. She is committed to this as a guiding principle of life. Her intuition in this regard has been confirmed over and over again through all that she has witnessed around the globe in the lives of mystics and wisdom souls, particularly Indigenous People still in touch with their pre-modern cosmology, and others unaffected by the modern standard of scientific reductionism and materialism. 

I too know what it is to live among people whose primary way of being stems from the unquestioned assumption that all is one. I lived for many years in the Philippines where there are many cultural and language differences, however, there is one pervasive value. In the Tagalog language it is expressed in the word pakikipagkapwa. The word refers to the interrelatedness of all things. It is commonly understood to mean that souls do not have boundaries, so interiorly humans are one. This means that your pain and your joy are mine. The expression of this concept is spontaneous and very touching. In my experience there I never had to do anything hard alone. Without exception, I was always accompanied and whatever I was feeling was felt by my companions. Also, in times of joy. The joy is experienced and celebrated by the other. 

When I left the Philippines, I felt lonely for a long time, missing the natural and uncalculating relational spirit of the people I knew there. Gradually, I realized that I needed to embody the spirit of pakikipagkapwa and be present to the people in my life now, on their terms and as a witness to their lives. This has brought a great richness into my life. In the light of Jude’s work, I value it more and see it through a wider lens. In Terry’s words, “We seek to grow beyond what we already know”. 

Finally, according to Jude, “Leading edge science across all scales of existence and across many fields of research tells us that mind and consciousness are not something we have – but rather what we, and the whole world, are.”  www.wholeworld-view.org  Indeed, it is a grace to be aware of the mind and consciousness of which I am an expression. 

There are other rich ideas in the podcast that I will explore in Part 2 of this blog piece.  

In this season of light, may the bonds that hold us together be strengthened in love and affection.