Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious.
The more we comprehend the universe, the more we see how truly incomprehensible it is. The mysterious new universe calls for a renewed sense of divine mystery in the cosmos, a new religious myth, a new narrative that draws us into these cosmic waves that are, in some fundamental way, the source of our lives. We need a new religious sense of time and eternity as operative in the moment of occupied space.
If we believe in matter as God’s beloved dwelling place, then we should trust nature completely because God is in the waves.
Life thrives on the edge between stability and chaos, order and randomness.
Language falters as we approach the divine mystery, for God is more and more the ultimate energy of dizzying love, living quite comfortably on the edge between order and chaos.
We constantly pray to God to make order of our chaotic lives, but what if God is the very source of our chaos? What if chaos and disorder are not to be shunned and avoided but attended to and embraced? Nature shows us that life is not meant to be nice, neat, and controlled but lived on the edge between order and disorder.
The flourishing of biological life rests on the openness of existence to new possibilities in the environment. Biological life does not work as a top-down control system but as a bottom-up/top-down interplay of informational flow.
If we are to progress or evolve, we must release ourselves from religious individualism and confront the general religious experience, which is cosmic and evolutionary, and involve ourselves in it.
It is strange how consciousness is so much a part of us that we are not even aware of it. Awake or asleep, consciousness defines our existence. The most fundamental and essential aspect of human existence is virtually unknown. What is consciousness in relation to matter?
If God is creating the world, it is because the world is creating God; consciousness plays a fundamental role. The movement from unconscious matter to conscious matter, from unreflective matter to self-reflective matter and personal experience is the birthing of God in evolution. A mindful material universe giving birth to God is a radically new way to understand the relationship between God and world and the world’s future in God.
The realm of technology is our fastest game changer. In a mere fifty years we have gone from phones on the wall to computers in our hands, and soon we will have implanted chips and computer glasses. The speed of invention and delivery is both fascinating and frightening because we are not sure where we are going with our technologies or what we shall become.
The bond between cosmos and human endured up to the rise of modern science, when the discovery of heliocentrism and the movement of the earth disrupted the relationship between heaven and earth. Knowledge became detached from the outer world of the heavens and placed in the self-thinking subject.
Modernity brought with it a strange disconnect from nature; the human was observer of nature but not related to nature. While scientists mastered the details of nature, humans lost a spiritual connection to the cosmos. Knowledge became a means to power rather than a path to love; we forgot that we were made upright to contemplate the stars. By disinheriting the cosmos, we became lost in space, drifting for the last two centuries in an expanding universe.
The scientific mastery of space pushed God out of the cosmos.
God does not determine what is good for us; rather, God invites us to make choices. Our nature is already endowed with grace, and thus our task is to be attentive to that which is within and that which is without—mind and heart—so that we may contribute to building up the world in love. Every action can be sacred action if is rooted in love, and in this way, both Christians and non-Christians can participate in the emerging body of Christ.
Just as the cells in our bodies make a difference to our bodily function, so too our lives make a difference to what the world becomes. We either help build this world up in love or tear it apart. Either way, we bear the responsibility for the world’s future.
Consciousness may be the creator and governor of matter; the background of the universe may be mindlike.
The principle of Omega is the presence of something in nature that is wholly other than nature; it is distinct yet intrinsic, autonomous, and independent; it is deeply influential on nature’s propensity toward complexity and consciousness.
As the principle of centration that is within, Omega escapes entropy so that it is ahead of nature as its prime mover. Omega therefore emerges from the organic totality of evolution and is the goal toward which evolution tends.
Instead of placing all our faith in science and technology to lead us into a better future, perhaps it is time to attend to the mystics, who tell us that meditation or contemplative prayer may be the most important sources of energy for human evolution.
We continue to be faced by the same problems that are dissipating our energies: global warming, pandemics, the threat of nuclear war, the migration crisis, racial opposition, political factions, and economic instability. We are worn out trying to solve these problems by analytical means, and we are exhausted by the repetition of these problems, which not only perpetuate themselves but deepen. Our human energies are thinned out, and we are at the brink of a human energy crisis. We are exhausting our capacity to centrate our lives in a radiating power of love. The energy that is ours to co-create the world is being squandered on globalized superficiality and fake news; petty ideals are fueling globalized indifference.