Martin LeFevre: Wellsprings of Insight

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Indigenous people felt that the rocks and rivers, clouds and creeks were alive with spirit. In the few native cultures that are still relatively intact, people still do.

Science has conditioned modern people to believe this way of seeing is superstition, and to look down on it. But it is much closer to the truth than our way of viewing ‘things.’

The earth gave rise to animals and plants. Logically, it follows that since they are alive, the earth itself is alive. And by extension, the universe, which gave rise to the earth, is also alive.

Since rational thought, which is the basis of science, cannot encompass that fact without standing silently in awe of the whole, this actuality is denied, or at least subconsciously avoided.

What is the quality of mind that allows both the highest religious experiencing that a human being is capable, and the best science that the human mind can generate? Can such a mind exist in the same brain, the same person?

I have no urge to be a scientist. But I respect science, and most scientists. I recently heard an Italian astronomer, who, by looking at the solar system as a whole, had a new insight into how the earth came to have water. His theory has since been adopted as the consensus view of how the earth became a water world.

Though he might deny it, he spoke in spiritual terms about the moment he had the insight, describing with humility his feeling of exaltation at being, after years of labor, the first person to see something. He said scientists live for such moments, and feel privileged to have one or two in their lifetime. That is the true scientific spirit.

(His thesis is rather complicated, but essentially and rather simplistically, the planets that formed closer to the sun, including earth, were initially dry and barren. But planets that formed further out in the solar system, other than gas giants like Jupiter, had frozen water. Jupiter, the first planet to form, mixed things up through its immense gravitational forces, and there were collisions galore. Walla, water on a dry planet!)

We moderns have a corollary to indigenous sensibility; it’s called the “Gaia hypothesis.” James Lovelock’s basic insight is that the earth is a complex interacting system that maintains itself in homeostasis. It too has been largely accepted by science, with many caveats and controversies.

The Gaia hypothesis is still within the scientific way of viewing the world. Despite the attempts of fuzzy-minded New Agers to blur the lines, the Gaia hypothesis does not, in itself, lend itself to feelings of awe and reverence, much less so-called mystical or peak experiences.

Both terms rankle, but they point at something, a way of experiencing in which the essence of life pierces through the material of the mundane, the habitual in daily life.

Indigenous people no doubt had the same difficulty with the accretion of the mundane. They simply understood the importance of regularly deleting the files (to use a techie term) and thereby go beyond the commonplace. Modern man has lost this art.

Can we get it back without trying to go back? I’m sure of it—if we allow the space and silence of mind for wholeness and creation in the present to eclipse the accumulation and deadness of the past.

On the way back to the house at noon on a beautiful late winter’s day, I take the time to drive as far into Upper Park as the gates allow.

Walking less than a mile to the gorge, the mind is stunned by the roaring creek and green slopes, the drapery of volcanic cliffs above the canyon, and the fantastic cloud formations. Hawks glide by at eye level only a meter or two away over the precipitous chasm. The sensory overload is dizzying.

Sometimes on days like today, one feels the presence of great spirits in this canyon just minutes from town. They seem to linger in the rocky outcroppings, speaking of ancient epochs, when spirits were everywhere in nature, and time had little meaning. Is it one’s imagination, or is one sensing something?

The first wildflowers have appeared—a few small yellow buttercups, a few orange poppies, and a few bluebonnets. Thunder rolls over the ridge. Every size, shape, and color of cloud imaginable fills most of the sky. But there’s no threat of rain.

There is not a sight or sound of man. Where I sit over the gorge you can see for miles, but I see no one in nearly an hour and a half.

Toward the end of the sitting, one has the feeling of melting into the volcanic cliffs high above, drowning in the roaring stream far below, and being obliterated by the scurrying clouds rushing overhead.

Back on the main road adjacent to Upper Park, a big coyote crosses in front of the car, heading toward the canyon. The fellow driving in the opposite direction stops as well. He turns and looks at me, wide-eyed, and we nod at each other.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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