Tag Archives: Brian Swimme

What’s so great about Brian Swimme?

Brian and SuzanneAs anyone who has been tracking with me knows, Brian Swimme is at the top of my list of contemporary thinkers. I just came across this, which will give you a sense of why:

 Awakening to the Universe Story is Part 1 and The Divinization of the Cosmos is Part 2 of an interview from What Is Enlightenment? that came to be after
I heard the editor do a talk and told him about Brian.

This, from the Intro to the interview, is why Brian can matter so much:

In this interview with Brian Swimme, and through the research undertaken for that issue of What Is Enlightenment?, our understanding of the deep time evolutionary perspective that Swimme espouses was profoundly enriched and expanded.
And that helped to shift the philosophical ground here.

There does not seem to be any link to this highly recommended intro,
but here’s my saved text:

Two centuries ago, the German idealist Friedrich Schelling wrote: “History as a whole is a progressive, gradually self- disclosing revelation of the Absolute.” A forerunner of evolutionary theory, Schelling’s philosophical project was
to reconcile the fundamental dualities of life into an all- encompassing and evolving unity. Though he was addressing evolution in the context of human culture, two hundred years later, as a result of the recent discoveries of astrophysics and astronomy, evolution has been elevated to the cosmic realms of the galaxies. It is now commonly known that we live in a vast and evolving universe. While many of us are aware of this, according to mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme,
our awakening to the truth of that fact may actually represent the most significant shift in human consciousness in two million years.

Swimme is a leading proponent of the “Universe Story,” the deep time developmental perspective that he brings forward in this two-part interview on both his own work and that of French Jesuit priest, paleontologist, and visionary Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The far-reaching significance of this cosmological perspective is why I’ve selected the spring 2001 interview with Swimme for our fifteenth anniversary issue of What Is Enlightenment?

A specialist in the evolutionary dynamics of the cosmos, Brian Swimme is on a mission to make us aware of the miraculous fourteen-billion-year evolutionary process of which we are a part. He is calling us to “reinvent” ourselves, to redefine what it means to be human in an emergent universe. The paradigm shift we must make, he believes, may be more challenging and more significant than any that has occurred in the course of human history. Evoking the vast panorama of cosmic becoming, he arcs back through deep time and then forward again, dissolving everything we know as real and relatively permanent into
a morphing, unfolding, infinitely creative process. In that,
he challenges us to cognize the fact that we are citizens not just
of our communities or of our nations or even of planet earth. We are citizens of an evolving cosmos. And our conscious awareness of that places us in a far more implicated relationship to ourselves, to the entire web of life on this planet, and to the future.

For Brian Swimme, whose understanding has been deeply influenced by the work of Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955),
the interface between science and spirituality holds a particularly potent significance. Teilhard believed that the evolving universe and the Divine are one. All dualities and traditional antipathies—between science and religion, matter and spirit, the physical and the metaphysical, God and the universe—are ultimately reconciled and subsumed into the scientifically verifiable reality of cosmic evolution. And that objective reality applies to us human beings as well. As Teilhard said, “I realized that my own poor trifling existence was one with the immensity of all that is and all that is in process of becoming.”

In this interview with Brian Swimme, and through the research undertaken for that issue of What Is Enlightenment?, our understanding of the deep time evolutionary perspective that Swimme espouses was profoundly enriched and expanded. And that helped to shift the philosophical ground here at WIE.
It became increasingly apparent to us that the spirituality of
the twenty-first century has everything to do with the cosmic evolutionary process that we are part and parcel of. Indeed,
as we comprehend our place in a swirling, unfurling universe,
it makes sense that the spiritual quest, the quest to understand who we are and why we are here, would be seen in an entirely new light. But what exactly is that new perspective? And how might it affect the way we relate to our own lives and to human life itself? Those were the questions driving us as we stepped into a fast-moving evolutionary current for Issue 19 and began to peer a little more deeply into what the future of the spirit, and the spirit of the future, might hold.

Here’s my affiliate link to buy The Universe is a Green Dragon,
my favorite book: http://tinyurl.com/28uql4b

Ah Sweet Mysteries of Life…

Here’s one of the loveliest comments about the nature of reality that I frequently pass back to people in response to something they’ve said. I swoon for Swimme, whose audio comments I recently posted: Exploding Your Head
Brian Swimme is a wondrous being, who I think has the best perspective on who we are and what we are doing here. His seminal book, The Universe Is a Green Dragon: A Cosmic Creation Story is a must-read for any friend of mine. Click on the title to buy it through Amazon, or get a good deal from me — through PayPal just send $9.00 to suzanne@mightycompanions.org and I’ll send you a copy.

“Albert Einstein once remarked that for the human there is no more powerful feeling than that of the ‘mysterious.’ In fact, he was convinced this feeling for the mysterious was the cradle for all works of science, art, and religion. In light of Einstein’s conviction, one might ask: ‘What is the opposite of a feeling for the mysterious?’ The opposite would be the sense that one understands it all. The opposite would be the feeling that one is in possession of a system that explains all the phenomena in the universe. For such a person, the universe loses its appeal for it becomes something we don’t really need to pay attention to. The universe becomes an exemplification of a theory that one has already understood. No real surprises are possible, only the working out of a logical system through time. When a feeling for the mysterious is lost, one become s vulnerable to the various fundamentalisms plaguing our planet, each one with its passionate certainty that it has all the answers while every other system is just superstition.

“In moments of stress and breakdown, there is a powerful drive in us to acquire answers and explanations. Certainly in our own time when we are dismantling ecosystems around the planet and deconstructing the stable climate upon which our civilization is based, we feel a deep need to know what is real and what is good and how to proceed. This need can become so great we are liable to latch onto one of these simplistic pseudo-explanations just to quell the feelings of fear and doom surfacing in us. What on Earth? does not provide any such simplistic explanations. This restraint is one of its greatest achievements. By insisting that the Crop Circles are beyond any easy explanation, What on Earth? enables us to make peace with living in the ambiguity of not knowing. This ability to live with ambiguity is related to a sense for the mysterious and together these two may be the most important factors for deep creativity to take place. At the very least, we need to realize that an embrace of ambiguity is a form of humility when confronted by the magnificent complexity of nature.

“One of the great benefits of viewing What on Earth? is the feeling one can get of wading into the mysterious. Through its balanced and wide-open approach to the phenomena of Crop Circles, the film has the power to ease us out of some of the prior certainties we might have had. What on Earth? explores and celebrates the fact of the existence of these designs. And as we are guided into this reflection, we find ourselves considering new ideas about the nature of our universe. We begin to imagine that things might be different than we thought. We might even begin to release ourselves from some of the tired explanations lodged into our minds by the media. But most important of all, as we view the film we might even begin to feel stunned by the simple fact that here we are in the midst of this overwhelming mystery, the universe.”
Brian Swimme, mathematical cosmologist specializing in the evolution of the universe

Exploding Your Head

Anybody who follows my thoughts knows how in love I am with Brian Swimme. If you give me one contemporary thinker to be on that deserted island with, it’s hands down Brian. Every time I listen to him, I am transported.

This is a fitting post to follow the one about the Hubble telescope. Brian is talking cosmos — where it came from, what we are doing in it, all the basics of being human. It was part of Evolutionary Worldview, an online daylong presentation that you’ll hear talk about at the beginning of this 22-minute recording.

Get on my wavelength! OK, I’m begging. Please listen to this.

Interviewer: My head just exploded again.

Brian: May it grow back quickly.

Suzanne Taylor-Brian Swimme