My desk has a hutch attached to it in which I keep a couple dozen books that I would like to read, but haven’t found the time. Occasionally, I will pick one up and open it at random and read a page for inspiration, or whatever.
I did that tonight (March 10) and randomly snatched a book called Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything from one of the shelves. The author is Ervin Laszlo, who is a philosopher, futurist, and former professor who has written 74 books. I’ve read a couple of them, but not this one.
I opened the book in the middle and found myself on the first page chapter 7, which is called: The Origins and Destiny of Life and the Universe. That sounds like a big topic…a really big one. The sub-heading is: Where Everything Came From and Where it’s Going. In the first paragraph, he asks if there is life elsewhere in the universe and will it evolve to higher states or dimension.
He also asks about the nature of consciousness. Did it originate with Home Sapiens or is it part of the fabric of the cosmos, and will it evolve further. Then he asks a really big question: Where did the universe come from?
That’s all I read before I put the book back, so I don’t have any answers to those questions. I’ll go back later and read more of what Laszlo has to say. I wouldn’t have written any of this here, except for what happened next.
A few minutes later, I picked up my phone and noticed I was on Facebook. I don’t recall going there, but I must have done so earlier. I scrolled down a screen or two and stopped. My screen was filled with a photo of an old bald man with lots of wrinkles, a fluff of white hair above his ears. His eyes were intense and I could see his intelligence and also could imagine him as a younger man.
I looked below the picture and was startled to see that I was looking at a pic of Ervin Laszlo. I’m not even sure why it appeared on my news feed. He’s not even FB friend. But hello, Ervin. Nice synchronicity. I guess it’s all part of the Akashic Field.
Stephen Hawking was looking for a theory of everything which is why the film about him bears that name. Science has been looking for a theory of everything since John Dee in Elizabethan times. He was the equivalent of what we would today call a theoretical physicist in his own period but he was also a philosopher, astrologer, mathematician, and astronomer. He was aware of the existence of over 1,000 stars. His library was one of the best in the world at a time relatively few people could read. He was also looking for a theory of everything, which is why his search didn’t end with science and he went looking for a metaphysical version of reality that allowed for conversations with angels. It answered questions for him that could not be asked of the science or philosophy of his time. This was the cumulative breakthrough in his life’s work that he is most remembered for. To have a theory of everything, science has to go deeply into what I call otherness, essence that cannot be quantified. Science is willing to acknowledge the presence of something unknown but is unwilling to accept it as part of reality without data that justifies its existence. Astrology played a significant role in the “sciences” of astronomy and medicine for those communities in the 16th century. Today’s astrologers are typically considered scientific illiterates by astronomers and medical practitioners alike. Believe it or not, Trish.
I was told by an engineer that it was all right for me to be knowledgeable about astrology as long as I didn’t practice it. It was an important part of history, he said, but all astrologers are scientifically illiterate.
I would stay away from that idiotic engineer.
I have, indeed, dropped out of that reading group. I did point out to him that the sun’s literal orbit around the earth was not part of my belief system. Someone sitting next to me mentioned that it’s the scientists, not the astrologers, who seem to be unwilling to have the conversation. I thought of asking him if he knew the mass of the Higgs boson particle but decided against it. You can’t declare war on ignorance. There’s too much of it lying around, creating inertia. Especially in polite social gatherings that have a literary bent.
Sorry this went to trash! Just found it.
I guy I met in Byron Bay a few years ago runs a very good podcast show and he interviewed Ervin Laszlo almost exactly one year ago just before St.Patrick’s Day in 2020 about his new book, and I wrote a post about it featuring that podcast episode on a You Tube of Guy’s –
https://brizdazz.blogspot.com/search?q=Ervin+Laszlo
You’re way ahead of us!
That’s a good one. Strange.
What a funny synchronicity! I actually have that book too, and have never read it…….as I get older, I seem to be intimidated away from the Big Questions, and prefer to contemplate the small ones. But he is an amazing and prolific mind.
As I get older, I don’t take the time to read enough!