In 2004, physicist Brian Swimme, produced his stunning DVD, “The Ten Powers of the Universe.’ In it, Swimme explains that within the universe itself, ten essential powers or tasks reside within every life form, and he explores how these powers move within humans, how we can align with these powers, how we can recognize the powers of the universe in the world and within each other, and how to develop a deeper intimacy with the Earth. The Ten Powers are essentially: Seamlessness, centration, allurement, emergence, homeostasis, cataclysm, synergy, transformation, inter-relatedness, radiance, transmutation.
The spiritual evolutionary impulse awakens the kundalini
There is an inborn evolutionary force that awakens as part of our spiritual evolution to bring us into verticality. In the yogic tradition this is called Kundalini.
So the creative principle’s desire to grow won’t be satisfied until the whole universe has awakened to itself and to its absolute nature. When a human being awakens to the evolutionary impulse and experiences the urgency of that compulsion to evolve, that’s what he or she is feeling—God’s desperation.
That’s why it is not reasonable, and it never will be. God is only as powerful in this world as those of us who have the courage and audacity to awaken in this way—to become one with our own impulse to evolve.
That’s the awesome significance of being a human being who is awake. When you realize this for yourself, you discover what an extraordinary blessing it is to be who you are, in this world, right now.
In fact, the whole point of the creative process is to be here—to participate fully, radically, consciously in the Universe Project. In this evolutionary context, the point of enlightenment is not merely to transcend the world so that you can be free of it but to embrace the world completely, to embrace the entire process as your self, knowing that you are the creative principle incarnate, and you have a lot of work to do. As an individual, you are instantaneously liberated, simply through taking that step, but your personal liberation is a mere by-product of finally embracing the awe-inspiring burden of the Universe Project, which in truth has been yours all along.
When the memory of the basic wholeness of the physiology is restored, any limitations that have arisen in this wholeness automatically dissipate. As long as wholeness is fully awake to its own nature, there is a frictionless flow between wholeness and parts, between the finest impulses of the unmanifest as it sprouts into the manifestations of relative existence, and between its more precipitated expressions in the physical body. When some value of wholeness is lost, however, some value of infinite correlation, of perfect alignment of wholes and parts is lost. It is this loss of perfection that we experience as disease, pain, and suffering.
As Maharishi says, “Our message to the individual to live a well coordinated, integrated life is ‘the intelligence is there inside, within you, which is absolutely, marvelously healthy because it is immortal, it is eternal.’ . . . [We only) need to co-ordinate its relationship with its own expression—the physiology.”’92 In the following, we will explore another consciousness-based healing modality, which pro-vides a further means of enlivening the totality of the physiology, while also targeting and balancing the specific areas in which wholeness has been lost. To explore this healing modality, we need to first develop a deeper understanding of the Vedas and the Vedic Literature.
There is a well-known phrase from the Vedic Literature which reads, Tat sannidhau vairatyagah-“In the vicinity of the settled mind, hostile tendencies fall away.” When a person contacts pure consciousness, a harmonious influence is not only created in his or her own mind; this influence extends to the environment as well, because pure consciousness is the primordial field of wholeness, the essence of everything that exists. When the source of thought is enlivened, all the impulses in the individual’s mind and in the environment start to become aligned with the unbounded field of cosmic intelligence that is the source of all evolutionary impulses in nature. When a sufficiently large number of people contact the field of pure consciousness, it creates a powerful influence of harmony and coherence in the environment.
You ARE THE ONLY ONE who can do this. That’s the ultimately challenging and profoundly liberating truth you discover in Evolutionary Enlightenment. Any individual who is committed to this path has to know, at the deepest level, that he or she is the only one who could possibly do this. And that is because there is no other. You have dis-covered that fact, directly, for yourself. From the absolute or nondual perspective that emerges in spiritual revelation, there is only ONE. There literally is no other; there is only One without a second. To truly understand conscious evolution, you must grapple with the profound implications of that fact.
The greatest challenge for a mortal human being is to realize and take responsibility for the fact that who you are right now, in all your imperfection, is that One without a second, and that One is endeavoring to develop and become more conscious as you. God has fallen out of the sky, but now he, she, or it is emerging as the spiritual impulse and longing to consciously evolve in, through, and as you. So you must ask yourself:
Do I have the guts, the audacity of intention, the boldness of spirit?
Do I have enough love in my heart to be willing to be the One?
The answer to that question is really the answer to every important question.
Who am I?
Why am I here?
Is there a purpose to all this?
All of these questions are answered in the deepest possible way when you point the finger at yourself and say “Yes.”
If we are awake and clear enough, each of us can intuit that universal impulse, experience the river that runs through everything (including us), and locate it in our subjective experience.
“Let’s just say arbitrarily that the sum total of whatever a human being is one hundred percent. Then let’s say we have an individual who out of a hundred percent is five percent awake to the evolutionary impulse or the longing for liberation or the Authentic Self. So then ninety-five percent of the vehicle is being driven, dominated or controlled by the fears and desires of the individual and collective ego. But nonetheless, five percent of that individual is awake to the Authentic Self. That means that that individual, to a small but not insignificant degree, is conscious or aware of the urge to evolve at the level of consciousness.”
Transmutation: Forced Out of One Era
In 2004, physicist Brian Swimme, produced his stunning DVD, “The Ten Powers of the Universe.’ In it, Swimme explains that within the universe itself, ten essential powers or tasks reside within every life form, and he explores how these powers move within humans, how we can align with these powers, how we can recognize the powers of the universe in the world and within each other, and how to develop a deeper intimacy with the Earth. The Ten Powers are essentially: Seamlessness, centration, allurement, emergence, homeostasis, cataclysm, synergy, transformation, inter-relatedness, radiance, transmutation. (A full explanation can be viewed in Swimme’s extraordinary video, “The Powers of the Universe”.”)
Gradual awakening involves a remolding of our self-system, a gradual shift from our old self-system to a new one. The whole purpose of spiritual practice and spiritual paths is to generate that shift. Following spiritual practices and paths slowly dismantles the old self-system, softens its boundaries and heals its discord, allowing a latent wakeful self-system to emerge slowly. This shift doesn’t happen by accident, or through some kind of a realization or “seeing.”
There has to be some kind of inner structural change, which can happen suddenly and dramatically — usually following intense stress or turmoil or gradually, through spiritual practice.
As we progress in self-transcendence, the sense of separation or involvement with the personal mind expands into an awareness of the unique emanation that each of us is as an individualized expression of the One Mind that is everywhere in its fullness. That which is happening cosmically begins to happen through us locally.
In such a state of awareness the plenitude, beauty, peace, joy, bliss, compassion—these transcendent yet eminent qualities of being—are activated within us. It is a process of awakening to our true nature that places us in harmony with the fundamental order of existence. Modern Zen master Huang Po describes the ultimate state of being he calls One Mind in this way: –
All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but One Mind, beside which nothing exists. Only awake to the One Mind.”
This One Mind is the very life force that animates and sustains existence, the evolutionary impulse within the universe and each individual.
The personal mind—predominantly the left side of the brain—wants to figure out how all of this happens. The demand to know how is actually a delaying tactic of the ego, a defense mechanism so that our sense of being a separate self doesn’t dissolve right on the spot! Self-transcendence is our birthright. Everything that we need is already within us, announcing itself through the inner impulsion to grow, develop. and unfold. How do we cultivate an extended awareness of self? First by an identity shift that acknowledges our at-one-ment with the One Mind. We then grow confident in our capacity to become a fully enlightened being. As an enlightened being, we live from a state of cosmic consciousness, a conscious awareness of our oneness with all life.
When we consider current scientific studies of the brain relative to the field of quantum consciousness, the evolutionary possibilities for the individual and our global family are limitless. A genuine state of cosmic awareness expressed through an individual or a whole nation is distinguishable as scientific knowledge of life—life lived in attunement with cosmic laws. Living from such a state of consciousness holds the potential for governing our world by a kind of superwisdom that results in cooperation rather than competition, in unity rather than division, in oneness rather than separation.