Cells that act like unique, adaptable organisms...

[AshvinP]

With respect Ashvin, I've got to ask if you in normal consciousness see 'inanimate' nature as comatose? I confess that I can't imagine it that way.

Yes. I can't imagine how humanity could interact with nature as it has in the modern era without seeing it as comatose. I am referring to mineral aspect of nature and not plant life, although we treat plant life rather poorly as well. Animal life for that matter too.

I am speaking of pure mineral life. Here, on this volcanic island, I see plants growing out of lava rocks everywhere. Can one look at a crystal and see it as comatose? Perhaps, but....

Yes yes, we all see the life and love and beauty in all of nature all of the time... or at least that's our story and we're sticking to it.

[Lou Gold]

To be clear, I do imagine it takes a certain insensitivity to slaughter -- other humans, animals, plants and rocks -- but a strip mine looks like an open wound to a living being to me.

Perhaps synchronously, last night I made a black-and-white image from a color photo of the local seashore. The photoshop conversion filter allows one to adjust each color value separately. In this image, I converted the bright greens in the foreground to white, highlighting that plants turn light into life and can grow out of lava rocks.

[Lou Gold]

Yes. I can't imagine how humanity could interact with nature as it has in the modern era without seeing it as comatose. I am referring to mineral aspect of nature and not plant life, although we treat plant life rather poorly as well. Animal life for that matter too.

I am speaking of pure mineral life. Here, on this volcanic island, I see plants growing out of lava rocks everywhere. Can one look at a crystal and see it as comatose? Perhaps, but....

Yes yes, we all see the life and love and beauty in all of nature all of the time... or at least that's our story and we're sticking to it.

Do you mean you don't subscribe to the story of inanimate nature as comatose?

[AshvinP]

I am speaking of pure mineral life. Here, on this volcanic island, I see plants growing out of lava rocks everywhere. Can one look at a crystal and see it as comatose? Perhaps, but....

Yes yes, we all see the life and love and beauty in all of nature all of the time... or at least that's our story and we're sticking to it.

Do you mean you don't subscribe to the story of inanimate nature as comatose?

I was just using "comatose" as an example of how we no longer see the conscious activity happening within the mineral world. It takes spiritual discipline and practice to uncover the interior of that world. The average person in the modern world barely recognizes the interiority of another human being, or avert their eyes so as not to create the conditions in which they could recognize it. Like I said, I have never actually seen or experienced a person in a coma.

[Simon Adams]

Perhaps the concept of Autopoiesis or "self organizing" can help. Your petri dish image made me think about the work of the evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis who was once married to Carl Sagan and who co-authored The Gaia Hypothesis with James Lovelock. For a more metaphysical spin see the many works and youtubes of Rupert Sheldrake who speculates as a biologist and a Christian. One of my oft-expressed beefs at the forum is the bias toward the abstractions of math, physics, QM and an under-representation of the messy messages of biology. In my personal lingo received in a Daime session early in my forum participation, the issue was stated as, "No Mother!"

Yes I said the idea of planets and stars having something similar to living forms seemed unlikely, but there is something about this idea that I find difficult to reject as well. I’ve always found Lovelock’s “Gaia” to make some sense - even as an atheist IIRC (which is strange in itself). I was reminded of this when I read recently about the earth’s ‘seismic heartbeat’. Of course it’s likely this has a far more rational explanation than any ‘biological’ type heart beat, but it did remind me of Gaia and the whole idea of the earth as something more like a living form.

There is even a psalm that says “Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars”, which may just be a poetic call for all creation to praise the creator, but again there is something compelling about it which perhaps doesn’t immediately seem to fit into a BK type of idealism. There appear to be different types of (mental/spiritual) forms at different scales, which are indeed all connected in a kind of formless substrate, but as well as this horizontal dimension, there is a vertical dimension which is just as real, and it’s the movement along this vertical plane, from the divine, into and through each form, that brings order out of chaos and gives rise to all things.

[Simon Adams]

I have been fortunate enough to never have seen a person in a coma, but I wonder if the feeling is anything similar to viewing inanimate Nature in our normal waking consciousness. If they are both in a deep 'sleep' of seeming unconsciousness. And if just as a person can come out of a coma, the forms of the mineral world can be reanimated by our higher modes of consciousness.

I had to have my cat put down last weekend, which was really hard as she was a brilliant creature, full of life and character and much loved not just by us but by all the people on my road that she regularly visited. The vet gave her an injection to relax her, then an overdose of a painkiller. I could tell clearly that she was still alive after the vet expected her to have gone, because I was looking into her eyes. She was not moving but she was there. The vet checked her heart and confirmed she was still alive, and in a bit of a panic got another injection ready. After that was given, she gave out a breath, and even though her eyes remained open, I could tell she had then gone.

So I don’t think the person in a coma is relevant, as they are clearly still alive? To me it seems there is a point where the unity of the natural form and the living form separate, where the natural form returns to the earth.

[Lou Gold]

Perhaps the concept of Autopoiesis or "self organizing" can help. Your petri dish image made me think about the work of the evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis who was once married to Carl Sagan and who co-authored The Gaia Hypothesis with James Lovelock. For a more metaphysical spin see the many works and youtubes of Rupert Sheldrake who speculates as a biologist and a Christian. One of my oft-expressed beefs at the forum is the bias toward the abstractions of math, physics, QM and an under-representation of the messy messages of biology. In my personal lingo received in a Daime session early in my forum participation, the issue was stated as, "No Mother!"

Yes I said the idea of planets and stars having something similar to living forms seemed unlikely, but there is something about this idea that I find difficult to reject as well. I’ve always found Lovelock’s “Gaia” to make some sense - even as an atheist IIRC (which is strange in itself). I was reminded of this when I read recently about the earth’s ‘seismic heartbeat’. Of course it’s likely this has a far more rational explanation than any ‘biological’ type heart beat, but it did remind me of Gaia and the whole idea of the earth as something more like a living form.

There is even a psalm that says “Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars”, which may just be a poetic call for all creation to praise the creator, but again there is something compelling about it which perhaps doesn’t immediately seem to fit into a BK type of idealism. There appear to be different types of (mental/spiritual) forms at different scales, which are indeed all connected in a kind of formless substrate, but as well as this horizontal dimension, there is a vertical dimension which is just as real, and it’s the movement along this vertical plane, from the divine, into and through each form, that brings order out of chaos and gives rise to all things.

Yes! And there's no necessary conflict with the Judeo-Christian notion of a Creator if one understands Nature as an expression of God's glory. After all is said, can anything be not God?

[Lou Gold]

Yes yes, we all see the life and love and beauty in all of nature all of the time... or at least that's our story and we're sticking to it.

Do you mean you don't subscribe to the story of inanimate nature as comatose?

I was just using "comatose" as an example of how we no longer see the conscious activity happening within the mineral world. It takes spiritual discipline and practice to uncover the interior of that world. The average person in the modern world barely recognizes the interiority of another human being, or avert their eyes so as not to create the conditions in which they could recognize it. Like I said, I have never actually seen or experienced a person in a coma.

Well, I think you just did a bit of word wiggling but it does not matter really. I guess if you want to approach the mineral world via higher level practices aimed at discovering interiority it might be possible to connect with a living mountain or river. However, it might be more direct to consult the Animist tradition and its practitioners. If this interests you, "Becoming Animal" by philosopher David Abram would be a great work to consult.

As for our present sorrowful state, I offer a poem:

TO OUR LAND
BY MAHMOUD DARWISH
TRANSLATED BY FADY JOUDAH

To our land,
and it is the one near the word of god,
a ceiling of clouds
To our land,
and it is the one far from the adjectives of nouns,
the map of absence
To our land,
and it is the one tiny as a sesame seed,
a heavenly horizon ... and a hidden chasm
To our land,
and it is the one poor as a grouse’s wings,
holy books ... and an identity wound
To our land,
and it is the one surrounded with torn hills,
the ambush of a new past
To our land, and it is a prize of war,
the freedom to die from longing and burning
and our land, in its bloodied night,
is a jewel that glimmers for the far upon the far
and illuminates what’s outside it ...
As for us, inside,
we suffocate more!

[Simon Adams]

Yes! And there's no necessary conflict with the Judeo-Christian notion of a Creator if one understands Nature as an expression of God's glory. After all is said, can anything be not God?

For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

[Lou Gold]

Yes! And there's no necessary conflict with the Judeo-Christian notion of a Creator if one understands Nature as an expression of God's glory. After all is said, can anything be not God?

For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

Cool poem. I like. Who wrote or received it?