For fourteen years I worked episodically, writing a book, attempting an inclusive account of evolution that placed the Hebrew and Christian narratives within a holistic, cosmic framework. It was an ambitious enterprise. I never managed to find a publisher. Perhaps elements of what I have written will eventually find their way into a simpler, more publishable book. Meanwhile, I will post sections of the book here, ingredients of my faith in unadulterated love.
Copernicus and Newton
From Copernicus (1473-1543) to Newton (1643-1727) to contemporary physics humankind has been learning about the invisible effect of fields, of gravity, magnetism, light, atoms, and particles. We live, most of us, unconscious that these fields are a reality without thinking about them. My spiritual imagination is now formulated to think of my existence as being within fields of energy that are invisible but felt and subtly, potently active. The idea that there are fields of energy present in creation finds its roots in Newton’s imagination, taking seriously the work of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler.
Isaac Newton believed that nature was entirely passive and God the sole source of activity. A sovereign God was the mechanic central to the existence of this system, the primal force which had set the infinite and intricate system in motion and alone accounted for the universe. Newton had been equally anxious to rid Christianity of mystery which he equated with ignorance and superstition. The new science was making a literal and mechanical understanding of Christian doctrine crucial to the conception of God. If space was unchangeable and infinite, where did God fit in? Was not space itself somehow divine, possessing as it did the attributes of eternity and infinity? At the time there was no clear distinction between alchemy and science. Newton retained an interest in alchemy and in his Hypothesis of Light of 1675, he posited the existence of ether to transmit forces between particles. Later, he replaced the ether with occult forces based on ideas of attraction and repulsion between particles, returning to the old Platonic doctrine of emanation. Since God is infinite he must exist everywhere. Space is an effect of God’s existence, emanating eternally from the divine omnipresence.
Newton’s scientific imagination understood that invisible forces had to be present to account for gravity but these scientific ideas clashed with what the Church taught about God. Newton’s continuing belief in alchemy and occult forces would seem to us to be superstitious, believing in something not congruent with Christian belief, and yet this openness to occult, invisible forces enabled him to develop his theories. He was beginning to identify forces that would lead to today’s quantum field theories.
Faraday and Einstein – electrical, magnetic and gravitational fields
In the next century Michael Faraday (1791-1867) introduced the concept of fields that give form or organisation to energy flows. He theorised the concept of electrical and magnetic fields that had invisible lines of force and spheres of influence in space. When Einstein (1879-1955) developed his model of the universal gravitational field the field concept was extended to the entire universe, not something in space and time but something that is space and time, the context in which everything happens. With the splitting of the atom in the late nineteenth century and of the atomic nucleus in the early twentieth, physics demolished the view that all of reality is built of indivisible blocks. The notion of “matter” became problematic. The sub-atomic particles that emerged when atoms and atomic nuclei were fissioned did not behave like conventional solids; they had a mysterious connection known as “non-locality,” and a dual nature consisting of wavelike as well as particle-like properties.
Quantum field theory
More recently, quantum field theory extended the idea of fields into the essence of matter, the behaviour of electrons and protons. Fields and energy have come to be seen as more fundamental than matter in describing the essence of the universe. Electrons and protons are dynamic entities, vibratory structures of the activity of energy bound within fields. Energy gives things, all things, their activity and ability to interact, and fields give them shape, form and organisation. All self-organising systems in the universe are formed in the interplay of energy and fields, including molecules, microbes, plants, animals, human beings, human societies, ecosystems, planets, solar systems and galaxies.
Coherence
Another property of these energy and field systems has been identified, that of coherence. All the parts of an energy system are so finely adjusted to each other that a change in any one of them introduces changes in all the others. The changes propagate through the system quasi-instantly and are enduring in some way everywhere throughout the system.
My Christian, contemplative, mystical faith
These ideas have fascinated me for decades. I understand their implications for my faith and constructs of God and reality even if I don’t understand the scientific details of what is being described. This is the real world in which I live. Physics is exploring and discovering mysteries and realities that are invisible and somewhat incomprehensible to me. Christianity persists in describing God and in promoting theologies that don’t make any sense at all to me given my intelligent understanding of what we are discovering about the universe and the essence of matter. My spirituality explores the world that is being revealed and is integrated with what I have learnt from my Christian tradition about the orthodox ideas of the non-being of God and the deep trust that Wisdom teachers place in human experience, imagination and vision. As a result I am deeply committed to a daily spiritual practice of deep presence and awareness, enriching my being in pursuit of love, truth, justice and peace.
The Big Bang – the Universe as a Field system
At the moment of the Big Bang, we may imagine a Field of Energy coming into being, a field that evolved over billions of years into the various specific energy fields that we have discovered and are continuing to discover, gravity, light, magnetism, sub-atomic particles, fundamental building blocks that explain how the coherent relationship between elements of matter in the universe is maintained. The Big Bang released into existence an energy field we live in and name as the Universe.
Human energy fields – living ‘as if’
Every one of us is an individual, personal, human field of energy. I live as if these and other fields are a reality we are beginning to learn about and accept. I have learnt to use these ideas and constructs as an integral part of my Christian faith, further evolving my spiritual and contemplative practice. It is, if you like, a theory, a working model of reality about which we are learning more and more. I understand that I am responsible for the quality and effect of my energy field and its effect on other people. The way I behave and relate is an integral part of my contemplative practice. This is me living as a work in progress within a work in progress ‘as if’ unconditional love is the essence of energy in the universe.
I’m inviting you to make a big leap with me as I introduce ideas that my rational, scientific, evidence-based, but Christian faith-believing-self would not have countenanced fifty years ago, dismissing them as New Age fantasies. That was before I learnt a lot more about myself when training for ordained ministry in a theological college where meditation, silence and the mystical tradition was integral and then later, as a psychotherapist in a body-centred school. It shouldn’t have taken such a big leap of faith for a Christian to trust in forces and experiences unknown, unseen, and unverifiable until recently by science, but it did. Western, white, European Christianity is so head-centred and dependent on Jesus and God as concrete entities having an existence in reality of which the Bible text and revelation experiences are proofs, that it’s hard both to overcome the dogmatic belief system of Christianity and at the same time be radically open to mystical experience and scientific theories which effectively fall into the same category.
God the Mystery
We now live in a complex world with competing scientific and religious narratives about what is “real.” Recent speculative, imaginative theorising has given rise to models of an integral, holistic, seamless field of consciousness and energy in the universe. The model proposes that the energy unleashed in the Big Bang included an in-formation field of energy. At the Big Bang both matter and intention came into being setting in train a process leading after billions of years to the evolution of life forms with conscious awareness, intelligence and emotions. Adopting the idea of an in-formation energy field that is invisibly and subtly responsible for the creative evolutionary developments that we have identified in tracing evolutionary history has given me a working model that underpins my contemplative practice. The Mystery, ‘God’, the sacred, divine essence in creation, together with the humanistic, Christian values of hope, justice, relationality, humility, compassion and love, have emerged, intrinsically, subtly, in creation and evolution and are integral to our humanity, the essence of our being that the Master, Jesus the teacher of wisdom, embodied in his essence and life..