We live in an age hungry for a new universe story, a grand cosmology that reconciles the Creation Story with Evolution, and scientific understanding with religion.
Such a narrative, if credible, would be nothing short of the mother of all cosmologies.
Call it "The Greatest Story Never Told," a subtitle once considered for this book.
I like to think big thoughts.
In the seventh decade of life, I find myself in what developmental psychoanalyst Erik Erikson called the Generative Stage, the next to last stage of psychosocial development.
It is that phase of life when a person is inspired to contribute something of lasting value for the benefit of future generations.
For a writer, that might involve offering clarity of vision and direction in some way to those who follow.
I had one book in me, this one.
This work is an offshoot of the vocation to which I have been called and gifted.
Every experience in my life, and every encounter have in some way led to its making.
Its content is not for everyone, though hopefully a few may find it relevant or enlightening.
It is born of a passionate curiosity about the inner workings of things, whose origin is in deepest nature, the One (singularity) from which all multiplicity and diversity derive.
In all division, argument, and conflict, all sides are usually dominated more by error than by reality.
That is because the only reality that could be present, were it present, would prevent or resolve the conflict, dissolve the division, and end the argument.
There could be no conflict if all participated in that reality and/or the focused intent to pursue same toward that end.
Deficient by nature in the earnest pursuit of same, and less than comprehensive in understanding, most mortals attempt this by means of argument, each believing his idea is valid.
Such a perspective is tantamount to looking at a tiny segment of reality through a soda straw, defining the whole via a limited perceptual field.
By observing all division and conflict over a lifetime, none more fervent than between religion and science,
it became painfully obvious that said reality (the infallible) has yet to be substantively revealed to the other side.
This book is an attempt to end that conflict, and all human conflicts where differences are preferred, sought, and defended over those of commonality, civility, and union.
While the grand synthesis proposed herein claims no infallibility, it points in the direction where its mysteries may be discovered in nature and supernature.
It is the thesis of this book that both are far from divided.
Rather, they are seamless interbeing realities hidden in plain sight, visible to eyes prepared to see them.
Notions of the inherent interconnectedness and communality of all things are not new, they date to ancient times.
What is new is the proposed synthesis herein that attempts to explain the “how” of their seamless unity.
Medievalists spoke of the “Great Chain of Being,” what is now referred to as the ecosystem, Egg of Life, or Circle of Life.
The chain model is a hierarchy (or continuum), one that preserves the inherent dignity of all things which participate in the divine being in various ways, their center and source.
That center is also their ground of coherence, holding all things together in an enchanted universe.
This view holds to the notion that once the chain is broken, and just one link is not seen or respected as sacred, the vision of its individual sacrality, and place in the whole vision collapses.
When divinity is not acknowledged in all things, the basis is lost for seeing it in anything.
Absent that vision, and reality becomes merely one of private preferences, slanted perspectives, and prejudices with no common ground.
As a result, the Cosmic Egg shatters.
Bonaventure, medieval theologian and prolific author of spiritual treatises wrote,
“God is within all things but not enclosed; outside of all things but not excluded; above all things but not aloof; below all things but not debased.”
If true, the origin, multitude, activity, and order of all things is the very fingerprint and footprint (vestigia dei) of the divine in creation.
And in a way that joins all things to itself by a common universal interbeing element; no exceptions, science and spirituality included.
This book delves into the mystery of that universal interbeing element in which all things consist and hold together.
And with it the very definition of God, God-identity, and Spirit.
~Joe Masterleo
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