The story of Genesis was written during a time of major change across the Middle Eastern and Asian areas, and perhaps even the Americas (e.g., the Mayan and Aztec Civilizations). It was written at the time that civilizations began and we moved out of our tribal societies, which, as evidenced by those societies still in existence today, could romp about buck naked without even a blush.
If we use a wave as a metaphor for the movements in history, perhaps we can get that this movement portrayed in Genesis has a beginning, an apex and a decline. Perhaps then our alienation could become lessened while we reclaimed our place as sacred beings living in paradise?
The decline in this wave is evidenced by works such as Talbot's Holographic Universe; Capra's Tao of Physics; or Watt's The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. In other words, the works of these people reflect a major movement in the universe that operates as a whole and not as a series of independent parts.
As such, Alan Watts states that "the whole is a pattern, a complex wiggliness, which has no separate parts" p. 97. Though you may be in California and I in Maine, we are united in a pattern in which we are not separate. Perhaps this unity exists on several dimensions. On the everyday level, you and I may appear to be independent systems. Yet if we go deeper into our function in relation to the planet, we exist as cells within the Earth's system of atmospheric maintenance.
Furthermore, as you go deeper into matter, you eventually come to a point where you realize you and the world are infinite. The epistemological question thus becomes, how can you and I exist side-by-side if we are both infinite? How can the infinite exist side-by-side with itself?
In myth, this is why the beginning of the universe is a bifurcation. Thus, in Genesis 1, once Light is born, God divides that Light from the Dark. In my interpretation of this line, the separation was of Manifest (Light-Created) from the Unmanifest (Dark-Uncreated). And, from that primary bifurcation, the universe is formed in an exponential multiplication leading to the infinite diversity we see before us.
This mirrors fetal development. In each one of our beginnings, our single celled egg first divides into two and from there winds up becoming the uncountable cells of our body. All of this from the desirous light in mom's and dad's eyes.
And the universal creation? According to many myths Desire or Eros arose from the primordial void which then led to all this. Again, how the universe begins and how we begin and how this article begins is the same". Desire comes upon us and we conceive.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
