Panpsychism
“Everything,
living or not, is constituted from elements having a nature that is both
physical and nonphysical, that is capable of combining into mental wholes. So
this reductive account can also be described as a form of panpsychism: all the
elements of the physical world are also mental…”
Thomas
Nagel
Panpsychism (pronounced: pan-psych-ism) is a theory that all things are connected; that all things are created from the same elements, and that matter may be made of more than protons and electrons. It may also contain consciousness. We know from scientific studies that trees “communicate” with one another through a network of underground fungi, and that all things, including rocks, have an energetic vibration. When I was in training with Carol Proudfoot, we spent whole days consulting with the other inhabitants of the planet—including the animal kingdom, plants, even rocks.
I have made peace with the wasps that live around my house—they
seem to know who I am and that I am not a threat to them and so they leave me
alone. I have never been stung by one. I had a teacher named Janet Evergreen in
Charlottesville, a graduate of the Barbara Brennen School, who once, when we
were in consultation, reached into a pot of boiling water and pulled out a dropper
bottle to use for mixing essential oils. When I asked if she burned her hand,
she replied, “Oh, no, I’ve made peace with fire.”
Once,
when I was working with the autistic child of an Indian physician, she told me that
her sister had just come from the ashram of the Sai Baba. The woman had gone
with a group of women and spent a week in the ashram. The morning they were to
leave, the Sai Baba was told they were going, and on the spot, he materialized sarongs for each
of them—out of thin air. One of the conditions for beatification is that the
candidate must have performed a documented miracle. There are more than 10,000
saints, and only 11 of them are Americans. Perhaps we are so wedded to rationality
that we can’t see beyond it. Albert Einstein, arguably the greatest theoretical
physicist of all time, worked for years on his theory of relativity without
coming up with the equation. Finally, it came to him—in a dream.
All
this is to say that not everything fits into our rational scientific world. There
is so much we do know, and so much more that we don’t, or at least, that we can’t
prove. Panpsychism fills in the gap between what we can prove, and what we know
but cannot prove. It assumes that all is one, and that all things in the
universe, both matter and non-matter, are connected by universal consciousness—what
some call the “world soul.”
I choose to believe this
because it feels right, and because it produces in me a state of wonder and
deep gratitude for the intelligence that binds us all.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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