Everything in life is underpinned by an underlying essence. Life is non-existent apart from an essence of aliveness that literally animates all - from the subtlest of sub-atomic particles to all that is known.
Human history overflows with all manner of noble-and-otherwise reflection attempting to determine from whence its aliveness comes and whither its heading. Yet, given all that, what has been and is still rarely considered is life's universal feedback mechanism (UFM) - the mechanism by which life is able to reflect back upon itself entirely apart from human cognition.
Why should this matter to you? Because, it's very existence signifies that humanity's welfare is but one factor among myriads of others the universe accounts for in determining not only whither it goes, but how - in what form and condition.
For evidence of such feedback, how it works and why it matters, continue below the break.
The Sense of being Watched
Have you ever felt like you were being watched? I'm not referring to specific episodes where you thought another person was silently looking at you from behind or some other direction and distance. I'm referring to all the time, under all circumstances - - and no, I'm not referring to the NSA or the like, much as they may want to be like that. Nor am I attempting or wishing to spook you, though it can feel that way.
I'm referring to a sense of nothing going unnoticed in the universe. After all, how is it able to go on in the manner that it does - from the largest macro levels to the subtlest quantum/micro levels - not only maintaining itself but seemingly enriching itself with ever greater variegation of form and content? - - such as the universe continuously expanding, yet always functioning together - with the likes of colliding galaxies and exploding stars, yet settling well into new accommodations and rather predictable routines? - with even seemingly rogue comets and meteors upsetting entire planetary eco-systems while introducing novel elements that enrich the planet with greater variety and complexity; - planetary ecosystems that remake themselves in adapting to new elements, new species, new geological and/or environmental conditions; - global species adaptations in terms of size, shape, coloration, daily and lifespan habits; genetic, bacteriological, and viral adaptations (spontaneous and otherwise) to changing surrounding conditions; - or Earth's own development of an increasingly rich, variegated, sophisticated ecology and inhabitants.
You might respond it all but represents natural selection, causality, stimulus and response at work. And while you may be at least partly right, what is spoken of here entirely transcends such automation. Such mechanics are entirely incapable of accounting for life's deepest currents as we universally experience them. For example: from whence cometh life-tingling aliveness? - breath-taking experiences of utter awe? - spectacular color-strewn vistas of majestic proportions? - unspeakable joy at a newborn's birth? - the propensity to playfulness, levity, laughter and fun? - and to cherish, nurture and beautify our surroundings with evermore creativity and ease? - or the sense of having direction, purpose, meaning and fulfillment? – to name just a few of such deepest currents.
Such experiences utterly fail to jive with a purely mechanized universe. Trust me, you won't find any such deep-flowing currents of life inside any Newtonian clock - cuckoo or otherwise. Neither can they be accounted for by laws of quantum mechanics. However, I have digressed from my main point.
The point concerns not only the utter balance and precision by which all forces in the universe work together - from the greatest to the least of them - but the manner in which this balance comes with continual, precise, rebalancing adjustments all along the way - and not simply for the universe's continuance, but for its furtherance in terms of enhancement, complexity, diversity and sophistication. All this highly suggests that much more than a mere universal-survival-and-maintenance-mechanism is here at work.
Consider well all that we as humans find necessary for furthering anything's increasing enhancement, complexity, diversity and sophistication. Comprehensive insight and oversight of a thing's nature and developmental path comes first and foremost to mind. And what is necessary for such insight and oversight more than the possessing of cognitive abilities like awareness, direct perception, reflection, responsive improvisation, testing and improving?
What computer, computer network, intelligent person, race or species might be capable of such comprehensive, universal insight and oversight? Now there's some cause for jest! However, we have yet to even get to my main point. Ask yourself next, what it is that everything finds completely requisite for developing the very ability to gain a comprehensive insight and oversight into the nature and developmental path of anything? Do you have it yet? It can be nothing short of a thoroughly comprehensive feedback mechanism.
Reflecting back upon Feedback
Without feedback, what good are the faculties of awareness, direct perception, reflection and responsiveness? They all depend utterly and entirely upon it. How else could they justifiably exist? The reverse is likewise true. What good is feedback apart from an awareness to perceive, reflect upon and respond to it? And just as your own body's communication of its needs depend upon having your attention and oversight, what sense does it make of having a universal feedback mechanism existing apart from a larger, living intelligence that it all reports back to?
As such, not only does comprehensive, universal insight and oversight require comprehensive, universal feedback, but the universal evidence of such feedback require the positing of such a comprehensive, universal, overseeing intelligence. As such, the universe is not only continuously telling on you, but it is telling - like the NSA run completely amok - on its entire universal self to an all-seeing, all-knowing intelligence. In other words, the universe is all eyes and ears (and utterly more sensitive and thorough) from the top down to the minutest degree more than is anything else in existence. (As such, it need not surprise us to be told - as we have - that the very hairs of our head are all numbered.) What else could possibly explain such universe-wide responsiveness and adaptability in the process of maintaining a constant upward trajectory of increasing, across the board development from the macro to the micro levels?
You might say, “Okay. Before considering your proposition further, at least allow me to humor you with the following observation and question. My observation is that even the most obscure of quantum energy fluctuations betray their presence by their observable effects upon matter. So, shouldn’t your proposed existence of a UFM likewise be made manifest through an observable effect upon matter, and even-more-so on a universal scale – given its supposed universal nature?”
Two Visible Representations of a UFM
Unbelievably enough, we have just such a qualifying, visible representation provided – not by one, but by two scientific teams, working completely independent of each other, and publishing five years apart, providing us with a tiny glimpse of what a tidbit sample of such a UFM could look like – even though neither team styles their representations as a feedback mechanism. The first representation from 2006 can be seen here: (hover on link below, then click on pop-up box that appears) (then scroll to bottom of linked web page to read: They Look Alike, but There’s a Little Matter of Size). This visual is representing the seemingly, most-likely growth pathways of a tiny segment of the universe’s galaxies in relation to each other. What is highly striking about the result of their computer simulation is how closely it resembles the neural pathways represented by an actual picture of a slice of mouse brain cell. While the computer simulation represents growth pathways and the brain cell picture represents communication pathways, what is relevant to recall is the fact that the communication pathways of brain cells are also representative of their growth pathways. The neural structure you see within the brain cell is the result of its pattern of growth. As such, it is not entirely beyond the pale to entertain the possibility that the growth pathways of the universe might also represent its own neural structure of communication pathways for its UFM.
The second visual representation from 2011 is available here: (hover on link, then click on pop-up box that appears) Cosmic thread that binds us revealed. What I find most fascinating about this very similar depiction is that this team of scientists talk about the growth pathways in terms of interconnecting filaments, as “evidence for the textile that forms the fabric of the Universe.” In other words, though they may represent pathways of the universe’s growth, these pathways contain “vast filament[s] of material that connect…clusters of galaxies, which are similarly interconnected to the rest of the Universe.” Notice further how their computer simulation so eerily corresponds to a simulation of the same done five years before by an entirely different science team, and again how similar it is to the neural, communication pathways of a brain cell.
I offer these only as links because I’ve not pursued permission to use their pictures here. And I don’t offer them in any way, shape or form as any kind of proof of a UFM, but simply as visual representations from prestigious, scientific sources that illustrate its possibility for me. The contentions offered here are hardly being based on these visual, scientific portrayals referenced above. Rather, they are based on observations of universe-wide functions attempted from an all-inclusive, impartial, thorough and consistent point-of-view. The visual graphics simply come in nicely like a bit of frosting on my cake.
What this can Indicate
All the same, what ALL of the foregoing observations - taken together - can very pointedly be taken to indicate (at the very least for me) is that the nature of the universe functions as any other living, intelligent entity - differing only in scale - and as such is best understood and accepted as most highly alive, aware and intelligently so.
Yet, what's even more is that if tingling aliveness, awe, laughter, love, joy and the like - as previously noted - are knowable within the universe, given the existence of a UFM — we’d be wont to expect that their like is known firsthand and direct by the universe itself and hence throughout its entirety - and can differ only - as with us - by a matter of degree. Could any less then be said for the intelligence it all reports back to? I don't know how it could!
To have a universe that is alive, even intelligently so is one thing. To have its intelligent aliveness oriented towards an increase in development, enrichment, diversity and sophistication that is inclusive of awe, laughter, love, joy and the like is the most eminently delightful manner of intelligent aliveness of which one can conceive! Factor in its feedback mechanism, and the universe might be thought and felt of as if it is completely into over-awing itself, tickling its own funny bone, being head-over-heals in love with its love, and overjoyed with its joyfulness! Now if that doesn't tickle your fancy, you're either not paying attention or you're dead to this world.
So why should this matter to you and the world? As was stated in the introduction, the very existence of universal feedback "signifies that humanity's welfare is but one factor among myriads of others the universe accounts for in determining not only whither it goes, but how - in what form and condition." At this junction, we should be wont to ask what factors most importantly in determining the direction, form and condition of the universe. Knowing that, it then becomes possible to discern how well we as humans align with such factors.
Why might we care? In answer, think about it in relation to anything impacting your own designs, creations and possessions. Are they items supportive of your designs and their purposes, or do they serve to largely detract from and diminish them?
In addition, what most likely becomes of such supportive items in your care? Surely you are happy (or at least content) to not only maintain their existence with you, but to take any opportunity to tweak or add to their usefulness, particularly if their make-up allows for a continual accelerated improving and excelling of their qualities - such as we have with various computer programs and plug-ins, and such as our nation has with its federal highway system. And what of those negatively, impacting items? Short of you being a compulsive hoarder, at best you repurpose such via complete recycling or reconfiguring, relaunching and reuse; at worst - you incinerate them with the trash. Yet, that it not to say that all that's trashed is forever lost. Rather, it can but be a matter of returning an item to its basest elements so as to contribute to the "scratch pile" so to speak - the pile of material used for starting things over again or creating completely new things "from scratch."
In summary
To summarize, the very nature of a universal feedback mechanism highly suggests that there is more to this universal essence of aliveness than being that which simply animates or enlivens all form. It's functioning also suggests this essence has purpose and direction for not only the universe's continuance, but for its furtherance in increasing enrichment, complexity, diversity and sophistication - an enrichment which must obviously be inclusive of those deepest life currents of tingling aliveness, awe, laughter, love, joy, creativity, meaning, fulfillment - and the like. Moreover, that being in personal alignment with such essence can make all the difference between being tweaked for excellence, repurposed for modified usage, or reinvented from scratch.
As we learned in the introductory article for this series, the ultimate or guiding direction for anything’s function and purpose is determined by the largest context, a context which is always based on internal values. The fact that we can have no larger of a context than that of universal essence means we ignore its deepest inner-life-currents only to our own risk of being out of alignment, out of sync, out in left field – so to speak, missing the boat of life with all the spectacular wonder it has to endlessly give.
Okay. Big breath. That covered a lot and I (if not you) need a break. At the very least, the supreme importance of being in alignment with this universal essence - i.e. its overall purpose, thrust and direction - should be rather self-evident and obviously so.
Besides, I also feel it best to get your feedback before proceeding further, so as to provide any wanted clarification. Hopefully, a lot of that can happen in the comments below. We'll see. All the same, notice how the very fact of most every article/story here as DKOS allowing for and soliciting comments underscores this article's point about the supreme importance of feedback for gauging further, appropriate response and possible adjustments!
What I will be wont to cover next time is how it might be possible to "get a finger on the pulse" of the universe so as to more accurately discern its purpose and direction, and hence determine our own alignment with it. For motivation, simply note how going with universal flow is much easier, rewarding, fun and fulfilling than trying to function at odds with it. What manner of contrariness could be more idiotic than that - - like earthworms opposing a raging mudslide, night owls picketing the rising of the sun, or humans banding together against the necessity to breathe? As stated in my introductory article,
“Life is not oppressive. Lack of flow is. You cannot be victimized by life when you know how to flow. To flow with it, you must experience and know it as it is – as a life that flows full, free, fresh, forever for and of all.” And further, “to flow in full, conscious alignment with this boundless, irreversible immensity is to flow unstoppably, irresistibly with this unstoppable, irresistible current of all - that - is - always - everywhere - so.”
And what we will be coming to of greatest relevance and interest to political progressives (and more) is how the understanding that comes of this discourse might be best applied to living our lives together on planet Earth. Please understand too that I am fully cognizant of the relativity and conditionality of all so-called "best applications." This is by no means a new form of imposing some manner of "one size-fits-all" idealistic straightjacket. After all, as we've seen, adaptability rather reigns supreme as the Universe's game of choice. Instead, the aim here is to enable all to experience - as my signature line states - "Letting love, life, light flow full, free, fresh, forever for and of all." That is my aim for you and all.
Until then - may you feel well watched over! ☺