Adam Lanka, Contributor
Waking Times

Humanity has always been driven to understand our world and how it works.  Not content to only live it and see it, we are filled with the question of how, and why.  Our history is filled with interpretations and ideas from countless different civilizations.  All the different peoples each have story and a culture through which they interact and relate with the rest of the world.  It is not surprising that we find many similar threads that tie them all together.  Members of our species possess an innate inquisitiveness and intuition with regard to our surroundings.  Through our awareness and observation of the world around us, we started to make connections in our mind, making intuitive leaps.  Humanity is a student of observation, and we began to learn.

Our DNA, for basic survival reasons, makes us organisms that must be constantly aware of our surroundings and environment in order to immediately recognize and respond to any danger or threat.  As such, humans are eternal students of observation, constantly practicing awareness.  This attentiveness, along with our innate inquisitiveness and intuition, naturally led to the cultivation of a further, deeper understanding.  Learning, experimentation, and scientific method are basic products of existence.

Humanity has come a long way since the first trial-and-error ventures of the ancient man.  As we evolved and grew, our methods and effectiveness did as well.  But the more we saw, the deeper our understanding went, the more we desired to know.  Our study of observation turned into a fundamental need to classify the world around us.  With this, we began to divide, we began to separate, we began to name.  We came to the conclusion that to understand something, we must understand its parts and what makes it different.  Born out of our new intent, reason and logic became tools to pick apart the universe.

Many early peoples practiced logic and reason, but perhaps most famous for this is the Greeks.  Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle pioneered the thinking that provides the foundations for our current Western philosophy.  Democritus introduced us to the term atom, heralding an age of awareness of the building blocks of life.  Linnaeus’ binomial nomenclature shattered paradigms, a new taxonomy to further classify and organize the world around us into neat little groups.  Today, we continue to unlock the mysteries of quantum mechanics and explore the subatomic realm, delving into the intricacies and complex mysteries that make up the very fabric of our existence.

But in this journey, in our practice of awareness, we have strayed from the original intent.  Our Western science, with its mighty hammers of logic and reason, has smashed and molded the world around us into a neatly organized system.  We have glorified the tool, anchored it into our society and culture, and placed it upon a pedestal.  Untouchable, infallible, Western science has the answers to all of the questions of our universe, and is the immutable authority upon our existence.  Everything is carefully separated, divided, and classified into its own unique group.  All the parts have been named, and the equation describes anything that we choose to observe.  Having broken everything down and differentiated the world around us, do we now better understand, is the picture now less blurry and indistinct than before?

Western science has deeply delved into all aspects of our existence, and discovered many of the physical constructs that make up the world around us.  We’ve even found many of the basic tools of the universe, the building blocks that create all of the matter in existence.  In our current carefully cultivated comprehension, logic and reason seem to work for the observable universe.  But what of that we cannot see?  What of the energy of the universe that cannot be touched, tasted, felt, watched, weighed, or measured?  In the manner of our study, have we limited our understanding and what we can know?  Yes we have unlocked the quantum nature of the universe, but how does it all work?  With everything we’ve seen and all we that know, we are still presented with more questions.

Inevitably, this invokes the question of the spirit, the quandary of the soul.  According to logic and reason, if something within a model cannot be explained, does that not mean that it is built upon a fundamental fallacy?  That everything in the world, in our universe, is in fact NOT observable, and that so much more lies beyond what we can physically sense.  Western science is fundamentally flawed because it cannot apply its tools beyond the observable universe.  We’ve taken our understanding of one tiny facet of the puzzle, and extrapolated it to apply to the entire picture!

Other cultures have also been students of observation, but they did not necessarily come to the same conclusions.  At some point in time along some other path, these civilizations came to the see paradox that we are encountered with.  Instead of continuing blindly down the same closed path, their models changed and altered to take into account the unseen, the energy behind everything that we can feel and observe.  Buddhism blossomed like a lotus petal, beautifully incorporating the incorporeal.  Daoism laid down the Way and recognizes the chi, the energy of the universe that flows in and around us all.  Many indigenous tribes, the Mayans, Hopi, and Aborigines for example, clearly saw the magic behind the world, and recognized the connection between themselves, the planet, and the universe.  While we struggled to take apart the world, these cultures worked to put it together.

The connection is the same from the bottom up.  Sub-atomic particles, molecules, and cells work together to form the tissues, muscles, and organ systems that make living beings.  Many organisms live together in populations and communities, and along with their surrounding form giant, interdependent ecosystems.   Together, all of these things inhabit our biosphere, and the Earth itself is dependent on the parts of its whole.  But the connection does not stop there.  It extends into space, filled with other planets, stars, and astral bodies, forming our Milky-Way galaxy, one the infinite cycles of energy that fills space.  Everything exists, rotating, vibration, propagating onwards in harmony, in a complex myriad of connections.

The infinite vastness of space is daunting, a body of endless magnitude where we are only the tiniest grand of sand.  But behind everything, in the void of space, there is not nothingness, not emptiness, but energy, and endless potential.  Einstein was right: everything exists in the universe as matter and energy.  If something is not found in the physical, observable state of matter, then it must be energy, and moving as a wave.  It is not merely enough to say that this energy surrounds us, or engulfs us.  We ARE this energy.  We arise out of its gentle embrace.  The universe is the means through which this energy is expressed.

Contrary to the separation and the division implied by Western science, our entire world is connected, and full of organisms and particles that work together, in harmony.  As everything is energy, there is no separation, just a giant, cosmic spectrum of potentiality.  In our world, afflictions and problems of humanity are not external, isolated incidents that affect only the given people.  Our planet is dependent upon all of its parts, and something that affects one part of humanity affects us all.  No longer must we emphasize the differences and isolationism, but the similarities and the symbiosis.  We are not alone in life, on our planet, or in the universe.  We are all one.

About the Author

Adam Lanka, originally from North Carolina, is a traveling philosopher, energetic arts healer, and lightworker.  His passion and interest in the spiritual path has led him to many insightful revelations about religion, spirituality, and how to walk nobly in these modern times.  To learn more about Adam, please visit his personal blog,The Wanderlust.