TAMIL NATION LIBRARY:  Unfolding Consciousness
 

• Find Your God - A Pilgrim's Guide to the Cosmos - Jack Rauahala

[see also From Matter to Life to Mind: An Unfolding Consciousness ]

Book Note

The author: "The meaning of the cosmos is its purpose. The purpose of the cosmos is its meaning." Drawing on challenging ideas from the world of science and from the profound traditions of mysticism and spirituality, a new, and yet ancient, definition of God emerges.

The book investigates when, where, how and why consciousness appears. It probes the levels of animal and human consciousness and how species relate and communicate with each other. It follows and records the growth of awareness and sensitivity during the author’s own spiritual pilgrimage. The book explores the sometimes-bizarre coincidences and synchronicities that occur as we move closer to the Tao, the implicate order of the Cosmos. It examines the paradox of the mind-brain problem as revealed by recent research into Near Death Experiences. The mind-brain question is also approached through quantum physics research. New ideas regarding the mind-brain problem arise, ideas that help formulate more precise questions about the nature of our consensus reality.

The book is replete with examples of mystical insights that help to remove the mystery from this broad field of spiritual study and practice. The author’s experiences of altered states of consciousness, including meditation, dreams and personal visions, are recounted so that everyone can understand the esoteric terms of mysticism and better appreciate his or her own experiences.

The urgent need for humankind to attain higher levels of awareness is a constant theme and the author draws on the spiritual insights of the great minds of science, from Einstein to the following quote by Dr.Danah Zohar to reinforce this call for change.

"There is a spiritual interpretation of God here that goes beyond the Judeo Christian myth. In my work, I have been examining what went on after the big bang and reconciling the idea of God with quantum theory. What’s so exciting is the way in which it reveals consciousness built into the cosmos from the very beginning.

It is part of the move away from a God separate from the universe a sort of chemist shaking a test tube to the idea of a transforming God who is himself transformed. This may well provide a new version of spirituality for people to replace the old creation myth. It fits in well with the strong anthropomorphic principle which says that consciousness was built into the cosmos from the beginning, and with good reason."

The book, Find Your God, concludes with the radical idea that there is no enlightenment. There is only continuous enlightening because reality is a verb, a process, a reaching for total communion with the Consciousness of the Cosmos.

If the cosmos is a giant thought process, as Sir James Jeans speculated, the author of the book, Find Your God, urges: "My God, keep thinking."