Universal Intelligence
Universal Intelligence
I once had a plant in my therapy office that shot seeds across the room, much to the amusement of my clients and myself. I loved how those little seeds would become sudden punctuation marks in a session. Sometimes nature has a sense of humor or demonstrates its intelligence as uncanny timing. Either way, the universe knows precisely how and when to let go.
Every moment, the world is shooting out seeds of becoming. Countless trillions of seeds have been ejected over centuries; only a few have landed in the unfolding drama of my office. Mother Nature has her own generous way of working out what will make it into the next frame. What is she other than that uniquely spontaneous intelligence that runs through everything: seeds, leaves, anchovies, and avalanches?
Nature’s unconditional aliveness is on constant display. Forms that were not there a moment ago arise, dwell, and immediately disperse within the blink of an eye. The old is constantly giving way to the new.
Stop and listen!
What you hear right now is a dynamic universe: sounds blossoming, withering, and dying as part of a flowing microcosmic lifespan that has no beginning or end. Plants, animals, humans, galaxies—all are part of the same process, the manifest emerging from the unmanifest, becoming apparent, then receding back into the void. It’s all one fluid gesture.
The tenth-century Indian sage Saraha said:
Like dust in a dusty tunnel,
That which arises in the mind
Goes to rest in the mind.
Thoughts, emotions, memories, hopes—all arise and return to rest in the here and now, like dust. We say babies “come into the world.” But from where? And we refer to the dead as ‘departed’. So, when we die, do we go somewhere outside this universe? Could our dusty tunnel be part of something bigger than itself, that also arises and disperses?
Many believe consciousness separates the animate from the inanimate. But apart from “doing what comes naturally,” we have no way to consciously and intentionally create our own offspring. Apple trees know how to produce apples—not eggplants. In the course of their creative process, they know how to sprout, attract bees, and rot. Don’t you think it is amazing that monarch butterflies are born knowing how to migrate? No one teaches them. Like us, they do not know what they know.
We might consider ourselves brilliant for planting, watering, and weeding a garden that produces a salad. But do we know how to turn salad greens into skin cells? Why don’t human bodies produce fish bones? A slug eats the same lettuce that we eat, but turns it into slug cells. They can do so day after day without error. Who among us has ever consciously transformed soil, air, and sunlight into a single apple?
A dandelion and a corn sprout might grow inches apart, absorbing the same sun, water, and nutrients. Yet the dandelion contains no trace of corn, nor vice versa. No one, not your priest, not your shaman, not you, nor I, can truly explain why. Yet, the universe knows, and its secret is hidden nowhere and everywhere.
Every sperm contains an incomprehensible blueprint. Only when joined with the egg does its information come to life. Nobody knows exactly how to program the sacred software that produces an infant’s first thought. And yet, all of it arises in the mind and goes to rest in the mind—like dust in the dusty tunnel of time.
If every present thought is born from a previous thought, can anything be utterly original? Is thinking spontaneous, or only the next determined link on a chain of instinct? Am I the “me” I claim to be, or the one I will become? Is the thinker of this thought merely some remnant of some distant ancestor’s dream?
It seems we have no choice but to humbly accept that our bodies were born, grow, and will die within a universe of unknowns. And as for our consciousness, can it actually be separated from the greater intelligence that is all around us? I simply need to leave the faintest trace of food on my kitchen counter, and within ten minutes, hundreds of tiny ants will take part in a feeding frenzy. My body harbors bacteria that will consume me the moment I stop breathing. Deep within an acorn, leaves are waiting to turn green.
We may try to relax and never quite make it. But when we let ourselves listen, we relax into an awareness we can’t truly own. Consciousness of sound does not start with us, nor will it end with us. We are simply the receiver of vibrations, a small section of shoreline meeting an infinite ocean of waves. We claim to be that which knows how to hear, as if we had ever learned the skill, but we are inseparable from the dusty tunnel of immediacy.
Perhaps Mother Nature has to keep her deepest secrets just beyond our conscious reach so that curiosity will force us to grow. But they exist within us, so we have never been separate from them, even for a moment.
How wondrous! How marvelous indeed!