What is Nature? Pt. II

Beyond the idea of a mechanistic Nature

The first part of this essay on Nature ended with the romantic philosophy of the German idealists, like Goethe and Schelling. I consider their phenomenological approach a step further in the right direction, which can help us overcome the crisis of our relationship with Nature and Earth. However, the philosophers’ and poets’ approach is necessary but remains an insufficient one. Philosophy can connect with the spirit but remains still an intellectual activity. Poetry can be a powerful means to submerge us into the atmosphere and vibration of the inner spiritual form of knowing, but much too often is hijacked by the mind and ego of the poet. While, what is necessary is a second shift that allows us to make an inner turn that connects the outer and inner realms, the physical with the immanent, and the immanent with the transcendent. This also we can only elucidate using a philosophical, or mystical language that, in and of itself, does not make someone lead to that inner turn. The words are intrinsically limited. Nevertheless, words can be pointers and might help us to go beyond them by a turn towards the domains of our deeper heart and spirit.

We saw in the last post how Goethe wonders: “Her [Nature’s] life is in her children; but where is the mother?” - “She performs a play; we know not whether she sees it herself, and yet she acts for us, the lookers-on."

Here Goethe’s limitation becomes evident. He intuitively feels that while Nature gives birth, it feels like she couldn’t have done that alone. We know she performs a play, but we wonder whether there is anything or anyone consciously experiencing that play other than the human lookers-on. What the natural philosopher here feels, intuits, and perceives is a sort of vague incertitude that marvels whether it is capturing the tail of some much deeper truth or if it has fallen prey to a trick of the mind.

Schelling came a step closer. He recognized how it is our separation from Nature that makes it appear to us so differently, not how Nature presents us to our senses.

“So long as I myself am identical with Nature, I understand what a living Nature is as well […].” “As soon, however, as I separate myself, and with me everything ideal from Nature, nothing remains to me but a dead object […]”
F.W.J. Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature - (1797), p.38

There is an inner movement, a psycho-spiritual internal cognitive non-intellectual process that allows us to switch our perception from something being dead to something (or should we rather say ‘someone’?) being alive. There is something twofold in nature that we still struggle to fully apprehend and comprehend. It is not new information or new knowledge that allows us to literally “see” this, but it is an inner heart-based and intuition-based cognitive movement that switches from one mode to another, like the vase-face Gestalt figure that is always the same and yet appears to us in a complementary two-foldness.

Nature: A dead vase, or two alive faces?

That’s why also simple-minded hearts without any intellectual preparation can see clearly through the veil of sensory appearances, while an erudite biology professor might be utterly unable to discern in Nature other than a dead universal clockwork.

Schelling also goes a bit further.

“All merely embryonic life is in itself full of yearning and desires to be elevated out of the mute and inactive unity and into the expressed and acting unity. In this way we see Nature yearning. In this way the Earth so ardently sucks the force of heaven to itself. In this way the seed strives toward light and air in order to gather a spirit for itself. In this way flowers sway in the rays of the sun in order to shine the rays back as fiery spirit and as color.” - Schelling (Ages of the World, p. 72).

There are the yearnings and the desires that subconsciously feel that there must be something to be elevated. Something that wants to evolve, persist, and continue to exist. What we commonly call the ‘instinct of survival.’ On the one hand, there is something mute and inactive, and, on the other hand, something expressive and active. There is a heaven that the Earth seems not to be part of. A strange polarity that we can observe in the seed and the flower rooted in the dark and seemingly spiritless soil that, nevertheless, strive towards the light as if in search of a spirit.

There is a clear perception of a two-foldness, a dichotomy, and a split that we can’t rationally fully explain. It is this gap that remains to be closed. It is this two-foldness that we must learn to get into contact with.

In my view, the deepest perception and most integral vision of what Nature really is beyond our sensory appearances comes from the Indian mystic and poet Sri Aurobindo. Let me exemplify its essence as follows.

The first step to take is to allow ourselves to detach from a materialistic understanding of the world unable to see beyond and unwilling to look beyond the anthropocentric and exclusively physical sense-mind based standpoint. It is that of recognizing, feeling, and intimately perceiving how, ultimately, consciousness is the primary and the ultimate essence of all there is. The very foundation of all existence is the Spirit, the Conscious Soul, the Divine, God, or however we might call it. This is not posited by an intellectual discourse or logical inference but becomes the self-evident truth of things if we detach from a physical mind-based perception of reality that transcends the limited analytic and intellectual separative physical consciousness.

The second step is to reconsider the nature of Nature. Because the word ‘Nature’ has acquired many meanings in our contemporary culture, its deeper significance in an integral view is very different. What it is not meant to be here is a simplistic natural identification from a merely biological and material perspective—that is, we are talking about something which goes beyond an image that sees life and the physical cosmos with its physical laws as a display of ‘nature’. It is a nature (lower case ‘n’) we implicitly assume much too often as being separate from us as if we are not part of it as well. Needless to say, it is precisely this conceptual separation between humankind and Nature that stands behind the environmental issues we are facing today. While Nature (capital ‘N’), in its integrality, encompasses all the manifestation, from the most material to the most subtle planes of existence, from the stone to the individualized mind as the universal consciousness in its dynamic play, and of which the human is clearly part. Nature is here conceived in a much wider sense. If we take a phenomenological approach to Nature–that is, establish not only an intuitive perception but also a heart connection–we intimately perceive, see, and know that beyond the appearances of a seemingly mechanistic and physical expression of blind material processes, there is an active and conscious force at work. If we carefully go into our soul-perceptive mode, we “see” clearly a Knowledge and Will standing behind Nature’s creative impulse. A higher Idea works behind the scenes in an apparently ideal-less world.

It is from our relationship with the Spirit in and of Nature from which we have to start. In an integral view, we discover how the mechanical Nature that is visible to our physical senses—is the other pole of existence of Nature only “visible” to more subtle senses. It is neither separate nor other than the Divine; rather, it is the Divine itself in a manifestation of dualities. Nature is the Absolute that presents itself in itself and, on the lower hemisphere of conscious existence, seemingly other than itself. Once we take this perspective, we see, feel and know that in Nature there is something that inherits a fundamental Unity.

On the one hand, is an aspect of Nature with its temporal, spatial, and material manifestation in an evolutionary process in diversity and multiplicity, which seems to have lost itself in an unconscious and mechanical universe. That kind of superficial existence that science studies and technology exploits. On the other side stands the poet and the artist who inwardly perceive a different vibration and contact with the very same reality, but rarely can be fully expressed perfectly and is much too often as a sentimental impulse.

Instead, from the integral perspective, both standpoints are united, not as contradictions but rather as complementary poles.

The two approaches are different (rather narrow) windows through which the very same reality is seen. They seem irreconcilable and mutually exclusive only because of the separative tendency of the mind, which admits only matter, or only spirit, or only itself. Integrality cannot be realized because, in the background, the mind remains the primary cognition tool that compels us to make a choice. Whereas, if one looks at things from an integral perspective, one can not only look through these windows simultaneously but, by accepting the intuitional and spiritual cognition, recognize them as low-level entries that can be widened and surpassed if at least the conception of higher forms of cognition is allowed.

We can then feel the presence and action of a ‘Nature-Soul’ which expresses itself as a Will in the cosmic play. Nature is an instrument for the expression of the Divine consciousness, but not something separated by it. It is the Power of the Spirit, the executive Consciousness-Force and cosmic Consciousness-Energy, or Shakti, and is the origin and cause of all dynamical activity in the temporal manifestation. Where one acquires the feeling of oneness and interconnection with everyone and everything. It is the experience of a limitless feeling of commonality between the so-called ‘inanimate’ and the animate. It is about a deep psychic connection with all life and profound embodied oneness. Everything becomes an emanation of Nature and, at the same time, emanates a light and a force that goes beyond the ordinary light and force. Nature is no longer a dead huge cosmic clockwork but a pulsation of life and something beyond life. Everything is permeated by an energy, a consciousness, and an intelligence we are normally blind to, even if it is right in front of us.

Something on the line of David Bohm’s implicate and explicate order. Bohm might have sensed something and was trying to translate it into the language of particle physics. However, here we are not referring to a universe made only of particles interacting holistically. The twofold aspect of Nature goes way beyond that of a model made of chunks of matter interacting among themselves (however, holistically, non-locally, entangled, or whatever). Matter and particles are only the very last rung of a ladder that goes much deeper (or higher, if you prefer) than punctuated entities in space and time. Because, in this view, the lower hemisphere of the mechanical Nature is the alter-ego of its higher hemisphere–that is, that of a conscious, intelligent, and goal-directed Nature. The inner contact with Nature furnishes us a comprehensive vision of both polarities. A seemingly unconscious universal clockwork in a domain of duality, division, separation, and limitation. On the other side, something we can feel and get into contact with that acts through this polarity but is not based on fragmentation. It is the silent perception and reception of something, THAT “something,” that penetrates us by admiring a landscape or observing the vastness of the celestial sphere, or just by listening to the bird’s song. There is more than just poetry. Paradoxes arise because the mind accepts only one standpoint—preferably, its own sense-mind point of view—and has the inherent tendency to exclude all others. It is not just a matter of choice; it is in the very nature of the mind to opt for one or the other truth because of its separative and distinction-based cognition. The mind always struggles to combine diverging truths that it sees as incompatible and contradictory.

Yet, there is a Unity, a Spirit, and a Beauty that deserves respect and contemplation. It is this lack of identification with this higher Nature that has led us to the ruthless exploitation of the environment. It is the lack of inner contact that leaves us indifferent to the killing of billions of animals in slaughterhouses or to the destruction of biodiversity. Our inner perception is deaf and insentient because we learn about Nature only in biology textbooks that examine only the ‘lower Nature’ acting in the form of mechanical forces with individualized particles–that is, through division and limitations, but are not encouraged to establish a link with the ‘higher Nature’ which acts by unification and by transcending limitations, working in and by a divine Force and Unity in diversity. One is the supra-conscious aspect of Nature which upholds the other mental, subconscious, or inconscient aspect of itself. The higher-Nature reconciles, unites in oneness, and works on the lower-Nature life, mind, and matter to uplift it into its inherent light, force, and joy. The higher-Nature has a wider self-guiding consciousness and a vaster force, while the lower-Nature has become more mechanical and deterministic, being apparently ruled by blind forces because it is an involved form of itself. This twofold aspect of Nature is also reflected in a twofold evolutionary process: an unfolding from below by a spirit in ignorance that ascends the vertical ladder of consciousness in a still unconscious or only semi-conscious hemisphere and a dynamic action from above ruled by a Spirit of knowledge descending the ladder from a supraconscious higher hemisphere.

This is not an abstract philosophy but can become a lived experience and a fact. It is THIS, after all, what subconsciously keeps the environmental movements alive, despite all the setbacks. It is what fascinates many about the understanding of Nature by indigenous people. We know that they still have a connection with the higher Nature and nurture a love and respect for it. An inner sensitivity that the modern ‘homo technologicus’ has lost and that the indigenous cultures still dimly are able to connect with. Something that we might have lost as early as 100,000 years ago when the Earth entered its last ice age. At some point in our evolutionary journey as prehistoric humans, we might have been much more ‘spiritual’ and ‘intuitive,’ living on a higher state of consciousness (whatever these words might mean) than what we are nowadays. But the mind, the intellect, the rational and analytic faculty had still to be developed fully, and an evolutionary relapse was necessary.

But we can re-learn what we always have known, integrating it with the mind, and go beyond the mind by apprehending and comprehending not intellectually but inwardly how Spirit and Nature are two equally real poles of the existence of the very same Reality. Although we are, to a large degree, outwardly not conscious of its purpose—that is, we are still guided by a lower-Nature dynamic—inwardly, we can perceive how its movements are determined by an active Will within, coming from a higher-Nature Force. It is about a concealed Consciousness and Wisdom in all things, driven by a Will-power and Knowledge-sense. We can perceive the action of a conscious Intelligence in a Sunrise or Sunset, in the cyclical nature of the seasons, in the play of waves on an ocean, in mountains and landscapes, or in the benign or violent play of forces in weather phenomena. The same power, wisdom and knowledge one can intimately perceive offended, tortured, and destroyed, when I see someone cutting down a tree, killing an animal for a trophy, or poisoning the air and land for money.

Yet, we will never be able to extinguish Nature. It will forever remain a concealed action of the Spirit through inconscient forces and a subconscient life that is nevertheless a conscious power executing a grand-design whose aim and goal is that of linking the finite with the infinite. The Spirit is operating in and through a twofold nature that works out a divine plan and intention in the cosmos. What appears to be a brute machine on the surface is the movement of an unseen God in things, a great working of a cosmic Power behind the veil. Creation is the manifestation of a creative Force, impelled and guided by the creative Spirit’s intelligence within. It is the Eternal that cast itself into time, and the One organizing itself into the many.

Thus, is our conception, or more precisely, perception of Nature from where we have to start. There is something when we call it “Mother Nature.” Not only because it gives birth, but also because subliminally we know how there is a Mother Nature standing behind a child Nature. It is the cosmic play, a twofold aspect of the Divine. Waking up to this inner union is essential for our survival and if we want to be able to avoid the environmental catastrophe.

There are ‘modes of knowing,’ ‘modes of feeling,’ ‘modes of perceiving,’ and ‘modes of connecting’, that we must learn and nurture.

It is time that even science transcends the physicalist’s mode of cognition that observes and analyzes the physical cosmic plane only with the outer mind and sensory means of the outer physical—the sense-mind. It is an externalized state of consciousness in which matter appears fundamental because there is no contact with the higher planes of Nature. Because the physicalist knows and experiences nothing of this principle of increasing division from Unity to multiplicity in Nature and the origin of the atomicity of matter, it takes the latter for fundamental—that is, it takes the endpoint for the starting point. The materialist’s perspective seizes the bottom-up evolutionary aspect of the lower-Nature but, being limited to a sense-mind form of cognition, which is unaware of the dynamic action of the Spirit in the manifestation and the deeper nature of matter as a result of an involution, misses the top-down evolutionary aspect of the higher-Nature and fails to acknowledge the consciousness hiding behind the mechanical material processes, which to the mind inevitably appear as unpredictable–that is, just coincidences and purely random. It is this lack of awareness, based on subconscious metaphysical presumptions, that makes virtually all biologists declare that evolution has no aim, no goal, no purpose.

Trees in a forest: The superficial appearance of separation, the deeper truth of unity.

It is this kind of spiritual blindness that makes the materialist-minded philosopher of science declare the opposition between organicism versus mechanicism being only a social construct, that the theory of Gaia is pseudo-scientific woo, or that the idea of the unity of Nature is an emotional self-delusion.

Only if we become aware of reality in its integrality, can we see the universe as an indivisible and undifferentiated unity and totality characterized by infinite variety and multiplicity. The One and the infinitely many, the objective and the subjective, the personal and the impersonal, Nature and Super-Nature—are all the different aspects and modes of the same Being. All are real, and none is an illusion.

Only then can humans regain a connection with Nature and become able to look beyond their present AI or AGI fantasies, transhumanistic delusions, or colonies on Mars. The pressures of urbanization, technology, and modern living have distanced us from the natural world, leading to a growing sense of disconnection and environmental disregard. Rekindling our relationship with Nature won’t work by knowing more. It can only come from feeling and intuiting more. Ecological education in their curricula, encouraging a greater understanding of the natural world, and learning about ecosystems, wildlife, and conservation efforts, is great. Still, it will not transform us into beings respectful of the environment if it is not complemented by a spiritual connection that adopts a different way of seeing and feeling, because only this can truly change our thinking as well.

Of course, we must actively work to preserve natural spaces, reduce our ecological footprint, and support sustainable practices, advocating for policies that protect the environment, reducing waste, and embracing renewable energy sources. But only the inner alignment with the recognition of the higher Nature will bring forth the real change.