We are the only civilisation without a Cosmology
And yet, it is only a breath away
It’s Fundamental
All previous civilisations had a Cosmology. They knew their place in the cosmos. They also knew their place mattered. They knew their lives mattered as part of a larger cosmic rhythm and cosmic story.
It wasn’t just a theory for them. They constantly grounded their cosmology into their bodies through ritual. In this way they didn’t just ‘know’ who they were or where their place was, they also ‘felt’ it in their bodies, they experienced it.
We don’t.
Spiritual Orphans
In our case, not having a cosmology and knowing our place has huge implications for our mental health, our levels of anxiety and our physical wellbeing.
A matter of existence
We see all of our problems writ large in the media, from what has been referred to as ‘climate change’, to global wars, to economic crises. With social media and travel, we now all have friends from around the world. It’s all connected, it’s all global.
Issues that were once local (local fueds) are now global, global wars. The global supply chains are so interconnected that, as we saw, the problem of one stuck container ship in the Suez Canal in 2021, affected people in all parts of the world.
When we have multiple crises spanning the world, we know that it’s an existential crisis we are in, it’s to do with the fundamental matter of our existence.
Exhaustion of Cultures
The Italian jurist and politician Giuseppe Dossetti wrote;
“We are facing the exhaustion of cultures - he added - I do not see the birth of a new thought either on the secular side or on the Christian side. We are all immobile, fixed on a present, which we try to patch up in some way”.
The Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben recently wrote:
“Human beings cannot live if they do not give themselves reasons and justifications for their lives, which in every age have taken the form of religions, myths, political beliefs, philosophies and ideals of all kinds. These justifications seem today - at least in the richest and most technologized part of humanity - to have fallen and men are perhaps for the first time reduced to their pure biological survival, which, apparently, they prove unable to accept.”
You can feel the end of our culture in the above quotes. Nothing new is happening.
writes, in his Substack, about the reduction in investment in new movies with the lions share of investment going to buy up all the old movies and music scores. We are not creating.Reduction in Disruptive Science
A recent study published in Nature showed a stark graph - the continual decline of disruptive science over the last 75 years. And this reduction in disruptive science wasn’t just in one area, it was in; Social Sciences, Technology, Physical Sciences and Life Sciences and Biomedicine.
Creativity is disruptive, and lack of disruption indicates lack of creativity. Nothing new is being created in science over the last 75 years. And ‘AI’ works on what data is already there. AI is not imaginative and so it cannot pull us out of the place we are in.
Only we can do that.
Fake Cosmology
Always in these situations there will be people who will try and fill in the gap for us. They will try and provide us with a ‘cosmology’, but it will be fake and will be simply a religion. A religion is not a cosmology, it doesn’t satisfy our deep yearning to be part of a larger cosmic story. It has some of the elements, like belonging, but over time our psyche sees it for what it is and what it lacks. It lacks Earth and Cosmos, of which I will speak more about below.
Teotihuacan
Take the indigenous people who lived in the Mexican city of Teotihuacan. They felt so embedded in the Cosmos that their city was created to reflect the alignment of the planets. And they actively participated in this through rituals that could embody this larger cosmic story. They called it the ‘City of the Gods’.
As they walked around their city, it was as if they were walking amongst the planets.
The city was left abandoned in 700 AD.
But . . . what is extraordinary to discover is:
During the 1960's and1970's a comprehensive mathematical survey was carried out by Hugh Harleston Jr, who found that the principle structures line up along the 'Street of the dead' (and beyond), from which he concluded the city was a precise scale model of the solar system, including Uranus,Neptune and Pluto (not rediscovered until 1787, 1846 and1930 respectively.1
Our Own Cosmology
We cannot go back, and there are always various theories about all archaeological sites, however, one thing is sure, we need our own cosmology.
Earth and Sky - the Vertical Axis
The one thing all cultures who had a cosmology had in common, was a connection to the Earth, and the Galaxies & Stars. They had a vertical (Earth - Sky) connection, and they saw, and felt, themselves as being the bridge between the two.
The Q’ero of the south american Andes, for example, had ‘pachamama’ (the earth) and they called the stars their ‘brothers and sisters’. This is an example of how close the relationship was, and how real the cosmology felt to these people.
Horizontal World
In today’s world we live horizontally, without this vertical axis. The American theorist and writer on transpersonal psychology, Ken Wilber, referred to this as ‘Flatland’. A world that denies interiority, soul, spirit and vertical meaning.
Is it no wonder we see so much anxiety and uncertainty reflected in mental health problems? Carl Jung said that the majority of the symptoms he saw in his patients were due to this lack of meaning and lack of a vertical axis.
Under or feet and beyond the clouds
It’s refreshing to know that a cosmology is only a breath away. Under our feet lies ‘Pachamama’ that the Q’ero speak of, and above the clouds are our ‘brothers and sisters’, the stars and gaxies. I learned these things from the Peruvian Mystic, Don Americo Yabar, when I stayed with him in the mountains above Cusco in Peru.
As Don Americo teaches, we can be the bridge between the Earth and the Stars. We can meditate and see our heart as the bridge between the two. We can call down the light from the stars, into our hearts, and then ground it into the Earth, by putting our hands on the ground.
In this way we not only have a cosmology but we are participating in it. We are becoming a part of a larger cosmic story.
And then you can never go back!
http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/mexicoteotihuacan.htm
Thank you for this.
Really thought provoking, thanks for sharing! You mention meditation which sounds like a great way to (re)connect. I wondered if you have other thoughts on how to find our place in the cosmic in modern Western life? One thing that strikes me that in those examples of other cultures they are/were doing it together, it is/was a shared social & cultural experience.