The New Ecozoic Reader

Cosmogenesis is certainly among the ten most significant ideas in human history. It dwarfs Copernicus’s discovery that the Sun is the center of the solar system.

What follows is an online-written conversation between Brian, Craig, and Louis inspired by their mutual love for humanity, wilderness, and the expanding universe.

My tendency when I read a book is to comment in the margins, stream exclamation marks, and underline important passages while I read. But I knew immediately that I couldn’t do that because there would be one continuous underline! Now, I recommend Cosmogenesis to my friends—if I could, to the whole world. It is impossible to put down. I read it in two sittings, finally staying up until 3:00 in the morning.

A Poem

In Cosmogenesis Brian Swimme tells us of his compelling archetypal journey. It is archetypal as he must leave home driven by inner unrest that compels him to seek something more than he has found in his contemporary world as a physics professor.

In the spring of 1984, I co-led a literary tour around Ireland with poet Robert Bly. One day out in the wilds of Connemara, I was moved to hear him say that if your young people don’t love where they live, they will burn your city down. If they do love it, they will honor and protect it. Love being the operative word.

Just two days ago, I received the request from Brian Thomas Swimme to write a reflection on his auto-cosmology, Cosmogenesis: The Unveiling of the Expanding Universe. I am sure he was unaware of the unusual circumstances in which I immediately agreed. I am on vacation at my place of birth and childhood, a very small outport in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

Modern scientific cosmology has expanded the limits of our imagination and revealed the secrets of cosmic evolution in ways Copernicus could never have dreamt. The change from our old understanding of the cosmos as cyclical rhythms of the heavenly spheres to a time-developmental, irreversible sequence of transformations has forever changed humanity’s consciousness.

Brian Swimme has written a remarkable book, unlike any other book I have ever read. It is, to be sure, a book about the origin and evolution of the universe—cosmogenesis—but it is far more than that. It is the story of how one person, an accomplished physicist, took the journey down his own road of life which led him from Tacoma, Washington, to Chicago, to New York City, and, through many failures and successes, to the ultimate truths contained in this book.

It seems to me that this book, Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe, is comprised of three parts: Resonance, Reverberation, and Radiance. Readers familiar with Brian’s Powers of the Universe will recognize these as the aspects of the tenth power, Radiance.

We sometimes associate our deepest knowledge of nature with Indigenous sensibilities and wisdom. Ancient people experienced, and many Indigenous people today experience, intimacy with nature, a mysterious abiding cosmic presence in all, and that Earth in all its dimensions is alive. The “New Story,” is however, not only these sensibilities and understandings

Brian Swimme’s new book Cosmogenesis is of major importance in the emerging work of the Whidbey Institute. It revives vivid memories of Thomas Berry who taught here. It reminds us again that the universe itself is primary for understanding what human beings do next to secure our future. What is especially great about Cosmogenesis is Brian’s passion. He wants us to see what he sees, and to sense with him how great the mystery of our universe is.

On the day that I received the invitation to participate in this publication, I read of the successful launching of the Euclid telescope on a mission to make an immense 3D map of the cosmos to better understand dark matter and dark energy. It was reported that researchers know virtually nothing about these phenomena, which appear to control the structure and expansion of the universe.

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth. I sat in Visio Divina contemplative practice with this image and wrote this cosmic psalm.

Not since Augustine’s Confessions has a single volume captured such a momentous shift in the evolution of consciousness. This is not only an engaging memoir of a leading cosmologist, but an autobiographical coming of age story of the cosmos itself. It’s a new Confessions for the Ecozoic era.

The necessary starting point for my engagement with your story of the universe and your powerful inclusion of yourself as image, exemplar, creation, witness, and agent of the universe that formed and called you is speaking to the most important thing that I believe we share in common. I have taken to calling it “the cosmic sense of life.”

Cosmogenesis  is the bold and visionary articulation of the new story whereby cosmos becomes cosmogenesis, the static becomes dynamic, the fixed becomes evolutionary in a process of development through time. As Brian’s mentor Thomas Berry proposed, the universe itself is the primordial revelation, and it has brought forth such sentient and intelligent beings as ourselves who are capable of knowing and of relationality with and within that same universe.

A Poem

This review actually begins with one of Professor Swimme’s prior books, The Universe Story (1992), co-authored with Thomas Berry. I read that epochal reorientation of cosmic presentation for one of my classes at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and then wrote a review similar to this one.

Cosmogenesis is a true gift of a book! I say this for many reasons. I loved reading about Brian’s personal journey in the early years and was amazed at the similarities between his path since his first visit to the Chinook Learning Community (now the Whidbey Institute), and mine.

In Brian Swimme’s Cosmogenesis, Thomas Berry in conversation with Brian states: “Come to understand you are not a scientist. You are not an American. You are not male. You are not even primarily a human. First and foremost you are a cosmological being.” “Which means I’m . . . ?” Brian hesitated. “The universe. In the mode of a human.”

Brian Thomas Swimme’s new book Cosmogenesis takes the insights of The Universe Story to a new level, providing a demonstration of the experience of cosmogenesis through a series of beautifully told personal stories. What emerges from these is an understanding of what scientists have come to realize: We live not in a fixed cosmos but in a cosmogenesis.

Modern science began with the myth of the machine. In only a few centuries, this worldview completely transformed the world, empowering our species to become a geological force on par with asteroids and ice ages. If Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry are right, science, through the insights derived from its own methods, has now entirely outgrown this mechanistic image of the cosmos.

A Poem

5.0 out of 5 stars Personal and Profound

When I first picked up Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe by Brian Thomas Swimme I knew I was in for a treat. As a master of story, Brian brings a perspective to science that makes it a joy to consume and easy to digest and leaves the reader deeply nourished.

A morning in 2008 I was awakened in St. Louis by aftershocks from an earthquake in New Madrid, Missouri. I see and recognize how this has been a pathway to my journey into living in the Ecozoic Age.

Reading Brian Swimme’s book Cosmogenesis resembles how I imagine it feels to ride a rocket into outer space. Liftoff happens slowly, but as the ship gains momentum, gravity recedes and the thrill of the journey takes over. My advice to readers: Be patient, then savor the sweet ride you’re about to experience.