globe covered with binary numbers zeroes and ones
Image by Gerd Altmann

One of our most venerable of wisdom traditions, the Chinese I Ching, tells that: ‘in the beginning was the one, the one became two, the two became three – and from the three, ten thousand things were born…’.

From the potency of its unified oneness, our Universe realizes itself through its universal informational ‘alphabet’ of just two letters; zeros and ones. This simplest of differentiation then combines, imbuing innate meaning into all the diverse expressions of the relational two-nesses of energy-matter and space-time.

From its beginning, our Universe has evolved from this foundational simplicity the complexity of the I Ching’s ‘ten thousand things and more…’ From the genesis of its first moment, it was poised and expectant with all the potency of its evolutionary diversity.

Ancient Wisdom Traditions

Another wisdom tradition, that of the ancient Greeks, intuitively perceived the fundamental nature of number, geometry as number in space and music as number in time, all underpinning their cosmology in a four-fold quadrivium of knowledge. Throughout Gaia’s story, the harmonic and resonant relationships and universal patterns of these teachings are now being newly appreciated as playing all-pervasive roles in the story of our planetary home and her Universe.

As a creative and finite emanation of an infinite and eternal Cosmos, the manifestation of our entire Universe through its continuing Big Breath, also reflects the ancient Vedic perspective of the Breath of Brahman. The Upanishads, a series of discourses between seers known as rishis and their students, in ancient India, sets out an integral philosophy of the unified nature of reality and all-pervasiveness of consciousness.


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The profound insights of these ancient scholars, are being re-appreciated by ever-more discoveries of leading-edge science. Even more vitally so, the living lore of Indigenous peoples who have never forgotten the innate web of life that encompasses the whole Cosmos, is now being honored as offering experiential guidance to heal our collectively dis-membered relationship with Gaia.

Gaia's Own Journey

For the last 4.5 billion years of our Universe’s evolutionary journey, Gaia has continued the emergence of ever greater complexity and diversity through the innate, dynamic and in-formational interconnectedness and collaboration of her entire ‘gaiasphere’ comprising her planetary geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere – and biosphere. Pulsed, not by passive continuity, but proactively by change and challenge, the evolutionary emergence of her biological children has not only survived but flourished.

Gaia’s innate nature is far from equilibrium and the intricate collaborations of her gaiasphere are perpetually dynamic. Yet, she has managed the extraordinary feat through all this time, of not only providing a planetary home for her organic children, but opportunities for them to explore, communicate, learn and grow in complexity, diversity and individuated self-awareness.

Over this time, she has dealt with our sun, Sol, radiating some thirty percent more brightly than when she became a young planetary mother. Yet she has succeeded and, despite the immense trials of regulating the interlocking and themselves evolving cycles of her entire gaiasphere, to continue to provide a breathable atmosphere, liquid water, resource-rich land and temperate climate, to sustain and nurture the evolution of her organic children.

As a mother herself she embodies profound wisdom. She only uses the energy needed for all she achieves. She fits form to function with underlying simplicity, exquisite beauty and intricate precision. She recycles everything and with no waste. She shares and in-forms her skills locally and globally.

Gaia embodies collaboration throughout her biosphere; appreciating healthy competition and encouraging holarchic cooperation. She exults in diversity and knows it to imbue resilience and collective genius. And she exists, evolves and thrives within the wholistic limits and emergent opportunities of her planetary gaiasphere.

And she’s been doing so for over four billion years.

Gaia's Organic Children

Her story has taken her and her organic children from single cells to organisms embodying trillions of cells; to the distributed intelligence of slime molds, the extended cognition of bats and spiders, the eusocial communities of bees and termites, to the dreaming of dinosaurs, the flights of birds, the dialect-rich songs of whales and the laughter of hominins.

Progressively, she’s guided emergent in-formational networks of complexity and sentience and with distributed and coherent multi-level intelligences. Their signaling capacities; whether the mycelium wood-wide-web of an entire forest, or the intricate nervous systems of animals, enable such coherence to prevail. And the neural hubs of the nine brains of octopuses, empowering their eight arms to operate independently, the thirty-two brains of a leech, and the encephalized ones of birds and land and marine mammals, testify to their complex reasoning abilities.

Alongside, and beyond intellect, however, Gaia has progressively nurtured empathy and emotional attachments in her biosphere. In the cooperative and loving relationships of mates, parents and offspring, families and communities, she has embedded circles of caring. Bacteria, insects and fish cooperate to look after others of their communities, especially the vulnerable. And in the altruism observed in rats and monkeys, the grieving of elephants not only for their own kin but for a human carer, the self-sacrifice of a human stranger, and the protection by humpback whales from others not of their own species; the circles of care further expand as spirals of compassion.

As a planetary mother, even when faced with the extinctions and devastation, she not only endured but resolutely recovered and went on to continue to serve the Universe’s and her own indomitable evolutionary impulse.

Why?

As I’ve continued to seek a deeper sense of how our Universe is as it is, a possible answer as to my question of why, has also emerged.

It tells of a Universe that learns though its holographic and holarchic manifestation. And through its explorative, experiential and evolutionary reflections to further know itself.

Its innate Unity, through the co-creative appearances and tensions of its dualities with their universal masculine and feminine attributes, then reconciles in the trinities of their child expressions. Their flourishing, in the diversity and complexity of its ongoing journey will eventually come full spiral; from Unity, to Unity in diversity, to a re-membered Unity in belonging and an ultimate return to Unity.

Gaians

We are the youngest of Gaia’s organic children and the only ones left of our family of hominins. We embody her legacy and that of our entire Universe’s evolutionary arc and we stand together with them at the bow wave of their and our next emergent possibility.

We are the last of our kind, yet, we are not alone.

We and her entire family, are all Gaians.

Copyright 2022. All Rights Reserved.
Printed with permission.

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BOOK: The Story of Gaia

The Story of Gaia: The Big Breath and the Evolutionary Journey of Our Conscious Planet
by Jude Currivan Ph.D.

book cover of The Story of Gaia by Jude Currivan Ph.D.In Gaia, the Universe’s evolutionary impulse is embodied in collaborative relationships and dynamic co-evolutionary partnerships on a planetary scale and as a wholistic gaiasphere.

Jude Currivan reveals how the conscious evolution of humanity is an integral part of Gaia’s own evolutionary progress and purpose. By perceiving and experiencing our planet as a sentient being and ourselves as Gaians, we open ourselves to a deeply ecological, evolutionary, and, above all, hopeful worldview.

For more info and/or to order this book, click here. Also available as a Kindle edition.

About the Author

photo of author, Jude Currivan, Ph.DJude Currivan, Ph.D., is a cosmologist, futurist, planetary healer, member of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle, and previously one of the most senior businesswomen in the UK. She has a master’s degree in physics from Oxford University and a doctorate in archaeology from the University of Reading.

Jude has travelled extensively, worked with wisdom keepers from many traditions and is a life-long researcher into the nature of reality. She is the author of 6 books, including The Cosmic Hologram, and is co-founder of WholeWorld-View. Visit her website at JudeCurrivan.com/

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