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My approach is to place the search for the unified field theory in the context of comparative religion and anthropology. I understand the effort to formulate the unified field as an effort to know God within the terms of Western scientific culture—not necessarily more or less valuable than other cultures' effort to represent Ultimate Reality through icon, myth, and ritual. This comparative approach encourages us to respect and learn from the variety of symbol systems which humans have used through time in our endeavors to know the Powers of Be-ing. In many cultures, spiritual practice and philosophy of being have recognized the center of the body to be the center of consciousness and the point of access to transpersonal power. From ancient times, many cultures have developed customs which energize the body's center with specific patterns of movement and breath. These customs have persisted as traditions of dance, healing rites, martial arts, and practices such as yoga and hara-training. (Hara is the Japanese word for the body's center both as physical site and as center of consciousness.) Recent research in Western science joins with these ancient traditions to suggest that consciousness is not localized in the brain but rather is spread throughout and beyond the body. If consciousness is indeed a field, then we're apt to address the field as a whole by addressing its center. If the field of consciousness spreads throughout the body, then we're apt to address the center of consciousness by addressing the center of the body. The center of the body is already known to be our center of gravity and the center of our electromagnetic field as well. In the bodies of both women and men the abdominal region is blood-rich and therefore iron-rich as well. Heating or tapping iron when it's situated in a weak magnetic field easily magnetizes the material. Certain traditions of movement and dance (performed, of course, within the earth's magnetic field) compress and heat the body's iron-rich center, thus making the body's center all the more magnetically active and sensitive to the flux in electromagnetic fields as we interact with each other and our environment. Studies of the human body suggest that our sensitivity to flux in electromagnetic fields constitutes or at least largely contributes to the aspect of awareness which we call intuition. Accordingly, patterns of movement and breath which compress and heat our body's center may thus enhance our conscious awareness of self, each other, and our environment. The center of the body may also be the site of the elemental transformations which occur through weak and strong nuclear forces. The work of the respected French scientist Louis Kervran suggests that living systems can mediate intranuclear exchanges, giving rise to a process of biological transmutation. (Louis Kervran, Biological Transformations, Brooklyn, NY: Swan House Publishing Company, 1972.) The medieval alchemists of Europe also concerned themselves with elemental transmutation, engaging in a process that was both physical and spiritual, ripe with symbolic references to the body's center as the site of transformation. In fact, the language and symbols which both European and Chinese alchemists employed refer to woman's womb as the vessel of transformation and regeneration which they hoped to replicate and whose pro-creative power they hoped to appropriate. If the center of the body is indeed the meetingplace of gravitational, electromagnetic, and weak and strong nuclear forces, then perhaps here at the center of the body is the center of the unified field. And if, as physicist John Hagelin suggests, the field of human consciousness is identical with the unified field of modern theoretical physics, again we find access to the center of consciousness at the center of the body. (See interview with John Hagelin in "The Thinking Universe: Unified Field Theory and the Dynamics of Consciousness," The Mind/Body Connection, Summer, 1993, pp. 19-30.) Drawing the connection between ancient and modern theories, Matsumoto and Birch write: "Throughout the whole of Chinese thought, astronomy, meditation, nutrition, and medicine, the idea of a source is pervasive. The thought that the hara, the abdominal center of the processes that create and transform life, is the parallel in the human being of the ultimate universal source is absolutely pervasive." These authors continue: "The transformations that were thought to occur in the universe take place, in human scale, in the vital center of energies. Although the language is far more metaphoric, more replete with symbols and images, than is the language of modern science, there is surprisingly little difference between the ancient Chinese theories and our own." (Kiiko Matsumoto and Stephen Birch, Hara Diagnosis: Reflections on the Sea, Brookline, MA: Paradigm Publications, 1988, p. 93) We must also consider that our universe's process of creation involves itself with matter rather than anti-matter, and that organic matter has the propensity for levorotatory stereoisomers (molecules which turn light toward the left) rather than dextrorotatory stereoisomers (molecules which turn light toward the right). As humans have derived both the words "matter" and "mother" from the same root—for example, from mater in Latin—and instinctively associate "left" with the feminine, we can suspect that creation does indeed imply the feminine force. We can further suspect that the center of creative consciousness—the consciousness that provokes and promotes creation—dwells in the center of woman's body. In sum, I suggest that the center of the body is the center of the field of consciousness, the point where individual consciousness meets and merges with universal consciousness, the site where the many energetic fields or powers of be-ing converge and become one—that is, unified. The practical implication is that we can each access an expansive field of consciousness by energetically activating the center of our bodies. Bringing awareness to and energizing our one-point—the place where the center of our gravitational field, the center of our electromagnetic field, and the center of our alchemical potency (corresponding to weak and strong nuclear forces) coincide—we enable ourselves to experience our oneness with the ultimate Power of Be-ing. I suggest that we know the Power of Be-ing that some call God through the center of our bodies. We know the Power of Be-ing that is the Mother of the Universe through the center of woman's body. |
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