I Sing the Universe Electric

"Then tell me, what is the material world, and is it dead?"

He laughing answer'd me: "I will write a book on leaves of flowers,
If you feed me on love thoughts, and give me now and then
A cup of sparkling poetic fancies, so when I am tipsie,
I'll sing to you to this soft lute; and shew you all alive
The world, when every particle of dust breathes forth its joy."

- William Blake


INTRODUCTION

For awhile now, I have had a series of seven axioms fluttering around in my head, with this theme flapping about here, and this idea settling down there. It has been very enticing to break down my own philosophy of life and the universe, especially after years of feeling and thinking and writing about such things. So contained within the seven precepts I am about to list are the seeds of everything that has moved and animated my inner life for as long as I can remember.

At some point, I will indulge in a few pages of commentary on each of them, but alas, I haven't the time now. Still, I feel compelled to at least list them, to give some kind of shape and context to my vision of the cosmos. Various poetic and philosophical voices across the ages could back up many of these sentiments, though for now I'm going to be the quintessential lone voice in the wilderness. That might be just as well, because I'm essentially chronicling what I personally feel when I go out into an empty field at night and stare up into the Milky Way.

Just keep in mind, patient reader, that this is the philosophical set-up that frames all my literary work in some form or fashion. It is the intellectual scaffolding, if you will, that makes all the creative constructs to come possible. Of course, it very neatly forms the spine of the two young adult novels I have already completed. These themes have and will continue to find form and expression in varying degrees across the entire spectrum of my writing. They are the water my work swims in, the wind on which it soars.

Whatever misgivings I have over what man has made of man, I can honestly say I have rarely if ever felt alienated from the rhythms of nature and the universe. On the contrary, the larger the cosmos gets, the more my chest gleefully expands to breathe it all in. I may have been at war with the grinding, twisting gears of the monolithic system for some time, but my quarrel does not extend to the stars and moons and planets, much less to the mountains and rivers and flowers.

Of course, one could argue these precepts are mere projection, but as a writer, making the stardust dance and painting the beauty of the nebula clouds is after all my vocation. And so be it. All is projection at the end of the day, be it religion or politics or even science, and sometimes I feel the real problem is not that our projections of the cosmos are too imaginative, but rather not imaginative enough.

And with that in mind, let us begin, and hopefully find our way home in the process ...



THE SEVEN JOYOUS PRECEPTS

1) "Our boundless, immeasurable universe is not a reality of dead matter and blind mechanism, but rather an organic field of living intelligence increasingly fascinated by the patterns of growth within it."

2) "Humanity is the complex ripening of the stars into acute awareness, the ultimate creative result of the cosmos fertilizing itself."

3) "The wondrous spectrum of consciousness crystallizes in the evolution of the human mind and breathes life into imagination, a remarkable faculty through which the teeming galaxies find expression."

4) "The universal experience of God is humanity spontaneously realizing its profound identity with the whole of creation, not unlike a solitary note suddenly aware of its place in an infinitely vast symphony."

5) "True religion is not a dogma but an art form, a singular talent which enables human beings to tease a harmony out of the heavens, and later clothe this spontaneous rhythm in story and symbol."

6) "The oldest and noblest symbol woven into the fabric of myth is the female form divine, a beatific image which sanctifies the cosmos and imbues every particle of matter with holiness."

7) “Life stands open and ready for us, existence little more than a blank canvas trembling with anticipation for whatever colors and light and textures we see fit to splash upon it, equally receptive to both our lowest, darkest hells, as well as our most achingly beautiful heavens.”