A letter-writer to Earthlight magazine, in 2004, put forward a number of questions. I was drawn - with a sense of curiosity and much spontaneity - to engage with one of them:

‘How has the sense of beauty come to be part of our consciousness’?

Without spending much time, and without editing, I set my imagination free to roam...

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For me, it is because we are built out of beauty. Comprehensively. This means beauty is deeply rooted in the cosmos. 

Consider the atoms. Even in the dance of atomic particles there is a certain beauty. Atoms resolve their fizzing attractions and needs by sharing their electrons between one another. As one atom comes close to another, they begin to feel each other’s presence. It is an electrical thing, but we might see the structure and the process like a phrase of musical notation in a score. The ‘notes’ are electrical charges--positive and negative and neutral, which we know and name as protons (positive) in the nucleus, electrons (negative) circling around the nucleus and neutrons (neutral) cohabiting with the protons in the nucleus.

If an atom is of a certain notation, with a need for an electron or two to feel perfectly balanced and stable, and there is another atom with an electron or two to spare and these atoms meet, then something wonderful happens. The electron orbits change from circling just one nucleus. The two nuclei forge an alliance of mutual self-interest. Electrons become shared between nuclei. Under the logic of feeling more electrically balanced, a new configuration swings into being, a new whole. In the coalescence of electron orbits around the two centers of attraction that form the atomic nuclei, a world begins to be constructed. A molecule is formed. The new structure settles the yearning of one atom—say oxygen—with another atom—say hydrogen. Suddenly, out of that mutuality of sharing electrons, which scientists call a chemical bond, there is a molecule of water.

It is a balance question. Oppositions, or differences, settle down into intimate partnership. It feels good. If the atom had sentience of any kind, it might feel good. They may not have sentience but they have something else: the buzzing vitality of electrical charges, which might define a Yes, a No, and a Maybe, with this simple ‘language’ becoming more and more articulate, as molecules grow in size and complexity of types of atoms. ‘Words’ emerge. Molecules form and become new centers of causation, new forms of presence. Or, extending the imagination some more, we may see the particles with different charges or no charge as three primary colors that complement and enhance one another. As the number of particles grows, and the atoms become heavier and heavier, their colors change. When the atoms combine into molecules, a miniature abstract painting emerges. Or perhaps they form pure music to one another. Their electrical language of interaction is a song or a sonata. Who knows?

We live out of these pulsing, zinging, fizzing interactions that are in continuous interaction and change. Perhaps in the world of vitalizing atoms there is a fine painting, or a grand symphony or a subtle literature happening, and our worlds of art arise out of this primordial simplicity that holds these possibilities within their own charged interactions. In any case, an atom is not static. This much we need to understand. It is on the move, even if the rock or tree, or house does not move around. These bonds forming molecules are constantly in motion, electrons flying into new orbits around tiny centers of attraction as the world happens. The world of matter is an event, running in action, flowing, unfolding—never wholly still. Painting, sonata and poem are in constant evolution.

And then, from seeing the atom as this micro, mini, tiny ‘event, we surge out into the cosmos. For the electromagnetic force which defines the precise interactions of the positive, negative and neutral ‘particles’ is one that flows across and through the whole universe. It is like the soil and rock on which life here on Earth is rooted. The field of electromagnetism is bigger than the atoms – it is the base, the field in which the charges are active. ‘Field’ is a good word.  But we must see it as active: a power-filled, pulsating force that drenches the cosmos, in constant activation. ‘At attention’, perhaps. It is hard for us to imagine this nebulous and subtle power being extensive with all that exists, woven across empty space, and matter alike.  But there it is. Our physics show it to be so. And with this force of electromagnetism we are drawn into the powering depths of everything that exists. All that we call ‘matter (which is also energy)— everything that is a body, or has a body—all of it is connected to something even more profound, and out of sight. But not entirely. This is the marvel of living in our era, aided by intensive scientific thought and experiment. In our own era we can discern the faint impression of the hidden powers of ultimate reality abroad in the cosmos.

Via atoms and the force of electromagnetism, present everywhere, we come to peer at the quantum vacuum. Ah. This is the mystery that our physics of the atom has brought us face to face with. All atoms are supported by this realm of the quantum vacuum which is emptiness that is pregnant with an inexplicable fecundity. It is as though they have an invisible ‘root’ holding them up in the world of existence and the root stretches into a realm without dimension, and without time. It is plunged into a realm of infinite creativity, infinite potentiality. It is also a realm of energy, although we cannot access this to push or pull matter around in any literal way. Physics calls it zero point energy. It is the energy that belongs to the realm of potentiality. The ‘root’ of the atom thus rests in the non-spatial, non-temporal realm of the vacuum, which we may also call the realm of creativity. Words fail us at this point. We have diverse names and beliefs. It is only natural that we should. Whatever can produce a universe has something to do with this vacuum that quantum physics has encountered.

It is from this discovery, along with visual observations of the night skies that we can come, via extravagantly beautiful mathematics, to see that the universe itself has emerged from this vacuum, at a primordial Beginning. We find that this is the only way of explaining how the universe with all its billions of glorious galaxies came into being. Truly we are before a splendor and a beauty in this discovery of our quantum physics. Surely it is this realm that enables evolution to proceed. Surely it is this realm whence novelty and self-governance and self-construction may derive. It is the realm of pure creativity.

So, in our atoms and molecules, like it or not, we are embedded in the great fountain of creation, churning in silence and potentiality.  Seen like this, perhaps we can begin to grasp that our sense of beauty is born of a long, long fuse, spanning the eons of time that the universe has been journeying since its eruption from the vacuum. And it is born also of our own unique mindscape that we recognize as ‘me’: alive now, comprised of atoms in combination as molecules that have their presence sustained by a realm that is pure mystery. Our cells, molecules and atoms were once a single energy, flaring forth at the birth of the universe, arising from that quantum vacuum, and now, with the expansion and cooling of the universe, they are floating in the same fecund mystery whence their energy first emerged. The energy became particles, which grew like delicate snowballs into atoms and then molecules. From these the stars grew, super-powerful, capable of generating radiance through the fusion of atoms of hydrogen into helium. By this fusion a tiny amount of mass is converted into radiant photons of light. An act of magic is performed. Matter becomes naked energy once again. The light speeds out into space. Some of it lands inside a tiny, membrane-enclosed center of intelligence and self-organization here on Earth. This is the photosynthesizing bacterial and eukaryote organism. And thus we are alive, after much else has happened in between. Time. Novelty. Evolution.

As I think of all this, I see a journey occurring. It really is not fixed and static--it is running like the violins and cellos of an orchestra, chasing one another, punctuated with the clash of cymbals, the call of flutes, and the whole thing is charging forward, expanding, moving along in self-creation. Self-construction. The journey seems to be a journey towards experience. For this, a body is needed.  All kinds of bodies. Bacterium. Shrimp. Jellyfish. Angel Fish, Snail, Sponge. Lizard. Lichen. Fern. Tree. Flower. Insect. Whale. Lion. Human. So many bodies, alive with sensitivity born of the atoms and molecules brought together into ‘cells’ by a power that no science yet names.  The grand journey seems to be one that has moved towards the allurement of sentience. Towards experience. And what diversity! So many experiences and so many forms of sentience! And then, with us, the universe has become a journey into being able to know sentience in another more textured way still, knowing it from within, in awareness, forged from the capacity to see into the eyes of the other, and sense a common ‘something’ going on. Consciousness.

It began wordlessly, I am sure. It grew out of mute sensitivity and intelligence, these qualities and powers extending back via the chain of DNA into the primordial oceans of life’s birth. We humans arose out of an intimacy that is mammalian, something that is warm and inviting for the young, enticing for the adult, above all emotionally supportive and nurturing.  The mammal is the universe’s ‘latest’ excursion into sentience. It began at least 200 million years ago, inside the ancestral mammals, with the dramatic change of warmth and metabolic stability being generated from within, not just from the Sun as among the reptiles. Supported from within, sentience began to ferment with particular vitality  amongst the primates. It was carried forward into the proto-hominid frame, until one day, one exceptional morning, or afternoon, as the Sun glinted between tree, river, and gliding fish, one hominid primate made a mental connection that was the stepping-stone over the threshold of possibility for primates. He or she saw a connection between this—and that. It was compelling to experiment. The fish was caught, its writhing body succumbing to a new force of perception and muscular co-ordination, governed by desire and intention as focused as the arrow hitting its target. And out of that mute inner understanding, the language to tell someone else grew stronger. The ancestors had stumbled into the current of creativity of the cosmos and quantum vacuum. They found a flame burning within themselves and thus began a new rivulet of evolutionary novelty. Something utterly new within Earth’s repertoire of experience came into stable, balanced, and reproducible form. The vast orchestra found a voice by which to name itself. It began in single words, single notes, as with the atoms that converge into molecules.

The journey into embodied experience by the universe thus became a journey into experiencing experience, experiencing sentience and with that layering of intelligence and feeling upon itself began self-expression in endless new creativity. Here we are! At least 5 million years after that moment by the glinting stream when our ancestor struck a vein of gold beyond compare, even as she or he focused on getting some lunch with which to feed the infant…Consciousness was given birth. It was not as we know it now, but it bore a relation.

As I see it therefore, the journey, built out of beauty has become one which, through us now can feel the beauty, touch the beauty, see the beauty, hear the beauty, think the beauty, taste it, hold it, marvel at it and thus recognize itself. Like so many other facets of recognition at work in nature, it takes beauty to know beauty. This simple self-reference is, I believe, an answer to the question posed by the letter-writer. The capacity to sense beauty that our consciousness ‘provides’ to us is something that arises from the Whole. The journey that began in potentiality, and advanced into actuality, through great rolling spirals of time, is a single Whole—differentiated, yes—but still a comprehensively united, moving Whole, supported and suffused with the blithe spirit which is outside space-time, outside matter-energy and without which nothing would be here. From ‘nothing’ has come ‘something’ and it is only possible to remain here, quasi-stable as our universe is, never ‘finished’ but ever unfolding—because of nothingness. This paradox is the way it looks to our physics today and what a vision!  No wonder we have a sense of beauty!

Sometimes I grow dizzy with the attraction that is inherent in the experience of beauty. To stay with the perception, to let it happen, and to allow it to express itself can become a rapture. We become entranced, moved with a longing to go closer, to stay longer, to enter the beauty more deeply. The attraction is of another order than anything else we experience. We say – ‘ it’s SO beautiful’. We can scarcely believe our experience. It is as though we are making love and staying right there, poised at that point of unbelievable pleasure – only we are elsewhere than in our beds. We are in front of a delicate flower or leaf or shell. We are astounded by the sight of cormorants skimming across the Bay. We meet the soft love in a dog’s eyes, flowing out as though he is speaking to you. We see the exquisite human child, clinging in such happiness to father or mother.  We hear Puccini in the soprano or the tenor, building to a soaring climax. We watch a machine that we have sweated over in our designing mind and longed to see work, now performing in perfect coordination. We move in the zone of mathematics, and with a feeling in our guts, our hearts, we suddenly see the connections of nature. We enter into the profundity of nature’s order and process. And finally, because there is yet another face to nature’s order, we know justice and can smell it, with our sense of beauty. Integrity is fundamental to beauty.

As we rest momentarily in the experience of something beautiful, our hearts quite naturally swell and roll within us. Of all the organs, it is the heart that seems to make us open up to the world and our own experiencing self. Then perception itself becomes beautiful. To experience becomes momentarily fused with the sight, or sound, or thought, which grips our heart. This is the mystery for me. The touch of beauty brings us into the heart of our interiority. And in there is awe. Delight. Joy. And a yearning. A feeling.  Indeed, the heart and beauty are never apart.   This is why beauty is a feeling. It comes from our animate atoms, molecules and cells, formed from primordial energy, rooted in the vacuum which supports all matter, all space, all time. It comes from the exquisite adjustments of billions of tiny cells, living in deep intimacy with one another, effortlessly forming our body and mind. The heart cells are especially sensitive and known for their love of being in rhythm. They pump day and night for years and years and years. Our years. Our life.

As we feel our sense of beauty flaring forth across our bodies, focused so intensely on both within and without, I see an axis forming, uniting our self with the world and with ourselves. The cells align somehow, as though they know this feeling, and our being is at one with Being. It is intimate. It is recognition. Mutuality. Presence. We are coiled around an axis of the world, and it is radiant. We spiral in ecstasy around this core that fuses us with the world. For this, perhaps, the universe entered its journey, flaring forth from the vacuum into Being.

These are my thoughts about why or how it is that our consciousness presents us with the incontrovertible sense of beauty that brings us such joy, laced as it must be sometimes, with our sorrows. In the mingling is our humanity. In the complex tensions of mingling emotions, are our great power and our great gift: consciousness. Let this gift become all it might be, as full a blessing to creation as it can be.

2725 words.

© Caroline Webb
Tuesday, August 10, 2004



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