The Emerald

A few weeks back, wizard-yogi-talkshow host Russell Brand interviewed scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson on his podcast Under the Skin. It’s the November 1st, 2019 episode and it’s highly worth listening to. On the show, Neil puts forward some commonly held suppositions about western science — that the scientific method is the only valid method of arriving at the truth. That subjective reality has nothing to offer the discussion on truth. That science itself is ultimately objective. And that the proof of science’s fundamental ‘rightness’ can be measured by the “progress” of technological society or what some have called civilization. In this episode, we take a look at some of the stories Neil uses to illustrate progress, triumph over superstition, and scientific objectivity and offer a differing perspective based on the animate vision that has driven humanity for 99% of its history. 

In this poetic ode to the animate vision of the cosmos that has been so central to humanity for so long, we explore the idea that the ritual heart of both culture and cosmos itself is poetry, and that poetry is the only way to accurately convey and invoke a cosmos that is ultimately artful. Poetry exists so humans can be propelled into states where we feel one with nature. Hence the gods “clothe themselves in poetic meter,” say the Vedas, and in doing so, give us a direct vehicle through which to access them, to revel in them, to ourselves shine. This episode uses the Greek myths as a jumping off point to celebrate the poetic vision of the cosmos and explores how we drifted far from our poetic source. Caution — Greek myths are explicit.

The power of myth exists beyond representation and symbolism. Myths grow out of a time when to utter the word ‘sky’ around a fire at night would transmit something directly to the listener, something very different than the experience of reading the word ‘sky’ on a page from the comfort of a library.  Today on the podcast we explore the somatic dimension of myth, the idea that the great myths take place within the body. Myths invoke somatic journeys, focusing on one somatic journey in particular,  the journey of the individual practitioner towards a state of ecstatic union with the cosmos.

Bears have been right at the center of pan-global belief systems for a very long time, causing some anthropologists to speak of a circumpolar bear cult dating back possibly over 100,000 years. Given the role that animals have played in shaping human imagination, it's not a stretch to say human beings have, over the ages, learned a whole lot from bears. And it may not be a stretch even to posit that some of our deepest spiritual archetypes and practices — including the practice of meditation itself — come directly from bears. 

What's the point? Well, far from being an image of smallness or insignificance, the single point, the dot communicates a lot. In fact, in India, there are songs devoted to the point, texts that extol its radiant qualities, practices designed to link to it as a focal point of meditative awareness. The importance of little dots takes on even greater significance when we realize that all life forms — and even the universe itself — began as a little round dot. In Indian cosmology, Bindu, the point, becomes everything — both cosmos and consciousness all in one. And the journey — to get to the point —is a poetic and visionary journey indeed.

Today on the Emerald — The Poetry of the Point — All of Cosmos and Consciousness in a Little Round Dot

Cauldrons — cooking vessels — have been part of the human experience and have captured the human imagination for a very long time, from the ancient Celtic cauldron myths to Shakespeare's archetypal vision of three crones and their bubbling brew to the cauldron cults of the African diaspora.

But far more than a simple vessel, the cauldron becomes in many cultures synonymous with larger internal and external processes — with the alchemical journey of the transformation of the soul, with yoga, with consciousness, and ultimately with the universe itself. Today on The Emerald, we look at cauldrons, inner and outer.

In this episode we take a deep dive into the abyss — the seemingly unbridgeable gap that exists between science and spirit. Are there places where science — which sees the universe as something that, to quote physicist Stephen Hawking, doesn’t need God in order to exist, and spirituality, which sees an animate universe created with consciousness and perhaps infused with consciousness — can find commonality? What are these places, these commonalities? How far do they go? And are these two worldviews in their heart of hearts ultimately more similar than we think?

The active practice of imaginative visioning has been utterly central for many societies. Far from being fantasy, such practices reinforce a deep understanding of the cosmos in which the active cultivation of imagination relates directly to tangible actualization — the ability to do, to see and understand, to shape one’s mind and therefore one’s life, to reap the benefits of spaciousness, luminosity, and calm in the mind, to bridge the inner and outer worlds, to understand oneself, the place of the individual within a community and cosmos. Considering its prevalence, it’s quite possible that ultimately for human culture to survive we need to actively imagine and seek visions.

The word 'enchanted' is used a lot, from old fairy tales to modern pop culture. But enchantment is not something reserved for fairy stories or for vague tingling feelings when we encounter something mysteriously wonderful. What if I were to tell you, for example, that enchanted land is an actual thing, a very real thing. I’ve been to dozens upon dozens of places that are enchanted. You’ve probably walked unknowingly across enchanted land yourself. There is enchanted land on at least six of the seven continents of planet earth, and for a very very long time, among very very many people, land was not considered to even be in its full expression, to realize its full potential as land unless it had been deliberately enchanted. In fact, the enchantment of land has been considered by many cultures their ultimate duty as human beings. And the implications of increasing swaths of unenchanted land are very real for both us and the planet.

He’s stirred the imagination of poets and writers and artists for 30 centuries. Rilke wrung his pale heart out to him. He finds his way into Shakespeare and Nietzsche, into the librettos of Stravinsky and Lizst. He’s the subject of ballets and sonnets and even avant-garde films.

I’m speaking, of course, of Orpheus. In this episode of The Emerald, I speak with author Ann Wroe about her remarkable book Orpheus: The Song of Life.  In the book, Wroe explores Orpheus from his Thracian shamanic roots into the modern era, finally coming to the conclusion — as many poets have — that Orpheus is not simply an abstract figure from the myths of old, but is the animate force itself, the force of song and poetry so timeless and so necessary in our modern world.