This is a big book in every way. It begins: “From the wisdom teachings of the Upanishads of ancient India to the pioneers of quantum physics and now to the latest available science … our Universe is being revealed to be a great and finite thought in the infinite and eternal mind of the Cosmos.” That’s the title reveal, and the author intends it as “a journey of exploration.” It is that.
As readers, we were engaged from the dedication page — which is not something we would usually mention in a book review; but that page offers this: “The Story of Gaia is dedicated to everyone who is waking up to re-member we’re inseparable.” For readers who may have experience trauma and painful change in recent years, this is a reminder of the essential meaning in life.
Gaia, the author reminds us, is how the ancient Greeks and many Indigenous peoples “viewed the Earth as a living being: a goddess and a mother. They called her Gaia.”
There is a great deal of philosophy and new science in these pages, but also each of the fifteen chapters begins with a personal story or spiritual practice. We found these helpful, such as this one that begins chapter 1, “Origin”:
“Closing my eyes and slowing my breath, I imagine the beginning of our Universe. It is black. Not the transparent black clarity of a night sky tinged by stars. Nor the blackness of squid ink, black yet with a hint of blue. But an utter and complete blackness. Not an empty void but replete with everything and the potentiality of what might come. Not a black hole, but the black whole…. I am in wonder at the audacity of its visionary magnificence. How, how! could the infinite and eternal mind of the Cosmos dream the perfect intricacy of such a thought?”
Author Jude Currivan aims to tell Gaia’s story, and in Gaia’s voice. She wants readers to come to “experience an enlivened relationship with her and indeed our entire Universe.” She seems to succeed at this enormous task.
There are discussions of the I Ching and Vedanta and “the acoustic AUM pulsing through” everything. There are also discussions of particles, energy fields, and holographic realizations of our Universe. The word “Universe” appears always with a capital U, signaling both its universal and divine meaning. Readers who feel at home in conversations with physics, ultimate reality, and wisdomkeeping blending together will want to explore this book. Currivan is good at making applications; even the chapter titles use words, concepts, and spiritual practices such as “Birth,” “Expectancy,” “Emergence,” and “Learning to Cooperate.”
