Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God
Description
<p>“<em>We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”(</em>Teilhard de Chardin<em>)</em></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;"><em>Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God </em> is as layered as a French cassoulet, as diverting, satisfying and as rich. Each reader will spoon this book differently. On the surface it seems to be a simple and light-hearted poetic journey through the history of Western thought, dominantly scientific, but enriched with painting and music. Beneath that surface is the sauce of a new evolutionary idea, involution; the informing of all matter by consciousness, encoded and communicating throughout the natural world. A book about the cathedral of consciousness could have used any language to paint it, but science is perhaps most in need of new vision, and its chronology is already familiar.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">The author offers a bold alternative vision of both science and creation: she suggests that science has been incrementally the recovery of memory, the memory of evolution/involution</span><em style="line-height:1.6em;">.</em></p><p>“<em> Involution proposes that humans carry within them the history of the universe, which is (re)discovered by the individual genius when the time is ripe. All is stored within our DNA and awaits revelation. Such piecemeal revelations set our finite lives in an eternal chain of co-creation and these new leaps of discovery are compared to mystical experience</em>” (From a reviewer)</p><p>Each unique contributor served the collective and universal return to holism and unity. Thus the geniuses of the scientific journey, like the spiritual visionaries alongside, have threaded the rosary of science with the beads of inspiration, and through them returned Man to his spiritual nature and origin.</p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">The separation between experience and the rational intellect of science has, by modelling memory as theory, separated its understanding from the consciousness of all, and perceives mind and matter as separate, God and Man as distinct. This work is a dance towards their re-unification: Saints and scientists break the same bread.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">All of time and all the disciplines of science are needed for the evidence. Through swift (and sometimes sparring) Cantos of dialogue between Reason and Soul, Philippa Rees takes the reader on a monumental journey through the history of everything – with the evolution of man as one side of the coin and involution the other. The poetic narrative is augmented by learned and extensive footnotes offering background knowledge which in themselves are fascinating. In effect there are two books, offering a right and left brain approach. The twin spirals of a DNA shaped book intertwine external and internal and find, between them, one journey, Man’s recovery of Himself., and (hopefully) the Creation’s recovery of a nobler Man.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">From the same review “</span><em style="line-height:1.6em;">The reader who finishes the book will not be the same as the one who began it. New ideas will expand the mind but more profoundly, the deep, moving power of the verse will affect the heart.</em></p><p><em>(Marianne Rankin: Director of Communications, Alister Hardy Trust)</em></p><p> </p>
Story Behind The Book
My late wife played the role of dark muse in my writing of Revenants. Strings of memory spliced one to another with her twine of tenacious insistence revealed in our rose-garden talks as we looked out across the black of the Pacific to where her Uncle Bunkle, Captain Richard Rees, United States Special Forces, died twelve miles southwest of a city then called Saigon in a country fated but to be for another sixteen months and fourteen days before it self-immolated atop that ever ascending gray ash heap of history. Died amidst a too-tentative truce while he and his unarmed men searched for Americans yet missing. Searched so they too might journey home. The first, and perhaps only, United States serviceman killed in action while deployed on an MIA recovery mission. Likely the last American combat death in our first war that even now only a few begrudging officials will admit where America was defeated, fewer still will confess as a mistake to have been waged at all, and none has yet conjured a credible explanation of what possible imminent threat its loss posed, beyond impairing their own political ambitions, to a vital United States interest justifying the slaughter of the lives of 58,220 Americans who had but begun to live theirs.
You may think you have a memory, but those black-night revelations taught me it is memory that has you for it is only remembrance that can render dignity to death. Remembrance that haunts you and holds you and will not let go. Not ever.
Reviews
<p>~~<br />
My Sleeper Read of the Year- Historical Fiction<br />
By YodaMom on December 27, 2015<br />
Format: Kindle Edition<br />
War and it's aftermath have so many levels of destruction. The person on the battle field is just the tip of the iceberg. War scars families, damaging generations, and this family does not escape any of the aftermath.<br />
This isn't a book I'd normally read, it's too real, too heartbreaking. It's about war, and the shadow of pain left in it's wake. I was drawn to it for some unknown reason I couldn't turn it down. So here I am feeling the dark devastation of the Vietnam War of those who didn't come home, those who did but left something behind and those here at home left to unscramble all the pieces.<br />
We follow young girl, Betsy, through her maze of life and lose, her findings and the ties that were never broken. Betsy is an amazing character supported by an intriguing cast of people and their love, war, lies and hopes. The death of her brother in the Vietnam War changes everything at so many levels. She is forced into candy striping at a local VA hospital where she meets a mystery that will take her and her friends deep into a time long forgotten.<br />
I really can't tell you more without spoiling the discovery for you. I did not expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. It will be with me for many years, haunt me. I finished this with with a need to visit a VA hospital and hold someones hand and listen. A beautiful book.</p>
