I would like to share with you a reflection that came to me while I was meditating on life with wonder and anguish. I turned to both science and spirituality to find answers, but I got the impression of exploring the limits of the human mind. It is nature itself, through its history, which offers the most interesting observations. This story is traced by our mothers, because every living being comes from a mother. Each mother is a branch of the tree of life, and this tree is the bible of nature.
It is this path of thought, from the sciences to the observation of the tree of life, that I will now describe.
Between chaos and regularity: the fractal of existence
Sciences see life as the fruit of a hazardous production. The fittest survive and reproduce. But if chance alone determined this production, we would be in an ever-changing chaos. Conversely, religions see the world as the fruit of an entirely decided creation whose destiny is traced in advance. If existence were the fruit of a determined plan, the ideal model would be immediately created, unique and immortal. It would be immobile, because there would be no opposition. It would be empty, because it would need nothing. So there cannot be life without randomness. There could not be any existence at all. Random disrupts the perfect cycle and this produces a multitude of movements and shapes.
Reality is like a Mandelbrot fractal. The Mandelbrot fractal is based on a formula comprising so-called “complex” numbers. The more we enlarge the edge of the overall shape, the more we discover a multitude of symmetrical shapes, on which we can zoom in infinitely to discover the same repeated shapes, or sometimes other forms, also repetitive, all without us knowing why. A cycle, touched by randomness, produces something similar to life, that is to say a multitude of forms, partly redundant and partly different.
The limits of our sensory and conceptual capacities
Science is limited by our sensory and conceptual capacities. The symbols and words used by the human community are a simplification. The perfection of the concepts they designate does not exist in reality. A perfect circle does not exist, one cat never looks perfectly like another, and in reality, one and one make two only if the two units are perfectly equal, which is never true. Reality is not in concepts. It is not in the words. Reality is impure, chaotic.
We can remember, we can dig into the past like archaeologists, or we can project ourselves into the future, but all of these are only ideas. Reality is sensory. Even if our senses are limited, they offer a more reliable reality than our concepts, which are always too simple, too perfect.
We can observe redundancies and deduce rules, they remain valid for our level of observation only, in an environment where everything is under control.
What would be the reality perceived by another form of intelligence? What is reality outside of our brain, outside of any nervous system that perceives it?
As I was unable to find answers in the writings of humanity, I started observing nature, and above all, failing to know what my destiny is, after death, I asked myself, where do I come from?
The omnipotence of the mother
I come from my mother’s womb. This is where I experienced my first sensations. My mother is the channel through which the world flowed into me. What I am in life is first and foremost the fruit of this soil. Even more, she brings the first cell. The egg cell already contains, under a protective layer, the main constituents of the cell. At the genetic level, the contribution is equal between the male and the female, but the constituents of the cell are almost all provided by the mother. In other words, if we compare ourselves to a clay statuette, our form is given by the mother and the father, but the clay itself is maternal. We forget it as we grow up, we see our mother as one puppet among others populating our internal theater. However, our mother is all-powerful. She is the source.
The way of the mother
Our mother was also born of a mother. Her origin goes back to all her mothers before her, linked by their umbilical cord, along a tree of life which takes root in the abyss of time.
Nature has a very deep form of intelligence, contained in all the cells of the living world. She evolves, slowly, because she thinks about everything she does, so that her delicate balance is maintained. It is her prudence and her patience that show her benevolence. Our present is the top of this crystal which continues to grow harmoniously.
The message of nature is not contained in any book, since she does not speak. The word is an invention of humanity. The bible of nature is the story of life. It is a symphony written in our genes, which is replayed every time a woman carries a child in her womb.
The lives that preceded us have died out, giving way to new ones. This is how nature evolves and adapts. The mortality of the life forms allows life itself to be immortal.
The resemblance of human embryos to those of other species suggests that we have ancestors common to each of these species. We can then observe the path that nature followed, from mother to mother, to reach our species. Our species has one particularity, compared to other living beings: it’s exceptional creativity. Even if human beings are far from possessing the creative capacity of nature as a whole, each human being is capable of creating much more than an individual animal, in technology, art, literature and all fields where the mind is able to take information or material, and rearrange it according to its imagination.
So, referring to the similarity of embryos, let’s look at how life evolved to reach us.
A close mother
What moved me first was the mother-child rapprochement across species, correlated with the presence of tenderness and attachment. Fish lay eggs and generally leave them at the mercy of the vagaries of the ocean, some amphibians carry the eggs on their backs, birds incubate their eggs, and among them the first signs of tenderness appear. Birds rub their necks. Domesticated birds can appreciate caresses and hugs. In mammals, the baby develops in the mother’s womb and is nourished by her breast. Cats, dogs, humans can develop a deep attachment and great tenderness. Some primates live in communities and the little one’s attachment extends to other members of his tribe who take care of him. Love is carried to its highest degree in the human species. It leads us to push our limits. It is at the origin of our most beautiful creations. It makes us desire to live.
This gives me the feeling that, while species have evolved towards human beings, they have detached themselves from a certain genetic determinism, therefore from their original mother, nature, through their individual creativity, while getting closer to the mother of their species. In other words, the more nature has developed the creative independence of her children, the more she has developed in them a tender attachment to the one who gives life.
The capacity for empathy among animals must be related to attachment, because it is greater among mammals. Our species is capable of pushing this ability very far, even if certain individuals are exceptions and ignore compassion.
A vulnerable mother
At the same time, the mother becomes more and more vulnerable. In insects, the egg-laying female is often larger than the male. This varies among vertebrates other than mammals but often the sizes are equivalent. Among mammals, it is common for the male to be larger and muscularly more powerful than the female. This is the case in our species. Perhaps there is a message of compassion there for our species: the one who gives us life is vulnerable.
What the human mother is for man is similar to what the original mother, nature, is for humanity: all-powerful, because she is the source of life, very close, because we germinate in her womb, and vulnerable, because she can be destroyed.
The child is also vulnerable. He remains small and fragile for a long time, entirely dependent on his family. It is possible to reverse the perspective and see the impulse of nature as the quest of a caring mother for all of her children.
Our creativity, our attachment and our empathy enable us to do wonderful things for the well-being of all life forms on Earth: we can understand and help suffering beings with nervous systems like us. Nature acts on a time scale much longer than that of our individual suffering.
Suffering is useful, it can warn us of danger and make us stronger. But when it is long, intense and incurable, suffering destroys the desire to live. I have long thought that this suffering was an anomaly of nature. Now I think that perhaps our existence as both creative and empathetic beings is a sign that nature is searching for a solution.
Our exceptional creativity may also allow us to leave mortal Earth to spread life to other planets.
Humanity devours its mother
Something in our life paradigms has diverted us from this benevolent path, because instead of using our abilities in symbiosis with nature, we parasitize it.
I think we got lost by turning away from observing nature and by seeking truths in religious or spiritual discourses. However, these truths are influenced by the material and narcissistic interests of those who designed them. This is how the law of the strongest, the source of the oppression of women, was established as a rule of life and extended to the divine Pantheon. It made submission without qualms a virtue. Human beings, especially men, learn to ignore or despise their vulnerability. However, it is the fact of knowing that we are vulnerable that makes us aware of the importance of gentleness, mutual assistance and empathy.
Today, humanity treats its mother nature as it has treated its mother woman for millennia: by subjugating and devouring her.
Seeing God as a mother
It is possible that during its long history, which extends well beyond the first written, modeled or painted traces, humanity has known other systems of filiation and other spiritualities, where the maternal bond to the universe was not cut off.
This humanity, while becoming aware of its inexorable mortality, must have been amazed by the emergence of life from the woman’s womb. All the forms that life takes had to be the children of an immanent mother. Every fruit of Earth was the milk of the Great Mother. The sounds of nature were her song, the flowers and plants her perfume. Butterflies, dragonflies, birds were her dance. The people revered life as much as those who gave it, and live serenely and confidently, feeling as if they were in a mother’s womb.
If people did indeed live according to this faith, why was it abandoned? Perhaps because population growth has led to conflicts and the spread of brutal laws, designed by those who can impose their will by force. It is also possible that patriarchal peoples had a higher birth rate, because patriarchal religions advocate a high birth rate, without consideration of the well-being of the mother and the child. It is a way of conquering territory that is easier for men than war, since it is enough to exploit the womb of women.
A male god is enthroned in place of the Mother Goddess and all the other divinities, an all-powerful god, who would have created everything and decided everything, and who distributes misfortune to punish or give lessons, to the image of what man has become for woman and the king for his people. A god who cannot be seen, somewhere in the sky.
The ancient faith in a Mother Goddess, from whom all creation originated, is a hypothesis supported by certain historians, archaeologists, and other specialists, based on very ancient myths and arts. But it is not unanimous. It must be said that it profoundly shakes up the entire ideology on which our society is built. And above all, it upsets the glory of the male.
However, there are still people today who live with maternal filiation, and who worship a Mother Goddess. These people are more respectful of nature and women than those who live according to a patriarchal ideology.
This form of spirituality is more in accordance with our nature, since we are indeed born of a mother. Patriarchal Abrahamic religions encourage us to see the flesh as something dirty and it makes it dirty through contempt for women. While faith in the Mother Goddess – or simply the fact of venerating life and those who provide it – reconnects us to the Earth, to our senses, to our body, and it encourages us to live in symbiosis with nature. It adorns women with prestige which compensates for their lesser muscular strength, to maintain an equitable relationship with men. The resulting respect for the weakest becomes a rule of life for the benefit of all humanity and all other forms of life. Sex is no longer an act of domination and violence of the male over the female, but a return to the channel which generates life, and a tribute to the woman.
As I reflected on the origin of our species and thought about the emergence of tenderness and empathy, I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. I imagined the creative intelligence of the world in the form of a mother. I felt enveloped in a maternal presence, gentle and luminous. Images then came to me like memories, of a time when humanity loved God in the guise of a mother. She was not like the terrible god of Abrahamic religions who created everything, decided everything, the worst sufferings as well as the greatest joys, and who fixed our destinies. She was a mother who lavishes blessings, nourishment and unconditional love, a mother who does not control everything, but dances between the mixture of harmony and chaos that defines existence.
The one who created us all cannot perhaps help us on the scale of a single life and a single individual, because she evolves on a much larger scale of time and space. But I believe that our very existence, as highly independent and creative beings, endowed with tenderness and empathy, but also, vulnerable, and born of a vulnerable mother, is a solution she found to understand and rescue her children.
There is only one other being in the world who lives in a reality similar to ours. This is another human being. When we look at other people, we believe that their reality is the avatar produced by our mind, the outer shell visible to our senses. But these avatars are only part of the multiple creations of our being, which is pure consciousness. People we are contemplating also have avatars before their eyes, and they take care of the avatar that they hope to see in the eyes of the others. But, in fact, each of them is, just like us, the whole world reflected in one consciousness.
We live a similar experience, next to each other, and yet each in our own world. Because we can only be one person at a time, ourselves. So we are basically alone, each of us. But we are all together, being alone.
We are like babies, resting next to each other, and nature has endowed us with everything we need to understand and help each other.
I believe that, for thousands of years, we have been experiencing and propagating a profound trauma, an intimate cutting from our roots, the fall of the Mother Goddess. The umbilical cord from humanity to Earth is cut, without us being ready to be born, and we float in a rotten placenta of illusions and lies.
Imagine all of reality bathed in a maternal presence. Imagine that everything available to your senses is the emanation of her presence. Maybe then, you will remember. And maybe you will see the path she has paved for us.