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Life . . . What's it all about?
The aim of my book, The Stuff of a Lifetime, is to help people be. Instead of seeking to "wrap up" life in an abstract discussion, it seeks to open up people to the ongoing experience of fully living their own. A wide-ranging expedition into life from conception to death, this book invites its readers throughout to reclaim their bodies, recover their souls, and re-enter the world. Coming at the entire span of a life afresh makes possible that rebirth of wonder so sorely needed in the world today -- which is the principal reason for this book's ever having been written at all.
Yet there is another reason also, one so immense it staggers the imagination and stuns the mind: the evolutionary shift taking place that is altering the nature of humankind. Jonas Salk was among the very first of those who saw this coming and explored the magnitude of what it meant — but more of him in just a moment. First, let's ground ourselves here at the start in an actual piece of human experience, for that is the "stuff" upon which the book and this entire website are based. So . . . here we go.
You and I don't know each other, but there are three things I believe about you: First, There is more to you than anyone around you knows. Second, Think of the person who knows or has known you better than anyone else whose feet have ever walked on this good green earth: There is more to you than they know, and you know it. And Third, There is more to you than you know. Because what you see whenever you "think about yourself" is an image in your mind, so to speak; but you are much more than that image . . . for you are also the one standing there holding it, and that "more," the rest of what there is to you outside your picture of yourself — that unique living, breathing, thinking, feeling bundle of cells, tissues, corpuscles, and characteristics that you alone consist of — is what The Stuff of a Lifetime seeks to lift to the surface and bring into full view.
Why Does All This Matter?
Because . . . if human nature is shifting, then human life has changed. And if that is taking place in our time, it behooves us to take a fresh look at human experience — not just in our hallowed halls of higher learning, but right in our own backyards, there in the streets and alleyways of our everyday existence — where our lives are lived day in and night out, and thus where we can expect to see and better grasp what our lives are truly made of.
When we re-explore experience, we re-experience the world, seeing things more for what they are and better understanding what they are busily becoming. As it happens, this is what first brought me into contact with Dr. Salk and led to our meeting and later coming to know each other.
The Seismic Shift In Human Evolution
Jonas Salk
Dr. Jonas Salk is the physician-biologist who developed the polio vaccine and founded the prestigious Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, numbering among its members-in-residence some of the finest research scientists in the world. He was one of the first to soundly relate evolution to the major problems now confronting humankind. His last four books broke new ground, setting forth an overarching framework of methods and practices useful to those working in the disciplines of today. Vast in scope and rare in its intellectual rigor, his view throws open the entire spectrum of human endeavor to the established scientific work of today, which can benefit both the trained specialist and the general reader as well.
"It is necessary that this vision be shared with others, especially with the new metabiological species that is emerging in the creation of a new reality, one fashioned by the conscious choices we make now."
(Anatomy of Reality, by Jonas Salk)
The Gist of Salk's Later Writings
Investigating the fundaments of growth in the life-spans of yeast cells, mice, fruit flies, and other organisms, while also considering the exponential increase in the world's population, Salk stumbled upon something new and arresting. He began writing about it extensively; in book after book he delved into the matter more deeply than in the one before, each time coming at the subject refreshed and from an enlarged perspective, until his years of research and reflection began to coalesce into a single unifying vision. The titles of his last four books reveal the intertwining themes culminating a life spent in scientific work – Man Unfolding; Survival of the Wisest; World Population And Human Values (A New Reality); and Anatomy of Reality. All of these reveal the intense curiosity and mounting concern at the core of his scientific investigations, and their contents spell out with cogency and increasing clarity the enormous significance of his discovery.
. . . and here is a summary of what he found:
(reading aloud may help the ear catch meanings missed by the eye)
I. That the growth profiles of various species show three very different patterns: . . . 1.) Following a long and steady period of growth, the rate suddenly spurts upward, after which the species ceases to exist; 2.) Growth accelerates, then rapidly declines, then accelerates and declines again, fluctuating up and down this way throughout its entire existence; 3.) A lengthy period of slow steady growth is maintained, which spikes upward, and then hits a plateau on which it maintains itself from then on (of the species that survive – and most of them don't – this is the normal pattern);
II. That in the third and normal pattern a "point of inflection" is reached . . . dividing the entire species profile into Epoch A, which comes before it, and Epoch B, which comes after;
III. That this unprecedented point is what humankind is presently passing through and will be for some time to come . . . involving dramatic and oftentimes conflicting shifts from values and behaviors required in the past to those called for now if our species is to continue to exist into the future;
IV. That to initiate the inflection is to trigger a transformation . . . commencing that broad-scale adapting to new conditions necessary to bring about both the emergence and ongoing unfolding of a species whose abiding aim is genuinely pro-survival;
V. That just as Man has reached the point where he can intervene to affect his own genetic inheritance, so also has he reached the point where he can now intervene into and affect his own evolutionary outcome . . . accomplishing the first, as he has, through biological means, and the second, as he is already beginning to do, through metabiological means;
VI. That a new discipline is needed, metabiology, to discern and delineate both the structures and dynamics inherent in the new form of existence now emerging within humankind . . . investigating as we must the crucial formative interrelations in Man between his BEING (the general givens of "Nature" as seen in "instincts" and appropriated through Intuition) and his EGO (the specific givens of personal inclinations as acted upon and elaborated by Reason), and the decisive interactional effects of both of these upon each other and in relation to the "environment";
VII. That this monumental shift – and the accompanying sense of unprecedented change it evokes in those undergoing it – is not "just an idea," but is, so to speak, in our very genes . . . arising, as it does, out of the very substance of Man's unfolding nature;
VIII. That what metabiology investigates is a newly evolved and still emerging part of reality (or of "that which is") . . . having to do with the entirety of Man's cultural experience -- its art, science, religion, philosophy, economics, politics, history, language, literature, and technology – and which, to be fully and rightly understood, must be seen in relation to all the other established parts of the overarching "Anatomy of Reality" to which they all belong, and which, when taken together, constitute the whole known rational order of the universe, whether that be approached as a whole (in macrocosm) or through any of its many parts (in microcosom);
IX. That metabiology should become the ongoing means through which humankind discovers and creates ways to live more wisely and relate more viably to itself, to other species, to the world's environment, and indeed, to the whole universe . . . and, lastly and surprisingly, . . .
X. That individuals working by themselves or in groups are far more likely to become effective "architects of the new reality" than are institutions . . . which are inevitably designed to remain fixed, and are thus much less capable of adapting swiftly to altered circumstances, such as those of the critical moment in which we stand today, which calls for many new understandings and a bevy of changed behaviors.
Jonas Salk
In 1975, one year into a five-year doctoral program and applying for a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, I came across Jonas Salk's The Survival of the Wisest and was utterly captivated by it. Calling his institute for more in the same vein, I was referred first to one office, then another, and soon found myself speaking to his politely polished but highly professional secretary. Since it was already late on a Friday afternoon, she sensibly suggested, "Mr. Ruyle, if you'd please call back the beginning of next week, I'll see what I can do for you."
Bright and early Monday mmorning, I called. "It's me again, " I said. "Oh, uhh, yes, " she murmured coolly, "Please hold a moment." Expecting to hear a click followed by a dial tone, indicating I'd been cut off, there was instead the empty sound of being on hold, suddenly the sound of another line being picked up and then a voice saying, "Jonas Salk speaking." I was stupefied and speechless! A few icy seconds everything froze, then the voice came again, a good bit stronger this time, "Jonas Salk speaking."
Galvanized into gesticulations and flailing like a parcel-bearing postman losing his footing on an icy sidewalk, I blurted out, "OH! Doctor SALK!!", jumping to my feet in a flurry of stutters and spasms, "I didn't expect to... uhh... and, well, you don't know me from Adam, but... — anyway, I'm applying for ... for this, uhh, grant, and, er... well your book, I think it's just magni—"Which book?", he inserted pointedly. "Oh, sure... I forgot to, uh, mention that it's... The Survival of the Wisest." "Go on," he urged firmly, like a conductor nudging along a passenger whose straggling is holding up the whole train. "Of course. Well, there's so much in it . . . and especially... well, for instance that sentence where you--" "Which sentence?" he interrupted, in a tone of rising impatience. Fortunately, the book lay open to the earmarked page that held on it — darkly lined along its margin with an inked-arrow pointing to the tiny paragraph it comprises — the sentence that I now know by heart. I rapidly read it aloud into the phone.
"If the BEING of Man is meaningfully related to what might be thought of as Nature's "purpose," its essential character must be discovered through its own expression, guiding the means it possesses for so doing while, at the same time, influencing the circumstances of its existence and evolution which are revealed by the effects "caused" by it."
The first of two huge pauses in our conversation was mammoth and now ensued, its heavy silence broken by Salk's soon saying in most measured tones, "Now would you please tell me what you think that means?" "Well . . ." I murmured, edging into the topic, never having thought of how to express this in any other terms, "that would be, I guess . . . well . . . like trying to design the world's perfect surfboard while you're using it to ride the waves."
The second and longest pause came next, in which could be sensed something akin to a ship's coming about. Then, rather softly, "Who are you?", he said, as if scrutinizing the scan results of my DNA. I replied, in the muffled manner of one just caught making a shortcut across someone else's well-kept yard, that I was a philosophy major working on a doctoral program in general psychology to develop a fresh approach to human experience — that I was active in theater, and also happened to be an Episcopal priest. "Mr. Ruyle, " he said, with a modicum of geniality missing before, "we understand each other. Not a whole lot of people think this way. Please feel free to indicate in your grant application that we've spoken personally. Should the grant be awarded, we will welcome you at the Salk Institute to share with you what we're discovering at the microbiological level while you share with us what you're finding at the metabiological level."
That never came to be, because the NIH informed me shortly thereafter that since the grant was to be awarded for the year 1976, they were "assigning priority to projects with a Bicentennial theme." No matter. Our link was maintained anyway, for Dr. Salk called me a few months later so we could share information; and we met in person when he came to Atlanta to address a large gathering at a conference entitled, "The Human Prospect: Revolutions to Come." There, he kindly autographed his World Population And Human Values: A New Reality, inscribing on its title page the sigmoidal curve depicting the growth profile he foresaw for the human species.
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SALK INSTITUTE for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Californina * * *
"We are not here to do what has already been done."
(Robert Henri, American painter and teacher of art, whose book, The Art Spirit, is a world classic)
"Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
(T.S. Eliot)
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
(John Lennon, of Beatles fame)
"Life is the continuing intervention of the inexplicable."
(Erwin Chargaff, the late biochemist and essayist)
"I thought I was learning to live, I was only learning to die."
(Leonardo da Vinci, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer, mathematician, and scientist. The same quote also appears as a lyric in a song from the Sixties)
"I think we have two lives: the life we learn with, and the life we live with after that."
(From The Natural, a film starring Robert Redford and Glenn Close)
"My life has been the poem I would have writ, but I could not both live and utter it."
(Henry David Thoreau)
"A difference which makes no difference is no difference."
(William James, the American philosopher and brother to novelist Henry James) ... which a gifted teacher of mine heightened the irony of, (like Twain, he was from Missouri as well), by turning it around: "If it doesn't make any difference, what difference does it make?"
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And now, a question for you: Are thought and action two different things — as many people believe — or is thinking an action too? You decide! But the way you choose to view this will greatly affect your life; because in whatever way we make sense of things, we come to adopt and live within the sense we make.
Making Sense
The sense man makes in turn makes man.
If that is something you don't understand,
do not "understand" it into something you can.
For to turn to face what you don't understand,
is better than to turn it into what you can.
And why should that be so? Because then you just may come to know it for what it really is. Example: While still in his teens, Einstein asked himself, "What would the world look like if I rode on a beam of light?", and broke through to a whole new understanding of the universe in just that way. Worth it, don't you think?
Of the countless realities that exist, the four greatest I know are these: God, or the holy; the universe; life; human experience. And the significance of the last one is that for all human beings, the first three can be known only through it.
(To grasp the significance of all that your Experiencing is related to, please visit Page 2 of this site entitled "The Human Realm")
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[The two evocative photomontages above are the work of Jerry Uelsmann, a renowned photographer and friend of many years, whose fine works are in the private collections of museums around the world. Links to Jerry's site and works, along with those of others presented in these pages, are found in the credits section listed on the Conversations page of this site.]
"The soul can never be lost, really (for where else can it go but where you are?); it can only not be found. For that to happen is to miss the very life within you, without knowing that you missed it."
"The soul cannot be conquered from without unless it has already capitulated from within. If this has ever happened to you, something in you knows it; or if it ever does, something in you will – and your first task then will be to reclaim it -- for it is your birthright -- and get it back again. Fortunately, there is a way everyone can do this."
"If you identify your own more (the rest of what you are outside your picture of yourself) too quickly with what is holy, then when you finally come to your self, you will lose your religion."
"One need not live the pace of youth to bear still all the vigor of its spirit."
"The greater power is not what ushers in the new, but that which makes even the old new once more."
"Try cutting religion away from the rest of life, and you will succeed only in cutting the life out of your religion."
"Spirituality and sexuality are inextricably linked; lose the capacity to be stirred (your sexuality), and you will lose the ability to stir (your spirituality)."
"Morality is the attempt to imitate the actions of a grace not yet fully found."
"To seek the truth while living a lie is to fool oneself . . . and a complete waste of time."
"No human being ever needs to tell another what it's like to be alone."
"Nothing like one's own mountainous messes to show with unforgettable clarity the way not to go."
"When you finally discover what is real, you see it's been there all along."
"A half truth is much worse than a whole lie, because it makes it even harder to tell the difference between the two."
"The truly free aren't those busily doing what they want, but those already engaged in growing into all they want to become. What the first have will largely be gone by the end of today, while what the second have will have grown into even more by tomorrow -- and every tomorrow thereafter."
"Those who spend most of the time talking about their relationship don't have one anymore."
"Thomas a Kempis knew 'Habit is overcome by habit'. However, those too weak to break a bad one may still be able to replace it with something better. But that isn't the end of the matter; it's merely where a person starts to see. Because it's in what happens next that one really discovers whether it’s just the old repeating itself or that something truly new has begun. It's impossible to predict or bring about what can emerge only in that free sphere where a soul is wrought anew. Whatever is there will announce itself. We must be patient to wait and see."
"There are Early Peakers, Mid-Course Changers, and Late Bloomers. The first get the glory before the others but may turn out to be a flash in the pan. The second, while solid and stable, experience the most costly mid-life upheavals and drastic course corrections. While the last end up having the most fun of all but run a serious risk of dying before they can make it that far. The worst thing is to miss what you are, and the next worst is to time it improperly." ;- )
"It isn't true that we always like to be around those we regard most highly. For in times of difficulty or personal weakness, the ones we want to see least are those who believe in us most. Not because they won't respect us, but because their respect reveals in us the lack of ours for ourselves. And that is when people "go into hiding" -- to keep themselves from seeing and being what they really are. This is one of the main ways (and we have several) that we cut ourselves off from self, others, the world . . . and everything that is."
"If you use what you have right now . . . it will turn into all you will become."
"Few things show what we are so definitely as those that arise within, and come out of, us."
"You cannot fully see where you are standing in your life until you have moved beyond it. This is why, with life in general, more is yet to come."
Life is that which if you can accept the endings of, you can begin to understand. And its corollary: When you are ready to live with a No, then you are free to ask for any Yes in the world.
Copyright © 2011. All Rights Reserved. Gene Ruyle
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Sensing The Way -- My primary blog at WordPressIt is the "Grand Central Station" for all of my sites online (at the Authors Guild, Yahoo, LibraryThing, etc.), -- and this link takes you directly to it.
[ This is the main or Home page of my official website. It gives the overall picture of what I do, explains what it is all about, and contains the Site Directory to show where to find what on each of its seven pages. One can read every word on this entire site and still miss the point completely; for what all of them seek is "the thing itself," a piece of each visitor's own experiencing, rather than settling for just talking about it. ]
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At all major bookstores
On the Navigation bar at the top of each page (or on the names highlighted in green) click Home Site for the site's personal welcome and place "To really start"; The Human Realm, for an interactive exploration of key concepts and components employed in my work.(ALL SNIPPETS OF THE BOOK ARE FOUND ON THIS 'THE HUMAN REALM' PAGE!); Life Sketch for a broad-stroke outline of my life up to now (with an interactive link to the albums of its Photobiography at FACEBOOK); and Events for an ongoing calendar and log of activities. The Coffeehouse ("The Viennese Coffee House Café") and Newsletter features are self-explanatory and readily apparent. The website's final or Contact page has a special form to use for those wishing to email us directly.
For instructions on reaching my FACEBOOK Photobiography ... please go to the third or 'Life Sketch' page of this website
Today's Site Activity
Tweaking the software
that is supposed to help all of my sites work together.
Have a happy Solar Eclipse day!
Sunday
May 20, 2012
Featured Quote
"No one is exempt from speaking nonsense. The great misfortune is to do it solemnly."
— Michel de Montaigne
(French essayist - a literary form he invented and coined the term for,
1533-1592)
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REFRACTIONS
"There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I have known some who are constantly drunk on books, as others are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulting of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing."
— H.L. Mencken
(American editor, writer, and critic,
1880-1956)
"What we pay for with our lives never costs too much."
– Antonio Porchia
(Born in Italy and moving, at age twelve, after his father's death, with his mother and siblings to Argentina, where he lived a long and simple life as a Taoist ... reading little, gardening, and pouring his gleanings into aphorisms of remarkable purity,
1886-1968)
"If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you."
–Dorothy Parker
(U.S. writer,
1893-1967)
"It was at a dinner in London, and I was asked what, in my opinion, were the chief characteristics of the American nation. I replied that the average United States citizen was perfectly epitomized in Irving Berlin's music. He doesn't attempt to stuff the public's ears with pseudo-original ultra-modernism, but he honestly absorbs the vibrations emanating from the people, manners and life of his time, and in turn gives these impressions back to the world – simplified, clarified, glorified. In short, what I really want to say ... is that Irving Berlin has no place in American Music. HE IS AMERICAN MUSIC."
—Jerome Kern
(Famous American composer, in a letter to Alexander Wollcott in 1925)
"It is not true that life is one thing after another – it is one damn thing over and over."
—Edna St. Vincent Millay
(U.S. poet,
1892-1950)
"Man will only become better when you make him see what he is like."
— Anton Chekhov
(Russian playwright and short-story writer, originally trained as a physician,
1860-1904)
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Of...
"Whether it's the racehorse Seabiscuit or the book The Stuff of a Lifetime, the story is much the same."
From...
and In the book...
The Official Dedication Pages
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Professional Member of ...
Authors Guild
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers
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