I like the term Deep Marketing because marketing makes sense to the business mind while Deep implies and refers to the subconscious. In  Geek and Tech– friendly terms, as a Mythologist, I seek to discover each individual’s default operating system; their programming, both conscious and subconscious.

I explore the why’s and how’s of  motivation and persuasion from personal to cultural levels. Mythologists seek access to the identified system’s programming,  like a Trojan horse sneaking below conscious programming to uncover the secrets, codes and passwords, that run individuals and the world.

                          

A large part of Jeff’s ongoing success  that is the 140 format inspires real relationships to form and build. The #140 events create new communities of friends and colleagues that persist long after the actual event has ended. This 140conference bonding ain’t your daddy’s social networking. The #140conf format is Jeff Pulver’s life’s work, he designed 140confs’ innovative format to be the antithesis of the stereotypical professional conference.

Jeff sacrifices much of his time travelling from one  high-tech conference to another. At some point Jeff decided he could do it better. He was right, he did figure out a way to create, produce, organize and present conferences that don’t suck. When you attend any of Jeff’s  140 conferences bring extra socks, Kleenexes and maybe a hat because  it will  knock your socks off,  blow your mind, and open your heart.

Meanwhile Jeff Pulver spends his  life in a perpetual state of travel-traversing the globe creating more events! Jeff just added Seattle to his list of destinations. He is flying to Seattle to create a 140 conference community.  Jeff will spend December 14th at Los Angeles’ 140 conference meetup. Los Angeles has a very strong and vibrant 140 community that has a great deal of momentum, having just hosted the 140 conference  The State of Now two- day conference on October 27th  & 28th.

It’s my opinion that Jeff has perfected the art of professional conferences. 140 conferences make a difference, make us different, and in our lives and in the world Jeff ’s genius and format are the only constants, all of the other ingredients vary from location to location. Jeff intuitively combines the variables of each local community with the greater,  global social media community. Every decision Jeff makes, from determining the primary and secondary venue locations, to designing a marketing plan that will attract the perfect mix of conference participants, matters.

140 conference sponsors and corporate partners create synergistic on site partnerships with  local communities to new and possibly game-changing partnerships with innovative and diverse community to a  corporate partners to selecting and scheduling an alchemically perfect mix of presenters to entertain, educate and inspire , schedules, and attendees of the 140 conferences experience  the same creates the same amazing results  amazing work by and with amazing people.

Working with passionate people who are changing the world doesn’t even feel like work; it feels like you’ve finding a higher calling. Everyone who has attended one of Jeff Pulver’s  140conf leaves it feeling incredibly lucky to have been a part of it, and grateful for the vision of the  sponsors who make it all possible.

We return home from the  140conf reinvigorated and fired-up with our memories of the most important and meaningful experience of our professional l lives tucked in our hearts to warm us  in our won lives. We realize shortly after returning home that the experience has enriched our lives and we become determined to recreate and share the peak  experience of our careers with our communities. The new city meetups address the longing we have to recreate the shining moments that are the Camelot-type convergence of Twitter and 140 conference–the State of NOW. We will carry these Camelot moments of NOW in our hearts as we return home, savoring being a part of a something extraordinary.

You can also “come to a lot” of 140 conferences– whether in London, New York, or Tel Aviv– certain that we’ll experience something magically trans formative, serendipitous, synchronistic, and synergistic. When we gather at 140 conferences our minds, hearts and humanity expand as we empower and inspire one another.

When we leave our homes and loved ones, we hope that the experience we’re travelling to will be worthy of our sacrifice. Jeff  knows from personal experience that to has to be quantitatively valuable in terms of  ROI as well as qualitatively meaningful in terms interpersonal relationship building. 140 conf ain’t your daddy’s social networking.

                          

As a mythologist exploring Social Media, persona-packaging  fascinates me. I love delving deeply into the way we present ourselves online. Each decision, from our choice of email address, website design and domain name,  profile image, to our user name, promotes or reveals an aspect of ourselves that we wish to highlight.

How we create, package, and market ourselves reveals the parts of our story that we are most proud of, and with which we are most comfortable. We project out into the cyberverse our best photos, our favorite Halloween costumes, and our coolest hobbies. We often choose to show the parts of ourselves that we think will gain the most approval from others. Some of us tone down our extremes in the hopes of attaining a  more generic appeal, while others highlight uniqueness to gain cache and identification within a niche audience.

The details of our lives that we conceal also have a story to tell. I like to think of these parts of ourselves as the offline/shadow persona, or the not-quite-ready-for-online-persona. The unmentioned details of our lives are the parts that we deem boring, uncool, perhaps even unattractive. If we step back and observe what drives & motivates our decisions to reveal, conceal, mask, disguise, or package ourselves in different ways, we may notice glimpses of our inner psychological forces battling for supremacy. 

My profile image reveals my conflicted impulses to conceal and to reveal. I took a photo of  myself, colored the background magenta and made the image so bright that it really stands out. My profile image is me, but stylized into an almost iconographic image. In real life (IRL) I’m less blonde than I appear in my profile; I’m a media analyst and scholar. I try to add a bit of wit and humor for tastier reading.

My offline-or shadow persona-is my real life. I don’t blog many details about my family. I’m married to a technology lawyer who, for personal and professional reasons, wishes to remain a private citizen. Early on I also made a conscious decision not to be a Mommy blogger, or more specifically, not to blog about the topic of motherhood. Ironically, since the birth of my daughter, most of my time has been spent as stay-at-home mom. My initial first few thousand tweets avoided almost all mention of my personal life and loved ones. My profile mentions it from time to time, as I try to decide whether I am a professional tweeter or a person who tweets.  I do fear losing all privacy, but the more I tweet and appear online, the more artificial the line between the public and private becomes for me. 

There are some readers who may be turned-off by the time gaps in my resume, but I no longer feel the need to hide my time spent in the Mother-Hood. Some of my initial success on Twitter may have come from the perception that I was some sort of expert:I put out quality content that was judged on its own merits. Being unknown permitted readers to project their own impressions into the voids in my profile, and let my words and opinions bypass  their prejudices. 

 After attending two Twitter conferences (Gnomedex and 140conf LA -the State of NOW) I can no longer say that I tweet  purely for the  intellectual exercise. Having met many of the individuals with whom I trade comments on Twitter, I cannot deny that my tweets have taken on a very social and collegial aspect. I’m no longer a lone  individual throwing tweets out to the random masses. I identify and communicate with an online community-one that listens (or reads), cares, responds, and retweets.

                          

diet coke, buddha, the all-is-one

When discussing this philosophy from foreign parts written in a foreign tongue, difficulties in hermeneutics lose entire concepts in translation & misinformation abounds. It’s particularly true reagarding descriptions of the practice of meditation-since the states of consciousness practitioners seek by not seeking have not been commonly experienced or understood  in the west until recently.

Western psychological terms such as individuation and self maybe similar to eastern spiritual terms on the surface, but they are not interchangeable and may in fact refer to totally different processes, qualities and aspects of the psyche. Gadamer’s concept of horizonverschmelzung, the hermeneutic merging of horizons, is extremely important for those who examine cultures, fields and concepts outside of their personal experience or expertise.

Jung has been accused of falling short of true understanding of eastern philosophy and spiritual practice (Maocanin 57). Jung may have looked to the East for independent proof and verification of his own thinking at times, but in his foreword to The Spiritual Teachings of Ramana Maharshi, Jung shows great respect for and awareness of the inherent difficulties in this undertaking.

He wrote “the philosophy of the East, which is so very different from ours, represents to us a highly valuable present, which however, we “must obtain in order to possess.” (Jung Foreword x). Jung seems to refer to the concept of being partially converted in order to receive the present. I agree that it is important to “grok” what you are studying. I confess that if I had to pick a religion or a truth to proselytize this philosophy of non-dualism, advaita vedanta,  and practice would be it. If I could study or do nothing else but pursue this line of enquiry for the rest of my life I would do so gladly. For those unfamiliar with this term or philisophy, I will expain the fundamentals of Advaita Vedanta philosophy and the method of enquiry taught by Ramana Maharshi and its horizonverschmelzung on my western psyche.

The sages of the East dismiss the empirical “reality” that the religion of scientific materialism is based upon, as pure illusion or Maya. They explain that it is our delusion that renders us unable to perceive the true nature of reality. Seeing from a dualistic perspective creates the world of opposites, for when we claim the existence of a separate “I” we project the separation everywhere.

By believing that we are separate we automatically superimpose a multiple world of creatures and objects upon the one, undivided reality the Existence which is Brahman. The illusion of a separate ego and world depend upon each other. When the ego-idea dissolves in transcendental consciousness, then the appearance of the world shall vanish (Shankara Crest 19).

Our everyday experiences may lead us to believe in the existence of the ego and its complexes, these are mental/emotional constructs and not necessarily the foundation of consciousness or being. The sages of the east persuade us to believe, to have faith, that the concept of “ego” is a theory and idea, and not reality.

Shankara explained that the ego-idea arises from a lack of discrimination between Maya and Ultimate reality/Brahman (Western 1). The ego-idea must be lost for Brahman, eternal bliss, to be experienced. Accordingly, spiritual masters seem to believe that trying to improve the ego is a waste of time that would be better employed in meditation. As a result, sages do not endorse the practice of psychotherapy over sitting in meditation.

Once you know and dwell in the true seat of  being, there is little value in analyzing the imaginary problems of you ego. Why waste your life looking at all of the pretty veils that obscure your true nature when you could be abiding in eternal bliss?

Our fascination with and attachment to our egos renders the practice and philosophy of Advaita Vedanta very intimidating to all but the ripest of souls. If only there was a way to experience bliss without dropping identification with the ego, westerners would have bought it already! Many people like myself have attained glimpses of the truth, but when faced with the possibility of enlightenment we become afraid and retreat into our minds. It is frightening for the mind and the ego to be convinced to approach their annihilation and obsolescence (Wilber No 146).

The price of Self-realization is the pre-existing sense of self. It seems insane to reject the peace and bliss of our true nature, and natural that we should eagerly embrace it. But the imaginary concept of thought and identity called the ego is a tough habit to break.

According to Shankara, a great Advaitan sage, the world is only thought. In Shankara’s philosophical system, aspirants are taught to use non-dual perception to see through the myriad things of the world to the true nature of reality, which is the Self. The term Self, in Advaitan philosophy, means Brahman; Self and Brahman are one and the same. Sunyata a “synonym for non-duality,” describes this quality of swollen-emptiness, something that which appears swollen from the outside, but in reality is hollow and empty (Maocanin 14).

Many different words and terms are used to describe this ineffable awareness, or state of consciousness beyond words: silence, sat-chit-ananda, and being who you are. The Advaitan view of reality is that Brahman alone is real, and what appears to be the universe is unreal. Advaitan philosophy introduces us to a radical way of perceiving existence: When the world and the individual self are rightly perceived they dissolve into Brahman.

I first read Advaitan philosophy in a Hindu Religions course in college. This philosophy made sense to me intuitively and immediately after taking that course I began to have insights and peak experiences into the true expanded nature of reality. These insights significantly altered my consciousness and my view of the world. I spent several years trying to integrate them. I had somehow transcended my personal awareness beyond the appearance of the opposites to a blissful state where I apprehended the true nature of reality.

After experiencing this higher state of consciousness, I awoke with the memory of the awareness but felt as if I had fallen to the bottom of a mountain with no clear path back to the top of the mountain. I took my peak experience as the answer to why I am here and the apogee of my existence. I was graced with that experience, but with no teacher to help me contextualize it. I sensed that I had had a divine vision that offered me a peek of awareness many steps beyond my personal consciousness.

My entire world view, my former concepts of reality and self were irreparably altered. Initially I chased “peek” experiences trying to get back to the garden without realizing that waking up spiritually is a never-ending process and my alarm clock had just gone off. for the first time.

Ken Wilber puts these peek experiences into context:
“A glimmer, a taste, a hint of the nondual—this is easy enough to catch but for the Nondual traditions, this is just the beginning. As you rest in that uncontrived state of pure immediateness or pure freedom, strange things start to happen. All of the subjective tendencies that you had previously identified with–all of those little selves and subjects…they start burning in the freedom of nonduality. They all scream to the surface and die, and this can be a very interesting period” (Brief 235).
I sought spiritual masters and found a tradition I could be initiated into—Reiki. I learned how to align with the consciousness of unconditional love, rei, and channel it energetically as ki. Reiki teaches non-dualism in action, and with the guidance of my teachers and spiritual practice helped me integrate the tremendous influx of visions, energies and insights that were rapidly altering my psyche. I applied most of my time and energy to spiritual practice and study and watched my life gradually transform.

Serendipitously, I attend the Works of Wisdom Book Club at Borders bookstore. There I met Neil, my next spiritual teacher and guide. Neil is sadhu, with straggly long white hair, a sparse mustache and pointed beard, with no job and no visible means of financial support. and few possessions except books. He walked the streets of town in a furry Russian cap with a book tucked under his arm. Neil held satsang with his “disciples” in all-night cafés, amidst the buzz of bottomless cups of coffee and the thin smoke of hand-rolled cigarettes.

It was Neil who introduced me to the teachings of Ramana Maharshi, Gangaji and Paul Brunton. I read the books he recommended, and although I believed the teachings, I remained unclear about how to deal with the world. Although I believed the concepts, I found it challenging and confusing for me to live in the illusion of the world. As Wilber wrote: “Contacting the Higher Self is not the end of all problems but the beginning of the immense and difficult new work to be done . . .” (Brief 315).

I learned Ramana’s legend from my teacher and later found this story repeated in books about the saint. It is said that in 1896, when Ramana was 17, he suddenly became gripped by a sudden and excruciating fear of death. The otherwise healthy young man felt certain that he was going to die on that day. At one point he said to himself, “now death has come.” He lay down in his bed and embraced death; he simply stopped resisting it. Ramana decided to emulate death by holding his breath and making his body rigid to confront his fear, concluding, “I must be the spirit that transcends the body. I am the deathless spirit.”

Ramana’s realization of his true identity was an immediate and intuitive flash that persisted. Ramana stated unequivocally, “there is no doubt the universe is the merest illusion” (Self 6). For Ramana, the veil of separation was lifted and he perceived the true nature of reality in which he is, as we all are, at one with Brahman.

What was unique about Ramana is he that he saw through the veils on his own with no formal training or teacher; he was never initiated into an established order. After his initial realization, Ramana tried to reconcile his new wisdom and awareness with the wishes of his family and requirements of school, he found he could not, and left home on a pilgrimage to for Arunachala. His deep oneness with Brahman was apparent to many and eventually an ashram developed on that site at Arunachula.

Ramana’s silent presence awakened people and made real the possibility of spontaneous self-realization. Though he rarely spoke, he did write some works such as answers to questions and dialogues as well as hymns to Shiva. Followers report they were awakened to their true natures just by basking in the deep silence of satsang with Ramana. He taught his students that the individual self is actually one with the Ultimate Reality. He told his students “the universe exists only in the same sense that the sun’s reflection on the lake exists. If not for the sun, there would be no reflection, and if not for the ultimate Reality there would be no universe” (Ramana Be 30).

The method embodied by Ramana Maharshi is amazingly simple and efficacious: to sit still and ask the question “Who am I?” The true answer is no answer. Beyond all answers is a state, void of qualities, with no adequate description. It is an experience of seeing through all separation to identification with the source. Even among the company of other Indian saints Ramana is considered to be a spiritual genius and teacher of incomparable purity. Ramana’s the path of Knowledge is so simple and so clear: merely inquire “Who am I?” with the awareness that beyond all qualities is the ground of all forms of our being Brahman and this is our true identity. Dis-identification with all thoughts that arise is true spiritual wisdom. The seeker uses discrimination, neti-neti, to negate all qualities except the awareness of Self/Brahman (Ramana Who 2). I am not my body, my desires, my emotions, or my thoughts. After negating all things, Ramana said “the awareness which alone remains–that I am, the pure center of awareness, an unmoved witness of all these thoughts, emotions, feelings and desires (Wilber No 128-29). This method does not leave the ego intact, and after it has eliminated all gunas, qualities, it will vanish. Ramana promised “the thought “Who am I?” will destroy all other thoughts and like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre, it will itself in the end get destroyed. Then there will arise Self-realization (Ramana Be 59).

The question “Who am I?” points to a specific state of awareness and that leads one to see through the apparent existence of this world and the I, rendering the ego, transparent. When thoughts or emotions arise in your awareness don’t resist them just dis-identify with them. They are not your thoughts, let go of ownership and observe them in the awareness of who you are and they will burn off naturally in the fire Brahman/Self. This question “Who am I?” is informed by the awareness that we are not our bodies and that any thought and any quality is an illusion. There is nothing to do or say except remember and experience union with Brahman. Ramana advised:
What ever thoughts arise as obstacles to one’s spiritual discipline the mind should not be allowed to go in their direction, but should be made to rest in one’s self which is the Atman; one should remain as the witness to whatever happens, adopting the attitude Let whatever strange things happen; let us see! This should be one’s practice (Ramana **).

Ken Wilber’s No Boundary and A Brief History of Everything are amazingly insightful philosophic syntheses of eastern and western consciousness concepts that addresses and compares Taoism, Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta and Western Transpersonal psychology practices and concepts. According to Wilber, the non-dualist is never totally “Enlightened.” Enlightenment is an ongoing process where new forms arise and each one is a test, an opportunity to be seen as a manifestation of the Source (Brief 238).

Questions often arise and they too will disappear when you pose the question, “Who is asking this question?” If you know your true nature these question will not arise (Ramana Be104). Questions are pitfalls and are generally a way of thinking about doing the method with out surrendering to it. Frequent traps of the mind and ego are reflected in concern about how long the journey will take. Ramana’s reply echoes through the ages: “As long as there are impressions of objects in the mind so long the inquiry “Who am I?” is required (Who 4). Another common pitfall for beginners on the path is the paradox of continued existence and how to stop chasing enlightenment as some achievable, yet somehow still out of reach, goal. The extraordinary and altogether paradoxical secret is that the Final Release is always already accomplished, “ever-present from the very beginning and at every point along the way”(Wilber Brief 305). Practice means being one with the all-that-is and dwelling in that, realizing that you always are one with Brahman. You are one with spirit the empty ground/source of all form. The intention of this inquiry is to make evident our true identity. This goal is accomplished though the total cessation of identification with the I/ego/body and thoughts or sensations of any kind. Identify with the all that is–Brahman, and to never forget that, never loose awareness of who you truly are. Ramana believed that “there is no better way of validating and acting from the awareness of the all-that-is except by abiding in it…for a wise man stays in the shade, one who knows the truth, does not leave Brahman (Who 6). Simply cease resisting the direct experience of the divine and dwell in that awareness.

One of the great mysteries of this teaching is once you have had this insight do you still exists? And if you don’t exist who is writing your papers? One may participate in an illusory world without identifying with the ego or the body.
Act from the firm conviction “I am the Self” without letting the false idea “I am the body or ego” arise…All of the activities of the wise man exist only in the eyes of others and not in his own, although he may accomplish immense tasks, he really does nothing…[but] remains as the silent witness of all the activities taking place” (Ramana Spiritual 9).
For Ramana, enlightenment is purely a question of identification and awareness of who you are. We may feel free our obligations in the world without attachment because “action and knowledge are not obstacles to each other”(Spiritual 9).

These concepts lose a bit in translation and the terms are not entirely interchangeable. It was important for many westerners to receive the teaching filtered through a western psyche that had distilled the essence of the teaching. It is not necessary to talk about any of the various qualities merely follow the practice but we westerners are very fond of intellectual discourse and philosophy. One of Ramana Maharshi’s most well known western follower was Rafael Hurst whose nom de plume was Paul Brunton. Brunton has been described as one of the first Europeans to “abandon the inbred illusion of superiority” and travel to India as a pilgrim (Journalist 3). In the books The Secret Path, A Search in Secret India, Brunton describes the teachings of Ramana Maharshi and the guru disciple relationship from his own experience as a western aspirant, “writing for those who have felt the truth in intuitive flashes as well as for those who must be argued into it by intellectual reasoning” (qtd. in Feurerstein 1).

I had an opportunity to attend satsang with a teacher in Ramana’s lineage named Gangagji Her teacher H.W.L. Poonjaji, affectionately called Papaji, was a follower of Ramana’s. Gangaji received the teachings of Ramana through Papaji. Papaji named her Gangaji and told her the Ganges needed to flow in the west. Papaji sent her back home to become a teacher and guru in her own right. This was the case with several of Papaji’s more advanced students; he didn’t coddle them and frequently pushed them out of the nest to spread the message in the world. Papaji died in 1997 after passing the torch for Gangaji to carry in to the west. Gangaji’s teaching is her own version of Ramana’s message has a slight Buddhist and Zen flavor and is interpreted by a westerner for westerners. During satsang with Gangaji in Boulder I found myself back on top of the mountain in an altered state of consciousness. What a treat, unfortunately, after this peak experience “Now what?” I was often disappointed by my inability to achieve the highest levels of consciousness at will, or once I disappeared, I always felt coming back I into ego consciousness as a failure. I had a “naïve notion,” as Wilber put it, of instantaneous enlightenment (A Brief 152). After several years of spiritual practice I became aware that if I still had a body and was still asking questions there was more unfolding and learning in store. In A Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilber references Aurobindo several times regarding the process of spiritual evolution “which obeys the logic of a successive unfolding;” and may be accelerated but not skipped over (Aurobindo qtd. in A Brief 152).
Gangaji said, “stop looking to be something and stop looking to not be something …Everything appears in the vastness and mystery of you. This is the deepest secret. This is the greatest gift of all-this gift from Ramana through Papaji. The opportunity to stop midstream, to stop and recognize who you are”(Satsang 2). We seek enlightenment like a wave seeking the shore; it is our nature. Upon reaching the shore, the wave disappears and blends back in to its Source, so too the seeker disappears when we realize who we are. (Wilbur No 142).

Works Consulted
Clarke, J.J. Jung and Eastern Thought: A Dialogue With the Orient. New York:
Routeledge, 1994.
Brunton, Paul. A Search in Secret India. 1935. York Beach: Weiser, 1997.
—.The Inner Reality. New York: Weiser, 1972.
—. The Secret Path. Read by Christopher Reeve. Berkeley: Audio Literature, 1989.
Deutsch, Elliot. The Philosophy of Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction.
Honalulu: U of Hawaii P, 1969.
Feurerstein, Georg. Paul Brunton: From Journalist to Gentle Sage. On-Line.
http://members.aol.com/yogaresrch/brunton.htm 10/10/98.
Gangaji. You are THAT! Boulder: Satsang Press, 1995.

                          

Tweets are so short and spontaneous they give a false impression of casual impermanence. Taken out of context, or stand-alone, my micro blogging is preserved forever in the public search engine record. Only this realization, and the desire to create a more controlled public and professional image,  finally motivated me to overcome my fear of premature publication.

Now I’m in a race to get the horse before the carriage, or at least the search engines. I created this website to serve as an anchor that connects to each of my social networking identities. If I don’t seize control of the reigns my tweets will  float, passively on the surface of the oceanic Internet, like so much flotsam and jetsam. Watching hopelessly from the shore hoping that my best tweets will be caught in the right search nets.

Luckily, I was smart enough to ask for advice in multiple forums, tapping into the collective wisdom of the hive to crowdsource a consensus on the how to’s of blogging. I relied on the the  help of my friends at Geeks,  Twitter and the answer anything app, Aardvark to figure out how to secure my domain, design my website and set up this blog.

I was pleasantly astonished by the savvy answers volunteered by individuals in each forum. The service at godaddy.com completely knocked my socks off.  At long-last I finished constructing a framework, clearinghouse and archive for my cyber-identity and all future work.

I’m all astonishment to discover that I  just finished the EASY part. I’m a writer, nor a web designer, but I designed my first website before I wrote my first blog post.

The website functions-it’s technically done. The never-ending task of feeding the search engines nuggets of wisdom and poignant insights of astonishing genius has barely begun. I have built it, but unless I fill it with content, they will not come.

I had naively imagined my blog bursting-forth out of my skull, fully mature like a literary Athena from Zeus’ skull. (Of course, in this analogy I’m Zeus and my blog is the Goddess of Wisdom.)

Since I built it, and I’m writing my first official post-I must have faith (or a an excellent SEO) to ensure that Shoeless Joe and lots of traffic, “will come!”

This is my blog. There are many others  but this one is mine. My blog is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my blog is useless. Without my blog I am useless. I must write my content true. I must write better copy than the spammers. This I vow, to fill my site with posts that will challenge, amuse and entertain my readers.*

*Yes that was an intentional humorous allusion to a little FullMetal Jacket humor. You may also recognize alllusions to Pride and Prejudice, & Field of Dreams.

                          

a Deep Mythology Analysis of the Apollo Program Archtypes

Glimpses of Gaia: Apollo’s Accidental Epiphanies:   On December 24th, 1968 three men gazed at the Earth from their Apollo spacecraft to the Earth as it orbited the Moon. This first “moon’s eye view” of the Earth was relayed back to Earth and shared with millions of TV viewers. These images led to a radical shift in Earth mythology. Prior to this spectacular moment, there seemed to be a lack of awareness of the preciousness and fragility of the Earth. Western culture, sanctified by Christianity and Marxism, encouraged symbolic, psychological, and ethical patterns of destructive relations of humans with nature. From Descartes to Newton and scientific materialism, westerners developed a model of the universe as a Giant Clock, a soulless machine. For the modern Westerner, Earth is generally considered an abundant source of dead matter or raw material bequeathed by God for mankind’s use and exploitation.

The space flights during the 1960′s allowed humans to look at our planet from outer space and perceive it as an integrated whole. The perception of Earth in all its beauty deeply moved both astronauts and TV viewers alike; in fact, several astronauts declared after their flights that they had undergone a profound spiritual experience that forever changed their relationship to the Earth. The first “Earthrise” photographs taken by the Apollo astronauts in December of 1968, along with other views of the small blue and white gem contrasted against the vast velvety black background of space, have become powerful and persuasive symbols for the global ecology movement. These extraordinary images have allowed us as a species to see Gaia, to achieve emotional and intuitive insight into the nature of the Earth.

These glimpses of Gaia were an unexpected result of the Apollo program. At the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, (NASA), it was an engineer and deputy administrator named Abraham Silverstein who came up with the name “Apollo.” He was inspired by the heroic image of Apollo he found in a book on Greek mythology. Silverstein said of his choice, “ I thought the image of the god Apollo riding his chariot across the sun gave the best representation of the grand scale of the proposed program.” (Burrows 267). The Apollo program followed two U.S. space projects: the earlier Project Mercury solo flights were aptly named after the messenger god, the god of travelers, and Project Gemini two-man missions. Interestingly, NASA’s great minds were not inspired to name the program for Artemis, or Diana as she was known to the Romans, although she is the goddess of the moon they so desperately wished to reach. Instead they chose her brother, Apollo, the god of the sun with his dramatic and masculine horse drawn-chariot. Not surprisingly the space program is by its very nature, quite Apollonian. It is Apollo, the god of reason, mathematics, and logic who rules the professions of science and engineering.

It was Apollonian consciousness, the mathematical, engineering and competitive warrior spirit, that got us to the Moon and that very Apollonian consciousness that was transformed by the stunning view of the Earth from the Moon. The deeper mystical and ontological ramifications of the journey to the Moon were not revealed until after the flight of Apollo 8. To Apollo 8 astronaut Jim Lovell, the Earth seemed like a small jewel, a sapphire against the black velvet of outer space. Lovell perceived the Earth in its finitude, as singular and precious as it really is. The scientists, engineers and pilots of NASA saw the epiphany of Gaia. The image acted as a deep symbol, a kind of intuitive shorthand revealing what the Earth is to us on a fundamental level: our salvation, preservation, and spiritual ground or matrix.

NASA unintentionally gave birth to another epiphany of Gaia by hiring scientist and theorist James Lovelock. It was at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs in California that Lovelock worked to develop experiments to detect life on Mars. Lovelock wondered: if life on Mars is of a different order than life on Earth, how can an earthling conceive of the right tests to detect it?  This train of thought led him to think more deeply about the essential characteristics of what we call life. Lovelock concluded that all living organisms must take in energy and matter and discard waste products causing chemical changes. These chemical reactions, Lovelock speculated, could be detected life on other planets through analysis of the chemical composition of their atmospheres.

Before NASA ever launched the Viking spacecraft to Mars in the 1970’s, Lovelock determined that Mars had no living organisms at this time since all possible reactions among the gases in the atmosphere had all been completed in the distant past. Lovelock informed NASA that a spectral analysis of the Martian atmosphere (which could be performed by a telescope on Earth) was all that was required, and that there was no need to send the Viking spacecraft all the way to Mars. NASA was not thrilled with Lovelock’s insights and continued developing the Viking project to search for life on Mars. During his time at NASA, Lovelock had an intuitive insight into the mysterious yet obvious nature of the earth as an integrated whole, a living being, a complex and self-regulating organism. Lovelock confessed that the “start of the Gaia Hypothesis was the view of the Earth from space, revealing the planet as a whole.” Ironically, the telos of the space program led to the formulation of the Gaia hypothesis. Science reached to the ends of the known world and beyond it into its mystery.

NASA gained much more than it bargained for with the Apollo program and James Lovelock. The journeys to the Moon didn’t just present the Earth from a new perspective, they also gathered information about the Earth’s atmosphere and surface that allowed us to discover more about the interactions between the living and inorganic parts of the planet. This information helped Lovelock formulate the Gaia hypothesis. With the Gaia hypothesis, Lovelock proposes that the Earth’s living matter, air, oceans, and the land surface form a complex system which can be seen as a single organism with the “capacity to keep our planet a fit place for life” (Lovelock, Gaia ix-x).

The controversial name for the hypothesis was chosen by William Golding, the novelist friend of James Lovelock. Little did Lovelock know that he had tapped into a deep archetypal power. Gaia is the ancient Greek name for the Earth personified as a Goddess known by the same name. Lovelock’s serendipitous choice encourages us to honor and respect the Earth as befits the supreme deity of early pre-Hellenic Greece. Lovelock has personified the Earth as Mother Nature, the source and sustainer of all life, the womb to which all life returns, the mother and matrix, “the sustaining force of all things.” The Gaia hypothesis comes along with a very powerful mythological history. According to Greek mythology, the universe began when Gaia emerged out of the chaos. Gaia then parthenogenically conceived and gave birth to Uranus, the sky god, as she slept. He was both her son and lover. Together they populated the earth with the Titans and Olympians. Two generations later her great-grandson, Apollo, slew the great python (one of Gaia’s offspring) at Delphi, usurping Gaia’s shrine.

After thirty years of scientific debate, the Gaia hypothesis has become much more accepted and is considered to be an accurate, if colorful, description of the Earth’s self-regulatory nature. However, the scientific community, unlike the general public, hasn’t enthusiastically embraced the theory. Capra ponders if some of his colleague’s highly irrational reactions were “triggered by the evocation of Gaia, the powerful archetypal myth” (106). The representatives of mechanistic biology attacked Gaia hypothesis as teleological, because they could not imagine how life on Earth could create and regulate the conditions for its own existence without being conscious and purposeful” (Capra 107). By strenuously opposing any argument that seems teleological, “the mechanists still struggle with the Newtonian metaphor of God as a clockmaker” (Capra 107). The scientific establishment initially acted as catholic orthodoxy defending against Lovelock’s revolutionary, creative and persuasive model of the Earth.

The mythic baggage of the idea of Gaia has made scientists leery and resistant for several decades now. Lovelock’s colleague, biologist Lynne Margulis defends the serious and scientific nature of the Gaia hypothesis, insisting that it “is science” and “not some vague, quaint notion of a mother earth” (Margulis 123). However, those aspects of the term “Gaia” that repelled scientists attracted ecologists, spiritualists and feminists. Gaia caught on with those who sought an “ecological spirituality” (Ruether 4). A substantial segment of the general public has begun to accept that “the surface of the Earth, which we’ve always considered to be the environment of life, is really part of life” (Margulis qtd. in Capra 106). Unfortunately, this knowledge hasn’t translated into action. Americans still consume a disproportionate amount of the world’s resources.

The Biblical and mechanistic models of the Universe still influence our behavior. The Gaia hypothesis represents a sharp break in the myth structure that sustained the Western mind for thousands of years. Prior to this, the Christian teachings led to an underlying assumption that man was something quite apart from the world in which he functioned, something special and unique from nature, and destined to rule forever” (Morowitz 40). In addition, the historical identification of nature with the female, an inferior being, became dramatically emphasized with the development of modern science in the 16th and 17th centuries. It isn’t surprising that man has exploited the Earth. In a natural progression from the extreme undervaluing of the Earth, a corrective self-regulation brought the Gaia back into modern Western consciousness and placed her at the forefront of scientific inquiry.

Awareness of the concept of the Earth as an oasis with limited resources will hopefully usher us into a millenium of responsible stewardship. The Earth is our refuge and safe haven; it is a lifeboat in a vast, dark sea. To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful is to see a new vision of the world. We must understand that not only is the Earth rare, but the “living part of Gaia is but a thin film on its surface” (Capra 214). The current ecological crises we face are due, to a great extent, to our failure to realize that we exist within nature and only by its grace.

The marriage of science and myth is a potent combination that can motivate powerful change. The space program harnessed the power of Apollo for the journey to the Moon. The ecology movement can unite the strength of scientific data with the power of myth to alert people to the need to change our habits for self-preservation. At the time of the moon landings and the release of the Gaia Hypothesis there was a concurrent swell of support for comprehensive environmental legislation, which still regulates our environment today. We can use the image of “the Earth as mother; nourisher, provider of water, food, shelter and clothing, the sustainer of life, and the source of fertility… a life support system” to promote changes in awareness and wasteful lifestyles (McCagney “Towards” 3). Our survival as a species in the next millenium depends on the “realization and recognition of our kinship with all other beings and our Mother Earth” coupled with life-preserving actions that reflect this awareness.

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