“Combining science and spirituality in the context of governance can create an authentic new foundation for principles of justice and law. Justice should be defined and practiced within the context of One. Laws should be defined in terms that honor justice in the context of the whole and defined in ways that express “whole systems”. The possible confusion and explosive consequences of that confusion can be addressed and overcome through the new scientific foundations which we propose are emerging.
This is a massive high-bandwidth “everything at once” revolution at the foundation of our collective life. It is at once a response to dangerous crisis, and a pathway forward into unfolding the highest and most beautiful elements of human potential.
We are responding to crisis, but we are creating a renaissance.”
“ ‘We are not in this alone,’ I so often think to myself, and I remain sure that, “in the network,” whether consciously or unconsciously, we are all working together in that massive creative act combining science and spirit, in which is to be found the best and perhaps the only hope for the future vitality of the human family.”
(from Bruce’s UCSC senior thesis, 1987)
Bruce wrote this poem at age 20, 1964, not long after his father’s death, for a poetry class he was taking at Monterey Peninsula College. The form was assigned, the content the poet’s. Bruce’s mother and then Sally kept the original over the decades.
“That easing morning frees the blackest night.
I hope for what I cannot hope to know:
Our time is shrived with silver beads of light.
“These whispered vespers sung just out of sight,
Float, wait, like early morning smoke.
That easing morning frees the blackest night.
“And of prayer, polished to a holy white:
Need I, the sinner, outwear a cassocked hope?
Our time is shrived by silver beads of light.
“And yet it is the knowing that bids me wait,
Bids me pause here, though in sleep I know
That easing morning frees the blackest night.
“As if it were the taste alone, that excites
The tongue, the eye, the rest I undergo in
Our time, shrived with silver beads of light.
“For in these days spent deeply, before twilight
On this Earth I shall become I know
That easing morning frees the blackest night.
Our time is shrived with silver beads of light.”
“Let us suppose that the evolution of civilization is today reaching a capstone moment, a supreme pinnacle of synthesis and capacity, where the interdependence and interconnection of everything includes all dimensions of human knowledge and insight and wisdom and science and skill.
Within this comprehensive span is included the deepest range of intuition and the most refined and detailed knowledge of science. This breadth of inclusion contains the full range of human being, from "heart" (feeling / spirituality), to "head" (thinking / science), and "hand" (action). In the context of this full breadth of inclusion, let us suppose we are entering into a supreme transformational moment – when at the same time as we are realizing this knowledge, it also becomes critically true that we human beings must rise to our best to "pass through the eye of the needle together" in order to solve the critical hydra-headed crisis that threatens us today.”
“I have been a student of what Fritjhof Schuon describes as “The Transcendent Unity of Religions”, which is introduced by Huston Smith in the 1984 edition, where Smith brings in his simple and Ken-Wilber-like diagram, to which I have returned again and again. The central image below shows the historically “separate” religions each on their own track but converging towards all the others as lesser differences drop out and significant general principles create commonality.”
“Driven by new vision and inspiration and by a reaction against the limits of ‘reductionist and mechanistic science,’ new holistic and whole system ideas are making their way into the world. Sophisticated studies of the human body show that organs and cells do not function as isolated independent units but work together in an intimately connected flow where the apparent boundaries between ‘parts’ can be artificial and misleading. Today leading thinkers are recommending a path of biomimicry that recognizes the innate wholeness of many organic and natural processes. We can follow these principles in the development of new governance models.” 2020