The Birth of Autocosmology: A Personal Reflection
By Brian Swimme
Starborne: The Journal of Autocosmology, Issue 1, can be read in full at the above link. Each individual contribution will be shared here as well, one every week.
The Birth of Autocosmology: A Personal Reflection
By Brian Swimme
Today is January 29, 2025. Ezekiel Fugate, one of my last doctoral students, has asked me to submit something to "Starborne: The Journal of Autocosmology." My first response is to feel even more keenly the heavy obligations already on my shoulders, a jovial elephant on one side and a really angry gorilla on the other, both jumping up and down. There's no way I can take on another assignment. But this is Ezekiel, the man who gave a heartfelt summary of my life’s work when I retired from teaching at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). There is no way I can say anything but Yes! to Ezekiel. But in the instant I silently agree to it, I feel the presence of scholars, decades in the future, poring over each and every offering in this maiden voyage of the first journal dedicated to the new genre of autocosmology. I feel an intense pressure from the critical minds of the unborn future. In any event, here I am in the San Francisco Bay area, searching through my memories for the throughline that led to the founding of this new genre.
When I was in graduate school studying mathematics and physics, I was keenly aware that I was en route to becoming a dried up stick. That's a terrible thing to say, I know. It suggests that the American system of higher education is filled with evil people, which is far from the truth. Even so, there was something missing in my education. My struggle can be characterized as the condition the mythologist Phil Cousineau calls "Venus," by which he means "lack." I felt a profound lack. I was lost in a territory of confused erotic energies.
The way I dealt with my confusion was by entering into a slow process of turning from the equations of mathematical cosmology to the philosophical meanings of the universe. The parade of thinkers ushering in what was, for me, a different form of consciousness includes Hildegarde of Bingen, Thomas Aquinas, Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, Teilhard de Chardin, and Thomas Berry. The equations remained at the center of my mind, but they were now seen to be an element of a much larger, richer, more magical universe than what they, by themselves, had unveiled. Back then, I would not have been able to say that I had taken a first step out of industrial consciousness. I didn't have that much self-awareness. What I did know was that a hot energy within demanded expression as I taught my courses. I would find myself saying things like, "Every atom of your skin came from the creativity of stars! Can you actually learn that and not change your life?"
Even with this development, "lack" continued. You can see it in the last sentence of the previous paragraph: "Can you actually learn that and not change your life?" Looking back on that exasperated questioning, it seems obvious to me now that knowledge of the evolving universe was not enough for me. Or for my role as professor. That is to say, if I had given written examinations, and students answered every question perfectly but were not also flaming with wild energy at finding themselves at the forefront of an evolving Earth and universe, I would feel I had failed to connect, that I had failed to convey what needed to be conveyed, that I had failed to deliver the searing truth.
Another step. After a lecture I gave at the Esalen Institute, Bruce Wilshire, Rutgers University philosopher, suggested I look to European phenomenology. This turned out to be helpful. I launched into reading Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre and was delighted. But once again, my mind filled with Venus. It took some time to name it, but eventually I realized what the lack was. Neither Heidegger nor Sartre lived in the evolutionary universe. This is not a criticism of their work. After all, they had no choice in the matter. Heidegger's big work was published in 1927, four years before Georges Lemaître theorized the universe's beginning as an explosion, and 37 years before Lemaître’s hypothesis could be empirically verified by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson at Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey. I celebrate Sartre and Heidegger as touchstones in Western philosophy, but ye gods! All those books and not a single mention of what it felt like to live in a universe that has been developing for fourteen billion years? All those words but nothing about the flame of wild energy at the front of cosmic creativity?
Then, a fateful moment. Carolyn Cooke, novelist, short story writer, professor, showed up at CIIS when her college went bankrupt. Never have I been so happy at the bad luck of others! Their failure led to a new world of possibilities working with Carolyn. From the start, I was amazed by her brilliant understanding of both writing and literature. But along with her insights, which I copied down furiously, came statements that threw me. For instance, this professor of creative writing declared one day that, "Writing is not self-expression. I hate that." In another class, she proclaimed, "Writing is consciousness." In all my years studying philosophy and the world's spiritual traditions, I had not come across anyone saying that writing, by itself, was a form of consciousness. But as the months and years went by, I slowly drew in what she was saying, and I found, through experience, that it led to a bright, brand new, creative world.
The autocosmology genre emerged in the series of courses Carolyn Cooke and I invented over several years of the early twenty-first century. We drew students from both the MFA world and the Philosophy world. No one person knew where this process was taking us, but when we were together as a community of novelists, cosmologists, visual artists, philosophers, actors, spiritual teachers, screenwriters, film directors, short story writers, and playwrights, we could feel the significance of what was brewing. Various words surfaced as possible ways to name what we were about. Over time, "autocosmology" survived longer than the other candidates.
Asking about the emergence of the autocosmology genre is similar to asking when the first human entered existence. Was it with Homo erectus millions of years ago? Was it with Homo sapiens 300,000 years ago? Scientists argue over these and other speculations. The one thing we can say with confidence is that humanity began in Africa. It's the same with the autocosmology genre. It surfaced not from one particular individual nor from one particular event; it was, instead, a collective discovery coming from a group of CIIS faculty and graduate students exploring the developing universe through the lens of human experience.
With the birth of Starborne, that is, with the work of editors Ezekiel Fugate, Ari Makridakis, Addam Ledamyen, and Erin Vigil, the process initiated in the classrooms at CIIS now leaps beyond its walls. All around our planet are utterly unique creative personalities who will light up with the wild energy of a developing universe.
I should end by addressing the scholars of the 22nd century who are tracing the lines back to the origin of the autocosmology genre and have found their way to our journal. Thank you for featuring us in your research. There is one additional thing you should know which concerns the whole process of invention. Our classroom dialogues included light shows. And music. We would often spill out of CIIS into the San Francisco evenings. Restaurants, bars. Please note that in your report. The truth is, in addition to the seriousness of the undertaking, it was a real blast.
Brian Thomas Swimme is the Director of the Center for the Story of the Universe and a professor at CIIS. He brings the context of story to our understanding of the 13.7 billion year trajectory of the universe. Such a story, he feels, will assist in the emergence of a flourishing Earth community. He lectures widely and has presented at conferences sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The World Bank, UNESCO, The United Nations Millennium Peace Summit, and the American Museum of Natural History.
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