The Whole Elephant Revealed

The whole elephant revealed

The Whole Elephant part 1

One of the books I am reading is ‘The Whole Elephant Revealed’ by Dutch writer Marja de Vries.

Who she is and how the book came about is a different story already, maybe for some other time.

Universal principles in most religions and wisdom traditions

In this book she searches for Universal Principles that can be found in most, if not all religions and wisdom traditions. Though I am quite critical of religions and their dogma’s (to be explained in one or more separate blogs) this is different. The sages and mystics of a lot of these religions traditions often worked with issues that were not available for the common followers. And it is in these parts of their traditions Mrs de Vries found an enormous overlap in important even foundational principles.

The title of the book comes from an old fable about a group of blind villagers having touched different parts of an elephant. You can understand that the one touching the ears described a different phenomenon than the one feeling the tusks. From their descriptions never the actual beast emerged of course. And so it is with a great number of religions and wisdom traditions and even with modern western sciences neatly divided in all their nice cubicles and corners. Each and everyone with its own very special view and angle. Never the whole magnificent beast.

Mrs De Vries explains that after centuries of going and staying underground to evade the persecution that often started many hundred years ago a lot of indigenous wisdom traditions have come forward in these last decades and started sharing long preserved (often by oral transfer) knowledge. Of course since they started this new path, the internet may have helped just a tiny little bit.

I will let Mrs De Vries speak about this in some quotes from her book. If this matter interests you, go buy it if you can for it contains so much more than I can describe in short here. I will get back to this book more often. For the record: I do not get any percentages or fee’s to mention this book (at least not now ;)), it is just my opinion.

“Although the many different indigenous people have widely differing traditions, it turns out that similar insights have evolved regarding their relationship with their natural environment. In their view, it is now time to reveal these perceptions, so that we can use this knowledge to restore balance and harmony throughout the world. Added to that is the fact that the knowledge held by the more spiritual and mystical movements in the different world religions, often kept secret until recent times, has also become much more accessible.”

…

At the same time, extensive and radical changes are also taking place within the field of the present-day Western science. In its search for the truth, Western science bases itself not only on observations and repeatable experiments, but also on axioms, that is to say on unproven assumptions about the nature of the world. Some new findings appear so radical that a number of these axioms, on which Western science has long been based upon, may well need to be reconsidered. Many new revolutionary scientific findings have since demonstrated the restrictions of the so-called mechanistic thinking in science.

Furthermore, because results from quantum physics suggest that the observer has an influence on what is observed, even the ideas on objective observation have begun to falter.

Within the scientific world, the idea has now emerged that instead of one objective truth, there may be several truths, depending on the perspective of the observer. Furthermore, there is a growing perception among scientists that overemphasizing the intellect is starving their own hearts and souls. They, too, are feeling an increasing need for an integration of their own experiences on the one hand with scientific reality on the other.

At the present time, we are therefore seeing that scientists are endeavoring to unite their scientific understandings with spiritual insights on a much wider scale than was previously the case.

These profound changes, for example in circles of pioneers in physics, biology and psychology, which lead to radical new understandings, is referred to as a paradigm shift, following philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn.4 Based on this an entirely new worldview is now emerging, which is shaking everything that we use to believe about the nature of our world and how we see ourselves. In fact, there is a revolution taking place from the analytical, reductionist science of the last three hundred years toward a holistic science. This new science is revealing the deep interconnectedness and harmony of the universe, spoken of in the wisdom traditions and suspected to exist by quantum physicists. The confirmation of ancient knowledge by the latest scientific findings is of great importance. It allows us to use this knowledge to help restore the balance and harmony in ourselves as well as worldwide.

OK, I will stop quoting here. What does this all mean? It means that according to Mrs De Vries there are Universal Principles that are relevant to a lot/most/or maybe all aspects of life in the Universe. Not only relevant in humans but also in animals, nature as a whole and even in space. This takes places on so many levels. Vague? I understand. To make it a little bit more concrete already: google ‘the golden ratio’. This is a kind of measure or natural order ratio that can be found everywhere, from the microsphere of atoms and the alike, to architecture designed by humans, in nature in trees, plants and animals, in our own body and in galaxies. I will be back on this and related subjects.

Ludicolous

An example of the Golden Ratio: