Brian Swimme Quotes

Brian Thomas Swimme is a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, in San Francisco, where he teaches evolutionary cosmology to graduate students in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program.[3] He received his Ph.D. from the department of mathematics at the University of Oregon for work with Richard Barrar on singularity theory, with a dissertation entitled Singularities in the N-Body Problem. Swimme was a faculty member in the department of mathematics at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, 1978–81. He was a member of the faculty at the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality at Holy Names University in Oakland, California, 1983–89.

Swimme brings the context of story to our understanding of the 14 billion year trajectory of cosmogenesis. His published work includes The Universe is a Green Dragon , The Universe Story , written with Thomas Berry, The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos , and The Journey of the Universe , written with Mary Evelyn Tucker. Swimme is the producer of three DVD series: Canticle to the Cosmos, The Earth’s Imagination, and The Powers of the Universe. Swimme teamed with Mary Evelyn Tucker, David Kennard, Patsy Northcutt, and Catherine Butler to produce Journey of the Universe, an Emmy-winning HD film released in 2011.[4] They draw together scientific discoveries in astronomy, geology and biology, with humanistic insights concerning the nature of the universe. Wikipedia

✵ 4. September 1950

Brian Swimme: 12 quotes 0 likes

Famous Brian Swimme Quotes

“There's a great phrase from Eric Jantsch … and he says, "these self-organizing dynamics are in every place in the universe, waiting at their marks". I love that phrase because you get that … the power for making water exists everywhere in the universe but the conditions have to be right. But if the conditions are right, then these self-organizing dynamics leap to it. So I think it's something like that, that the possibility for sentience has always been there but has been waiting for a chance to really display.”

Brian Swimme

MeaningofLife.tv interview, 2007

“The primary challenge of this cosmological transformation of consciousness is the awareness that each being in the universe is an origin of the universe. "The center of the cosmos" refers to that place where the great birth of the universe happened at the beginning of time, but it also refers to the upwelling of the universe as river, as star, as raven, as you, the universe surging into existence anew. The consciousness that learns it is at the origin point of the universe is itself an origin of the universe. The awareness that bubbles up each moment that we identify as ourselves is rooted in the originating activity of the universe. We are all of us arising together at the center of the cosmos.”

Brian Swimme

The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos (1996)

“With the appearance of the human, the coding process of life burst beyond the DNA molecule and began carving its information in stone!”

Brian Swimme

From Journey of the Universe:

“What's evil for the hawk is the mouse because, you know, the mouse is quick and gets away but I did this one realization every scientist goes through at one point… if you gave the hawk power, the power of God, the first thing the hawk might do is to slow down the mouse. But then the hawk would lose it's speed. And then if you slow the mouse all the way down, so it can just barely move, the hawk would lose its flight. So that in a weird way the tension between those two say natural enemies is what gives birth to their beauty. So I definitely feel that the tension we have right now within the human community in particular — that those are ultimately going to be resolved with a deeper harmony and a deeper appreciation for one another.”

Brian Swimme

Meaningoflife.tv interview, 2013

“If you if you take Buddhism and Christianity and so forth there's a kind of battle — a subtle sort of struggle taking place because they're not standing in a common ground but … take the Earth or ecology then suddenly they can begin to explore what they have to offer. So I do think I do think absolutely that … there will be a flourishing of religions, not a withering away. And they will flourish to the degree that they will move into the context of planet and universe. I even think that as a matter of fact that … some of the central insights of the religions are more powerfully presented by what we know about the universe now then when they were first formulated.”

Brian Swimme

MeaningofLife.tv interview, 2007

“The more I learn about light the more I realize, man, we don't know anything about light… It's just bizarre… a particle has it's own proper time which slows down as you speed up. But at the speed of light… there's no time. That's bizarre … that we can, right now, as you know, see — interact with the light that has come from the birth of the universe. So … from our point of view, that light traveled for 14 billion years but from the point of view of the light it's the moment of creation.”

Brian Swimme

MeaningofLife.tv interview, 2007

“Earth was once molten rock, and now it makes spaceships.”

Brian Swimme

Found on Pilgrimage to NASA's Apollo Flight Center http://thegreatstory.org/nasa-houston.html write up by Connie Barlow, a fellow in Evolutionary Spirituality

“The break-through moments are unimaginable until they happen.”

Brian Swimme

Meaningoflife.tv interview, 2013

“This is the greatest discovery of the scientific enterprise: You take hydrogen gas, and you leave it alone, and it turns into rosebushes, giraffes, and humans.”

Brian Swimme

Interview with Brian Swimme by Susan Bridle, Enlightenment Magazine issue 19 The Great Story http://www.thegreatstory.org/SwimmeWIE.pdf

Brian Swimme Quotes about thinking

“I think the discovery of nonlocality is touching in on the whole. So that these these seemingly separate events are somehow connected through the whole. … you have this larger enveloping field and we're, you know, just beginning to understand something about that… so I love that discovery although I don't think we're anywhere near really knowing what we've come upon.”

Brian Swimme

Meaningoflife.tv interview, 2013

“Every moment we're making decisions. If you want to understand the universe as a whole you'd have to include all those decisions including our own lives so that even in the future our presence is going to be felt one way or the other — so I think … our death as being — it's a death to a micro-phase self or a small self … it's a death into our larger self in that … this whole vast adventure is our larger identity.”

Brian Swimme

Meaningoflife.tv interview, 2013

“I have a sense that something amazing is at work … I think our planet is actually moving into a time of profound harmony and fecundity and peace but whether that's going to take 600 years or 6 days I don't know. I mean, I think that as humans begin to take seriously… the planetary dimension of conscious self-awareness, then we will become homonized versions of natural selection — so that we will begin to make decision with the large scale dynamic of the planet in mind. So I see that we're actually entering into a transformation of the human species out of the modern period into this new era… It may take centuries… but like the past and it's catastrophes I think that's… what's taking place in the midst of so many hardships.”

Brian Swimme

Meaningoflife.tv interview, 2013

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