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The Universe Speaks

Updated: Jan 28

Albert Camus got it wrong.


Camus was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His works include 'The Stranger', 'The Plague', 'The Myth of Sisyphus', 'The Fall' and 'The Rebel'. Philosophically, Camus's views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as 'Absurdism'. Some consider Camus's work to show him to be an Existentialist, even though he himself firmly rejected the term throughout his lifetime. On the practical level, the conflict underlying the absurd is characterised by the individual's struggle to find meaning in a meaningless world. Camus suggests that the Universe is silent.


I would argue that on the contrary, that the search for meaning is the primary aim of any life and that meaning is everywhere, dished up by the Universe in a multitude of forms. We simply do not have ears to hear or eyes to see, at least at first.


Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor wrote the game-changing book 'Man's Search for Meaning', which is in my 'Suggested reading List.' Meaning is the purpose of our life, and the Universe showers us in it, speaking to us as clearly as a bell, when we are ready. When I was searching for meaning, as I was walking through my favourite space in Nature, the Universe directed me to a podcast on Transformative Life Coaching (TLC), and in it I heard my new meaningful purpose in life.


When Camus mistakenly said that the Universe is silent, what he should have said is that the Universe is speaking to us, but we are either too busy to hear it, or we are too intent on listening to the loud brash voice of the ego to hear the still, quiet voice of our Higher Power (or God, or the Universe, whatever your preferred name for it). We are being constantly being exploited by the ego in all its forms and we don’t even know it. The main ‘perpetrator’ is our own inclination towards seeking eternal gratification in the transient. To say it another way, it is our willing and unwilling participation in a superficial materialist global consumer culture that both drives and is fed by the exploitative corporations and our addiction to external validation: This is a culture of lack, not of abundance. We need to listen with our hearts, not our fearful minds, if we are to tune in to what the Universe is telling us all the time...


The Universe speaks: You just have to learn how to listen


In 1957 Albert Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Following the devastation of not one but two World Wars, there was widespread disillusionment in the apparent meaninglessness and lack of purpose of Western civilisation. Camus the novelist, playwright, philosopher and political activist, had emerged as a moral spokesperson of his generation. Fifteen years earlier, as WWII still raged in Europe he had written his most famous essay, the 'Myth of Sisyphus'.


His opening lines are straight to the point: "To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy…Everything else is child’s play." In this, he did strike a chord. In other words, the purpose of your life is to find your purpose.


However, according to Camus, a difficulty arises precisely when we ask what is the meaning of it all, because regardless of our appeals, he says the Universe is silent. “This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart…The absurd is born of the confrontation between human need and the unreasonable silence of the world."


The daily monotony of our lives, Camus says, resembles the Greek Myth of Sisyphus, the ancient story of a king condemned for eternity by the gods to roll a boulder to the top of a mountain only to see it roll back down again. Sisyphus must roll the boulder back up again, only to see it roll down again. Repeat. Repeat. The myth reflects the mechanical repetitiveness of our daily lives - wake up, eat, go to work, work, go home, eat, sleep, and wake up and repeat the same process the next day. Occasionally, without reason, the question Why? pops into our minds, and it is at these moments we are confronted with the nothingness, the unreasonableness of a Universe that is seemingly indifferent to our existence, our joys, our hopes and our pain. The enduring popularity of such films as 'Groundhog Day' is a testament to this as they resonate deeply with our subconscious Higher Self crying out for meaning and purpose.


Carl Gustav Jung, the greatest psychiatrist of our time, who was also a psychotherapist, founder of psychoanalytical psychology, philosopher, and spiritual Master, described, together with Linus Pauling (the Nobel-laureate), the concept of synchronicity - events that are related by meaning rather than causation. In 1952, as the culmination of their collaboration, Jung and Pauli published a joint volume, Naturerklärung und Psyche ('The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche'). It included two treatises, 'Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle,' and 'The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific Ideas of Kepler.'


By the end of 1930, Austrian-born theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli was at the height of his achievements, yet was an absolute emotional wreck. His brilliant contributions to science - such as the famous exclusion principle that would eventually earn him a Nobel Prize - had cemented his reputation as a genius. With his emotional life in shambles, Pauli took up drinking and smoking heavily. He became a familiar presence at Mary’s Old Timers Bar, a Zurich tavern styled after American speakeasies. It is remarkable that his neutrino idea had emerged around the same time. He was focused enough to remain productive even with his life in crisis. Pauli’s father decided to intervene, suggesting that he seek out Carl Jung for therapy. One of the remarkable aspects of the Pauli–Jung collaboration was how their rhetoric had begun to converge. This groundbreaking convergence of science and spirituality led to the concept of synchronicity - Universal events connected by meaning.


Camus wrote his essay in the shadow of a world war, and received his prize at a time when nuclear annihilation of the planet was a possibility, but it is not stretching the metaphor too far to say that we also are in something like a war right now. Just as the war Camus’ generation found themselves in was existential and on a planetary scale, so is ours. And just like Camus, we are all participants whether we choose to be or not. Like the prospect of total nuclear devastation, the war we are in reaches every continent: The war is one of egoic reaction waged at an interpersonal level and in all the larger scale conflicts in the world that engulf us today, and ever since the beginnings of human 'civilisation'. We live in, and have always lived in a dysfunctional, Dystopian world, ruled by limited egos.


The other difference is that far from being silent, the Universe is clearly shouting back at us, albeit as an invitation to self-reflect. We misinterpret it as silence and at best the voice appears still and quiet until we are ready and willing to tune into its frequency. David Bowie said that "Tomorrow belongs to those who hear it coming." The great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."


Around the world, heat waves, forest fires, extreme droughts, hurricanes and flood events have become increasingly commonplace. More than eighty years ago, amateur scientist Guy Callendar painstakingly collated the temperature records from 147 weather stations around the world and connected the rise in temperatures with carbon dioxide emissions from global industry. Yet, only eight years ago, every nation on the planet agreed to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, established to keep average global temperature rise under 1.5C but the half-way report last year found we are failing on almost all of them. On many we are going backwards. Fossil fuel extraction continues unabated. Inordinate quantities of plastic waste flows into our oceans. Biodiversity continues to diminish. Year on year, new temperature records are being set. Yet governments around the world remain wedded to infinite economic growth and seem unable or unwilling to make the necessary hard decisions. We don't want to hear. New expressions have entered our vocabulary; eco-anxiety and solastalgia - the distress caused by environmental change. We are at war with our Selves, with each other, and with the planet itself. Anne Frank wrote "I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more."


Instead of a daily spiritual practice we go to the 24/7 shopping mall in search of ‘retail therapy’, seeking relief from the stress, anxiety, and monotony. It is here that the analogy of our lives with the eternal punishment of Sisyphus has relevance, because too easily we get stuck in repeating these same behaviours. Hence we choose to buy the ‘two for one’ although we do not need the second one at all. We upsize and buy that outsized SUV, we upgrade the year old smart phone that still works fine, we buy the outfit we wear only once if at all, and we purchase that dream big house we do not really need or take that luxury trip - simply because we can. The purchases barely give us relief, fill our void, and make us happy if only for a very brief time - but then the question Why? enters our lives. Here we glimpse that liberation from this Sisyphusian prison is what we really want - and that our souls need. Then, perhaps, we consider our personal footprint. Then, too we become open to hearing anew the voices of traditional wisdom that teach how lasting satisfaction for homo sapiens is not to be found in the transient lack-based materiality of the world.


So this war we are in takes us to a deeper and wider place. The world and science has moved on, and is moving on. Liberation now lies not in rebelling against a perceived silence of the Universe but listening to what it is telling us.


In the Bible is Isaiah 30:21 it states “And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’" In Jeremiah “Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.” This is the reason that prayer (the 'ask without supplication') and meditation (the intuitive voice of your Higher Power - the reply) must be daily spiritual practices if you want a successful and abundant life, with Real Personal Power, in any domain. In Psalm 119:105 it says “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” In Mark 4:24 “And he said to them, ‘Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you.’” John 8:47 “Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” James 1:19 “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” When you renew your mind to the Truth that the Universe is talking to you all the time and wants to guide you in every part of your life, you will begin to expect to hear His still, small voice every day. Lean in. He’s talking to you right now! That is why you are reading this article.


In Matthew 13:9-16 it states Whoever has ears, let them hear.” The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of Heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables:

“Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;  you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’ But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.


It has become obvious that our contemporary meaning crisis is deeply connected to our own wellbeing, the wellbeing of our communities and the wellbeing of the natural world that sustains us. Everything we do, no matter how small is connected to the whole. Every decision, every choice we make has significance. How we choose to act, or do not act in the face of our extractive and exploitative culture’s destruction of the natural world affects not just the natural world but also how those around us choose to act, or do not act. If we project despair, we influence despair. If we project indifference, we influence indifference. If however we project hope and positive action in our own lives, no matter how small that action, it has a real world effect that can influence hope and positive action. And if enough of us project hope and positive actions in small ways, together we will move mountains. In the Bible in Matthew 17:20-21 it states that "Truly I tell you, if you have Faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”



Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you: Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you.


George Bernard Shaw wrote that “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” Are you ready to change your mind?


Namaste.


Sending you love, light, and blessings brothers.


Olly



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Hello,

I am delighted and enchanted to meet you. I coach men with 'Deep Coaching', 'Supercoaching', and Transformative Life Coaching (TLC). Thank you for reading this far. I very much look forward to connecting with the highest version of you, to seeing your highest possibility, and to our conversations. Please do contact me via my email for a free connection call and a free experience of coaching on Zoom or in person. 


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I have a Bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge; a PhD Doctorate in Scientific Research from University College London (UCL); a Medical Degree (MD/MBBS) from The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London and have been a doctor and reconstructive trauma and cancer surgeon in London for 20 years. I have a number of other higher qualifications in science and surgery. I have published over 50 peer reviewed PubMed cited scientific journal articles, have been an associate editor and frequent scientific faculty member, and am the author of several scientific books. I have been awarded my Diploma in Transformative Life Coaching in London, which has International Coaching Federation (ICF) Accreditation, as well as the UK Association for Coaching (AC), and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). I have been on my own transformative journey full time for over five years and I am ready to be your guide to you finding out who you really are and how the world works.




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