Psyche and Physis: A Brief Investigation Into The Synchronic Existence of Mind and Nature

The psychological state of the modern world is one of disruption, upheaval, and destruction. Not much has changed over the centuries, has it?

There is a global food shortage. There is a global oil shortage. There are battles being waged in the Middle East. There are battles being waged in urban areas scarred by abject poverty and drug addictions. Rainforests are being clear-cut at an alarming rate. More species are becoming endangered every day. The list goes on.

We’re rudderless. We lack a collective vision of how things should be. If we don’t slow down the zeitgeist, we will likely kill one another and the planetary body that gave birth to us.

Thankfully, the state of the modern world is not incurable. Those misanthropic and cynical people amongst us who disseminate and advocate the “doctrine of doom” have obviously not studied the mind properly and have obviously not seen the wondrous sheen of nature. They have closed themselves off from possibilities and facets of reality that exist within and without, above and below. Alas, they will remain closed off from the greater spectrum like buzzing bees trapped between two panes of glass as long as the will to remain dystopian persists.

The panacea for the modern world is close at hand. It may be closer than that dust mote that settles on the apogee of the eyelash. All it may take is one small molecular shift to foment a quantum leap from mental confusion to mental expansion. This quantum leap could also make us aware of the synchronic order of existence, or, stated in another way, the dynamic ground of reality itself.

In my opinion, the panacea will come in the form of an understanding. There will be an unspoken agreement between two parties that were once thought to be involved in a domestic dispute. Psyche, or mind, will bow down to Physis, or nature. Physis will return the gesture. Psyche will apologize for being aloof at times and inept in the communications department. Physis will apologize for extreme materialism, or the belief that the empirical universe is all there is. When these two mend their ways, we may have access to a whole new level in the evolutionary, multidimensional scheme.

I love what Alan Watts said at the beginning of his essay, “The Art of Contemplation”:

“The individual is an aperture through which the whole energy of the universe is aware of itself, a vortex of vibrations in which it realizes itself as man or beast, flower or star—not alone, but as central to all that surrounds it.”

The key to existence, the splendiferous panacea, seems to be in that sentence. Everything is central to everything else. Nothing is superior; nothing is inferior. Psyche and Physis have always shared the colorful stage of life, regaled in its wonders, and despaired in its tragedies.