I came across this extraordinary passage in that most extraordinary book, The Definitive Guide to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, by Laurie Frost. And when it says "definitive," well, it means it. I will have to do another video, projecting lantern-style, if I ever review this masterwork, because it has to be seen and recorded to be believed.
But as we approach the six month anniversary of Building the Republic, the above passage is the focus of our current attention, and it originated on Readerville, which was apparently once a literary website. Still, the quote quite happily lives on, because if you're fishing about for inspiration, you could do far worse than this. As we all know, Philip Pullman has stated many times that in His Dark Materials, Dust, as well as all the Republic of Heaven business, is a metaphor. It is not a political state or the like, but more of a psychological one. In many ways it seems to be the target his two most famous trilogies are aimed at.
I recently heard a Robert Shaw quote on a podcast, in which the novelist and playwright eloquently stated, "You don't see something until you have the right metaphor to perceive it." So this metaphor stuff is indeed important. Actually, some have even argued we're incapable of thinking or talking in anything but metaphor. They are the images and symbols that allow us to make sense of life, as long as they're not interpreted too literally.
So as the above image may be difficult to fully read, I'll type it out here -
Philip Pullman on Dust:
Dust permeates everything in the universe, and existed before we individuals did and will continue after us. Dust enriches us and is nurtured in turn by us; it brings wisdom and it is kept alive by love and curiosity and diligent enquiry and kindness and patience and hope. The relationship we have with Dust is mutually beneficial. Instead of being the dependent children of an all-powerful king, we are partners and equals with Dust in the great project of keeping the universe alive.
Well, forgive me if I think that's kind of extraordinary.
At a time when Western society has become untethered from all the ancient metaphors, when all the once grand narratives have fallen by the wayside, when we've never been further away from seeing life as a poem and ourselves as participants in a poem - the above quote is nothing short of revolutionary. It makes for a very sane and reasonable image by which we may realign our own psychologies to that of the cosmos, to once again establish a rhythm or harmony with the stars and the clouds and, yes, the distant but very real dust permeating half the universe.
When the great poet William Wordsworth once observed that we "half-perceive" and "half-create" the world unfolding before us, he still never pictured human beings - all of us - as "partners and equals" in "the great project of keeping the universe alive." That's one of the most dynamic lines I've ever read. One could frame their entire life by such a metaphor, and consequently live a good one.
Or at least a potentially bigger and better life than the one they're living now.
The key word here being "bigger," as it seems to me humanity is currently suffering from some kind of postmodern cosmic myopia on a massive scale. The highest ceiling many can point to doesn't seem to reach much higher than current events and politics and social media, which is utterly incongruent with an observable universe that contains roughly twenty-five billion galaxies. Indeed, many have deconstructed reality until what little they have left to stand on isn't much bigger than the head of a pin.
(A line of thought Pullman is onboard with, as he has a fictitious and fraudulent postmodern philosopher trying to even deconstruct the very real daemons out of existence in The Secret Commonwealth. More on that later)
One of the most prominent modern thinkers that Pullman himself introduced me to is Iain McGilchrist, who wrote a now famous book, The Master and His Emissary. It revolves around brain science and the division of the hemispheres, and he had this to say on the same subject during an interview over a year ago, reflecting on how abstract and disembodied our relationship with the larger universe has become -
Now I have a strong belief that it's not that reality is made up by us, but it's not that reality independently exists from us - we midwife reality into being. Our consciousness, which is never completely separate from the consciousness of what we're looking at, brings out an aspect of something. And so we are actually not just passive observers or recipients in the cosmos, we are actors in the cosmos in bringing the cosmos into being.
Or as the late great philosopher and man of letters Alan Watts reasoned out, if we designate a tree as an "apple tree" because said tree grows apples, it really isn't an irrational leap to think of the universe in much the same way. After all, on this particular planet, in this particular solar system, in this particular spiral galaxy, in this particular local group of galaxies, the universe "humans" much as the apple tree "apples."
But because it is so antithetical to our current trends of thinking, you apparently need a solid metaphor like Dust in a series of young adult books to see this as a possible way of feeling and experiencing.
(And on the chance someone in our studio audience is fighting the urge to roll their eyes at such an idea and shout "anthropomorphic fallacy," I would suggest a book like The View From the Center Of the Universe, which comes via a cosmologist and science writer who independently arrived at much the same conclusion. Whether one takes up the lens of cosmology, astronomy, chemistry, biology, or any relatively hard-nosed science, we are still quite literally the conduit through which stars wake and dream alike. It's all a matter of realizing it and then making an effort to feel it in our bones.)
As far as the daily, practical ways of enacting such a metaphor, Pullman poetically outlined some of them during a wonderful address he gave to The Blake Society -
That's what we do when we read. That's what we do when we write. When we learn a poem. When we play some music. When we fall in love. When we think about things. When we have a conversation. We're increasing the amount of consciousness in the universe. And that's a very Republic of Heaven purpose.
So those are some of the actions we can take, those are some of the notes we can strike, in this great project of "keeping the universe alive" - of igniting it with meaning and purpose, of regenerating it with art and beauty, of electrifying it with awareness and vitality. That is the motivating factor behind Building the Republic, and all the real work (and play) of being alive. And in this age, in this time of simultaneously ever-shrinking and ever-expanding horizons, what could possibly be a better motivating factor than that?
So maybe we can all keep in mind that, from a Republic of Heaven perspective at least, we are infinitely closer to being this -
Then we are to being this -
And as Always
Stay Dusty My Friends
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#BuildingTheRepublic #PullmanStudies #JordanScholarship
#InDustWeTrust #DownAndDusty #TheGreatProject
