Sex, Ecology And Spirituality, Introduction

Introduction
IT is FLAT-OUT strange that something – that anything – is
happening at all. There was nothing, then a Big Bang, then here we all
are. This is extremely weird.
To Schelling's burningquestion, "Why is there something rather
than nothing?," there have always been two general answers. The first
might be called the philosophy of "oops." The universe just occurs,
there is nothingbehind it, it's all ultimately accidental or random, it
just is, it just happens – oops! The philosophy of oops, no matter how
sophisticated and adult it may on occasion appear – its modern namesand numbers are legion, from positivism to scientific materialism,
from linguistic analysis to historical materialism, from naturalism to
empiricism – always comes down to the same basic answer,namely,
"Don't ask."
The question itself (Why is anything at all happening? Why am I
here?) – the question itself is said to be confused, pathological,
nonsensical, or infantile. To stop asking suchsilly or confused
questions is, they all maintain, the mark of maturity, the sign of
growing up in this cosmos.
I don't think so. I think the "answer" these "modern and mature"
disciplines give –namely, oops! (and therefore, "Don't ask!") – is
about as infantile a response as the human condition could possibly
offer.
The other broad answer that has been tendered is that something
else isgoing on: behind the happenstance drama is a deeper or higher
or wider pattern, or order, or intelligence. There are, of course, many
varieties of this "Deeper Order": the Tao, God, Geist, Maat,Archetypal Forms, Reason, Li, Mahamaya, Brahman, Rigpa. And
although these different varieties of the Deeper Order certainly
disagree with each other at many points, they all agree on this: theuniverse is not what it appears. Something else is going on, something
quite other than oops.…
This book is about all of that "something other than oops." It is
about a possible Deeper Order. It is...