WALKING WITH AUSTIN

Rancho volunteer Austin from Pennsylvania arrived with a good camera equipped with macro extensions for close-up photography, knew how to use his equipment, but needed help finding good subjects to photograph. Since I always seemed to be taking close-ups, would I give him some pointers?

Without moving from where the request was made we looked at constellations of tiny, translucent glands embedded in an orange-tree's leaf, then with a few steps came to a Cowfoot tree bearing white flowers, in which the calyx, corolla, stamens and pistil clearly could be seen, Austin particularly liking how the stalked ovary looked like a little greenbean legume. A few steps farther brought us to two plants of Ek Balam Croton with male flowers on one and female on the other.

After about an hour of this, still not far from where we started, Austin's mind percolated with new ideas about where to look, and how to think about the world between human scale and truly microscopic. He'd experienced how seeing translucent glands in an orange-tree leaf leads to new insights about plants defending themselves with chemicals. The Cowfoot flower had shown how having a mental image of "a standard blossom" can indicate what's special about any blossom encountered -- special features being those different from the "standard" one. Male and female flowers of the croton summoned thoughts about how Nature works hard to produce diversity by avoiding self-pollination, yet likes to build on what She already has.

Experiencing so many new insights and seeing how easily they can come about simply by paying attention, and letting one insight lead to another and another, possibly eventually bringing about some kind of transformative shift of mindset, Austin asked me what the most important effect in my life Nature study has had. I replied that my spirituality is rooted in what I've experienced and understood about Nature. And what did that mean, he wondered?

"All my life I've been groping and stumbling through the same process we just went through, trying to keep my eyes and mind open, with each new insight leading to and encouraging the next," I said. "My main compulsion for doing this was the need to have some kind of explanation for why this Universe exists, why I'm in it, and what I ought to be doing. Nature has guided me step by step, and keeps guiding me. Only a few months ago, at age 71, I finally got my thoughts about the matter together enough to articulate what I was seeing to Eric, a philosopher friend in Mérida. He identified me as a monist."

"What's that?" Austin naturally asked. I pinched my arm and replied:

"The pinch hurts. That spot of stimulated senses on my arm has an identity in that it's localized and has boundaries. It's sending reports of what the arm is feeling there to the center of intelligence, my brain, so it's useful, for the body needs to know when something is hurting it, so it can take action. Before I pinched the arm, nothing at all existed of that pain, and once the pain stops, there'll be no trace of it again. But, for awhile, that little spot of pain definitely exists, and it's important."

I let that set in, then continued, explaining that in my conservative form of monism there's just One Thing, and we entities under the impression that we're separate from other entities believing the same thing -- if they can believe at all, and of course rocks and galaxies don't seem to believe in much of anything -- are like the spot of pain in my arm.

"This pain in my arm is to me, as you and I and everything else in the Universe are to the One Thing."

Then I finished:

"I've wondered why things might be set up like this. The only answer that strikes me as halfway believable is this: We're the One Thing's nerve endings."

Austin was quick. Immediately he saw that, thinking along monistic lines, humans exist on Earth in order to experience, feel and think. Also, the monistic perspective orients us from the beginning to see how intimately all us parts of Nature are interrelated, and interdependent, and how important it is for us entities to empathize with, and take care of, one another.