The Flower of Life is an

ancient symbol that can represent the complex intersections of energies that constitute phenomena as diverse as molecular bonds, social networks, and the elements of the individual creative process. Being a complex wave interference pattern it could also represent what Laszlo has called the Akashic Field or A-field, a universal information matrix existing throughout space and holding energy and information in the medium of wave interference.

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Another example of such interconnectedness is the root system of a redwood grove. A redwood tree can grow up to 350 feet (107 meters) in height and weigh a million pounds (450,000 kilos). Yet its roots go only 6 to 12 feet deep into the earth. The redwood compensates by spreading out is roots for hun- dreds of feet and, in the process, interweaves with other redwood root systems. Thus all the trees together, using a similar pattern as the multiple intersecting raindrops, create a synergetic strength that allows the trees to remain standing for a thousand years or more.

The multiple intersections of circles as a symbol for the synergy of creative work finds geometric expression in the Flower of Life symbol (see drawing 4.7). As noted in the caption, this symbol could also represent what Ervin Laszlo calls the Akashic Field, named after the ancient Indian concept of the akasha

or universal field in which all knowledge is contained and from which creation arises. Laszlo considers the A-field to be an information field containing, in the medium of wave interference, a record of everything that has happened in the Universe. He offers a parable to give a sense of how information can be held in interfering waves:

When a ship travels on the sea’s surface, waves spread in its wake. These affect the motion of all other ships in that part of the sea. Every ship— and every fish, whale, or object in that part of the sea—is exposed to these waves and its path is in a sense “informed” by them. All vessels and Figure 4C.

Raindrops in pool.

“The physical body is made up of intersecting, pulsating energy fields. What we call a ‘physical body’—flesh, bones and blood—rapidly disappears when highly magnified. A physical body, therefore, or any piece of matter, can be viewed as an interference pattern of electromagnetic fields that change with the passage of time.”

Itzhak Bentov3

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objects “make waves,” and their wave fronts intersect and create interfer- ence patterns.

If many things move simultaneously in a waving medium, that medium becomes modulated: full of waves that intersect and interfere. This is what happens when several ships ply the sea’s surface. When we view the sea from a height—a coastal hill or an airplane—we can see traces of all the ships that passed over that stretch of water. We can also see how the traces inter- sect and create complex patterns. The modulation of the sea’s surface by the ships that ply it carries information on the ships themselves. It is possible to deduce the location, speed, and even the tonnage of the vessels by analyzing the interference patterns of the waves they have created.4

Another watery symbol of an information field comes from Peruvian sha- man, don Antonio, in a conversation with Alberto Villoldo. He describes, in a metaphor of a lagoon, the nature of the energetic realm that seers tune into in order to see the past:

if you change your perspective on the water, see where the sunshines on its sur- face and look at it from that point of view, from above, where the eagle flies, then you can see into its depths, see what supports the surface, see what lies below. . . . That perspective allows you to see not only the present condition of the lagoon, but much of its history, everything that has touched its surface and sunk to the bottom. You can even see the effect that whatever has penetrated the surface has had on the life of the lagoon: a sunken log that plants have grown on and fish must swim around. Everything that has ever fallen into the lagoon has somehow altered its character. Some things are deeply embedded and are no longer distinguishable, but all of them are visible.5

The idea of the phenomenon of wave interference as a repository of informa- tion can be symbolized if we draw two small intersecting circle arcs, which do not seem, at first, to possess any usable information. But by finding the centers of the arcs and constructing the vesica and the other circles of the construction we begin to see the richness of the information contained in the initial seem- ingly simplistic figure (drawing 4.8).

The interpenetration of forms within one another, symbolized by the vesica, is a natural mechanism through which space is shared among different beings.

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In the plant world the intersection of different root systems can be repre- sented by the same symbol that can represent the intersecting gravitational fields of binary star systems. The bringing together of two or more things is an idea of great importance in our internal and external creative processes: the birth of new life from egg and seed; the joining of two tones to produce an interval; the joining of paint and canvas to make a painting; the creation of a metaphor that, in joining two images or ideas, creates a poetic unity. The following example shows a creative intersection that brings together two disciplines: gardening and sacred geometry.

Drawing 4.8. Beginning with a fragment of a wave-interference pattern (1), we find

the circle centers of the arcs by drawing vesica pisces at any two points on each arc, bisecting the vesicas and intersecting the bisectors to find the circle centers (2). In (3) we draw the full intersecting circles, and in (4) and (5) we complete the vesica construction. This exercise has a holographic quality to it, that is, it shows how the whole is somehow contained in the part. When we unfold the information contained in the original crossed arcs we produce a vesica-piscis construction generated from the tonal fifth interval that contains all the potential numerical and geometrical information of this important figure.

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