Heaven's fractal net Book

	Acknowledgments
	Introductory reflections : little alps and big alps, again and again	1
	The spirituality of a fractal sensibility : toward whole networks of scales	1
	Standing back and learning lessons from fractal beauty and fractal unity	8
	Hidden links : elvish sightings of the power of the unconscious	13
Strand 1	The weave of the net	19
	Retrieving Heaven's fractal net from the waters : sensibilities of the cosmic in world religions	19
	What are fractals, and what is their relation to nature?	21
	Nets work	27
	The strength of strings no heart can hope to hum : fractal-like images from literatures of the world religions	28
	Fractal-like recursive patterns in traditions : envisioning heavens and hells	39
	Recursive patterns in Dante's Divine comedy	41
	Tamil correspondences, levels, and the thread of unity	46
	Dogen's interactive fluid Zen "net-aphor"	50
	"Love is strange" - water as an embodiment of cosmic possibilities	54
Strand 2	Shipshape Earth and other fractal holding patterns	60
	Cosmic images of wholeness : fractal-like functions in spiritual traditions	60
	Geometry that spans levels of existence : reflections of wholeness	63
	Examples of fractals and related patterns in the literatures of spirituality	72
	Buddhist images and other examples from spiritual traditions	76
	One example of cosmic sensibility : mysterious life in the hold of shipshape Earth	80
Strand 3	Like father, like son	85
	Imitatio Dei : self-similarity following sacred patterns	85
	Self-similarity in structures of ancient religious systems	86
	Following the ultimate likewise : the Taoist sage as self-Similar to Tao	91
	Hinduism and the following of divine patterns	92
	Judaism and patterns of likeness	93
	Imitation of Christ : Christianity and similarity	95
	All at once and once and for Allah : Islamic patterns of similarity and apocalyptic style	99
	Horrific similarity : profanely playing god	101
	"Otherizing" kin or celebrating oneness	104
	Power relations, peer relations, and relations of subordination	105
	Experiential openness and resonance	107
Strand 4	Creatures of creativity, creativity of creatures	113
	Wholeness thinking in images : "the madness of art" and art's rational strength	113
	Child creativity, wholeness, echoes of eco	119
	Creativity : wave upon wave of catchable energies	126
	The way of art as opening and paradox	128
	Sensitivity to resonating nuances and "chunks"	132
	Drawn by the updraft, taking risks involved in love	134
Strand 5	Atom snowflake Kingdom Earth : fractals in literature	138
	Philosophers and poets on the signs of mind in the cosmos	138
	Thomas Traherne's Treasures of childhood : a mystic's fractal-like paradisal reflections	148
	Fractals everywhere and voices of infinity : other mystic poets of cosmic sensibility	152
	Notes on fractal sensibilities in various stories and verses	158
Strand 6	Elephants carved in ivory : nature-culture fractal wholeness	167
	Overlappings of nature and cultural traditions : discovery and invention, inspiration and cultivation	167
	Dreams of reason in the furnace of concealed flame	173
	Self-similarities in evolution and mental processes : E. O. Wilson's mammal genes and mammal society	175
	Correspondences : evolution as mental process : Bateson and systems theory, chaos, and paradox	180
	Evidences of mind in matter	184
	Nature and culture in the relations of humanity and land	189
	Descartes encounters chaos and backs off	194
	What way of culture shall we iterate?	200
Strand 7	Envoy : child of oneness	205
	Child all awe and law	205
	Child of wonder oneness	210
	Hidden in the layers of scale from DNA to stretchmark galaxies	215
	Interweaving strands	218
	Riddles of early Taoist vision : "Pao I"	219
	Eka : Vedic-Upanishadic vision : see and become the one consciousness	220
	Ehad : listen to the one god, one and only, only reality	222
	Plotinus : ascending to the One's presence, living an inspired dance around the One	224
	Goethe's mode : the wholeness of nature, meaning's self-revelation	225
	Natural law and self-similarity : fractal process structures	227
	Envoy to the envoy	236
	Conclusion : unfoldings without a finale	241
	Something fractal this way comes! (why are there fractals in culture?)	241
	Nothing new (and all things new)	247
	Getting cracking : the proof of the principle is in the practice	253
	Notes	259
	Index	305