Jeff Carreira: I was introduced to you through your book Visionary Cosmology: The New Paradigm and in it you speak about the underlying powers or spiritual forces that shape the evolution of reality, starting from what you call the Panoriginal Source and building to what you call the Stargate Opening. As I found out more about you, I discovered that you are a sociology professor and have taught at the University of Colorado, Stanford University, and the California Institute of Integral Studies, as well as founding your own school called Pacific Center. You also created a contemporary tarot deck called tarot of the Spirit. The book Visionary Cosmology offers a scientifically informed exploration of the nature of reality, and I’m hoping that we can connect the dots between that vision of the universe and the tradition of the tarot. I wonder if you would be willing to start the conversation by telling us a little about the Stargate Opening which in your book is what initiates a new paradigm.

Pamela Eakins: The Stargate opening is something like a revelation that happens once we take in the idea that we are not who we thought we were. That's the key. We're somebody different. You are right that in the book I have taken a strictly scientific approach to show how cutting edge science charts a course to a new way of understanding ourselves that will shift the paradigm. When I talk about a paradigm shift, I'm using the term the way Thomas Kuhn did. He was a philosopher of science who talked about how scientific paradigms shift once you start gathering information that no longer fits the premises and assumptions you've been working with. At this point your experimental results no longer make sense. Eventually nothing makes sense, and then as a new paradigm begins to be created, you embark on different research, develop new terminologies, and obtain unusual results. At some point you have to find a new system, a new way of understanding that can hold it all. That's a paradigm shift.

Visionary Cosmology addresses questions about where we came from and where we're going. If we explore some of the current understanding of scientific cosmology we find that it points to a new vision of who and what we are. In other words, we're not who we thought we were. And it all starts with the understanding that space is not out there somewhere above us and beyond us, and the universe is not out there somewhere above us and beyond us. In fact, we are made of all of the same components and constituent parts that the universe itself is made of. We are the universe unfolding and developing. We grew right out of this planet. Our DNA grew out of Earth and Earth grew out of the solar system. Our origin goes back and back and back and back, and it is all a logical progression.

As human beings we go through many stages of development in terms of our understanding of who we are. The new paradigm will emerge out of a deeper understanding of how we have been created from fundamental powers that are inherent in the universe. That understanding ultimately leads to the Stargate Opening which reveals that we are not in any way who we thought we were.
Can I describe the powers to you?

Jeff Carreira: Yes, of course.

Pamela Eakins: The first power is numbered zero and is about space. It's about the field that we live in. What I call the Panoriginating field, meaning the all-originating field. That supremely creative space lives inside us because every atom of our being is made primarily of space. So the first realization is that we are actually made of a supremely creative space and also that we are unique and original because our universe specializes in originality. Every single planet is original, every star system is original, every galaxy, every person, and every leaf on every tree is utterly unique and original. The first power reveals that I am the spiritual and material starfield of universal life. I am the body of the cosmos in every moment spinning into form and realization.

The second power is the power of attraction, because everything is a charged energy form. I am an electrified force field inspired to keep the universe in motion.

The third power is the power of creation. I am a center of creation and a zone of cosmological emergence.

The fourth power is the power of stabilization. This allows us to stabilize what we create. The universe stabilizes its creations in order to make sure they stay alive. I am a sanctuary of nurturance where all the pieces that I create are stabilized and allowed to survive.

The fifth power is the power of cataclysm because no matter how well we try to take care of something there will always be a side swipe we don’t expect that messes it up. There is no way to control the inevitable periodic blow ups that occur. I am not only the power of creation, I am also the power of dissolution and dispersion. I am the change that heralds the new. With this revelation we learn that all of the awful things that happen are actually built into the cycle of the universe and we need to work with it, not against it.

Number six is the power of synergy, how we all work together. I am integral to the expansive interrelations of the cosmological community. This is all of us working together and with all the earth communities, not just the human but with all of the communities of the earth.

Number seven is the power of transmutation. This is the ongoing state of metamorphosis that we are working with and dealing with all the time. I am the cosmological adventure and the transmutation of imagination.

Number eight, is where we symbolize our experience. Whatever we learn, we symbolize as words, pictures, images, etc. And as soon as we have these symbols we can share what we’ve learned and spread our new views widely. This is what we do as humans, we’re experts in using symbols. I am a record of cosmic experience holding, integrating, and creating new codes.

Number nine shows us how the universe absorbs everything it is creating and takes it all into its own being. I am a reflective universe witnessing and remembering the possibilities of its journey.

Number ten is radiance because the universe shines. I am a radiant cosmos expressing itself.

Number Eleven brings us to the secret outcome that results from all of the ten powers, the Stargate Opening. A portal that opens and a passage into new dimensions of becoming. I am all of that. You are that. We are all that. Every single one of us is the power of the universe unfolding.

Jeff Carreira: The powers that you just described show how the fabric of reality evolves, creates and continually regenerates itself. The process concludes with the Stargate Opening, which as I understand you, is an opening to new dimensions of reality. Recently I am compelled by the existence of higher dimensions of reality and that has led me to the Western esoteric tradition of the tarot. My path was mainly in an Eastern tradition of enlightenment and I hadn't paid much attention to Western traditions. After reading Visionary Cosmology, I found out that you were also a pioneer of the modern use of the tarot and I see a connection between the two in the eighth power of symbolization and how reality is made up of symbols on top of symbols on top of symbols. And I’ve recently had the revelation of how the tarot is a symbolic map of the path to enlightenment or a path of spiritual realization. This means that the tarot is a way of working with the universal powers you just described. Can you speak about the tarot in relation to the laws that govern the unfolding of evolution.

Pamela Eakins: I love it. They are so connected. My background is as an academic, teaching sociology and doing research. And one of the things that you study in sociology and psychology is theories of development. I actually had a tarot deck before getting my Ph.D., but I didn't know what it was. I got reintroduced to it and when I laid the cards out and looked at them I saw that this was an amazing piece of work beyond any of the psychological development theories I had learned about and any of the ways I had learned that societies develop.

A tarot deck is a medieval game right? How could it contain wisdom beyond anything I had ever seen? It struck me that it contained a theory of life and consciousness. It described a paradigm because paradigms are theories about the way things work and as I see it, the tarot is based on the same theoretical outline of the ten powers I describe in Visionary Cosmology. The book explains the scientific aspect of those powers. Similarly, the tarot describes the creation of the universe and a path to enlightenment that unfolds through the four elements of water, air, fire, and earth which in turn represent our emotions, intellect, consciousness and body. The cards of my deck, The Tarot of the Spirit, fit into a system that emerges out of the interplay of the four elements with the ten powers we just described.

The interesting thing about the tarot is that it takes us outside of what we normally think of as possible. The options we have with the tarot are limitless so playing with the tarot deck shifts us out of our typical binary patterns of thought that present everything as choices between this or that and introduces all kinds of new possibilities that we never imagined before. It takes us out of the cages we think we’re trapped in. This makes it such an important tool for developing our consciousness.

Jeff Carreira: That's amazing, we started with a visionary cosmology, a scientific view of the energies and powers of universal creation and your book is quite rich with scientific references. And then we moved from a scientific cosmological view to the tarot and you seem to be saying that the cards are a symbolic representation of the same cosmic forces of creation. You're taking an ancient esoteric tradition which to many people in the current paradigm would not be seen as particularly credible, and connecting it to fundamental properties that, according to our best scientific understanding, guide our universe. Are you making the tarot more relevant and accessible in the modern world by connecting it to a scientific worldview?

Pamela Eakins: Yes. Let’s speak about the preservation and understanding of wisdom traditions. When I explored more deeply into the world's religions, what I saw was that the religions also fit into the same powers of cosmic unfolding. And I'll give you an example of that. Let’s take Buddhism for instance. It fits into the fifth power that we talked about. That power is about breakdowns and Buddhism is based on the idea of the Buddha going out into the world and seeing pain, suffering, old age, and death. So the question is, what do you do about that? How do you handle it? And the entire tradition of Buddhism is about finding ways to work with, transcend, and end suffering. The fifth power is about suffering.

A lot of Hinduism works between the power of zero and one; the panoriginating field and the emergence of the individual. So it fits into those powers, moving between the unmanifest and the manifest and back again.

If we talk about indigenous shamanic traditions they focus on transmutation and that is number seven. In the seventh power you seek a vision that will be healing for the group, the self, and the planet. Once you have the vision, you can start to code it, name it and explain it, so you can share the vision.
When I saw this system of powers, I could not believe how well it mapped over so many different philosophies and how they can all work together.

Jeff Carreira: I see how reality is created of symbols that exist inside of symbols, and that symbols exist in all different dimensions. Our three-dimensional world, the one that we're familiar with, is a set of symbols and if you know how to engage with them they can lead you to dimensions beyond these. Symbols become portals to other ways of seeing and understanding. It seems that the tarot is a collection of symbols that are particularly powerful for serving as portals to other ways of knowing.

Pamela Eakins: Now you are moving into the territory I explore in my new book. One of the things I kept thinking about how we need a transformation of the mind on the planet right now. After thinking about it for a long time, it suddenly came to me that what was really needed was a transformation of the heart because our feelings and emotions are what really drive us. In my new book called Terra Nova Pilgrimage I focus on love and the liberation of the heart.

In talking about this book I started by using the word portal, but switched to talking about stations of the pilgrimage. And in the end I used the word vortices. From this perspective each card is a vortex. They hold a collection of energies that swirl together. They are symbols, and as they say in Zen Buddhism, we don’t want to mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the moon, but with that caveat, we also need to understand that our consciousness is symbolic and these symbols can ignite a whole awakening inside us. We live inside a tremendous mystery and you can step inside that mystery, access the vortex it contains, and initiate a stream of revelations that can be recorded in new symbols before moving on to the next vortex.