#149. A Psychology for the New Cosmology

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ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 

http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Blog entries beginning with #101 are not essays but minimally-edited notes and reviews from the files I've collected over the last few decades. I no longer have the time and energy needed to sort out and put together into decent essay-form the many varied ideas in these files, but I would like to share them with all who are interested.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com

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#149. A Psychology for the New Cosmology

This post #149 contains some thoughts stimulated by a master's thesis, "Henry Corbin and Russian Religious Thought," submitted in August 2013 as part of Master’s of Arts program at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University in Montreal, by Hadi Fakhoury. The full text is available on Tom Cheetham's website.

The main idea of Fakhoury's thesis is straightforward: that the noted Islamic scholar Henry Corbin (1903-1978) was considerably influenced by Russian religious thought.

In the first of its four chapters Fakhoury gives an excellent introduction to Russian religious thought over the last two centuries. He shows how Corbin made use of the work of Sergius Bulgakov (1871-1944) to spell out his own understanding of the Islamic expressions of Divine Wisdom and its guidance in human life.

I found the fourth chapter, where Fakhoury spells out Corbin's use of the work of Alexsi Khomiakov (1804-1860) to explain the Iranian spiritual world, most fascinating.

The main idea is that that there is in fact an Iranian "spiritual universe" which came into existence long before the beginning of Islam and which persists even to this day in Islamic Sufism.

Its roots go back to the ancient Persian religious leader Zoroaster (628-551 BCE), and was brought to new life through the efforts of the work of the 12th century Sufi leader, Suhrawardi (1155-1191 CE).

In spelling out Suhrawardi’s “Iranism,” Corbin also draws on the concept of “Byzantinism” coined by the conservative Russian religious thinker Konstantin Leontiev (1831-1891).

It is a somewhat bewildering mix-- of ancient Persian, Medieval Islamic, and Russian religious thought-- but Corbin would like to see it incorporated into the contemporary understanding of global religious perspectives. I think Corbin is right.

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Personally, I find several things of major significance in Fakhoury's presentation of Corbin's ideas. The most important, I think, has to do with my life-long interest in the nature of religious ritual.

Another, closely related, is the nature of the long-neglected fourth function of human awareness for which we still lack a commonly-understood name. Jung calls it "Intuition," others call "Imagery" and "Super-sensory perception." Corbin's name for it is "Creative Imagination."

A third item of major significance is a very clear understanding of the nature of modern matter-mind rationalism and of body-spirit dualism which emerges from Corbin's presentation of what I think of as his mistaken need for an intermediate realm of reality which he calls the mundus imaginalis.

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Some words about Corbin's understanding of Suhrawardi’s lifework will be helpful. In a 1966 essay titled “From the Heroic Epic to the Mystical Epic," Corbin describes Suhrawardi’s interpretation of the ancient Iranian-Persian heroic epics. He saw Suhrawardi’s project as a “resuscitation” of the theosophy ("religious wisdom") professed by the Sages of ancient Persia.

Suhrawardi saw those ancient sages as predecessors in the Islam of his time of those called Ishraqiyun, "Disciples of Light."

Corbin makes the point that, while Suhrawardi's work of proclaiming his kinship with the sages of ancient Iran reveals that Suhrawardi did envision an “Iranism,” he was not describing objective history but a “meta-historical” fact, something psychological. Corbin describes it as an “event that took place in Suhrawardi’s soul."

As I see it, Corbin's emphasizes the non-historically-factual nature of Suhrawardi's perspectives because Corbin wants to say that they are, or belong to, another realm of reality, that 'in-between' realm which he calls the mundus imaginalis.

In the course of Fakhoury's presentation, an amazing number of names are used to describe the soul-event being talked about here: besides "meta-historical" and "imaginal," some are more psychological-- such as "personal," "experiential" and "existential"-- while other are more conventionally religious-- such as "spiritual," "priestly" and "holy."

Of great interest to me is Corbin's own term for Suhrawardi's psychological-religious soul-event: “creative intuition.” The emphasis is not just on the fact that it's a perception of reality, but that it is a new-- previously non-existing-- perception.

Corbin is describing an essential aspect of that long-neglected fourth function of consciousness: creativity. "Creative intuition" doesn't mean seeing something new, but seeing something in a new way. My wording for it is "seeing newly." It's like the phrase used by liturgical theologian Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983) to describe the nature of the new creation: "not new things, but things made new."

Corbin says this soul-event is its own "source and principle of explanation." I want to emphasize that it is a new perception, a new conscious awareness, and that the change is epistemological, not-- as Corbin's words would seem to imply-- ontological.

Corbin also uses a phrase I like a lot in describing the results of this creative soul-event; by it, he says "a new past emerges."

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Fakhoury points out that the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948) uses a similar term: "creative newness." Both Berdyaev and Corbin are talking about the same thing, a perception by personal consciousness that didn't exist before.

In explaining why a creative perception doesn't have a past, Berdyaev says it is achieved "in existential time." I'd emphasize that his use of the term "existential" is his way of saying that a human person, a consciously aware being, did the perceiving. (With philosophers, such things aren't necessarily obvious!)

Berdyaev also notes that “creative newness” cannot be explained in terms of the past, because, being achieved in existential time, it knows "no system of causal links.” Although I have more to say about this below, I want to note here that from this we can see that neither Corbin nor Berdyaev value cosmic space and time as they might; they are both operating in a pre-evolutionary worldview. This point helps make sense of the strong dualistic language used by both of them.

Fakhoury includes a reference to Berdyaev's 1941 book The Beginning and the End, where Berdyaev makes the point that there is "no new 'object" in a creative intuition, that it only makes sense "when we start from the subject." Once again, Berdyaev is simply saying that creative newness comes only by way of personal consciousness-- indeed, a very important point.

In describing creative newness Berdyaev uses language which demonstrates a very negative view of the world: “It is in fallen time," he says, "that the life of nature and historical life flow on. But everything that happens in time which has broken up into past, present and future, that is to say in time which is sick, is but a projection on to the external of what is being accomplished in depth."

I find it sad that these thinkers have to negate and devalue the real world in order to make their point about creativity and newness. From my perspective, they lacked the age-old and four-fold, "mandalic" understanding of personal self-awareness.

Berdyaev also uses the language of "vertical vs horizontal" in talking about "true creative newness." He says it's not only achieved "in existential time" but also vertically, not horizontally.

Again, it seems a pity that he has to negate one dimension of reality to make another dimension more important. There's no reason to exclude relationships just to say other realities are valid, too. (Bruno is the one religious thinker I know who emphasizes that for a complete picture the four-fold view is needed. And once again, Hooray for Bruno!)

As a summing up of this point I want to note that there is simply no need to mistake epistemology for ontology. I am sympathetic with their efforts, but the world-negating wording they come out with-- left over from a static-dualistic worldview-- is neither helpful nor valid for today. Our great need is not to negate the world but to understand our place in it.

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Corbin uses the phase "a new past emerges" when he is discussing what are called the "recitals" of Suhrawardi. The "recitals" are a ritual re-telling and re-living of the stories of the old Iranian myth-heroes.

That the past becomes present in acts of creative intuition is an understanding long-familiar to me from my interest in ritual. It has been especially well described in the works of early- and mid- 20th century liturgical scholars. (And here I offer special thanks for the work of Alexander Schememann mentioned above).

What Corbin calls "reversal of time"-- his wording for saying that the past becomes present for those participating in the 'recital'-- validates for me the correctness of my understanding of ritual.

Corbin also says that in the creative act the past is "absolved" (and I thought maybe a better word would be "dissolves"), but either word would seem to miss the main point: that while what was, remains in the past, it also becomes real in the present. I think this is the essence of what's being described here, whether we call it "recital" or "liturgy" or "ritual"-- or even "dance" as some Native Peoples do.

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A major question is how this "seeing, newly" happens. And that question is much more readily answer-able in the modern evolutionary worldview than in the static, dualistic and patriarchal perspectives of the past.

In the energy-focused dynamic cosmic context we can more easily understand that what makes the newness available-- both then and now-- is the tune-ing in, by personal consciousness, to the energy processes of the universe.

And that, as I understand it, is the very essence of religious experience via ritual. As I see it, this is one of the places where a more complete understanding of science-- as the understanding of time and space, matter and energy-- allows us to move far beyond the antagonisms of religious fundamentalism and scientific rationalism.

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Corbin was opposed to both religious fundamentalism and scientific rationalism, and yet he seemed to remain stuck in the worldview of static dualism.

For example, in talking about how a new past emerges Corbin uses the Arabic word hikayat, which means a narration that is at the same time an imitation or a repetition. The word applies to the kind of ritual which is a re-telling and/or an acting out of 'the old (or "basic", "foundational") stories and myths. Corbin says that in the hikayat, the Reciter is the actual and active actor. And this makes good sense.

But then, speaking from his anti-reality attitude, Corbin also says that "we ravish this past, and ourselves with it, from the causality known as historical causality." I think this is an especially important source for an understanding of Corbin's Docetism and his strong anti-Incarnation views.

It's also helpful for understanding the reasons for his "anti-historical" perspective, manifest when he notes that the creative act is a “history that breaks history.” He calls it an eschatological history-- which "in reverting the deeds of the heroes of ancient Iran to their “true,” “inner” meaning, simultaneously leads the mystical pilgrim “to his real being, to his origin, to his ‘Orient’.”

I hear all this as talk about human purpose and meaning, about eschaton and what I like to call "our fullest significance." Unfortunately, Corbin, like Berdyaev, again seems to need to negate one view to affirm the other. (More on that, shortly.)

In any case, we can learn a great deal of wonderfully valuable stuff from these various religious thinkers-- Medieval and modern, Islamic and Russian-- despite their inability to express themselves in a more contemporary non-dualistic, not-static and non-patriarchal socio-cultural context.

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I see this inability as a major problem, so it seems important to spell it out a bit more here. Suhrawardi's idea of "Iranism" is a good place for that effort.

In spelling out Suhrawardi’s “Iranism,” Corbin also draws on the concept of “Byzantinism” coined by the conservative Russian religious thinker Konstantin Leontiev (1831-1891).

Corbin relates Suhrawardi’s “Iranism” to the "Byzantinism" of the conservative Russian religious thinker mentioned earlier, Konstantin Leontiev. It is a bit complicated, but well-worth staying with, for the sake of the resulting clarity.

Corbin sees Suhrawardi’s “Iranism” and Leontiev’s “Byzantinism” as both being in contrast to their opposite, which Leontiev called "Kush-ism." Corbin says all this as a version of "Hegel’s system."

According to Corbin, the whole philosophy of Hegel (1770-1831) "rests upon the contrast between two types and upon the conflict of two principles in history": freedom and necessity.

These opposites, also referred to as spirituality and materialism, result in Leontiev's "Iranism-Byzantinism vs "Kushism," which is then extended to include "Russia vs Europe" and "East vs the West."

According to Berdyaev, the "principle of necessity" has to do with materialism and logic, while the "principle of freedom" has to do with creativity and morality.

From a mandalic perspective, we can easily see that materialism and logical reasoning come from the Sensing and Thinking functions of consciousness (our awareness of matter and sequential time), while morality and creativity come from the Feeling and Intuition functions (our awareness of spatial relatedness and the dynamic energy of the cosmos).

The dualistic implication is that the fixed necessities, matter and time, are bad, while space and energy, the more free aspects of reality, are good. In a patriarchal context, this also makes the bad-and-necessity aspects 'masculine' while the good-and-free aspects are 'feminine.'

Note, too, that it is the "good" group which is called by the dozen or so different names I mentioned earlier: "meta-historical," "imaginal," "creative," "religious," "priestly," "holy," "spiritual," "personal," "psychological," "experiential," "existential."

The whole point here-- of Khomiakov, Hegel, Berdyaev and Corbin-- is that what's of highest value is freedom and spirituality, in contrast to necessity and materialism. And this, of course, is a most blatant dualism.

They also found "necessity"-- that is, the power of materiality over the spirit-- in pagan religions, in Roman Catholicism and in Western rationalism. It's "us vs them" on a very large scale!

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(This present paragraph should probably be a footnote, but I want to add it for completeness.) Fakhoury makes clear the emphasis, essentially and primarily by Khomiakov, on the presumed superiority of Iran-ism over Kush-ism. Iranism "is founded on tradition and cannot be restored by a purely logical action, because the concept of creative freedom cannot be chained to and deduced from formulae."

This is being said in support of Corbin's ideas about Suhrawardi making the past present (i.e., that "a new past emerges"), and that Iranism "can only be discerned by a superior intuition [i.e., some kind of higher activity], going beyond the narrow limits of reasoning." Khomiakov also associates the notion of "creative freedom" with “tradition.”

Fakhoury's point is that this view anticipates Corbin’s own association of the notion of “renaissance” with “tradition”: what Corbin has to say about Suhrawardi's 'recovery' of the pre-Islamic Iranian views is coming from-- and, at least in some sense, based on-- Khomiakov.

This is important because Corbin draws a parallel between Khomiakov’s notion of “Iranism,” which denotes “creative freedom” rooted in tradition, and the “free creative inspiration” which Corbin saw enabled Suhrawardi to claim he was the “resurrector” of the theosophical wisdom of ancient Persia.

Corbin ends all this with a kind of hymn to what I think might be described as the "superior superiority" of Iran-ism over Kushitism. In "Irani-ism" Corbin includes Suhrawardi and those he calls "the Platonists of Persia," and in "Kushitism" he includes "Peripatetic philosophy, the dominion of Logic, and the necessity of the laws of rational understanding."

He adds that logical and physical necessity "is shattered by the visionary theosophy of the Khosrawaniyun from Iran, by the free flight of the configuring vision, the 'superior intuition' penetrating into the spiritual universes forbidden to the dialectic of Logic."

So all these Russian themes-- of freedom vs necessity, intuitivism vs rationalism, East vs West, Orthodoxy vs Catholicism-- ultimately come together for "the affirmation of the mundus imaginalis." And in which, Corbin adds, is "therefore the paradox, which in daring to 'exit' the constraints of empiricism and rational Logic, surmounts their antagonism."

My response: I don't think so!

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One more point. Fakhoury observes that Corbin also notes that there is a divergence between Khomiakov's and Suhrawardi's versions of “Iranism.”

Corbin notes that the Russian version is “the desire to elevate the hidden type at the root of the life of a people to a universal value.” He names this value “pravo-slava” (literally "right praise," a self-description of Russian Orthodoxy).

Corbin criticizes this “populism” as being too concerned with the consolidation of a “temporal ideal.” The pravo-slava ideal is too 'materialistic."

It's not sufficiently 'spiritualistic,' so Corbin uses the term "Oriental" describe what he saw as the purely spiritual “Iranism” of Suhrawardi. He notes that "the knowledge of the ancient Sages was not 'Oriental' simply because they happened to live in the geographical East. Rather, inversely, it is 'Oriental' knowledge that made these Iranians 'Orientals' par excellence."

Corbin calls this “Oriental" knowledge "the Light of Glory," and gives the Zoroastrian name for it "Xvarnah." He describes as "a hieratic ascendant in the Neoplatonic sense of the word."

His point is that “Orient” does not designate a geographical East, but rather symbolizes a spiritual light and knowledge which contrasts with knowing in a physical and material sense.

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To illustrate the point that "Orient" doesn't mean a geographical east but a spiritual knowing, Corbin draws a parallel between Suhrawardi and Konstantin Leontiev.

Fakhoury notes that Leontiev was at one time an admirer of Solovyov and an aesthete ["a person who has or affects to have a special appreciation of art and beauty"] but died as an Orthodox monk.

Leontiev's religious and political conservatism placed him at odds with the other religious thinkers of his generation. He rejected Solovyov’s “humanism,” charged Dostoevsky of promoting a “rosy Christianity,” and considered Khomiakov’s Orthodoxy as “too liberal and modernised.” In contrast, he affirmed Byzantine Orthodoxy and the ascetic monasticism of Mount Athos.

Fakhoury says Leontiev “placed his faith neither in Russia nor in its people, but in the sacral and hieratic ideal of the Byzantine world.”

Corbin favors Leontiev here because, as he says, the Ishraqi Light-wisdom ideas in Iranian-Sufi Islam come from ancient Persia via Suhrawardi, there is "an essential affinity between the Byzantine and Iranian spiritual universes."

Fakhoury makes the point that Corbin's saying that Byzantium and Iran are alike is meant not in a 'historical' but in an 'ecumenical' sense.

Fakhoury also notes that the perceived “sacral” and “hieratic” sympathy between Byzantium and Iran "defies every historical analysis." Corbin gives an example from an exhibit of Byzantine mosaics in Isfahan: at least in the minds of the Islamic observers, Byzantine mosaics shine with a light of their own just as do the famous ceramic tile artworks of Isfahan.

Corbin also claims that for both Leontiev and Suhrawardi, it is not the people that is in itself essential, but the sacral idea which inhabits it and prevails in it. He's saying that what's really important is not the place or the people but the "concept." I find the language here-- saying that people are too material and too physical-- to be the grossest kind of dualism.

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But if we can move beyond the dualistic wording, there is something of the greatest value in all this. It sounds like Corbin is talking a dualism language of light vs darkness, but he is not.

The Zoroastrian Xvarnah is not about darkness vs light or evil vs good. Rather, the Light of Glory is about the goodness of the world which is already actual, and the goodness of the world which is yet to be realized. It's such a different perspective that it's difficult for us to even hear correctly what's being said.

It is an eschatological view, in the sense that it sees a purpose to reality. With it's distinction between what is and what is yet to be, this 25-century-old dynamic-emergence perspective is eminently suited to the modern evolutionary worldview!

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So despite all the dualistic language-- matter vs spirit, physical vs spiritual, a people vs an idea of them-- some very positive views comes from all this.

For one thing, my perception of the great need for a mandalic rather than patriarchal-dualistic understanding of human consciousness is greatly reinforced.

For another, Fakhoury's note that Corbin’s explanation of Suhrawardi’s claim to have revived the illuminative philosophy of ancient Iran, helps to clarify the nature of Corbin's own project. He is trying to do something very similar for our day.

As I mentioned earlier, Corbin says that in defining his spiritual lineage, Suhrawardi is not writing an objective history of philosophy or mysticism but a "history of souls." But I think it's not so much a "history" of souls that's being offered by Corbin's understanding of Suhrawardi as much as a psychology which is both non-static and non-dualistic.

In describing what's happening to people's consciousness, Suhrawardi is offering stories of soul-experiences, stories about the changes in humans' deepest awareness. And these inner transfiguration-events do not require us to remove ourselves from the world of time and space, matter and energy.

In many ways, I find it difficult to understand why this is such a big deal for many. Except that I realize, of course, that there are many-- academics and all who are greatly influenced by both rationalism and fundamentalism-- who still don't think too much in terms of mind or soul or psyche or conscious awareness. They think even less in terms of transformation, and not at all in terms of the dynamic means by which such transfiguration occurs.

They are still stuck in a static patriarchal psychology.

So what a delight it is for me to realize that this whole issue, of Corbin's use of Russian thinkers to make sense of Suhrawardi's recovery of the ancient Persian perspectives, ultimately comes down to what seems to me to be a especially successful attempt to describe both the methods and the efficacious effects of ritual.

We have the beginnings, at least, of a non-static psychology suitable for the New Cosmology!

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#141. The Seven Pillars of Coyote

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ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 

http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Blog entries beginning with #101 are not essays but minimally-edited notes and reviews from the files I've collected over the last few decades. I no longer have the time and energy needed to sort out and put together into decent essay-form the many varied ideas in these files, but I would like to share them with all who are interested.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com

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Post #141 is a first attempt, made in 2004, at relating basic ideas about trickster aspects of Sophia with the help of Jung and Eastern thought.

1. INITIATION. Initiation to, and attestation for, endurance (of opposites within) is intrinsic to the trickster worldview and to the sophiological perspective.

As Louis de Montfort says, the Divine Energy "gives us the courage to be creative. It inspires us to do everything, to go everywhere, to try every new thing, to leave nothing unexplored. That we should become all that we can be. That’s what it wants from us!"

And its greatest lesson is that, in that on-going process, we can endure anything. Nothing good will get lost. Its most significant spokesman says, 'Don’t be afraid'."

2. HEALING TRANSFORMATION. Understanding of healing transformation via the union of opposites within is not part of the worldview of static-dualistic religion. It is unconventional, even in Bulgakov's sophiology, and tends to be found only within contemporary psychology and still-radical religious-psychology thinkers. It is thus within the realm of Coyote.

3. UNDERSTANDING and COMMUNICATION. Sophia is defined in the Old Testament as perception and understanding. And a definition of Coyote-consciousness definitely includes awareness of our limitations in understanding things well.

The modern field of hermeneutics knows, as Coyote teaches, that we have to dance around things in order to understand them well.

Louis de Montfort stresses communication as a gift of Eternal Wisdom: "Divine Energy gives meaning to our lives especially by serving us as a mentor and teacher. The wisdom it gives us is a profound understanding of the nature of things and a deep intuitive insight into what life is all about. It also gives us powerful communication and relational skills, so that our hearts can reach out to touch the hearts of others."

A hermeneuticist is by definition a communicator across cultural boundaries. And the (phallic) herm stands at every cross roads.

4. ROOTS. Jung's psychology, Bulgakov's sophiology, and at least some aspects of the dynamic evolutionary worldview of modern science all have the same philosophical roots in those western thinkers, the Germanic Romantics, who first brought Eastern thought to western consciousness.

5. PSYCHE and RELATEDNESS. Jung speaks of psyche and Bulgakov of relatedness as essential aspects of reality; both make use of the same language to say that neither the conscious psyche nor the divine-human inter-relatedness are "derived" in any sense but are fundamental "aspects of being."

6. OUR WORK OF WORKS. Individuation, as the process of becoming who-what we have been called into existence to be, is not a significant aspect of dualistic religion. But in the dynamic worldview-- of Jung, Sophia and Coyote-- growth and development is what life is all about.

Louis de Montfort says of Eternal Wisdom: it "gives us the courage to be creative. It inspires us to do everything, to go everywhere, to try every new thing, to leave nothing unexplored. That we should become all that we can be."

Jung says this is the one really important factor: "the salvation of the world depends on the salvation of the individual soul." And this is of course precisely to what Coyote serves as teacher and guide. And it's also found in Grail legend.

7. ENDS (PURPOSE is MEANING). We have many names for the one same reality: the Tao, how the world works, the cosmic ordering principle, Sophia as God's creative helper-craftsperson, the counselor of the Creator, the angel-guardian of the cosmos, etc.

The point of it all is that there is direction to the evolution of the universe and to what Coyote directs our growth and development: unity-in-diversity: all that can be said of eternal cosmic wisdom can also be said of the wisdom of the body.

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#105. "The Love of Eternal Wisdom"

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ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 
http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This is the 5th in my series of blog entries beginning with #101-- a collection of notes and essays from my files all dealing in one way or another with the emerging new religious consciousness. They are mostly things I've written over the last decade to clarify my own thoughts but which I want to make available for anyone who might be interested. This post (#105) was originally a follow up to the letter in post #104.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com

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Dear D&M:

What follows should really be called something like "Sam’s one-page 'contemporary' version of Barbara Moore's translation of Louis de Montfort's The Love of Eternal Wisdom." I wrote this a couple of summers ago; I did it primarily for my own benefit, as a way of better understanding the ideas connected with Sophia.

This introductory page is an integral part of the effort. As I said earlier, I'm sending this in conjunction with the long essay on Bulgakov from the St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly to give you an example of the "opposite ends of the sophiological spectrum."

The one thing I need to add to the Intro and text that follow is that while the language of my one-page summary is not one de Montfort would (or could) have used, I think I have been able to be fairly faithful to the 'flavor' or 'spirit' of what he has to say. It is complicated, however: in his opening prayer, for example, he addresses Sophia as “my princess,” and yet equates her with Jesus. Hmmm.

I think the most interesting thing about all this is not how odd it seems, but that it exists at all. -Sam

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Introduction

I have been having fun with Barbara Moore's book. I tried to do a one-page summary of Louis de Montfort's commentary about Eternal Wisdom.

Moore says Montfort’s book is probably based on notes for a retreat he was asked to give for the youthful members of a newly founded religious order devoted to the Holy Spirit. Montfort himself was a young and enthusiastic missionary priest at the time, so the resulting text is filled with the breezy slang of a youthful but charismatic leader trying to speak in a hip style to an even more youthful audience. All set within the context “baroque piety of 17th century France.” The result is dreadful.

So why bother with it? No one had done anything like it in western Christianity since the time of the early church fathers. And it would be another hundred and fifty years before the earliest Sophiologists appeared in Russian Orthodoxy. It's definitely worth looking at.

I probably spent as much time trying to come up with a good name for what Montfort calls “Eternal Wisdom” as I did in trying to summarize his text. What works best for me, so far, is “the Divine-Cosmic Energy." It’s appropriate and contemporary, and has the key advantage of putting Montfort’s thought in the perspective of a dynamic cosmos, utterly absent from the 18th century worldview. 

But I'm not really happy with “Cosmic Energy,” either. Sometimes, I think “the forces of nature” would be best. And I’m even less content with my summary. Above, I said “it's definitely a fun project.” Here, I’m thinking, “what a drag.”

Early on in his text, Montfort (writing around 1700 AD) quotes the author of the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon (writing roughly 100 BC), saying “I’m very confused. I feel like my mind is going in a half-dozen directions at once.” That is exactly how I feel. I have much admiration for Barbara Moore for taking on such a difficult project! 

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THE LOVE OF THE DIVINE-COSMIC ENERGY

Divine-Cosmic Energy takes priority before anything else. It pervades the universe and is responsible for everything, and all the good that it is, is ours for the taking. We humans are just like it; we are its supreme creation, its unique representative and living portrait. Its equals. Yet without it, we’re nothing. But-- without us-- it, too, is nothing. Its whole meaning and purpose is to be “for” us. It delights in us and needs us-- we, human persons at the heart of cosmos-- for its own fulfillment.

If what it’s all about is our happiness and enjoyment and we’re unhappy, that means we must be missing something. Maybe we’re just unaware. “Clue-less.” Or maybe we’re too distracted. Society has never been so bad, with its focus on externals and trivia, in making it easy for us to forget what life is about and to ignore the fullness of life which the Divine-Cosmic Energy offers us.

However, if we do pay attention to it, everything good is ours. It fulfills our heart’s desires. But we have to be attentive. We need to focus on it as much as a man does when he’s out looking for a woman. When we do, it responds like a woman happy to be found. She gives herself to us, totally.

This Divine Energy is such an amazing thing! There is nothing greater, nothing more important. And no violence, pain or bitterness is connected with it in any way. We really can’t put it into words. But we can experience it. It’s like food or music: we can tune in, taste it, know it by experience.

And it really does have a profound personal desire to belong to us. It personally cares about us, especially if we’re unhappy. It wants to share everything with us. It is so positively oriented towards us that it’s like a stalker. The Uncreated Energy is always pursuing us! But there’s no reason to be afraid of it. What it wants is that we should be its friends and fellow workers.

We can see its effects in people who befriend it. They stand out clearly as enlightened, inspired, encouraged, protected. It’s obvious they are being guided, that their lives are meaningful and happy. If we are open to it, the Divine-Cosmic Energy will guide us, too. Its goal is nothing less than riches and fullness of life for us; if we befriend it, it will supply us with everything we need.

Although it is in charge of the whole world, it works unobtrusively. This means that often we don’t recognize it, especially in life’s difficulties. But it’s the Cosmic Energy that, in fact, gets us through rough times. It so intensely wants to give itself to us that, if it’s ours, we never really lack anything.

Divine Energy gives meaning to our lives especially by serving us as a mentor and teacher. The wisdom it gives us is a profound understanding of the nature of things and a deep intuitive insight into what life is all about. It also gives us powerful communication and relational skills, so that our hearts can reach out to touch the hearts of others. Perhaps most important of all, it gives us the courage to be creative. It inspires us to do everything, to go everywhere, to try every new thing, to leave nothing unexplored. That we should become all that we can be. That’s what it wants from us!

Its greatest need, from its point of view, and its greatest gift, from our point of view, is our collaboration with it in the on-going creation of the world. Together, we and the Divine Energy bring about the New Creation. And its greatest lesson is that, in that on-going process, we can endure anything. Nothing good will get lost. Its most significant spokesman says, “Don’t be afraid.” 

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#34. Talking About Us

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Talking about God means talking about us." That's how I ended the previous post.

While bumper stickers proclaim "God is the answer," many today recognize that "God" is part of the problem. In the dynamic worldview that's ours thanks to modern science, a static understanding of God doesn't work. We need a participatory understanding of the anthropos-theos relationship to go with our participatory understanding of the anthropos-cosmos relationship.

In the dynamic worldview, we can see not only that cosmos, anthropos and theos go together, but also that anthropos has a central position. It's obvious that we can't say much either about the world or about God without talking about ourselves. That's what this post is about.

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In sharing my thoughts about the convergence of science and religion via this blog, I've mentioned many times how valuable I find the Biogenetic Structuralist perspective, with its combination of insights from the three big scientific areas of evolutionary biology, neurophysiology and cultural anthropology. It's called a "structuralism" because it looks at the underlying structural aspects of all human cultures; it focuses on what groups of persons, from small communities to large ethnic groups, have in common.

In the realm of religious thought, Karl Rahner, a great genius of 20th century theological and philosophical understanding, does something similar. He too tries to analyze what all humans have in common; his emphasis is not on human culture, however, but on personal experience. Rahner focuses on the underlying structural aspects of the most basic experience we human have: our awareness of being a human being. (It's so basic it even sounds odd to say it!)

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As an attempt to analyze the fundamental structural aspects of our experience of being human, Rahner's work is a kind of "experiential structuralism."

I want to emphasize that this is no small example of the contemporary convergence of science and religion. Just as Biogenetic Structuralism asks, "What do we come up with when we take into account biology, brain studies and the Earth's cultures?" so Rahner asks, "What do we come up with when we reflect on our experience of ourselves as a person?" The creative growing edge of scientific thought and the creative growing edge of religious thought are using very similar methods to enlarge and enhance our self-understanding.

"What's it like to be a person?" is not a question that most of us ask ourselves often, not only because we are taken up with the practical details of living, but also because we live in what has been called-- in a recent book, The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby-- a "culture of distraction." The superficiality of so much in contemporary society prevents us from focusing on the deeper aspects of our lives.

Such questions are, however, the ones that matter most to all of us in the long run. They matter because how we understand ourselves shapes how we act. As Teilhard de Chardin expresses it, "Seeing is being." How we see ourselves determines how we live our lives.

Creative thinkers on the growing edge of both scientific and religious understanding are offering us new ways of seeing and offering us, therefore, new ways of being. They help us to a new understanding of our own existence, which we need in order to deal with our contemporary problems. It has always been the case in the Earth's cultural evolution that every evolutionary advance is the result of people dealing with new problems. Individuals and groups who don't deal with their problems eventually die off.

Rahner's starting point is to ask, " What touches all of us? What can everyone agree on about what's basic to human experience?" He attempts to articulate what all humans experience-- whether young, old, male, female, Christian, Jew, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, secularist, atheist or agnostic-- simply because they are human.

The great power of this effort is that, in looking at the underlying basics of personal experience always and everywhere, it allows us to link the static worldview of the past with the present dynamic perspectives of evolutionary science, and to see the world's various religious and cultural traditions, even contemporary secular values, in terms of our common human experiences.

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I've emphasized repeatedly in these posts that we are a mystery to ourselves. Rahner's effort is to ask what aspects or structures of the experience of being a mystery to ourselves we can make explicit. What can we put into words about what's basic and common to the conscious experience of every human being who ever lived?

Rahner sees four underlying structural aspects to the mystery of being a person; he calls them "existentials" and names them self-presence, freedom, transcendence and grace.

His terms aren't as helpful as they might be. They come from a basically Germanic philosophical tradition, and just as C. G. Jung's German names for the functions of the four-fold mind (as I mentioned in post #29) don't really convey their meaning well in English, neither do those of Rahner.

Because at least two of them sound like traditional religious terms, it's especially important to recognize that Rahner is not relying on the traditional religious thinking of the past to talk about human experience.

He is relying neither on biblical and liturgical imagery (as was done in the Patristic period of western religious reflection) nor on abstract rational thought (as was done in the later Thomistic-Scholastic period). Rahner is doing something new.

His analysis of concrete human experience is part of the very broad movement in the modern world called the "turn to the subject" or "turn to the person." This "turn" toward episteme (personal consciousness), comes out of the more or less "Germanic" philosophical tradition which includes Descartes, Kant, Heidegger and the Enlightenment thinkers; it earliest roots go back to the time of Dante. It might best be described as an increasing awareness of awareness.

Karl Rahner calls this "turn to the subject" the "awakening of person in the world." In a way that our ancestors of past centuries never were, we are aware of ourselves today as autonomous and responsible "subjects." Rahner's focus is the anthropos-cosmos relationship which I have frequently referred to in these blog postings. And it's this awareness of the mystery of ourselves as conscious participants in an evolving universe that leads to new spiritual-religious perspectives appropriate to the New Cosmology. It really is a new start.

One important note. In Rahner's "structural" analysis of our experience of being a person in the world, it is you and I who are the authorities. Rahner can help us-- and he helps a great deal-- in putting words on our experience of being a person. But we're the ones who decide. In what follows, I'll describe as well as I can my understanding of Rahner's four "existentials." You can see if you think they fit your experience-- and whether, as Rahner says, all human experience.

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[1] Self-presence. The first of Rahner's existentials-- of the fundamental aspects of the experience of being a human being-- is the easiest to understand; it is that we are aware of ourselves. Rahner calls this self-possession or self-presence.

As is the case for each of Rahner's existential aspects of human experience, we can express what he's trying to say in many ways: we are in possession of ourselves, we are present to ourselves, we experience ourselves as experiencing ourselves, we are conscious of ourselves as being conscious of ourselves, we know ourselves as knowing ourselves....

And although we can't give a simple definition of consciousness, we know what we mean by it. We understand what we're talking about, even though it's understanding that we are trying to understand. That's why we have so many names for the mystery of being a person: "mind," "consciousness," "experience," "gnosis," "knowledge," "awareness," "episteme"....

The problem is that a satisfying definition always has two parts: we always define something by saying it's "like such and such, but it differs in some way." A familiar scientific example is defining a plant by naming its genius and species. At familiar example at the cultural level is the term first used for a self-moving (auto-mobile) machine: a "horse-less carriage."

But we haven't anything to compare our conscious awareness with. We can say we experience ourselves as "subject" in contrast to being an "object," but that only distinguishes us as being self-aware from things which are not self-aware; it doesn't really help us to understand what self-awareness is in itself.

Probably the best and truest thing we can say about our consciousness is that "it's the same thing as God, but created." That's not helpful either, of course, unless-- as the Asian religious traditions have done-- we do some serious reflection on what we mean by "God." All the Eastern traditions begin with the insight that we and the Ultimate are a-dva: "not two."

And maybe that's the best we can do. And maybe, also, that's not so bad. Thinking about our self-presence leads us to an awareness of our own deepest mystery: our non-duality with the Great Mystery. (Clearly, "Talking About God" and "Talking About Us" go together.)

It's important to note that in Rahner's view, the awareness of the non-dual nature of personal awareness has nothing to do with religious doctrines as such.

He specifically mentions that while many people today reject religious beliefs, it's "not because they abhor the incomprehensible." What contemporary people reject, he says, is "the complications of human reasoning which has tied itself up in knots." It's the rationalism of religion and theology that they reject, not mystery.

Rahner stresses that people "sense and revere the nameless and inexpressible." It is "a mysterious simple thing of infinite fullness," he says, that, based on our experience of being a person, we find ourselves to be "a being in face of the nameless mystery."

This takes us well-beyond the rationalism of recent centuries in the western world, where the mind is "tied up in knots." As anthropos-in-cosmos-- "person in the world"-- we know ourselves in a new way. And this allows us to be in a new way.

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[2] Transcendence. Rahner names his second existential aspect of human experience "transcendence." While the word is traditionally used to describe a creator who is above, apart from and independent of the world-- utterly different than anything we know or imagine-- Rahner uses it to describe human experience. He says we are self-transcendent.

It sounds as if he's saying that we experience ourselves as being beyond or separate from ourselves, but that's not what he means. He's saying that our deepest personal experience is something more profound than that of our everyday ordinary consciousness. There's more to us than the awareness we have when we are carrying out the normal everyday aspects of living. We are conscious that we have (or are) a deeper (or higher or bigger or truer) self. (Again, how we struggle with words!)

Probably the best word to use to express what Rahner means is "open." As a "person in the world," we experience ourselves at a deep level as being utterly open to everything that exists.

Another way to say it is that we experience ourselves as being "many-sided." Very many-sided.

This experience of being unlimited-- open to everything, unbounded, infinite-- is what Thomas Aquinas meant when he said that a person is "that which can become all things." We are potentially open to everything. We don't have any limits. We participate in infinity.

At first hearing, this may seems difficult to make sense of, but in fact it's something we experience all the time. As Aristotle said, "We desire to know." And everyone has had the experience, for example, of being interested in something-- whether it's growing roses or the structure of atoms or major league batting averages-- and wanting to know everything about it.

And as anyone with a passionate interest in anything has experienced, the more we learn, the less we know. The more we realize, that is, how little we know.

A good example is how we feel when we look up something on the internet. There are millions of sites and many millions of topics. Just now I checked out "Abraham Lincoln" and got 24 million entries. If I looked at one per minute, it would take me 500 years.

We may not be especially interested in Abraham Lincoln, but there are many things that we are interested in, and some of us seem to be interested in everything. The experience of wanting to know everything, to experience everything, to go everywhere, to see every interesting place in the world, to try every thing at least one, maybe even to go into outer space or certainly to go into the bigger world of inner space-- all of this is the kind of thing Rahner means when he says we experience ourselves as "transcendent."

Maybe the best way to say it is that nothing exists outside the realm of our possible experience. We really are open-ended. We are in some way one with all things. We experience ourselves as infinite, unlimited, unbounded, potentially present to all of reality, participants in infinity. We do not exist apart from the infinite unbounded reality underlying everything.

Western people are not at ease with such understanding of ourselves, even though it is a familiar experience when we reflect on it. But it, too, appears clearly in the Asian traditions, and this is, as I mentioned in the previous post, one of the main reasons westerners today are so interested in those ancient traditions.

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[3] Freedom. Rahner's third existential is the very opposite of experiencing ourselves as open to all things: it's knowing ourselves to be limited, finite, particular, to be "this" but not "that."

This aspect of the experience of being a person is just as familiar as that of being open to and participating in infinite reality. And it, too, is an aspect of our being participants in the cosmic process. As "person in the world" we are not apart from and separate from the world. Indeed, as anthropos, we are the cosmos become aware of itself.

This means that we have a specific place in the world. We have a history. Each of us can say something like... "I'm male. I'm American. I have a mixed Scotch, German and Polish ancestry. I'm 5 feet, 9 inches tall. I'm 70 years old. I live in New Jersey. I'm married. I have two adult married children and two grandsons. I'm not good at languages, but I can do math fairly well. I don't like broccoli...."

Each of us can fill many pages with this kind of specific information about ourselves, but no other person in all the world can say exactly the same things we can. Rahner calls this "existential" aspect of ourselves, which is the opposite of openness or self-transcendence, our "historicity."

It has to do with "actualizing"-- making actual or real-- our uniqueness, our individuality, our creativity and freedom.

At first, "freedom" may seem to be the wrong word, but it's not. Rahner is talking here about what he calls our "awareness of the unbounded scope of the human spirit" and of bringing it down to earth.

It is precisely this experience of being a free and autonomous person which allows one to know one's self as a responsible subject. In the conventional religious context, "responsibility" usually has negative connotations; it readily evokes guilt feelings which religious authorities abusively exploit. But Rahner's emphasis is on the experience of being responsible for and to ourselves.

At a very deep level, we know we really are free, at least to some extent, to choose who and what we will be. And it is this freedom, which is ours precisely because we are specific and finite, that makes us a mystery to ourselves.

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[4] Grace. Rahner's fourth existential is less easy to express clearly than the others. Not because it's difficult to understand, but because it's difficult to put into words that aren't easily misunderstood.

In responding to the question, "What is the experience I have of being a mystery to myself?" Rahner says we experience ourselves as "graced" or "blessed." A better English term might be "given." We experience ourselves as having been "given" to ourselves.

This is precisely the point that I made in the previous post (#33) when I noted that, in contrast to the idea of creation ex nihilo, the idea of creation by kenosis sees the creative source of the world as bringing us into existence by pouring itself out as the world and us.

In that post I quoted the pioneer 20th century theologian Henri de Lubac who explicitly says with regard to the Mystery's creative out-pouring that "there is no prior recipient." In calling this fourth existential "grace," Rahner is making the point that at a very deep level we do in fact experience ourselves as the "embodiment of an incomprehensible source."

I want to emphasize again that Rahner is not proposing a theological doctrine. It's what might be called a "pre-theology." He is intending a description of our experience of being a "person in the world" and offering an insight about human self-understanding which is independent of any specific religious or cultural tradition. A problem is that in our rationalist culture we can hardly hear it except as a theological concept.

But of much greater interest is the fact that the growing-edge scientists who have moved beyond the rationalism of 19th century science are saying something very similar to what Rahner is saying. I described some of these ideas in my very first blog entry.

In talking about what they call the "mind-matter issue," theoretical scientists working in fields with still-unfamiliar names such as "Systems Theory," Chaos Theory" and "Unified Field Theory," conclude that we and the world appear to be expressions (or manifestations) of an underlying order of reality for which they use terms like the "Vacuum Plenum," the "Quantum Sea" and the "Implicate Order."

Rahner says we experience ourselves as the "embodiment" of an "incomprehensible source." Back in the 1930s, the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov used the phase "actualizations of the divine potentialities." And Jungian analyst Michael Conforti, a contemporary pioneer in matter-mind studies in the realm of the psychotherapy, uses a more traditional religious term. "The patterns of reality," he says, "are continually being incarnate in space and time."

Conforti's book, Field, Form, and Fate: Patterns in Mind, Nature, & Psyche, is an especially good collection of many of these concepts. (It was published in 1999, but it is recently new to me. My thanks to Mary Conrow Coelho for pointing it out to me.)

Once more, I want to emphasize, with regard to this existential aspect of being a person Rahner calls "grace," that he is not talking theory or theology. He says it's a matter of personal experience.

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Some last thoughts. If you feel that Rahner's existentials aren't all that different from one another, I agree. They seem to be different ways of looking at the one same experience, of being a human person, from slightly different points of view.

And if you're thinking that this sounds a lot like the ideas about the four-fold mind that I've talked about in recent posts (#29-31), again, I agree. And there's even more to it: I've found that seeing Rahner's existentials in the light of quaternary consciousness is especially helpful for understanding the Immense Transition global humanity is in the midst of. I hope to share some thoughts about that in a future post.

My final thought is that whether we're talking theoretical science or personal experience, we are in fact "talking about us." These insights are available to all humanity, no matter what our ethnic and cultural and religious background. In recognizing ourselves as self-aware, open, free and blessed, we find ourselves not only to be mystery in the face of mystery, but personal participants in the progressive embodiment of the Great Mystery.

The New Science Story of the cosmos, life and anthropos-- of seeing ourselves as "person in the cosmos"-- is the heritage of all the people of the Earth. And it really is something new.

sam@macspeno.com