#49. Evolutionary Spirituality

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Everyone who is familiar with Jungian thought knows the story of Jung's visit to Native Americans in the American Southwest in 1925. Jung's conversation with a Taos Pueblo tribal elder, Mountain Lake, is recorded in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. It was a significant turning point in Jung's understanding of the human psyche.

Jung was talking with Mountain Lake about the tribal religion. Mountain Lake told him that the Pueblo people keep the sun going. "If we didn't practice our religion, in a few years the sun would no longer shine. It would be the end of the human race," he said.

Scientific rationalists and religious fundamentalists scoff.

But Jung saw that this perspective provided the Pueblo people with a sense of belonging to the world and having an active role to play in it. And he recognized that that this was precisely what was lacking to the people of modern western culture.

In our day, this sense of belonging is precisely what the New Cosmology provides.

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The New Cosmology is a "cosmology" in the sense that the term is used both in astro-physics-- a picture of the physical cosmos-- and as it's used in the human sciences-- a cultural group's understanding of its place in the universe.

What's unique about the New Cosmology is that it belongs to all the people of the Earth. The evolutionary worldview of modern science is a gift to all humanity.

The essence of the New Cosmology is the understanding that we not only belong to the evolutionary world but are also active participants in its development. It is in the greatest contrast to the static worldview of religious dualism which sees humanity as alienated from the physical universe and the goal of life our escape from the world.

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My main reason for starting this blog (almost two years ago, now!) was to state as clearly as I was able to say it that the evolutionary perspectives of modern science and the core perspectives of western religion converge in their common and shared dynamic worldview.

I have devoted many posts to the idea that the dynamic perspective originated in western religion-- specifically in the Exodus experience of the Hebrews and in the subsequent reflection on it by the Hebrew sages which is found in the Bible's wisdom literature. And I have repeatedly emphasized that although it was lost to western religion for a number of centuries it has been recovered by both western science and western religion in our day.

From the science side, the dynamic worldview allows us to see ourselves as the result of billions of years of evolution: we see that each of us is not only an utterly unique expression of the universe become conscious of itself but that we are also responsible participants in the evolutionary process at the level of human cultural development.

From the religion side, the dynamic worldview of the Bible's wisdom literature allows us to see that war, violence and injustice are distortions of the cosmic process: they prevent individuals from making their unique personal contribution to the evolution of the universe.

Both worldviews converge in their understanding that all of us together are called to contribute our efforts toward global ecology, gender equality, peace and justice.

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In the New Cosmology, where science and religion converge, the question is: How should we live? How should we live so that we can move beyond the violence and injustices of patriarchal attitudes and thus allow everyone to make their personal contribution to the cosmic process? How should we live so that we are properly aligned with the evolution of the universe?

Science doesn't have a name for "how we should live," but religion does. The traditional name is, of course, "spirituality." That's the focus of this post: what "spiritual life" looks like in the evolutionary context of the New Cosmology.

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It's important to recognize that "spirit" here does not refer-- as it does in a dualistic perspective-- to the inner life of a disembodied soul. It refers to "spirit" in the original sense of spiritus: that energy, dynamis, creative power which has been empowering the evolution of the universe from the beginning.

So, the main idea of a spiritual life is simple enough in an evolutionary perspective: it means "living in the spirit." To be "spiritual" means to live our lives in communion with the spiritus -- the pneuma, wind, air, breath-- which hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation and which, as the Hebrew sages recognized, has been guiding and directing the creative process on Earth and has, ever since, been inviting us to actively participate in it.

Evolutionary spirituality starts with this understanding. We need to keep in mind Claude Tresmontant's description of Hebrew Bible's evolutionary metaphysic that I noted in several previous posts: "It is the nature of being to continuously evolve." We also need to keep in mind Tresmontant's observation that it's the nabi, the prophet, who is the specific personality type who can discern the direction of the process: pax, peace, shalom.

So the question of an evolutionary spirituality comes down to living in accordance with the direction of the evolutionary process on Earth. It means allowing ourselves to be energized, empowered, by the spiritus.

This is what western religion is all about. It is what the Hebrew prophets and Jesus and the early communities of his followers were about. And it is what "life in the spiritus" means today.

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An unlikely source for our understanding of evolutionary spirituality appeared in a recent New York Times article reporting the death (in October 2008 at age 99) of the famous French nun, Sister Emmanuelle. It provides a good brief summary of what spiritual life is about.

While relatively unknown in the United States, Sister Emmanuelle was a unconventional Catholic nun who favored priests being allowed to marry, was indifferent to homosexuality, and opposed the papal ban on birth control. Her "energetic candor" endeared her to the French, as the Times article says, and she was "revered for her work with the disenfranchised, especially among the garbage-scavengers of Cairo, and renowned for her television appearances in France as an advocate for the poor."

When she appeared on a popular television program in 1996, she was asked by the host to name her favorite word. She said it was "Yallah," an Arabic word that translates as “let’s go.” When she was asked for the word she most disliked, her answer was the English word “stop.”

That's "life in the spiritus." Not "Stop!" but "Let's go!" That's what being on the growing edge of the cosmic process means. It's the refusal to live in accordance with the norms of the patriarchal mentality, the refusal to follow patriarchy's will to power, the refusal to accept the patriarchal control of persons with its unending commands of "No," "Stop" and "You may not!"

And it's more than just taking a stand against patriarchy's "Stop!" As this "outspoken advocate for the rights of the poor" recognized, the essence of Judeo-Christian wisdom spirituality is accepting-- with an enthusiastic "Let's go"-- the invitation of cosmic Wisdom to join in the work of peace, pax, shalom.

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The fact that a 99-year old French nun can provide us with insights into the nature of evolutionary spirituality reminds us that members of religious orders have had a central place in western culture for many centuries. They have been the "professionals" of spirituality in western religion, so we can't ignore them.

The various religious orders all have their roots in the earliest attempt at a radical spiritual life in western culture, the 3rd-century desert hermits.

While the desert fathers (and mothers, since there were plenty of women, too, who chose to live a hermit life) are not unique in the world's religious traditions-- there were Buddhist and Taoist monks long before the time of the Christian desert hermits-- those desert hermits were a unique cultural phenomenon.

There were once many thousands of them, and their movement to the desert was precisely a refusal of patriarchal control. It was a radical separation from what can be characterized by words such as "empire" and "Caesar." It was the first protestant movement in the western world, the first refusal on a cultural level to take seriously the patriarchal voices that said "Stop!"

The early desert hermits eventually evolved into monastic communities and, after the Middle Ages, into service groups-- taking care of hospitals, protecting travelers, teaching-- while living according to the traditional religious vows still familiar to us today.

Over the centuries, the dynamic perspectives of the wisdom spirituality on which the religious orders were founded got lost. Their traditional vows of poverty, chastity and obedience were reinterpreted to fit the static perspectives of the patriarchal mindset. The vows took on negative meanings, so that in a static worldview they seem much more like "Stop" than Sister Emmanuelle's "Let's go."

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To most of us today, "poverty, chastity and obedience" sounds like "no money, no sex, no freedom," and we wonder why on earth anyone would want to take such vows.

But a significant aspect of the Great Turning-- the Immense Transition happening today in our world-- is that many who are focused on a spiritual life have been redefining the traditional vows as positive commitments which are both quite appropriate to the modern evolutionary worldview and totally in keeping with the wisdom spirituality at the base of western religion.

This new consciousness and practice of spiritual life flows from a fuller appreciation of the interdependence and wholeness-- the inter-connectedness-- of all creation. The intention of these modern vows is not an escape from the Earth but the effort to function harmoniously with the created world.

The vows are being understood again in our day as commitments to challenge the destructive, exploitive structures of patriarchy and to once again move in the direction of the cosmic process which the Hebrew nabi discerns as "peace, pax, shalom."

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This redefining of the traditional basis for western spirituality has been going on for more than a generation. Persons as diverse as the Russian Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov, the Catholic monk Thomas Merton, and the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams have contributed to it.

A new religious group, celebrating its first anniversary in November 2008, provides an excellent contemporary example. It is made up primarily of married Catholic priests and their families and calls itself the Community of John XXIII.

In their understanding, chastity is understood far beyond its former narrow sexualized interpretation. It's seen as a call to authentic relationships at every level of creation, as a love and reverence toward the whole of creation. It's described as a "witness which presents a challenge to all political, consumerist or socially oppressive practices which exploit the sacred creation." They name this mutual respect for all things "Commitment to Relatedness."

Poverty, in this evolutionary perspective, is understood as the right use of material things. It is named "Commitment to Justice-making"-- with a strong emphasis on what's known as distributive justice, "where everybody has enough (not mere charity)." This sense of justice-making is also understood especially as a call to relate to each other and our society as a "discipleship of equals." It is "egalitarian rather than hierarchical," and stands in opposition to all patriarchal, hierarchical and institutional injustice.

Even the traditional vow of obedience is understood in a positive and dynamic-evolutionary sense, as "a call to work together to build a consensual and collegial approach to religious and social structures." Renamed "Mutual Collaboration," it is the refusal of any kind of slavery to falsehood or illusion-- a commitment to "not relying on institutional patriarchy as in the past but being open to the Spirit of creativity, which prompts us toward new possibilities."

These commitments to relatedness, justice-making and mutual collaboration are excellent examples of what life-in-the-spiritus looks like in the New Cosmology. Understood as the refusal to conform to patriarchal values and a commitment to participate in the dynamic movement of human culture toward "peace, pax, shalom," they clearly define "how we should live" when we are empowered by the spiritus of the cosmic process.

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There is one more aspect of evolutionary spirituality that we need to be aware of. It too has its roots in the protests by the desert hermits against patriarchal values; it is, in fact, the very basis for the contemporary commitments to healthy relationships, the right use of things and mutual collaboration for justice-making. But it's not a vow that is familiar to us today.

Everyone knows of persons like Francis of Assisi and Benedict of Nursia, the founders of those religious orders which evolved out of the early movement to the desert. But few of us are familiar with people like Paul the First Hermit, Anthony of the Desert, Mary of Egypt, John Cassian or Pachomius of Thebes-- the western world's earliest professionals of spiritual life.

What's especially important for evolutionary spirituality is an understanding of what it was that drove them into the desert in the first place, what it was that was the very essence of their need to move beyond the influences of patriarchal culture. It was the same inner need each of us experiences at a deep level within ourselves, in whatever cultural context we find ourselves: the drive or urge or need to become the person we feel we are meant to be.

I like to think of it as a "cosmic imperative," similar to both Biogenetic Structuralism's "cognitive imperative" (which I've described in a number of posts) and to what I called (in the previous post) the "expectation imperative." It's the drive we find in ourselves, as the evolutionary process become conscious of itself, to personal authenticity.

And while none of the early hermits-- neither western nor Asian-- had any knowledge of the modern evolutionary worldview, all of them experienced this dynamic inner drive for the realization of their own personal uniqueness.

From the evolutionary perspectives we can see that this effort to be one's self-- and not to be who-or-what the conventional patriarchal perspectives of the times insist on-- is precisely the effort to live in accordance with the dynamic energy of the universe.

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The Christian hermits saw it as a response to the question Jesus asks in the gospels: "What good does it do you to gain the whole world if you lose your true self?"

As unlikely as it may seem, this cosmic imperative to personal authenticity has persisted in the monastic world to this day. While everyone is familiar with the traditional vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, few of us are familiar with this unique monastic vow.

It's so old that scholars aren't even certain of its original name.

It is usually called conversio morum, which is translated into English as "conversion of morals" or "conversion of manners." But neither of those phrases is especially helpful in understanding what it's all about. Sometimes it's expressed more clearly as "conversion of life."

However it's named, this ancient vow is understood to be a commitment to transformation, to continuously develop and mature into the person the individual feels called to be.

Today we can see that it's a commitment to strive to live in accordance with the dynamic movement of the universe: a commitment to become, in the gospel's words, "one's true self."

If the desert hermits were somehow able to be informed about what Biogenetic Structuralists call "ontogenetic development," and what Brad Blanton calls "radical honesty," and what Jungians call the "individuation process," I think they would say, "Yes, that's what we're about."

And I think those early monks would have no trouble accepting the findings of the contemporary neurosciences with regard to the workings of the brain and nervous system: that we are indeed "the universe become conscious of it."

In a recent book on the spiritual life of men, Matthew Fox sums up his understanding of evolutionary spirituality in just a few words. He says it means "giving life your all."

Certainly Sister Emmanuelle would agree. And so, probably, would Mountain Lake's people at Taos Pueblo. It fits perfectly with the perspectives of the New Cosmology.

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I mentioned that the original name of the ancient monastic vow may not be conversio morum. Scholars think that "conversio" is possibly a "typo" or a misunderstanding by an early scribe, and that the original term was conversatio.

In that sense it's a vow to strive for personal transformation in conversation. It's the direct opposite of religious dualism's desire to escape from the world.

And in that sense it is exactly what's meant by being committed to Relatedness, Justice-making and Mutual Collaboration. Those commitments depend on nothing less than the personal integrity of each of us.

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This post is being published on the 40th anniversary of the death of Thomas Merton, surely the most famous monk of modern times.

Merton understood the ancient monastic vow in the sense of "conversation." He saw conversatio morum as a vow to grow and develop-- to continually work at becoming himself-- precisely in conversation with all the world.

I don't think we could find a better description of what "spiritual life" means in the dynamic evolutionary worldview given to us by modern science.

sam@macspeno.com

#48. Do We Have a Future?

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When I started this blog to share my thoughts about the convergence of science and religion, one of the first things I published was a report to my fellow high school graduates on the 50th anniversary of our graduation. It's in post #3.

The reunion planning committee had asked everyone, attending or not, to send notes about what they've been up to in recent years, to be published in an anniversary booklet and given to all who attended the reunion or sent in a report.

What I had been "up to" was an increasing awareness of the convergence of science and religion, specifically with regard to the question, “What is our place in the vast scheme of things?” I'd been thinking about that question for sixty years, and since my retirement in 2000 I’d given a good bit of time and energy to thinking through my understanding of it and how it might be expressed clearly for anyone else who might be interested.

I still continue to find fascinating what many of the front-running scientific thinkers, psychologists and religious writers have to say about "where we fit in." Although each uses very different words, they all seem to be saying something similar: that we humans are an integral part of the evolving universe and that we thrive in a dynamic relationship with the cosmic mystery.

I expressed it this way in post #3: "The Mystery behind the universe gives itself to us as the world and ourselves, guides and directs us, gathers us as individuals for all time and from the four corners of space into a wondrous Celtic knot and into a global community of diverse peoples, and promises our completion and fulfillment and the persistence of our relationships in the in-gathering of all beyond the passing away of things."

It's that last part of the statement that I want to explore in this post.

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Probably no aspect of western religion is more subject to ridicule than the idea that we have a future "beyond the passing away of things."

Because of the body-soul dualism inherited from Greek philosophy, western religion's idea of an after-life became such a mockery that people simply stopped thinking or talking about it. Many took an agnostic position, saying "I just don't know, and there doesn't seem to be any way any of us could know." But that's not very interesting. If you enjoy thinking about science and religion, agnosticism is simply no fun at all!

The dualistic view that comes from the static perspective of Greek philosophy is that persons have a permanent component that survives the decomposition of the body-- an immortal soul that persists after death because it was created to be immortal. In this view, escape from the world is the goal of human life.

Nineteenth-century scientific rationalism, with its reduction of the world to its material components, took the opposite view-- there is no soul, there is no immortality and only annihilation awaits us.

In a static worldview, either escape from the world into an after-life or our total annihilation seem to be the only possible responses.

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In dynamic worldview, things looks a bit different.

As Claude Tresmontant observes in his Study of Hebrew Thought (which I described in post #39), the "evolutionary metaphysics" of the Bible's wisdom tradition recognizes that "it is the nature of being to be continuously evolving." This dynamic view of the world is the basic understanding of the post-rationalist scientific view as well. Indeed, as I spelled out in post #38, the evolutionary worldview originally comes from the Hebrew experience of the Exodus.

In the evolutionary perspective, the question "Do we have a future?" becomes "Does the evolutionary process continue?"

The question isn't whether there is a direction to evolution. Direction seems clear enough; in the dynamic perspective, we easily see that the matter of the cosmos has evolved on Earth into biological life and eventually-- by way of mammalian and primate development-- into human beings, conscious persons.

We also see, although it's still a bit difficult in our individualistic society, that there is one more step in that sequence: beyond our individual development there is also our communal relationship with others. Science calls it "culture."

So, in the evolutionary perspective, the question is whether the dynamic sequence-- fourteen billion years of evolutionary development from stars to living things, persons and human communities-- is a dead-end in the long run.

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In its various forms, this is probably the most radical question we can ask. Is the universe meaningful? Or is it absurd? Do we have a future? Or is annihilation-- separately and together-- what's in store for us?

We know that once we did not exist and that we have come into existence out of apparent darkness and nothingness. Even dualistic religion and rationalist science agree on that.

But in the evolutionary perspectives of post-rationalist science, we can also see that we are part of that evolutionary process. We see that we have been gathered "from all time and the four corners of space" and that, out of the resulting complex chemical and biological components, our personal awareness and communal consciousness have emerged.

The question still remains, however, whether in the long run the process a dead-end. It's not a question science can answer. There's no empirical evidence.

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And yet almost every culture in the world has some understanding of our existence beyond death and of a reunion with those who have gone before us.

An in-gathering of some kind is imagined in almost every society: Abraham's Bosom, Happy Hunting Grounds, Heavenly Paradise Garden, a meeting with ancestors in the next world. Every culture envisions some kind of communal reality for humans after death.

C. G. Jung says that, in working with his older patients, he found that their unconscious psyche always acted as if it was to continue, even with persons who were expecting to die soon. He says that our deepest Self continues to presume and act as if it will persist. The psyche doesn't have any sense at all of an eventual annihilation.

Teilhard has an interesting comment about this. He says that if we didn't think we have a future we wouldn't even bother to answer the telephone. Today he'd probably say we wouldn't bother to check our e-mail!

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So, is there a way to make sense in our contemporary situation of the question "Do we have a future?"

I think the quaternary perspectives which I've spelled out in a number of previous posts can be of help.

I said in post #46 (Convergence?) that the best way I know to describe the distinction between science and religion is to say that science is about the anthropos-cosmos relationship, while religion is about the anthropos-theos relationship. And one way to state that difference is to use the imagery of the four directions on the Medicine Wheel which I spelled out in earlier posts: "Science is a primarily a Gold Eagle and White Buffalo expression of our conscious minds, while religion is primarily a Black Bear and Green Mouse activity."

In Jungian language we can say that science operates by way of the perception function called Sensation and the judgment function called Thinking, while religion, in contrast, operates by way of the perception function called Intuition and the judgment function called Feeling.

An easy way to summarize those concepts is to say that science looks at details and the sequential flow of things, while religion looks at the big picture and the inter-connections between everything.

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In four recent posts I used those quaternary perspectives to spell out the four-fold imagery of the anthropos-theos relationship contained in the Bible's wisdom literature. I called those posts Evening Wisdom (#42, Sophia as Architect), Morning Wisdom (#43, Sophia as Guide), Noonday Wisdom (#44, Sophia as Gatherer) and Midnight Wisdom (#45, Sophia as Provider).

I think the question of whether we have a future can be asked in terms of these wisdom perspectives, specifically in terms of the perspective I've called Midnight Wisdom.

As I spelled out in post #45, the sages among the Hebrew shepherds and farmers used agricultural imagery to describe this aspect of the anthropos-theos relationship. They pictured Sophia as vegetation (a tree, plant or vine) to describe Divine Wisdom as a source of food, shelter and protection, providing for the existence and life of the children of the Earth.

In that same post I mentioned that just as in the hunting culture of the Plains Indians the buffalo is understood to quite literally give itself for the life of the people, in these agricultural images Sophia is also understood to give herself so the people might live. She especially provides the food, shelter and protection needed in the dark of night and the cold of winter, the time and season specifically associated with North on the Medicine Wheel.

Like the North's White Buffalo, the mystery behind the universe provides us with what's needed for survival and the fullness of our lives. And as I said in post #45, "Contemporary scientists, cosmologists, theoretical physicists, psychotherapists; Orthodox and Catholic theologians; followers of ancient traditions such as Taoism and of teachings going back to Paleolithic times-- all are attempting to express the same insight."

There's one more aspect of Midnight Wisdom which needs to be mentioned here: the Sensation function's focus on details. Just as in the New Cosmology we see that it's a distortion of the cosmic process to exclude anyone or any thing from our care, so we can see that in terms of Sophia as Caretaker, nothing should to be overlooked in the long run, no one left out.

With all this in mind, we can re-word the question about whether we have a future in terms of Sophia as Protector, Provider and Caretaker: Will Divine Wisdom be consistent in the long run?

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In asking the question that way, it's important to keep in mind just what the long run looks like:

1. The world is dynamic, not static. "Being is continuously evolving."
2. The basic sequence of cosmic evolution is "matter, life, mind." In the big picture we see that human beings are "the world become conscious of itself." Persons are the matter of the world responding to itself by way of the structures and activities of the human brain.
3. In the cosmic process there is also culture, what I called in previous posts "the other half of person." Personal relationships, human community and our union with all else are also part of the evolution of the universe.
4. The Judeo-Christian tradition at the heart of western religion originally saw itself as the growing edge of that communal developmental process. In the context of the Bible's Wisdom perspectives, western religion saw the Hebrew prophets, Jesus, and the communities of his followers as the growing edge of cultural evolution, the continuation on Earth of the communal and cosmic stage of the world's development.

Western culture and religion lost this dynamic perspective for nearly a thousand years, and because modern science came into existence during that time, science too lacked the dynamic perspective for a while. But in our day, the big picture of the cosmic process has been recovered once again by both religion and science.

Today, we can recognize not only that we are associated with the destiny of the universe, but that as individuals we each have a unique contribution to make to it, and that our communal work towards peace and justice, equality and environmental consciousness is an integral part of it. We can also see today, as never before, that precisely because war, injustice and environmental damage prevent human beings from making their unique contribution to the evolution of the world that those things are distortions of the development of God's creation.

So in asking if we have a future, we're asking not only whether the cosmic process continues but also whether we can look for something else as well-- nothing less than a healing of the fragmentation we experience in our individual and social lives.

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In Christian tradition, the word used to name this healing wholeness which our minds and hearts look for is "salvation." It comes from the Latin word "salve," a word we still use for healing/medical ointments. In Greek, the word used is soterion, from soteria (desirable things), the opposite of phobia (things we fear). The basic idea in this understanding of salvation is that, as participants in the cosmic process, we can look for the healing and wholeness of all things, that in the long run we don't need to be afraid.

So in the evolutionary context, the question of whether we have a future comes down to whether we can count on the cosmic process for that healing and wholeness in the long run.

As I said earlier, there's no evidence. Nothing from the Thinking function. And if we do have a future, we have no information about the details. Nothing from the Sensation function, either.

But while the patriarchal mentality of static dualism writes off the other two functions of our four-fold consciousness as irrelevant or even as non-existent, it is via our Black Bear Intuition that we desire "our completion and fulfillment" and it's via our Green Mouse Feeling that we hope for "the persistence of our relationships beyond the passing away of things."

These two aspects of our consciousness also come from the cosmic process, no less than do our Gold Eagle Thinking and White Buffalo Sensation functions. It is via us that the universe expects to be "salved." And we experience that expectation in ourselves as a promise. It is a cosmic imperative much like what researchers in the human sciences call the "cognitive imperative." I originally described the "cognitive imperative" back in post #10 (Overview of Biogenetic Structuralism).
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The word "imperative" generally means an urge or impetus, an inner drive, something which is unavoidably necessary, like the pull of gravity. Here it refers to how the universe is ordered, and "cognitive imperative" refers to the fact that "cognition," human consciousness, results from the way the universe works.

This is such an important idea, with regard to the question of a future, that I want to offer some examples of the "cognitive imperative" at different levels of human development.

Months before we are born, the cosmic process is active in the embryological development of our brain and nervous system. Biogenetic structuralist scientists describe it this way: "The initial development of each nerve cell (in the brain) is motivated by a cosmic imperative to be active and 'reach out,' to contact and communicate with certain other cells."

At a later stage in our personal development, the same cognitive imperative is described as "the uniquely human, hardwired instinct to link cause with effect that gave us a vital evolutionary advantage over other animal species." That sounds complicated, but it simply refers to the fact that our minds look for explanations of things. When we hear a loud noise, for example, we automatically (instinctively) ask, "What was that?" The point is that it's not only a unique aspect of human consciousness to look for reasons for things but that the source of that cognitive imperative in us is the evolutionary process itself.

A third example comes from our understanding of adult psychological development; it has to do with the inner drive we experience to bring together the many aspects of our conscious awareness. In Jungian language it's described as our need to unify the various aspects of our conscious and unconscious (the Jungian "complexes") into a whole. Jungians would say that we experience within ourselves "a strong drive toward individuation." The biogenetic structuralists put it this way: "The wholistic imperative of the cosmic life-force also wants the psyche to integrate into consciousness those until now previously excluded complexes."

The point of these examples of the cognitive imperative-- this "primal urge to know," as biogenetic structuralists also call it-- is that this cosmic life-force, this "primordial cosmic dynamis," is both the way the world works and the way our hearts and minds work. It's not just the cosmic process working in us, but-- because we are the world become conscious of itself-- the cognitive imperative is nothing less than the "primordial cosmic dynamis" working as us.

So, when we look at the question of a future in this context, we can see that just as there is a cognitive imperative, there is also what might be called an "expectation imperative." We humans-- as the universe become conscious of itself-- find in ourselves a desire for completion, an instinct for fulfillment. We're hard-wired for it.

But it's not just our own expectation-- it is the expectation of the universe itself. Via us, the created world is expecting to have a future.

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Since I started this blog two years ago to share my thoughts about the convergence of science and religion I have pointed out many times that the evolutionary understanding of the world which characterizes modern science has its roots in the Western religious tradition.

Here I want also to point out that, as unlikely as it may seem to many, even this idea that the universe itself expects to have a future has been part of the Western religious tradition from the very beginning of Christianity. Although in the context of static dualism we miss it completely, the earliest Christian writer, Paul, makes the point explicitly in his letter to the Romans.

Paul says as clearly as possible that creation itself-- the whole universe, all of nature-- is "groaning as if in labor pains in expectation of its fulfillment." The many translations are fascinating. You might like to check Romans 8:22 on Bible Gateway. I especially like the version known as "The Message." In that translation Paul simply says, "The universe is pregnant."

So, just as there is a "cognitive imperative" recognized by western science, there is also what might be called an "expectation imperative" recognized by western religion.

The universe is expecting!

And it's that expectation which we experience in ourselves, via our Green Mouse and Black Bear functions, as the promise of a future. When we look at the big picture, in terms of the "Wisdom from on high who orders all things mightily," there doesn't seem to be any reason to mistrust it.

sam@macspeno.com

#47. The Growing Edge

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This post is about re-situating the Christmas story in the context of the new Universe Story.

Back in post #28, when I talked about "Where I'm At," I described the three different directions I wanted to move in (all at once!) in sharing my thoughts about the convergence of science and religion. In that post I offered "snapshots" of those three directions. In this post I'm finally getting to share my thoughts about the third one. It's the Christmas story from a dynamic rather than static perspective: what the story of the coming of Jesus looks like in the updated context of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution offered us by modern science.

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In the previous post, Convergence? (with the question mark), the main point I made was that "When we see that the real world is a dynamic process, and that the emergence of new things from previous things is the basic pattern to the process, we can see that the convergence of science and religion in the dynamic worldview of western science frees western religion from the centuries-old prison of static dualism."

My main thought there, and indeed in all my blog efforts over the last two years, is that far from being in opposition to religion, contemporary science serves the religion of the western world by rescuing it from its thousand-year prison of static dualism. Modern science greatly enriches western culture's religious tradition.

After the Dark Ages, western religion got trapped into thinking that the world is a prison. It lost its original understanding of reality as a dynamic process. For many today, it still comes as a surprise to know that evolution is at the core of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition and the evolutionary perspectives of modern science can help western religion re-discover its own dynamic heart and soul.

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As I spelled out in post #38 (Exodus), the western world owes its dynamic understanding of reality to the Hebrews. It began with the experience of the Great Escape from Egypt, and it continued in the subsequent reflections of the Hebrew sages in the Bible's Wisdom literature. I've spelled out those thoughts on Wisdom/Sophia in a number of recent posts (#40 to #45).

I've also frequently referred to the French philosopher of science, Claude Tresmontant, author of A Study of Hebrew Thought. As I noted in post #39, he makes the point that this dynamic-evolutionary perspective is in the greatest contrast to the static worldview that had previously prevailed for countless generations. As he puts it in the language of philosophy, "being itself is dynamic rather than static." It is the nature of whatever exists to be continuously evolving.

Tresmontant refers to this breakthrough in human awareness occasioned by the Exodus event as an "evolutionary metaphysics" and notes that, in humanity's cultural development, the Hebrew idea of creativity and newness is as significant as the discovery of fire.

I've also mentioned many times Teilhard's statement that the dawning of the dynamic-evolutionary worldview "is the biggest change in consciousness since consciousness first appeared on Earth several million years ago."


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One of my main points in the previous post is that "it's not quite correct to say that the Judeo-Christian tradition began in the context of the dynamic-evolutionary worldview." Put more accurately, the dynamic worldview is the very essence of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

I noted in that post that the reason this still sounds like such a strange claim is "because we're not yet comfortable with the idea of a dynamic-- in contrast to a static-- worldview." So we need to keep in mind just what "dynamic" means. It is a synonym for the Latin word spiritus and comes from the Greek word dynamis. Both words mean power and energy. The first chapter of Genesis describes the divine spiritus-- "the dynamis of God"-- as "hovering over the surface of the waters at the beginning" and in the Psalms it is said to "fill the whole world, giving life to all living creatures."

The Psalms and Genesis were written long after the Hebrew experience of the Exodus. Those stories and poems are part of the wisdom perspective that pervades the Hebrew Bible. The entire wisdom tradition speaks of the dynamis-- energy and power-- of God creating us, guiding us, gathering us, providing for us. The whole history of the Jewish people is understood as being brought about by this holy spiritus.

And as Tresmontant notes, this dynamic-evolutionary perspective is the down-to-earth worldview of a people who were farmers and shepherds. Their Wisdom literature sees Divine Sophia, the Wisdom of God, not only delighting in the creation of the Earth and its children-- delighting in the world of human persons-- but also calling us to participate in her creative work in the world.

One other aspect of Hebrew thought which Tresmontant notes also is important to keep in mind here. Not only is the world going somewhere, there is also a unique type of personality in Hebrew culture who is especially able to see the direction in which the world is moving: the nabi (prophet). And the direction is peace, pax, shalom. "The wolf will lie down with the lamb," says the prophet Isaiah. Today we would call it social justice.

This is the dynamic evolutionary context in which Jesus was born and in which the first communities of his followers were formed.

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That dynamic context is quite explicit in the gospel stories. We easily miss it, because, as I've said, "we're not comfortable yet with the idea of a dynamic-- in contrast to a static-- worldview."

The dynamic consciousness, for example, is the focus of the story of Jesus' baptism. Christians nowadays don't pay much attention to that story, but in the early days of Christianity Jesus' baptism in the Jordan was considered the central event in his life. It was of tremendous importance to his followers.

And although this will sound very odd, it is the baptism of Jesus, not his birth, that was the original Christmas story.

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The second century Christians in Alexandria-- the cultural center of the Mediterranean world at that time-- selected the Egyptian date of the winter solstice and the start of the new year to celebrate the baptism of Jesus. The date was January 6, a high point on the old pre-Christian Egyptian calendar celebrating the manifestation of divinity as the Alexandrians saw it. So it was good choice for the celebration of the manifestation of the divine spiritus in Jesus.

Except for Easter, January 6 was the only feast day on the Christian calendar at that time. A day to mark the birth of Jesus came later. That was added by Christians in Rome-- the political rather than cultural center of the empire-- and they also selected a pre-Christian winter solstice festival, which in Rome was understood to occur on December 25.

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Even today, January 6 is a major date on the Eastern church calendars, and it still has the original word "manifestation" in its name; they call it Theophany. The western churches call it Epiphany. The "phan" (or "fan") part of those words literally means "showing"-- just like what a fan-dancer does.

In the Western tradition two other events were also understood to be epiphanies of the dynamic spiritus manifesting itself in Jesus: the visit of the Magi from the east and Jesus' first "sign," as the gospel calls it, his turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana. On the western calendar the story of the Magi's visit eventually became more important than the baptism, but for many centuries the baptism continued to be celebrated on the octave, eight days later.

Today, on the Roman calendar used in English-speaking countries, the feast of the Three Kings has been moved to a Sunday near January 6 and the baptism is still remembered eight days later, on the following Sunday. (But the wedding feast story is read as a gospel only every third year.)

The Eastern churches, however, both Catholic and Orthodox, still celebrate the baptism of Jesus on January 6. And there is one national church, Armenia-- the very oldest Christian nation-- that never got around to adding December 25 to its calendar. They still celebrate Christmas on January 6.

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I've given all this seemingly trivial information because it helps us to see that the original Christmas story is the baptism, rather than the birth, of Jesus. If we're still functioning in a static and dualistic rather than dynamic worldview, we can easily miss its significance.

That the baptism of Jesus was about the manifestation of the dynamic spiritus which fills the whole world is clear from the ancient Eastern church custom of blessing a body of water each year on January 6. (The Roman church also had a blessing of water on that date, but it had been unused for centuries and was dropped from the books around 1900.) The blessing of water is still a central event in many Eastern churches, Catholic as well as Orthodox, when on the morning of January 6 parishioners go to the nearest stream or river or ocean to bless the waters of all creation.

Water here is understood to be the primal element-- the very substance of the world-- filled with the Dynamis of God. Jesus' descent into and immersion in the waters of the Jordan is an image of the divine energy filling the whole cosmos.

The fact that these customs have been lost to western Christianity is a clear indication of the extent of the loss of the dynamic worldview which prevailed for the first thousand years of Christian tradition. My point in all of this is that, with the help of modern science, the evolutionary perspective at the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition is being recovered once again in our day.

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When we see the world as a dynamic process, then the core of western religion makes good sense. But to see the Divine Dynamis as the cosmic evolutionary spiritus it's important to keep in mind the basic pattern of the evolutionary process: when the material of the world reaches a certain level of complexity, new things emerge. "Matter, life and mind" is the underlying structure to the entire cosmic process as we Earthlings experience it.

In a static context, individuals feel themselves imprisoned in an alien world from which they need to escape. In an evolutionary context, we experience ourselves quite differently: we experience ourselves as related to all things and blessed to be free participants in the cosmic process.

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There is one more point, one which western culture still finds difficult to accept: that the evolutionary process doesn't stop with the emergence and development of individuals. There is what I called in post #22 "The Other Half of 'Person'." It's the idea that our personal relationships and our communion with all else is also an aspect of the evolutionary process.

With the strong sense of individualism that's part of western culture, it's not easy for us to see that the evolution of the universe continues not just in the development of conscious individuals but also in the emergence of communities of persons.

The essence of the New Cosmology is that the developmental sequence of the cosmic process is matter, life, mind and communion. Biological evolution continues beyond the personal level in our connection with all things and specifically in our relationships on the human cultural level.

The fact that humanity's cultural development is an aspect of the cosmic process has become much clearer in our day with the growing awareness that we live in one world, "spaceship Earth," where all of us are mutually inter-dependent.

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When we look at western religion from that dynamic perspective, we can see not only that humanity's awareness of the process began with the Hebrew slaves' escape from Egypt and that it continues in the teachings of the sages and the sayings of the prophets, but also that it continues right into the new testament stories of Jesus and his early followers.

The early Christians saw the world as a process; they also saw Jesus as the embodiment of the divine dynamism of that process; and they saw themselves as the embodiment of Jesus.

To make clear what I mean about "re-situating the Christmas story in the context of the new Universe Story" I need to say a few words about each of the three parts of that sentence.

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They saw the world as a process. Obviously Jesus and his early followers didn't know anything about DNA or natural selection, but the very essence of his teaching was that something was in process in the world. When his followers asked him how they should pray, he told them to say, "thy kingdom come!"

We still call it "the Lord's Prayer" and it's said a million times each day on the Earth. But the words are so familiar that, understood in a static worldview, we miss their meaning. In a dynamic perspective, "the prayer that Jesus taught us" is clearly a prayer for the success of the cosmic process at the level of human relationships.

"Thy kingdom come" is a prayer for the coming of justice and peace-- pax, shalom-- when "the wolf will lie down with the lamb." It's a prayer for communion of persons and for personal relationships-- for the new creation which, thanks to the divine dynamis, emerges at the communal level of human development.

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They also saw Jesus as the embodiment of the divine dynamism of the process. The early Christians saw Jesus as the embodiment of the wisdom and the power of God. While the words sound unfamiliar in a static context, they are stated as explicitly as possible in the earliest Christian writings. At the beginning of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, for example, Paul describes Jesus as "the dynamis of God and the sophia of God." (Those Greek terms aren't a translation; they are the words used in the original.)

We still hear this understanding of Jesus as the dynamis and sophia of God at Christmas time-- in readings and stories, verses from Isaiah on Christmas cards, for example-- but once again it's easy to miss if we hear it in a static context. One especially good example is found in Paul's letter to Titus that is still read, as it has been for centuries, at the Midnight Mass of Christmas. "In him," says Paul, "the charis (grace, love) of God has been manifest to us." The Greek for "has been manifest" is epephane. In a non-evolutionary context, we just don't hear it.

A much more familiar example is the ancient Advent hymn, "Come, O come, Emmanuel." The very first verse begins, "Come, O come, thou Wisdom from on high." In a evolutionary context, we would hear something like, "Come, O come, Sophia from on high."

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And they saw themselves as the embodiment of Jesus. The communities of Jesus' followers understood themselves to be the continuation of his work. They saw themselves as a new kind of community in humanity's cultural development-- at the very growing edge of the cosmic process-- helping to bring about the coming of the kingdom-- the reign-- of divine Sophia.

In the previous post I emphasized the importance of the idea of emergence in understanding the cosmic process. It's also the key to understanding the story of the coming of Jesus and the founding of the communities of his followers in the dynamic-evolutionary context.

A contemporary Jewish source expresses this understanding of the emergence of new communities well. The prophetic American rabbi Arthur Waskow captures precisely this sense of the formation of new communities in the dynamic process of human cultural development. In a letter about the 2008 presidential elections, he says the world is in such a mess that it's like living in an earthquake-- "God's earthquake," he calls it-- and that we have to learn "to dance our way to a new world from the earthquake of the old."

"Modern' civilization is devouring itself," says the rabbi, "turning its towering control of the world, of the earth itself, into self-destruction. The certainties of Modern life are quaking, and our country as a whole does not know what to do." He notes that while some seek to hang on to the old certainties, it "takes even more courage than in the past to renew the ancient bubblings of Truth and Transformation." It means, he says, "jumping off into a world we cannot remember."

"To shape these new communities, broader and deeper than we have known, will take not force of arms but hearing of the heart. Maybe only 'YHWH,' the Interbreathing of all life that appears in every human language and in the lives of every life-form, can do it."

Rabbi Arthur's main point is that "God's Great Dance is between Control and Community, A great leap forward in Control must be followed by a great deep warming of Community." And that, he says, "is what happened when the West-Semitic tribes faced the power of Imperial Egypt and Imperial Sumeria: They went deep into the Spirit, and arose with Torah, a new form of community. That is what happened when the conquered Jews faced Imperial Rome: they went deep into the Spirit, and arose with Talmud and New Testament, two new forms of community."

Notice where those new forms of community come from, when we're caught in the earthquake of patriarchy suppressing everything new for the sake of power and control. Rabbi Arthur says it twice: "They went deep into the Spirit." New community emerges from the dynamism (spiritus) of the cosmic process. (It is a good letter. If you'd like to be on the rabbi's mailing list, you can send him a note at The Shalom Center: www.shalomctr.org.)

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Once again, it's the idea of emergence that's the key to understanding what the coming of Jesus and the founding of the communities of his followers looks like in the evolutionary context. In the emergence process we see that at the biological level, DNA can do things that its chemical components can't; and at the neurological level, a human being can do things that brain cells can't. In exactly the same way, at the cultural level, human communities can do things that individuals can't.

Historically, communities have used words like "gathering," "assembly" and "meeting" to name themselves as something more than individuals. Buddhists still use the Sanskrit word sangha. Greek Christians used the word ekklesia.

The main point of this post is that the formation of such gatherings is the growing edge of the cosmic process on Earth, and that, in the context of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution, the essence of the Christmas story is our awareness of the Growing Edge.

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The very earliest Christian communities saw themselves this way. At first they were exclusively Jewish. (Remember their question I mentioned in post #37: Would non-Jewish males who wanted to become Christians have to be circumcised first?)

But those Jewish communities fairly quickly opened themselves to anyone of good will who wanted to join, women and men, circumcised or not. And it wasn't long before they began to use the Greek word katholic to describe their gatherings; they saw themselves as world-wide or universal. Probably the best words today to express what they intended by katholic would be "global" and "all-inclusive."

And at their best, the contemporary expressions of those communities still understand themselves as a generative force in the world. At their best, they still see themselves, as the early Christian communities saw themselves, as continuing the work of Jesus in bringing about the new creation of peace and justice. At their best, they exclude no one. (At their best.)

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So, here's the Christmas story in the context of cosmic evolution:

Once upon a time, long ago, the growing edge of the cosmic process was the formation of galaxies, stars and planets. Later, when planet Earth was new, the growing edge was the formation of living things and their development-- from sponges, worms and fish to birds, mammals and primates-- by way of natural selection.

Two million years ago, the growing edge was the emergence among the primates of self-reflective consciousness. And twenty-five centuries ago, the growing edge was the emergence among the Hebrew people of an awareness-- "as significant as the discovery of fire"-- of the cosmic process itself; their sages saw it as the manifestation of the energy and wisdom of God.

Two thousand years ago, the earliest followers of Jesus saw him as a personal embodiment-- and saw themselves as the communal embodiment-- of that same wisdom and power.

And today, we are coming to recognize that every gathering of good-willed persons working for peace and justice-- even if it's just two or three, as Jesus himself said-- is an embodiment of that Energy of God which moved over the face of the waters at the beginning of creation.

I think the best thing about re-situating the Christmas story in the context of the New Cosmology is seeing that it's not something that happened long ago. It's going on right now.

sam@macspeno.com