#120. Living In Complete Harmony With What is Around Me

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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

Post #120 offers notes and reflections stimulated by a book I read in Jan, 2000, about the contribution individuals make to the emergence of post-patriarchal society.

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HERMITS, Peter France, St. Martin’s Press, 1996.

This is a well done book. The author lives in England, but spends part of each year as a hermit on the island of Patmos, with Bishop Kallistos as his spiritual father.

There are chapters on Christian hermit groups, including the Desert Fathers and the Russian startsy, as well as individuals such as Charles de Foucauld, T. Merton and Merton’s friend Robert Lax (who also lives on Patmos but as a full time hermit, which he has done for thirty years). There also are chapters on non-Christian hermits such as the early Greek Cynics, Thoreau and the Hindu Ramakrishna.

The chapter on the Optina monastery is of great interest and the one on Merton is especially stimulating, but the best is the one on the Desert Fathers; it’s likely the best thing written about them since Merton’s own work.

The Taoists were probably the earliest hermits to arise within a civilization. The author nods to them and the early hermits of India.

Within western civilization, Socrates and those followers of his known as the Cynics emerge as the first humans to consciously live as individuals rather than more or less unconsciously as group participants in a city- state.

The author stresses how totally immersed in the collective people were in the Homeric age. As I have observed previously, with regard to the Grail legends, it is difficult for us today to appreciate how little a person’s self-worth came from within rather than from external approval and socially-conferred status.

The author says the Socratic Cynics emerged not too long after the early Taoists, and were likely influenced, via trade routes, by the religious thought of India. The Cynics sound very much like the early Christians, and the author claims there is a fairly direct link from the Cynics to the Desert Fathers. (An in-depth comparison between the life-styles of the Cynics and the early Christians might be a source of major insights into what might be unique about Christianity.)

The essence of the hermit life of the Cynics and of the Desert Fathers is independence from conventional human society: opting more for life with nature than with culture. The hermit is an outsider, a stranger to the conventional perspectives of the culture of the day.

This is expressed primarily, at least in terms of the Desert Fathers, by living apart from society and especially by not commenting on the established culture: being silent and having no expressed opinions. (Clearly this distinguishes the hermit from the prophet; although the eremitical life may be prophetic, the individual hermit does not take on a prophetic role.)

The Desert Fathers persisted for several centuries (longest in Syria) and their heritage eventually passed to the hermits of Mount Athos and still later to those of northern Russia.

In western Christianity, the trend was to cenobitic (communal) monasticism, via the Rule of St. Benedict, although the eremitical life emerged again around 1000 AD with the Camaldolese in Italy and the Carthusians in France.

In modern times, outside the established Christian traditions, eremiticism appeared at about the same time (early 19th century) with Ramakrishna in India and H. D. Thoreau in New England, both of whom had and continue to have immense influence in the modern world. Charles de Foucauld did his thing in the late 19th century, and Merton his in the mid-20th century. The author says Merton did more to publicize the hermit life than anyone since Simon Stylites.

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Personally, the hermit archetype has been a powerful image for me since adolescence. I found the chapter on Merton especially interesting for several reasons. One is that I am able to compare my own inner development chronologically with Merton’s, but that’s primarily of only personal interest. More importantly, the chapter on Merton helps make clear what being a hermit is all about (the essence of the hermit ideal), and perhaps even more significantly, it points out two aspects of the eremitical life which represent, via Merton, evolutionary advances.

Merton’s first hermitage was nothing more than a room, newly built following a fire at the monastery, near the infirmary stairs, where he was able to spend some time daily. Of reading in this special cell he writes, "One is alone, not on guard, utterly relaxed and receptive." I think those words (especially “not on guard”) may capture the essence of the hermit’s wants and needs.

Later Merton used an outside tool shed and still later a cabin the woods, where he was gradually permitted to spend more and more time, and where eventually he lived full time. What he does there, he says, is simply to "live in complete harmony with what is around me." That, I think, is the essence of the hermit’s goal, communion with all. And the means to that goal: freedom from the need of being "on guard."

Of the two evolutionary developments within the eremitical perspective which seem especially significant to me, the first is a reappraisal of asceticism. Merton eventually got electricity in his hermitage and, with it, a refrigerator. On that occasion (probably, I would guess, in reaction to criticism) he wrote of his doubts about the intrinsic value of the past ascetical practices within the church.

"Depth psychology… has made these things forever questionable. They belong to another age and another kind of consciousness. Artificially austere practices… prevent… and can be a substitute for deep change. (We) need to avoid all trappings and décor of a theatrical eremiticism-- the hood, the costume, the diet, the stone pillow…. These things are affectations."

Later he wrote, "The hermit exists today to realize and experience in himself the ordinary values of a life lived with the minimum of artificiality."

The other change in perspective which seems especially significant to me is mentioned almost in passing by the author. If, as Jung indicates, the Grail legends along with Gnosticism and Alchemy are part of a great tradition of individuation outside the patriarchal establishment, and if we are indeed moving toward a post-patriarchal era, then a major shift in the hermitical tradition would seem to be called for.

As outlined in this book, eremiticism arose within the context of patriarchal civilization. Yet we know that the shamanic personality, characterized by that same developmental reality we today call the individuation process, appeared much earlier. And so it is the pre-patriarchal perspectives of the Paleolithic hunting culture that we must recover if we are to move toward a post-patriarchal world and into the future.

Merton points this out in a wonderful passage. Once, alone in the woods, he saw three deer-- a stag and two does. Afterwards, he wrote:

"The thing that struck me most-- when you look at them directly and in movement you see what the primitive cave painters saw. Something you never see in a photograph. It is most awe-inspiring. The ‘muntu’ or the ‘spirit’ is shown in the running of the deer. The ‘deerness’ that sums up everything and is sacred and marvelous. A contemplative intuition, yet this is perfectly ordinary, everyday seeing-- what everybody ought to see all the time. The deer reveals to me something essential, not only in itself, but also in myself. Something beyond the trivialities of my everyday being, my individual existence. Something profound. The face of that which is in the deer and in myself."

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#41. Four-fold Wisdom

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This post is the latest in my attempts to share thoughts about the Judeo-Christian tradition in the context of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution. It's the first of five (hopefully short) posts offering an introduction to the four-fold aspects of Divine Wisdom, with a separate post on each.

In posts #38 (Exodus) and #39 (Hebrew Thought) I made the point that the Exodus event, the Great Escape from Egypt, marked the beginning of the western world's evolutionary worldview and that we owe our modern dynamic-evolutionary perspective to Hebrew thought. As the French philosopher Claude Tresmontant whom I mentioned in several recent posts observed, the realization of the Hebrew sages that it is the nature of whatever exists to be continually evolving was as significant in human history as the discovery of fire.

Post #40 (Wisdom/Sophia) deals with an additional aspect of Hebrew thought especially important to the Immense Transition humanity is currently undergoing: our movement away from the patriarchal worldview which we inherited from ancient classical culture. The Bible's wisdom literature offers help in moving our understanding of God beyond the older image of a harsh patriarchal divinity.

The accumulated insights of the Hebrew scriptures with regard to Divine Wisdom are especially important at this time in history because they are at the core of the Judeo-Christian tradition and thus of western society. While the wisdom perspective was lost after the Dark Ages, and so seems unfamiliar to us in our still-rationalist and patriarchal situation, it is in fact nothing less than the religious source of the western evolutionary view of cosmos and life on Earth, and so is of tremendous relevance to our continued cultural development at this crisis time in our history.

So far, Western culture has shied away from dealing with the meaning and purpose of our existence in a non-static and non-patriarchal context. But the wisdom literature provides us with just what we need: an in-depth understanding of the significance of our lives in an evolutionary perspective.

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While many religious traditions have a feminine divinity dating back to Neolithic times, in the Judeo-Christian tradition the image of Divine Wisdom seems to have emerged first among the Diaspora Jews living in Alexandria, Egypt, several centuries before the Common Era. It apparently emerged as a way of tempering the more rigid and harsh aspects of the distant and transcendent-only divinity of earlier Judaism. It is an important part of the evolution of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and more generally of western culture's understanding of God.

Jesus and the early Christians understood themselves in the wisdom context, but patriarchal perspectives within Christianity have kept it submerged for many centuries. It has appeared spontaneously, however, many times throughout Christian history. Byzantine art and architecture in the earlier Christian centuries are good examples. Other examples include the famous Lutheran shoemaker Jacob Boehm, the French Catholic saint Louis de Montfort, and the early 19th-century German Romanticist philosopher Frederick von Schelling.

An especially significant example of the spontaneous appearance of Divine Wisdom is the 20th-century religious thought of Russian Orthodoxy. Russian Orthodox thinkers led the way from the mid-1800s right up until the end of World War II. Some of their names may be familiar: Feodor Bukharev, Vladimir Soloviev and, especially, Sergius Bulgakov.

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The wisdom perspective is emerging once again in our day, as we move-- ever so slowly-- beyond the values and attitudes of patriarchy. It is especially relevant to the insights and perspectives of the New Cosmology because this dynamic religious understanding converges with the scientific-evolutionary view. It allows us to bring together our contemporary concerns for peace, social justice and environmental integrity into a non-static, non-dualistic, and non-patriarchal perspective.

As Tresmontant observed, violence and war are a distortion of the cosmic process. A recovery of the wisdom perspective which lies at the heart of our western culture can bring us back to valuing human life, individual persons and our relatedness to the Earth. In the wisdom literature, Divine Wisdom not only helps to fashion the world but also delights in it. "How happy I was with God's earth and its people," says Sophia in The Book of Proverbs.

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The loss of the wisdom perspective is especially clear in the variety of names and words we need to express these ideas. We're not yet comfortable with either the words or the insights presently available to us. Wisdom is called hochma in Hebrew, sophia in Greek, for example, but referred to as logos by the gospel writers.

In the old-fashioned language of the King James Bible, The Book of the Wisdom of Solomon says: "Wisdom reacheth from one end to another mightily: and sweetly doth she order all things." ("Sweetly" here has the old meaning of "skillfully" or "proficiently." We still have this meaning today, although it sounds to us like slang, as in "He has a sweet golf swing.")

When Wisdom herself speaks in Ecclesiasticus (also called The Book of Sirach), she says: "Then the creator of all things commanded [and he that made me, rested in my tabernacle. And he said to me]: Let thy dwelling be in Jacob, and thy inheritance in Israel, and take root in my elect."

It's not easy to connect that sentence with the words from the Prologue of the Gospel of John which say: "The logos pitched its tent (his tabernacle) among us." (That's the literal translation of the familiar words, "the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.")

So the archaic words and the old languages don't help as much as they might. One thing that can help us a lot, as I see it, is our contemporary quaternary understanding of human consciousness which I wrote about in post #29 (The Four-fold Mind). The quaternary perspective can help us to a far richer understanding of that Divine Wisdom which pitched its tent among us.

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Because of my long-time interest in the fact that our minds function in four different ways, I was delighted to find references to it in the work of Brad Blanton which I described in post #27 (Radical Honesty: The "How-to" of Ontogenesis). I found Blanton's work a help in understanding the Biogenetic Structuralist view of the stages of human development which I described in three earlier posts on ontogenesis, #23, #24 & #25.

As I said in post #29, "We may not know exactly what the mind is, but we do know that it's not something static: it's not so much a thing as a dynamic process. We also know-- although it's less commonly understood-- that it operates in four distinct ways."

As I also said in that post, "The basic idea of the four-fold mind comes from the human sciences, specifically psychology and cultural anthropology." In the Immense Transition we are undergoing-- from the static worldviews of rationalist science and dualistic religion to the dynamic, evolutionary and unitive perspectives of the New Cosmology-- the quaternary perspective is invaluable for our self-understanding.

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Both the Jungian view of the four-fold mind and the teachings connected with the Native American Medicine Wheel insist that, if we are to be complete persons with an integrated rather than lopsided consciousness, all four functions are needed. It is the lopsidedness of western culture which accounts for the great damage that patriarchal attitudes inflict on women, children and the environment, and is the cause of much of our racial and religious conflict.

So what I'm hoping to do in the next four posts is to bring together the various quaternary perspectives of Jung and the four directions of the Native American tradition with the wisdom of the wisdom literature of the Hebrews. I also want to link those views with the four traditional ways of being religious that I described in post #30 (Ways of Being Religious) and with German theologian Karl Rahner's existential analysis of human experience as self-presence, freedom, transcendence and grace that I described in post #34 (Talking About Us).

In Rahner's language we experience ourselves as aware, open, free and given; but those four words can only hint at the depth of Rahner's understanding, just as C. G. Jung's names-- Thinking, Feeling, Intuition and Sensation-- for the four functions of consciousness can only give us tags for the concepts and insights Jung provides. In contrast to these ideas and concepts, the Bible's wisdom literature provides us with images of Divine Wisdom, just as the Medicine Wheel teachings provide us with images of ways of being human.

And images touch us at a very deep level.

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As I mentioned above, I described the Biogenetic Structuralist understanding of the ontogenetic process in posts #23-25. It is a scientific understanding of the growth and development of human consciousness as it takes place in the context of a culture's cosmology; it happens via the three stages of belief, experience and participation. That participatory phase of conscious development is also referred to by the term "contemplation" and, perhaps surprisingly, it has the same meaning there that it does in a religious context.

In post #26 (Help from Uncle Louie), I described some of Thomas Merton's especially helpful ideas about religious experience available to us via images. He says, among other things, that it is "the result of personal experience at a deeper than rational level" and he calls it "the highest form of cognition." It brings us, he says, "into living participation with an experience of basic and universal human values."

While ideas provide us with understanding, something else results from images: communion. Images, says Merton, "put us in communion with our deepest selves." They "deepen our communion with the concrete" and they put us in communion with the real world: images "bring us to an awareness of our place in the scheme of things."

And they empower us to participate in the cosmic process: "images bring us into harmony with world and its energies," says Uncle Louie. In contrast to concepts, images give "a privileged status as a conscious participant in communion with the energies of the cosmos."

That's what the biblical images of Divine Wisdom can do for us. And they are especially valuable because they come from the same Hebrew source that provides us with humanity's initial insights about evolutionary development and creative newness.

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Back in post #34 (Talking About Us), I mentioned the work of a contemporary pioneer in matter-mind studies in the realm of the psychotherapy, Jungian analyst Michael Conforti. He observes in his book Field, Form, and Fate: Patterns in Mind, Nature, & Psyche that "The patterns of reality are continually being incarnate in space and time." I noted there that this insight sounds a lot like Karl Rahner's analysis that we experience ourselves as the "embodiment" of an "incomprehensible source." And it sounds a lot like the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov's phrase that we are "actualizations of the divine potentialities."

In chapter 9 of Conforti's book he notes that "every nation and culture has recognized the presence" of the archetypal energies of the cosmos (in the form of gods, spirits, powers) and that "we too need to find some way for including again in our notions of consciousness the relationship between the personal and the non-personally acquired transpersonal."

As he says, "In this way, we create the opportunity to reconnect to the generative matrix of human and global experience" and this "capacity to recognize and understand the meaning of archetypal fields offers important opportunities for resolving conflicts on the personal and collective, or global, levels."

"Clearly," says Conforti, "the time is ripe to apply our understanding of archetypal dynamics to global concerns." As I see it, the biblical images of wisdom at the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition provide western culture the opportunity to do just that.

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The Bible's images of Divine Wisdom fall into four main groupings. They correspond, as I've said, with Jung's four-fold functions of consciousness, with the four traditional ways of being religious, with Rahner's analysis of human experience, and with the images of the Native American Medicine Wheel. My plan is to spell out one of these four groups of correspondences in each of the next four posts. (I'm well-aware that this is an ambitious project!)

If you're also feeling ambitious, there are innumerable web sites dealing with Sophia from every imaginable slant-- New Age, Feminist, Christian, Gnostic, Sophiological-- except, as far as I know, the quaternary perspective. Meanwhile, I want to mention three especially good books about Wisdom which you might like to know about.

For a strong academic perspective on the history of wisdom, there's Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza's In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (Herder & Herder, 1994). Fiorenza is a feminist Catholic theologian and Professor at Harvard Divinity School.

In terms of depth, breadth and vision, the best book I know of is The Future of Wisdom: Toward a Rebirth of Sapiential Christianity (Continuum, 2007) by Bruno Barnhart. Bruno is a monk at the Camaldolese Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur, California. I visited him there in the spring of 2002. [Bruno and his fellow monks were evacuated from their monastery during the recent fires in June-July 2008. So were the monks of the near-by Buddhist monastery at Tassajara. Both sets of buildings were still standing, last I heard. (Update: As of 22 July, the evacuations were lifted for both monasteries.)]

And for a wonderful collection of texts from the Bible's wisdom literature, with lots of practical down-to-earth ideas for making use of them, see Hal Taussig's Wisdom's Feast: Sophia in Study and Celebration (Harpercollins, 1989). It's coauthored with Susan Cole, Marian Ronan and Susan Cady. Taussig is a New Testament scholar, Near East historian and Methodist pastor. I heard him speak at few years ago at a Jungian gathering in Media, Pennsylvania. It's a sign of the times that he's been interviewed on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

In the Byzantine churches, before the scriptures are read aloud the deacon cries out, "Wisdom! Let us attend!" Bruno notes in The Future of Wisdom that it's as if the Earth itself is ripening in our time. "The time is ripe," Michael Conforti says. Indeed! Let us attend!

sam@macspeno.com

#26. Help From Uncle Louie

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In the 1980s, when I made a mid-life vision quest-- questing for a vision of what I should be doing with the second half of my life-- I was given the name "Scavenger." In the main part of the vision I was a cinnamon-colored black bear digging through trash cans in the parking lot behind a restaurant in a spectacular natural setting something like Yellowstone National Park.

The full earth-name I was given is "Scavenger of the Sacred Mystery." I was told that I "was not to mourn the Mystery's loss nor hate those who damage it" but to scavenge for those good things relating to the sacred which have been ignored, damaged and discarded by our culture.

The name stuck; this blog is part of that calling. I started the blog, with the help of my techno-savvy daughter, to share the results of my scavenging-- particularly, as the title says, to share with anyone interested "thoughts with about the convergence of science and religion," my two life-long interests.

In the more than two dozen blog entries I've posted so far, I have stressed that by "science" I mean not the science of 19th-century rationalism but the late 20th-century perspectives of contemporary science, and I've repeatedly emphasized the great value of the little-known movement from the human sciences in the 1970s, Biogenetic Structuralism, which attempts to combine the perspectives of biological evolution with cultural anthropology and studies of the brain and nervous system in its scientific quest to understand the mysteries of our existence.

I've also emphasized that by "religion" I am not referring to its dying institutional forms, but to the growing-edge thinking coming out of those traditions in their attempts to recover their ancient roots. In each posting I offered a comparison between those growing-edge religious ideas and similar contemporary scientific concepts.

So far, the most radical example I've offered is in post #20, where I compared the neurological concept of consciousness (as expressed by Biogenetic Structuralism's jargon term cognized environment) with an understanding of the ancient religious doctrine of the resurrection of the dead (as expressed in the writings of the Russian Orthodox Sophiologist, Sergius Bulgakov).

Needless to say, the language of these two perspectives is quite different, but both seem to be saying something very similar about the connection between mind and body (or more generally about the relationship between human consciousness and the physical universe). There really does seem to be an amazing convergence of religious and scientific thoughts going on there-- at least to me.

I did not offer an example of that type of convergence in the previous two postings. I had enough to do in trying to describe Biogenetic Structuralism's understanding of ontogenesis and of the role of symbol, myth and ritual in the third stage of personal development.

It's important to keep in mind that "ontogenesis" is a scientific understanding, essentially from the combined fields of neuro-physiology and cultural anthropology, of the growth and development of human consciousness as it takes place in the context of a culture's cosmology and happens via the three stages of belief, experience and participation.

In this entry I want to offer some similar ideas from a religious perspective about the role of symbol, myth and ritual in the participatory phase of our personal conscious development.

You may well ask whether such a religious perspective exists. The fact that "contemplation" is one of the names given by Biogenetic Structuralism to the third stage of ontogenesis provides a hint that there may be. In fact, there's help from Uncle Louie.

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In his religious order, Thomas Merton officially was called "Father Louis, OCSO." But among his fellow monks he was known by the (I think, affectionate) nickname, "Uncle Louie." Merton was one of the most significant persons in 20th-century American Catholicism and was greatly respected worldwide for his many contacts with religious thinkers in Islam, the Asian traditions and the secular world. In an introduction to Merton's Contemplation in a World of Action (Doubleday, 1971) the famous scholar of Medieval thought, Jean Leclercq, ranks him "with the Fathers of the early church and those of the Middle Ages."

If you are thinking that Merton is an unlikely source for a convergence from the world of religion with concepts coming from cultural anthropology, I agree. But in fact he has a very significant essay where there is an amazing agreement from his religious perspective with the kind of scientific ideas about the role of myth, ritual and symbol in our personal development that I spelled out in the three previous blog entries. That's what I want to share in this posting.

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Merton died in 1968, a half-dozen years before the appearance of the first of the Biogenetic Structuralists' three books, Biogenetic Structuralism. As far as I know, he had no science background and no contact with those pioneer research scientists. But in a major essay dealing with the relationship between religion and literature, written sometime in the early 60s, Merton talks about some very similar ideas.

I find the essay valuable not only because it offers an especially good example of the convergence of some significant contemporary scientific and religious perspectives, but also because it provides an excellent introduction to a much deeper understanding of religious experience than has previously been commonly available in western culture. Most of what follows deals with Merton's thoughts specifically with regard to myth, symbol and ritual in connection with what he calls the "religious elements" in literature. I hope to talk about that further idea, the "deeper level of religious experience," in the future.

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Merton was a highly talented writer with a life-long interest in art and literature. The thoughts that follow come from his introduction to a collection of essays by various writers dealing with the connections between religion and literature. The book is Mansions of the Spirit, Essays in Religion and Literature (Hawthorn, 1967). His introductory essay is entitled "'Baptism in the Forest': Wisdom and Initiation in William Faulkner." The essay also was printed in a later collection: The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton (New Directions, 1985).

It's a long essay of several dozen pages. The first few pages are devoted to comments about religion and literature in general and to the ideas of the many authors of the essays found in Mansions of the Spirit. He eventually gets to talking about two books by 1950 Nobel Prize author William Faulkner, Go Down Moses and The Wild Palms. (Merton wrote a master's thesis on Faulkner while at Columbia University.) It's in that section that he introduces some extremely significant ideas about the "religious elements" to be found in literature.

He begins by noting that there are a number of contemporary authors in addition to Faulkner in whom such "religious elements" can be found; among the more familiar names he mentions are Boris Pasternak, D. H. Lawrence, William Butler Yeats and William Carlos Williams.

But Merton's view of literature is global: he compares Faulkner's work to Greek tragedy in western literature and to things like classical Japanese No drama in Asian cultures.

One of his main points is that in such literature there are "specifically religious elements which come not from any specific cultural or confessional expressions of religion but from human nature, the human psyche, human experience." And this is already a convergence, in that Merton is looking at the religious elements in world literature in exactly the same way that anthropologists look at rites and ceremonies in world cultures.

His language is so close to that of the Biogenetic Structuralists that I keep thinking: "Maybe Merton did have some contact with them." But that's highly unlikely, so the similarity between his thoughts and theirs serves as an even stronger example of a contemporary convergence of religious and scientific perspectives.

He notes, for example, that the religious experience available via literature is neither inborn nor based on "acquired beliefs and attitudes" but is the result of personal experience at a deeper than rational level, and he calls this deeper level "the highest form of cognition."

With this kind of emphasis-- on the fact that the specifically religious elements in world literature are not genetic but cultural and that they are not at the level of beliefs but at the trans-personal level of conscious development-- Uncle Louie sounds just like a Biogenetic Structuralist!

And he sees "literature" in a broad sense as having the same kind of potentially profound transformational effects that Biogenetic Structuralism attributes to symbolic myth and ritual.

He says Greek tragedies and performances like the religious dance-dramas of Bali, for example, were "not merely presentations which an audience sat and watched" but "religious celebrations, liturgies, in which the audience participated."

He observes that they were in fact so powerful that if we-- "our twentieth-century selves"-- had been "present then, in those days, for instance in the theater at Delphi during the festival of Apollo," we might "have undergone the same kind of thing that happens now to people who take LSD." (He was writing, remember, in the Psychedelic 60s.)

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I find five major ideas in Merton's understanding of the religious elements in literature that seem to me a convergence with the scientific perspectives of Biogenetic Structuralism. They are all interrelated, so it's not easy to sort them out and describe each separately. But here's an attempt....

One. The first big idea is Merton's emphasis on the "participatory" character of the kind of experience he's talking about: it is, he says, "something we can participate in, at a deep level."

He notes that what makes the Greek myths "classical" is that they are universal: "they speak to our human nature and we find ourselves involved in them." They are "not just a spelling out for ourselves of a religious or metaphysical message." Rather, they deal with "the drama of human existence" and "have a direct impact on the deepest center of our human nature." In myth and ritual "our conflicts are not explained, not analyzed, but enacted."

By "conflicts" he means our human condition: the issues and problems we have to deal with as human beings. Note that he uses the term "enactment" in the same way Biogenetic Structuralism does and that he says that it is precisely the creative power of enactment which "brings us into living participation with an experience of basic and universal human values."

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Two. A second major idea of Merton's is that these profound participatory experiences happen "via ritual and symbol language." Here, too, as in the Biogenetic Structuralist understanding, myth and ritual are the stories, while symbols are the language-- the means or tools-- by which the stories are told and enacted.

Merton says symbols are "signs which release the power of imaginative communion." He calls them "efficacious sign-symbols": "basic archetypal forms" which "have arisen spontaneously in all religions and which have everywhere provided patterns for the myths in which [we] have striven to express our sense of ultimate meaning." Symbols "put us in communion with our deepest selves via images, not by concepts and ideas."

Merton emphasizes that symbols are "signs which do not arbitrarily signify something else but which release the power of imaginative communion": they release in the reader "the imaginative power to experience what the author really means to convey." (It helps to read "imaginative power" as "the power of images, in contrast to concepts.") It is this "creative power of enactment" which "brings us into living participation with an experience of basic and universal human values [which] words can only point to but not fully attain."

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Three. A third major idea is Merton's note that the depth of awareness evoked by these archetypal symbol-signs is "beyond the rational and analytical."

"Our conflicts are not explained or analyzed," as he has said; "we're not spelling out a message but being directly impacted, via signs and symbols, on the deepest center of our human nature." He describes this deep center as "a certain depth of awareness, beyond words and explanations, in which life itself is lived more intensely and with a more meaningful direction."

He calls this depth of consciousness beyond rational knowledge the "highest form of cognition," just as Biogenetic Structuralism does: it "initiates us into higher states of awareness, an intuition of the ultimate values of life and of the Absolute Ground of our life."

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Four. A fourth big idea is Merton's emphasis on the transformative power of myth and ritual. The "religious elements" in literature and ritual performances, he says, "have power to evoke in us an experience of meaning and direction." The "power of enactment" works by bringing us, via signs and symbols, "to living participation in an experience of basic human values: it leads us to imaginative communion with meaningfulness."

By "imaginative communion" he obviously does not mean "imaginary" but the fact that the communion happens via images. Merton says these archetypal patterns are "capable of suggesting and implying that [human] life in the cosmos has a hidden meaning which can be sought and found." The transformative power of images is just the opposite of 'imaginary': myth and ritual are "not an initiation into a world of abstractions and ideals but deepen our communion with the concrete." They put us in communion with the real world.

And it is this concrete imagery which he says "makes possible a change of heart and can restore us to an awareness of our limitations and our nobility." Through their therapeutic effects, myth and ritual enable us to "a more real evaluation of ourselves, a change of heart" which brings us to "an awareness of our place in the scheme of things."

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Five. With his reference to "our place in the scheme of things" Merton is saying that myth and ritual provides us with a meaningful cosmology: "The meaningfulness it takes us to has to do with the why of things: ultimate causes and the ultimate values." This "highest form of cognition" is not "knowledge about things but a living out and possessing this meaningfulness in everyday life."

And this sense of meaningfulness and significance allows us nothing less than participation in the evolution of the universe: "This extraordinary shift in consciousness is called initiation, enlightenment, regeneration, rebirth, becoming an heir, being in harmony with world and its energies." (All of those words are italicized in Merton's essay.)

And Merton names our participation in the evolution of the world "salvation." It is, he says, "salvation in the sense of freedom from isolation from the natural world and thus communion with the ground of our being." Because it is the "acquisition of understanding of life's purpose and the decision to live in accordance with it," it gives "a privileged status as a conscious participant in communion with the energies of the cosmos."

Big ideas, indeed!

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I noted in the previous post (on the third phase of ontogenesis) that myth, ritual and its symbol-language was dismissed by 19th-century rationalist materialism in what came to be known in academic circles as the "disenchantment of the world" and was considered to be a sign of progress.

In our day, we have a far better understanding than our 19th-century ancestors of our place in the scheme of things. That's why we call it the "new cosmology."

But we are still in the process of recovering an understanding of the means by which we take our place as conscious participants in the cosmic process. It's not easy for western people, victims of the 19th-century "disenchantment of the world," to accept the idea that we enter into communion with the energies of the cosmos by way of symbol, myth and ritual.

But the recovery is in process. This Scavenger sees it as coming thanks especially to the anthropological and neurological perspectives of Biogenetic Structuralism. And with help from Uncle Louie.

sam@macspeno.com

#25. Ontogenesis: Phase Three

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On first hearing, the third phase of ontogenetic development makes little sense for many people today. The static worldview of previous centuries has been so strong and so persistent that we're simply not used to thinking about our personal growth in any context, let alone trying to make sense of it in terms of ideas such as "culture," "cosmology" and "ontogenesis." So here's a quick review of those key terms.

"Ontogenesis" is a fancy word from anthropology which recognizes that our growth and development takes place within the context of a culture's cosmology. Psychology also deals with personal development, of course. In the Jungian perspective it's called "individuation," but the focus is more on an inner sense of personal development rather than on the fact that our personal growth takes place within a cultural context.

"Culture," for anthropologists, includes everything which is not part of our genetic inheritance: all the knowledge and understanding we have which is passed on to us from older and more experienced members of our group.

"Cosmology" refers to a culture's response to the basic question of our place in the scheme of things; the focus of any cosmology is on how we are related to the rest of reality.

As I said, these ideas make little sense to many people today, and once we begin thinking in terms of "our place in the scheme of things" the reason becomes obvious: for many centuries western culture has lacked a coherent cosmology. It's for this reason that the emergence of the New Cosmology is of such great significance.

Thanks to modern science, the New Cosmology can be shared by all humanity. And it offers a perspective which includes the whole of the cosmic process-- from the Big Bang and the formation of stars and planets to the emergence of life on earth, the eventual emergence of self-awareness in humans and the continuation of the evolutionary process via the creativity of the human spirit.

That's the broad cultural and cosmological context in which Biogenetic Structuralism sees our personal growth and development taking place. Easy tags for the three stages (or levels or phases) of the development of consciousness are belief, experience and participation.

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I described the first two stages in the previous post (#24). This one deals with the third phase, participation.

As the third stage of ontogenetic development, participation differs from both belief-- the conscious understanding of ourselves and of our place in the world which we have received from others-- and from that kind of personal experience we have by which we compare what we have been told with what we have personally observed to be true.

Working out the relationship between knowledge which has been passed on to us and knowledge we have from our personal experience is, of course, a major part of growing up.

In earlier cultures, where awareness of this third phase of development was still part of the culture's tradition, the growing up process was usually completed during the teenage years. By contrast, as a result of the several-centuries-old divorce between science and religion, in modern western society the maturing process often continues well into an individual's 30s.

The problem is that western culture has been caught in the trap of thinking that we have to make a choice between science and religion. That was, unfortunately, the one thing early science and traditional religion agreed on. The reason I find the insights of Biogenetic Structuralism to be of such great value is that these insights make clear-- from a scientific perspective-- that we don't have to make that choice.

Because it combines evolutionary and anthropological understandings with neurological information, Biogenetic Structuralism allows us to recover this third phase of ontogenetic development as a normal part of our personal growth and development.

And it's precisely the perspectives of the New Cosmology-- which sees the world not as static but as developmental, and recognizes that we do indeed have a place in the evolutionary cosmos-- that allow us to move beyond the impasse of scientific rationalism and religious fundamentalism.

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By referring to the third phase of ontogenetic development as participation, Biogenetic Structuralism intends to indicate that it means something more than personal experience.

As usual, the words we have available tend to get in the way. In this case, however, the distinction really isn't a difficult one. It's a distinction we make every day. Participation means doing something, not just talking about it.

When we're first learning to drive, for example, we have a lot of conscious information about how to drive, but it's only when we're behind the wheel and actually driving that we are participating in the driving process.

That phrase-- "participating in the driving process"-- sounds strange because we don't usually talk that way. But we need to here, if we are to understand clearly the difference between knowledge about the evolution of the universe and personally participating in it.

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It sounds confusing because we still lack good terms for this third phase of ontogenetic development. Biogenetic Structuralism uses words like "trans-personal experience," "advanced individuation" and "contemplation" to talk about our conscious participation in the cosmic process. While none is the ideal term, each is worth our attention.

"Advanced individuation" is a reference to the Jungian term for personal development. Calling it "advanced" is a way of saying that Biogenetic Structuralism is referring to the same growth process but is looking at it, as I mentioned earlier, in the very broadest cultural, cosmological and evolutionary context.

"Contemplation" is a more explicitly religious term; for many it brings to mind spiritual writers such as Teresa of Avila or Thomas Merton. Its original meaning is something like what's meant by the familiar saying, "as above, so below." The image evoked is the construction of a temple being built on Earth in accordance with the architectural plan of the temple in heaven. So it's contemporary meaning is something like "making myself in accordance with the divine plan."

That contemporary meaning is similar to the meaning of "meditation" as it's used in Eastern religious thought: coming into contact with ultimate reality and ultimate values. So the contemporary and the ancient meanings of "contemplation" aren't all that different. And neither is the Biogenetic Structuralist use of it-- except that the emphasis in the Biogenetic Structuralist perspective is, again, on the fact that the construction process (or contact with ultimate values) takes place in the broadest cosmic context: the evolution of the universe.

The third term, "trans-personal experience," has been in use for several decades; there are academic journals devoted to Transpersonal Psychology and some schools offer courses in it. But it's a misleading term in the sense that the third level of ontogenetic development isn't something beyond personal experience so much as personal experience which takes place in a much larger than usual context. That context is described well in Native American tradition by the phrase "all my relations." So the term "trans-person" is meant to emphasize that the context for our personal development includes all of reality.

Perhaps a better term than "trans-personal experience" might be "trans-ego experience." But even that isn't quite right. As with the jargon found in every branch of science, we need to keep in mind that "trans-personal" is shorthand for an idea-- just as are "contemplation" and "advanced individuation." In this case, it's shorthand for the concept of conscious participation in the developmental process specifically as it's taking place in a relational-- rather than ego-isolated-- context, and that the relational context excludes nothing.

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In any case, whatever name we give to it, this third phase of conscious development is understood to be a shift in awareness; and it's a shift so radical that its results are often described as an "altered state of consciousness."

Even that term comes from the mental framework of 19th-century science, however, where our mind's thinking function was considered as the norm of ordinary awareness, and the other functions of consciousness, such as feeling and intuition, were dismissed as being of little significance. (Or even worse: as being feminine!)

But there's really nothing extra-ordinary about the third stage of conscious awareness. From the broader evolutionary and neurological perspectives available to us today, it is as normal and ordinary as are the other phases of our growth and development. It does, however, feel extra-ordinary when we first get into it, in much the same way that puberty, for example, feels like an extra-ordinary development for a teenager.

Even the reason why the third phase of ontogenetic development feels so extraordinary is similar to the early adolescent experience of puberty: they both take us out of the very narrow focus of our ego-centered concerns and allow us to enter into a world of relationships which were previously unimaginable.

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What's going on in the brain during the third phase of our developmental experience is fascinating. Just as in the biological evolutionary process generally, living things survive via adaptation (assimilation and/or accommodation) to the external world, so ego-consciousness develops in precisely the same way at the second phase of ontogenesis. But in the third stage there's a difference in that, while the same process is operative at both levels, it's the process itself (rather than the external environment) that's the focus at the contemplative level. I hope to spell out this kind of fascinating information in some detail in future posts. (Such optimism!)

Meanwhile, I'd like to offer some basic thoughts about what Biogenetic Structuralism understands to be the very means by which we enter into our participatory experience of the cosmic process. I'm referring, of course, to symbol, myth and ritual.

In post #22 (The Other Half of Person) I called myth, ritual and symbol "in-between" ideas because on one hand they are found in every culture on the Earth and are part of every religious tradition; even religious groups which formally shy away from them make use of them in practice (the Quaker "meeting for worship" would be a good example), and of course anyone involved in a regular meditation practice makes use of them. On the other hand, precisely because symbol, myth and ritual are significant aspects of religious practice throughout the world, they are also objects of study in the human sciences.

So as odd as it may sound, what bridges the gap between science and religion is ritual, symbol and myth.

As I also pointed out in post #22, they are "in-between" concepts in a second sense: they tend to be dismissed by the rationalist-materialist worldview-- along with belief and the intuitive and feeling functions of consciousness -- as little more than childish superstitions.

It's important that we recognize that the dismissal is itself a belief. In academic circles, this major component of western culture's materialist-rationalist cosmology has been described as the "disenchantment of the world". In the mid-20th century it was considered a sign of progress, a gain for humanity.

But while that disenchantment continues to pervade western culture, it is itself in the process of being deconstructed, as a result of the findings of post-rationalist science.

A central aspect of the re-enchantment of the world is that we are rediscovering the "other half of person": the fact that we are communal-relational beings. And along with it we are seeing a recovery of an understanding of the place of myth and ritual in our lives.

As I observed in an earlier post (#21 Struggling with Words), for most of us, the terms we have available to talk about these things are both familiar and fuzzy. We're in the process of updating basic words such as "science," "religion" and "person." And we're also in the early stages of updating our understanding of myth, ritual and symbol.

I need to emphasize that it really is a kind of "deconstruction of the deconstruction" that's happening. So before sharing some thoughts about a positive understanding of myth, ritual and symbol, I first want to say a few words about what they are not. Since I began these blog postings in the last days of 2006, I have intentionally avoided expressing negative attitudes as much as possible; but this is one place where some negative thoughts are appropriate. Think of them, if you will, as a contribution toward the effort to "disenchant" rationalist materialism's disenchantment of the world.

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In that disenchanted worldview, "myth" only means "something which is not true." It can refer to anything from a deliberate lie to common misunderstandings, but also to stories like urban legends and tall tales told for our entertainment (such as stories about Paul Bunyan or Bigfoot). "Myths" usually refer to events of the past, involving Greek gods, magic swords and flying dragons, but Santa Claus, King Arthur and the Parting of the Red Sea are also "myths" in this sense.

The word "ritual" in this same disenchanted worldview almost always includes the idea of repetition. From the rationalist perspective, "ritual" is the name for any kind of repetitive gesture or any activity which is repeated on a regular basis. Rituals are usually described as being "empty gestures" and are often considered compulsive or even pathological.

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The word "symbol" is a little more complicated. It has a valid use in science and math where it means "something which stands for something else." In this use, symbols are a shorthand for more complex meanings. We couldn't do chemistry, for example, without chemical symbols such as NaCl and H₂O, and we couldn't easily summarize Einstein's understanding of the physical equivalence of matter and energy without his famous equation, e = mc².

But when this legitimate use of "symbol" is extended into other areas, we end up with silliness and nonsense: that a circle, for example, "stands for eternity" or that a dove "is a symbol for peace." This use of "symbol" exemplifies the rationalist disenchantment of the world. We need to keep in mind that like the conventional meanings of "myth" and "ritual," it has nothing to do with our ontogenetic development or with our participation in the evolution of the universe.

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For that reason, I want to conclude this blog entry with at least a brief introduction to a positive understanding of myth, ritual and symbol. I hope to spell out why the Biogenetic Structuralist perspective sees myth and ritual as the tools by which we participate in the cosmic process in the third stage of our ontogenetic development.

In this more positive understanding, myth simply means a story: a description of anything that has happened or that people are involved in, and which illustrates or expresses in some way the culture's cosmology. Gods or spirits may be involved, but the story is not about them, it's about us. Myths in this anthropological sense help us to understand our place in the scheme of things; they are stories which help us to enter into the mystery of our human condition.

And ritual in this anthropological sense simply means telling the story. The telling can be around a primitive campfire or a Thanksgiving table, and be as complicated as a three-day Tibetan Buddhist rite or the three-hour Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom. It doesn't even have to include words. It can be told in gestures and actions, like a dance, or even by no action, like the zazen practice of "sitting quietly doing nothing."

While "mythos" is a Greek word, "ritual" comes from a Sanskrit term: rita. The basic meaning of rita is something like "the order of the universe" and "the round of the seasons." It's the way the world works: what we call today the scientific rules by which the universe operates.

Clearly, the meanings of "myth" and "ritual" aren't all that different. They each have to do with the telling or acting out of a story which is of significance for our human self-understanding. A good brief definition of both might be simply: enacting a story which has meaning.

What makes the story significant is that it somehow allows us to enter into the meaning of our lives. It somehow speaks to us in such a way that we are transformed beyond what's conventionally called "ordinary" consciousness to an "altered" state of awareness. Which is, of course, what the third phase of ontogenetic development is all about.

I've no doubt that my use of the word "somehow" twice in the previous paragraph resulted in a strong response from many readers: "Somehow? Well... HOW?"

That's where symbol comes in.

We can easily understand "myth" as a story and "ritual" as its telling, but there is no similar equivalent term for "symbol." Symbols seem to be neither things nor actions but can be perhaps best described as a kind of communication. They are like body language-- in this case, the "language" of myth and ritual.

As a form of communication, symbols are the mechanism by which a story influences us. They are whatever grabs our attention. So symbols can be anything: words, actions, pictures, gestures, things, places, persons-- whatever helps us to enter into the meaning of our existence. 

They are whatever aspects of the story touch us and affect us at a deep level. This is why Biogenetic Structuralism understands symbol to be the means by which the mind-brain works to bring about our personal transformation.

I am aware that these are greatly oversimplified ideas with regard to symbol, myth and ritual, but I don't think they are inaccurate. I offer them as basic ideas to build on in our attempts to understand symbol, myth and ritual as means by which we participate in the cosmic process.

Nowadays, most traditional religious rituals are understood from the secular perspective to be nothing more than empty gestures; and for large numbers of contemporary people, traditional religious symbols have become what T. S. Eliot calls them, "a heap of broken images." 

They have been lost to western culture with the rationalist-materialist disenchantment of the world.

But they are being recovered again, thanks to the New Cosmology.

sam@macspeno.com