#77. From Theory to Practice

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This post is part of the series I began with post #73: "Two Important Books."

In posts #74, 75 and 76 I spelled out some important ideas from Ken Wilber's The Marriage of Sense and Soul, Integrating Science and Religion. He provides a wonderfully clear explanation of why science has been at odds with religion ever since it began about 400 years ago and how it came about that science not only "corroded away all of religion's teachings" but also "led to the denial of the very existence of spiritual realities."

What was especially new to me was Wilber's description of Western culture's attempts over the last two centuries to deal with the loss of the traditional religious perspectives.

Those attempts-- known as the "post-modern movements" of Romanticism, Idealism and Deconstructionism-- all failed, but we have learned something of great significance from each of them for integration of science and religion in our day.

Two important principles have emerged.

Thanks to Romanticism, we can see that we do indeed need to recover our communion with the natural world that had been lost because of the take-over of culture by science.

And thanks to Idealism, we can see that the evolutionary perspective isn't anti-religion. Evolution is what religion is all about.

These two Post-modern principles provide us with a good summary of the basic ideas and ideals of the New Story of the Universe that's ours today thanks to science.

And as strange as it may seem, we can even learn something of importance from Deconstructionism. It can be stated both negatively and positively. Negatively, it's that we can see better, now, that no single viewpoint or position-- about anything-- is privileged: every truth, from whatever source, has to be considered partial.

What we can learn from Deconstructionism, stated positively, is the great value of diversity-- diversity of persons and ideas, diversity of ethnic backgrounds and cultural perspectives. Along with subjectivity and communion, diversity is one the three basic principles of the New Cosmology listed by Thomas Berry.

Wilber's Marriage of Sense and Soul has helped me see how all these ideas fit together. The more I learn of Wilber's work the more I think he may go down in the history of ideas as an extremely significant contributor to our self-understanding at this great turning point in humanity's cultural evolution.

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I think Michael Dowd may go down in history, too. His book Thank God for Evolution presents us with a wealth of practical suggestions for a daily living out of the ideas and ideals of the New Cosmology. So these two important books go together as theoria and praxis.

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The title of his book makes it clear that Michael Dowd is especially concerned with helping people from a religious background to see that the contemporary scientific view of the world-- far from being in conflict with religion-- allows it to blossom in a way traditional religion never could.

Dowd puts into everyday language what the Post-modern movement called Idealism recognized: that evolution is, indeed, "what religion is all about."

His book is not, however, addressed only to people coming from a religious background. With his remarkable ability to address everyone, believers and non-believers and everyone in between, Dowd is himself a model of the Post-modern Deconstructionist respect for the diversity of persons, perspectives and cultures.

So in my next few posts I will be sharing some thoughts about the practical ideas available in Dowd's book.

In this post I want to include some thoughts about just what praxis means in the context of the New Cosmology.

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You may be thinking "we know what 'practice' means." I agree that we're comfortable with terms like "football practice" or "band practice."

But because science "corroded away all of religion's teachings and led to the denial of the very existence of spiritual realities," we may not have as clear idea as we can have of just what's meant by "spiritual or "religious" practice. As far as I know, no one has yet used a phrase like "New Cosmology praxis."

Wilber notes that the Post-modern Idealism had "one crippling inadequacy." Although it was "a glorious spiritual flower, the finest the West has ever known," he says "it lacked a yoga." It lacked, that is, an appropriate spiritual practice.

This may seem strange, given the profound religious history of Europe, with its contemplative traditions going all the way back to the early centuries of Christianity; but we need to keep in mind that, for most Western people, the cultural shift to Modernity wiped out all understanding of interiority. The "mind, soul and spirit" part of the Great Ladder of Being simply ceases to be a reality for most individuals in Western culture. Even today the concept of contemplation and spiritual practice remains an odd one for many-- maybe most-- Americans.

The science-religion conflict isn't just in terms of theoria. It's in terms of praxis, too.

After the Middle Ages, the idea of "spirituality" tended to be limited in meaning to a concern for the higher rungs of the Great Chain, so the more recent Western religious tradition overflows with spiritual "how-to" books like The Imitation of Christ and An Introduction to the Devout Life. They focus on an individual's relationship with the Divine-- the "God and me" attitude-- to the exclusion of the physical universe and humanity as a whole.

A contemporary understanding of spiritual practice obviously needs to include cosmos and anthropos as well as theos-- the physical world of human beings as well as of God.

In the perspectives of the New Cosmology, spiritual practice has to do specifically with we humans taking responsibility for our world. The New Story of the Universe lets us see, perhaps for the first time in human history, that we are called to create our own world.

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One of Post-modernism's "moments of truth," as Wilber calls them, is the Deconstructionists' understanding that, in expressing itself via language, human consciousness isn't "simply a representation of a pre-given reality." It is, as he says, "a participation in the very construction of our world."

Speech, our uniquely human characteristic, is a powerful creative force: "Language creates worlds."

This idea-- that we human persons are participants in the creation of our world-- is not one found in traditional manuals of spiritual practice. But it is, I think, the very essence of any praxis for the New Cosmology.

In the dynamic perspectives of the New Cosmology, we humans, made in the image and likeness of the Creator, recognize ourselves as responsible for creating our own world. That responsibility-- being creative-- is what the New Cosmology spirituality is all about.

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I mentioned in an earlier post that creativity refers especially to our powerful need and desire to know and understand the world-- its meaning, purpose, significance-- and that it refers to the drive we experience to seek to make our existence better. Words like "quest" and "invention" are basic aspects of the creative drive we find in us.

And it wasn't only religion which overlooked creativity. Wilber notes that the understanding of our creative role in the world was totally ignored-- completely missed-- by the flatland perspectives of Modernity as well. It's being newly discovered thanks to the New Cosmology-- as the very essence of New Cosmology's spiritual praxis.

Wilber uses the word "performance" to express this still strange idea that we actually make our own world by our understanding of it. Thomas Berry calls this participatory role in the evolution of the universe our "Great Work."

If "evolution is what religion is about" then, in the evolutionary perspectives of the New Cosmology, what the practice of religion is all about is precisely this Great Work of creating or making our world.

Dowd offers some down-to-earth practical details for going about performing our job. His Thank God for Evolution is a unique compendium or manual of praxis for living out the New Cosmology in everyday life. So I'll be sharing some thoughts along those lines in the next few posts.

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Meanwhile, I want to mention another person whose practical ideas are of great relevance to the New Cosmology praxis: Dr. Vandana Shiva, a philosopher and physicist from India who has become world-famous for her work combining concern for the Earth and the rights of the oppressed, especially the rights of women. I hadn't heard of her until a few months ago.

She was principle presenter at a recent conference the Sisters of Earth held on the weekend after the Fourth of July at Thomas Berry's old place on the Hudson, north of New York City. She spoke at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia a few days later.

Her talk has been made available on the web by the Academy of Natural Sciences' Center for Environmental Policy. With the introductions, it runs 80 minutes, but it's well worth watching.

It's a wonderful presentation of what spiritual practice means in the New Cosmology and an outstanding example of what creativity means as the essence of religious practice in our time.

The video link is http://www.ansp.org/environmental/2010/07/video-follow-up-vandana-shiva/.

I hope you will be able to view it.

sam@macspeno.com

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#61. Wisdom, Cosmology & Creativity

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This post is being published on the third anniversary of the date I started this blog-- with my thanks to all who in any way have supported and encouraged my efforts!

This is the third of several posts dealing with an understanding of religious ritual in the context of cosmic evolution. I shared some thoughts about symbol, myth and meaning in the previous post. This one deals with wisdom, cosmology and creativity. I'll start with cosmology since it's the easiest to talk about.

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Cosmology. In science, the word "cosmology" has two different meanings.

At the physics end of the science spectrum it refers to our understanding of the origin and development of galaxies, stars and planets-- the evolution of the material world.

At the other end of the spectrum-- the human sciences like sociology and anthropology-- the word "cosmology" refers to any cultural group's understanding of itself and of how humans fit into the physical cosmos of time, space and matter.

What's new about the New Cosmology is that it combines these two understandings. And the result is a truly New Story-- new for all the peoples of the Earth-- of the world and our place in it. It is "Our Common Story," as William Grassie, founder of Metanexus Institute, calls it in a recent essay.

The New Cosmology is also new in another sense. In contrast to the old religious cosmology of western society-- which was based on a distorted (static and dualistic) understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition-- this New Story sees the world as one single, dynamic (non-static and non-dualistic) evolutionary process.

The New Cosmology also differs from science as it is popularly understood. In contrast to the rationalism and materialism which western culture inherited from the 17th-century Enlightenment period-- and which, unfortunately, continues to be the conventional view of what science is all about-- the New Story recognizes that it is mind-- not matter-- which is the basic stuff of reality.

Especially important for our understanding of ritual in the dynamic evolutionary context is an awareness that the New Cosmology sees the whole sweep of the cosmic process as a movement toward life, mind and conscious awareness. It sees diversity of persons and personal relationships as the heart of the entire cosmic process.

And from what I've called in the previous post a "neurologically-informed view," the New Cosmology also recognizes the human mind, nervous system and brain as the most complex thing we know in the universe-- so that it sees each human being as nothing less than the dynamic cosmos itself come to expression both in us and as us.

One more important idea, also mentioned in post #60: While we are still unconscious of much of the universe's workings within us, humanity's age-old myth-stories are expressions of those activities of the cosmos which have yet to come to consciousness in us.

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You can see why I said back in post #59 that if I think too much about trying to talk about the connections between evolution and ritual that I will decide not to start. There are just too many things to keep in mind!

For a clear understanding of ritual in the evolutionary context, I think the most important detail we need to keep in mind is the concept in the New 

Cosmology which is most in contrast with the old cosmology. It's the idea that, as conscious participants in the evolution of life on Earth, each of us has a responsible role to play in the cosmic process.

The very fact that we exist makes us participants in the universe story. 

And it's the fact that we exist as unique individuals that allows each of us to make a unique contribution to it.

That's where creativity comes in.

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Creativity. It's an understatement to say that patriarchal society, with its dualistic alienation from the world and its fear of change, doesn't value creativity-- it suppresses it. And yet creativity is the key to understanding the link between religious ritual and cosmic evolution.

As I see it, the very essence of creativity is simply being aware of our personal uniqueness, which is why, of course, the New Cosmology is so important for us.

It's worth remembering just how unique we are. In terms of the genes we received from our parents, the possibility that another person might exist who has exactly the same genetic makeup we have has been calculated to be one in 10⁸⁰.

That means the chance the universe might ever duplicate any of us is about one in a million, million, million, million, million, million, million, million, million, million, million, million chances. (Slim!)

Beyond our awareness that we are unique there is also the effort each of us needs to make to learn what it is that's unique about us. We need to educate ourselves about ourselves. It's only when we know what our unique gifts are that we can put them to good use.

I think this is probably the basis of any new spirituality associated with the New Cosmology: to make the effort to become aware of our gifts-- our unique combination of skills, talents and capabilities-- and to work at developing them.

As I see it, it's the awareness and the effort together that's what we contribute to the cosmic process. We make the world better by making ourselves better. That's our cosmic task.

And the very essence of it is innovation and transformation. Novelty and newness is what the universe has been about for 14 billion years-- making new things, doing old things in new ways, making things better. 

It's also what human creativity is all about.

So it's only in light of our cosmic task-- our creative newness and personal transformation-- that we can understand the connections between religious ritual and cosmic evolution.

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I received an especially helpful comment about post #59 from artist and author Mary Conrow Coelho. "I hope," she said, "you will say more about the experience at the blessing of fire and water when you were eight years old."

If you haven't seen post #59, you might like to check it out. The story is about my being the entire congregation at a Saturday morning Easter service back in the 1940s.

Here's Mary's full comment: Was the experience numinous, mystical, a knowing? Is it better described in another way? It seems that in some way over the years you must have been hoping that the rituals you have joined and those that you created might be the occasion of similar experiences for you and for others. Has this been a successful endeavor?

In my brief response I said that the short answer was "yes" to all these questions, and that I would offer a more adequate response in a post. This is it.

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Because I'm looking back at something which happened 65 years ago, I have the great advantage of being able to make use of a life-time of reflection and thought.

I now understand the words "numinous," "mystical" and "knowing," for example, to refer to any conscious experience which is especially significant and important, and which, at the same time, is not only difficult but maybe even impossible to talk about.

My Holy Saturday morning experience was definitely along those lines. But I think the best way I can describe it is to use words like "feeling" and "sense." What I experienced can best be described as a sense of affirmation. I felt affirmed.

I felt affirmed in my own personal reality and the bigger reality of which I was a part. It also had a sense rightness about it, that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing.

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Mary's question about whether over the years I had been hoping that the rituals I'd been involved "might be the occasion of similar experiences for you and for others" was also helpful. I don't think, however, that "hoping" is the right word.

"Expecting" would be more accurate. Even "confidently expecting."

A trivial example is how we feel when we look forward to having a cold beer on a summer day. We don't hope it will taste good and make us feel refreshed, we expect it to. That's what a cold beer on a hot day does.

I think the same is true about affirmation. I doubt that it ever occurred to me that a ritual, when it's done well, would not result in an affirming experience. That's what ritual does.

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To Mary's other question--"Has this been a successful endeavor?"-- I would say, "Yes."

Some rituals work better than others, of course, and the effort to understand how rituals work well has been a major part of my adult life. 

But if the question is "Do people generally feel affirmed?", my answer would be "Yes, I think they do."

Here's one example. After an extensive evening ritual at a church a number of years ago, I overheard one of the participants-- a 75-year-old man whose wife had died many years earlier-- say to the pastor, "This has been the best night of my whole life."

That was good enough for me.

I realize that "affirmation" is probably not the kind of answer Mary or anyone else expected in response to her question about the nature of ritual experience. It's certainly not a conventional understanding of what ritual is all about.

So I need to point out that in our still-patriarchal culture-- where "symbolic" is usually understood to mean "not real," and "ritual" is often preceded by the word "empty"-- we still don't have any positive understanding of ritual and symbol.

And that lack is why I think the Wisdom perspective is also important here.

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Wisdom. Probably the best way to describe what I mean by "Wisdom" is to say that it's the opposite of patriarchy.

Patriarchal religion sees the world's Creative Source as outside and above the world-- not as part of it-- and it sees humanity's main task to be an escape from the world. Patriarchy disdains physical matter: it exploits nature, dominates the powerless and suppresses creativity.

In contrast, Wisdom is an attitude and perspective which not only values the created world but understands both God and human beings in terms of their relationships to the world.

(For an especially clear-- indeed mind-chilling-- example of that contrast, see The New York Times editorial from earlier this month, A Bishop's Words.)

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At this new religious moment in the Earth's history, when the human race is growing up and we are outgrowing our adolescent patriarchal perspectives, we are coming to see ourselves more realistically in the context of cosmic-biological-cultural evolution.

And central to the Wisdom perspective is its view that the creative life-force, the spiritus of God, is the motivating energy at the heart of that entire evolutionary process.

Also central to the Wisdom perspective is the understanding of human persons as unique expressions of the universe, each called to be a co-creative participant in cosmic evolution.

Such ideas are so far from the patriarchal worldview that they sound very strange.

But, just as we are familiar with the "wisdom of the body"-- its ability to heal itself, to grow and to bring itself into balance and wholeness-- so we also can know a wisdom of the universe-- which in religious language we call the Wisdom of God.

"Divine Wisdom" is a name for our understanding of the dynamis (energy, spiritus) at the core of all things which moves them toward that balance, beauty and wholeness which in various religious languages is called "peace," "pax," "hozho," "shanti," "shalom."

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It's important here to keep in mind that the cultural movement beyond patriarchy didn't begin recently. It is more than two thousand years old. It started several centuries before the birth of Jesus (and he was part of it).

Because at this present time in history we are still working our way out of the patriarchal worldview, the Wisdom perspectives continue to be relatively unfamiliar to almost everyone, even though they are found in many of the world's religious traditions-- including our own Western Judeo-Christian tradition.

I've shared my understanding of the Bible's Wisdom perspectives in a number of posts. I offered a general introduction in post #40 (Wisdom-Sophia), a quaternary perspective in post #41 (Four-fold Wisdom), and descriptions of the functions of Wisdom in terms of those quaternary perspectives in posts #42 (Architect),#43 (Guide), #44 (Gatherer) and #45 (Provider).

I find the four-fold ("quaternary") understanding extremely helpful and significant. If you're not familiar with it you might like to check out three earlier posts: #29 (The Four-fold Mind), #30 (Ways of Being Religious) and #31 (Integrating the Four Functions).

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In the Bible, Divine Wisdom is described as a feminine person, Sophia, who is intimately related to every aspect of reality. Scripture scholar Kathleen O'Connor, in her book The Wisdom Literature, calls Sophia "the Wisdom Woman."

In the biblical stories this Wisdom Woman is pictured working along side the Creator from the very beginning. As Dr. O'Connor says, "She is closely joined to the created world; she is an intimate friend of God; she delights in the company of human beings."

This relatedness-- to God, world and humanity-- is what Wisdom is all about. It couldn't be more different from the attitudes and perspectives of patriarchy.

From another point of view, Wisdom can be described in terms of our human experience as "a state of knowing and being"-- a higher, deeper, fuller awareness of our life and existence.

And in the context of the New Cosmology, that higher, deeper awareness is precisely of the fact that we are unique persons called to be co-creative participants in the cosmic process.

I think it's here that the New Cosmology and the Bible's Wisdom perspectives coincide completely; for me, this is the very meaning of "the convergence of religion and science."

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How this all connects with ritual becomes fairly clear, I think, when we understand religious ritual as humanity's age-old means for being in communion with Divine Wisdom. It is ritual which empowers us to be co-creative participants with the Wisdom Woman, Sophia, as she operates at the depths of the world, all the while delighting to be with us, Earth's children.

And ritual is nothing new. As the Irish writer Diarmuid ("Dermot") O'Murchu says in his book, Evolutionary Faith, we know now that humanity has "droned and drummed, chanted and danced for a hundred thousand years."

Such age-old ritual is the means by which we "let the heart of the Earth beat within us." By it we are empowered to participate in the cosmic evolutionary process because by it our uniqueness and our call to express it is acknowledged and affirmed. And that's all we need.

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And that's it for this post. Except for another "homework" assignment. This time it's to think back to a ritual you have experienced which may have been for you what I've called here "affirming" and/or "empowering."

And-- if you're willing-- to share it with me and our readers.

If you are willing, please send it c/o my e-mail address. (The comment section of the blog seems to have recently acquired a limit of only 300 characters. That's equivalent to the famous "25 words or less" from the days of radio-- hardly enough to begin to describe an important-- and maybe indescribable-- personal experience.)

I hope to hear from you.

sam@macspeno.com

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Reminder from post #60: I have dealt with the ARCHIVE TECHNICAL PROBLEM (more or less). You will remember that since I started this new series of posts (with post #51), each time I publish a new post, an earlier one vanishes from my Archives list; they're there, just not visible. (Sounds like the Nicene Creed!) From now on, the Archive will include a post with the title LIST of ALL PUBLISHED POSTS, which I will update with each new post. (If you are a tech person and know of a better solution, I would love to hear from you!)

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#21. Struggling with Words

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It isn't easy to write about the convergence of science and religion.

Each time I use the word "science" I feel the need to make the point that I'm not talking about 19th century rationalist-positivist science. 

That early form of science rejected feeling and emotion and even personal consciousness itself as a component of the real world. It was a materialist and mechanical understanding of living things and human life and it is, unfortunately, what "science" still means for many people today.

And each time I use the word "religion" I have a similar need to make the point that I'm not talking about fundamentalist and authoritarian religion. Religious dualism, like rationalist science, was unable to see humanity as a part of the physical world and emphasized our need to escape from it. It, too, is still with us today.

Although post-rationalist science has been around since the late 1800s, we don't yet have a good name for it. It includes relativity, quantum mechanics and complexity theory, but its most distinctive characteristic is its understanding of the world as dynamic rather than static, and it recognizes personal consciousness as an integral part of the cosmic process.

Our understanding of religion has likewise changed dramatically since the end of the 19th century. In the 20th century, there were major changes in religious thought just as there were in scientific thought. 

Theologians have not only recovered the inner core of the Judeo-Christian tradition which had been lost to western civilization after the Dark Ages but also have moved forward to include the best values of the modern world; those values especially include an appreciation of the universe as developmental and of persons as central to the cosmic process.

We don't yet have a good name for non-dualist religion, just as we don't have a good name yet for post-mechanistic science; but as a way of wisdom rather than theological concepts, it can be called sapiential or sophianic.

Contemporary science and contemporary religious thought converge precisely in their understanding of the cosmos as evolutionary and of human consciousness as integral to it.

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I was delighted when I discovered Biogenetic Structuralism because its emphasis-- on understanding in an evolutionary context the brain and nervous system and the religious behavior which results from it-- helps bring these things together. It attempts to integrate the various perspectives of the physical, biological and human sciences, and sees human consciousness at the center of it all.

It's those perspectives which are what I've been attempting to share with readers via this blog.

In posting #8 I offered a background to the whole Biogenetic Structuralist view and in post #10 an overview of the basic ideas found in these creative scientists' initial 1974 book, Biogenetic Structuralism. 

In those two postings I spelled out some specific points which I find especially significant in terms of the convergence of science and religion.

Most of the postings since have offered details about what I see as the main idea of this convergence: the centrality of personal consciousness and our participatory role in the cosmic process.

We're still not use to thinking of ourselves this way, so these ideas are worth bringing together here.

In post #12, The Cognitive Extension of Prehension, I described the neurological understanding of personal consciousness as being both something new to the cosmic evolutionary process and at the same time rooted in the life of the Earth.

This understanding alone marks the end of religious dualism, as I tried to spell out in post #11: it takes away nothing of the spiritual nature of the human person to know ourselves as the result of the evolution of the universe. Indeed, it greatly enhances our understanding of human dignity.

In post #13, Cognized Environment, I described some of the basic neurological findings about the workings of the human brain with regard to the fact that human consciousness is the universe become conscious of itself. I've mentioned these central ideas in many entries since.

Post #14 deals with the mystery of ourselves as a process rather than as something static. While thinking of the universe as a process is one thing, thinking of ourselves that way is much more challenging. But it opens us to a far larger self-understanding than is possible in the old static worldview.

It helps us to see, for example, the utter uniqueness of each person, as I described in post #16.

And, when we recognize that what the universe is doing is making unique personal copies of itself (post #17) and that we are called to freely contribute our personal uniqueness to the evolutionary process (post #18), we have a much more integral and wholistic of ourselves and the world than our ancestors ever could.

Post #19 has to do with how we respond to our call to take part in the creative process; each of us is called to become a personal embodiment of that diversity which appears to be a central goal of the universe. I called that participation "our service to God." And in the most recent posting, #20, I described what might be called God's service to us, resurrection of the dead.

In each case, I've tried to point out areas where contemporary science is saying something much like the insights which have emerged in the new religious thinking. Central to both is precisely the evolutionary or development perspective missing from rationalist science and dualistic religion.

The ideas in each separate blog entry are a challenge. But while the words and concepts may be unfamiliar, when taken together they begin to form a coherent picture of that very different view of things which has emerged from contemporary science and which relates to the contemporary recovery of the "sapiential" foundations of western religion.

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In trying to spell out all this, one of the major problems I encounter is a lack of clear and useful terms. We don't yet have the right words to allow us to express well these post-19th century viewpoints.

Religious people still hear "science" as a synonym for atheistic materialism, and non-religious people still hear "religion" as synonymous with superstition and ignorance. In the pre-20th century context of rationalism and dualism, religion and science are mutually exclusive worldviews. They can only be imaged together in terms of conflict and the very idea of their convergence seems to be an impossibility.

Examples of that static 19th century perspective-- often presented in terms of "faith versus reason" and "belief versus atheism"-- are still found daily in the media. It's only when we see things from a dynamic-developmental perspective that we can see points of convergence.

I offered a challenging example in the most recent post (#20) where I described how the Biogenetic Structuralist description of the relationship between inner consciousness and the external world sounds similar to the understanding of the relationship between the human spirit and the material cosmos found in the discussion by the Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov of the ancient Judeo-Christian doctrine of resurrection of the dead.

The fact that so many thoughtful people have a difficult time with the idea that completion and fulfillment might be a normal part of the cosmic process demonstrates how totally pervasive the static rationalist-positivist perspective continues to be.

In a dynamic unitive perspective, where diversity and uniqueness can be seen as central values to the cosmic process, it doesn't seem so inconsistent to assume that our personal contribution to the cosmic process will be incorporated into it.

We know so little, still, about the laws of the natural world. It may be that those laws include, rather than exclude, a completion of the cosmos process in such a way that nothing-- and especially not its central value of personal consciousness-- will be lost.

My point here is not to argue for the truth of a specific religious doctrine, but only to say that once we move out of the 19th century static worldview, some significant convergences become apparent. If, that is, we can find the right words to express them without evoking the 19th century meanings still attached to them.

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Here's a second important example of the struggle for helpful words. It's our need to express clearly the common understanding, found in both the sapiential religious perspective and the contemporary scientific worldview but totally lacking in the dualistic-mechanistic perspective, of the inter-relatedness of things.

I've found the Biogenetic Structuralist view especially useful here. Just as it helps us to spell out the nature of the individual person in an evolutionary perspective, so it also helps us to understand the communal aspects of the mystery of personal consciousness.

Biogenetic Structuralism calls itself "Anthropology Plus" because, while it began with the efforts of 20th-century cultural anthropologists, it also includes a strong emphasis on the evolutionary development of the primate brain and the consequent social-cultural aspects of human existence seen in that context. For these reasons, its understanding of personal consciousness is especially helpful in understanding ourselves in the broadest possible scientific perspectives of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution. And this, of course, is also the context in which 20th-century religious thinkers have been working out their new understandings of human nature.

But both efforts have a difficult time finding the right words to express the communal or relational aspects of human existence.

So, just as I feel the need, each time I use the word "science," to say that I mean more than its conventional 19th-century rationalist-positive sense, and each time I use the word "religion" to say that I mean more than its conventional dualist and authoritarian sense, so I feel a similar need each time I use the word "person." In the cosmic context of both contemporary science and religious thought, "person" refers to far more than individual. But "person," as the rugged individual of America's early pioneer days, still remains the ideal in conventional perspectives.

I know it sounds odd to say that "There's more to person than the individual." But that's exactly my point. Finding good words to talk about it is the struggle I'm pointing to in this blog entry. The communal and relational aspects of person are part of the perspectives of both contemporary science and contemporary religion, but in trying to express those converging perspectives well, the very words we do have available tend to get in the way as much as they are helpful.

Ours is such an individualistic culture that the very idea that there might be something beyond the ego-stage of personal development is as incomprehensible to many as is the idea, from a rationalistic point of view, that the universe's evolutionary process might have a positive outcome.

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In any case, in sharing my thoughts about the convergence of science and religion, it's some ideas about this understanding that "there's more to person than the individual" which is what I'm planning to present next.

What I hope to do is to take the ideas about person which I've presented in the earlier postings to the next step, where the emphasis is on our communion and connectedness with all things.

The words we have available to talk about the development of personal consciousness beyond the individualistic stage are both familiar and yet fuzzy for most of us. They include terms such as myth, ritual, symbol, shamanism and cosmology, and no matter what our background, most of us may be inclined to automatically dismiss one or more of them as irrelevant. But none of them are.

Religious ritual, for example, constitutes a fundamental part of humanity's religious practice, and while the idea that science might have something positive to say about it will seem to many an exaggeration, the place of ritual in personal and communal development is, in fact, a major part of the Biogenetic Structuralist perspective. The second of these pioneering researchers' three basic texts is The Spectrum of Ritual.

It is in that book that they describe the development of personal consciousness in the context of the cosmic process and the evolution of the brain as an experience of reality at three distinct levels of cosmological understanding. And it is thoughts about those levels of experience, and how the scientific understanding of them converges with the emerging sapiential perspectives, that I hope to share with readers in my next few blog postings.

Ambitious, to be sure! And sure to be a struggle to come up with the right words.

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But you can help.

We've all had teachers who obviously knew what they were talking about, but were unable to convey their ideas clearly. Less obvious is that what helps a speaker to communicate clearly with others is, more than anything else, the feedback the listeners provide.

Feedback takes innumerable forms, from an unconscious shuffling of feet or a repeated glancing at the clock to the slightest hint of a smile as well as an explicit comment or question.

So please, shuffle your feet-- electronically. Or e-mail a hint of a smile. I need your feedback.

If the formal blog-comment process seems too complicated, just use my regular e-mail. The address is below. Thanks!

sam@macspeno.com