#138. Sacred Ritual in The New Creation Story

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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 #138 is the third of three collections of thoughts and reflections based on the only book I know which deals explicitly with what the Christian Church looks like in the Big History perspectives of the New Cosmology.

The book is The Holy Web: Church and the New Universe Story by Cletus Wessels (Orbis Books, 2000). The author is a Dominican priest, pastor and theologian in the Midwestern United States.

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1) Cosmic Evolution, Ritual and Spirituality. Because the individuation process is the continuation, at the level of personal consciousness, of the world’s evolution, spirituality is a major component of the story of the universe. And ritual is a major aspect of spirituality.

Spirituality is growth and development (personal transformation) in terms of inner consciousness and self-awareness; ritual is the primary means for intentional growth and development.

It is precisely by way of ritual that the energies, power and forces that make up the individual are contacted and owned. How important it is, then, to understand how to contact and own them. The spirit-powers are contacted via the Vision Quest and are “owned” via some form of a vision “dance.”

Obviously the churches should be fostering spiritual transformation, but we simply can’t expect much of them anymore.

2) Our Ritual and Spiritual Roots. Spirituality is finding God in all things, especially in one’s own emerging self. The truest self and God, the sacred/numinous, are not distinct realities. Ritual is essential for the emergence of a planetary global community.

Our Paleolithic ancestors experienced the numinous in all things, all the time; especially in the hearth fire and the communal forms surrounding it. Art, music, dance and language, all evolved for ritual communion with the spirit powers. Ritual especially was focused on sex and death, but on transformation generally: reproduction, the beginnings of sexual maturity and burials.

Institutional, organized religions emerged after the Paleolithic Hunting Culture and the Neolithic Matriarchy. They are coincident with Patriarchal Civilization and are, apparently, a necessary step in the differentiation of religion, but they are now no longer what’s needed or appropriate.

Jesus went way beyond the institutional religion of his time. He obviously knew the numinous from within, and recognizing the dangers (of inflation) involved.

He has a tremendous impact on his followers. They used Jewish imagery to make sense of his impact on them: they saw him as the Second Adam, the Suffering Servant, the Passover lamb, and especially as the one who was anointed (appointed) "Lord of All."

Everything that the “numinous” refers to was understood to be contained in Jesus. Western culture summarized that by saying he was God in the flesh. Nowadays, the problem is that those experiences should not be made exclusive of the rest of the world’s religious experiences.

Similarly, ritual is not the exclusive property of the church. It is essential-- a prerequisite!-- for the Earth’s planetary global community. And this is why it’s important to see the story of Jesus in the context of the universe’s story; Jesus is the exemplification of-- not an exception to-- the way the cosmos works.

3) Our need is to be as attuned with the earth and “all our relations” as Jesus was. We are to know, as he did, that we are part of, and responsible to, the cosmic process. We especially need to be conscious of the fact that the paschal process is intrinsic to the cosmos.

While it isn’t clear that this was Jesus’ understanding, at least in such an explicit form, it most certainly was precisely the understanding of his followers. “This is the way the world works: even the worst that can happen is a means for fullness of life in communion with God.”

The universe supplies “supporting evidence” that we can trust it; despite appearances, the cosmic process is going to work out well. That this is a part the New Universe Story, and finds expression in chaos theory, is a new insight.

So then, in a way, is the idea that the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus is not a unique event of history so much as an exemplification of the normal functioning of the cosmos.

This insight really does change things in terms of theology, in the sense that the salvation effected by Jesus does not have to be understood as some form of blood payment to an avenging God but, rather, as a radical shift in consciousness, the most fundamental ontological change possible.

It can be understood as a breakthrough, an alteration of the morphogenic field, and thus as effecting everything. But also as being in harmony with everything, not as something uniquely added as an exception or even a contradiction to the way reality works. How wonderful to celebrate the Passover Seder each year!

4) Psychological insight: If cosmology is psychologically a projection of our coming to conscious awareness, individually and as a species, then a sense of the pleroma and parousia must be the projection of the other end of the same individuation and cosmic process.

The evolutionary process is, from the beginning, a spiritual as well as a physical process. Formal institutional religion is only a temporary stage in human evolution, one which we as a species now seem to have outlived.

We can ask, then, will there be a church beyond the Church? Can we look for a globally present sacramental and servant community, as a continuation of the Christian tradition, but sociologically non-structural, more along the lines of how Buddhism is set up? (Some study of those social arrangements by sympathetic sociologists would be helpful.)

I think that is precisely what the universe is asking of us, that’s where things seem to be moving. But it will have to be far more inclusive than what we’ve known in the past.

5) Details About Ritual: Ritual is our “grandmother tongue.” Its goal is transformation and empowerment. Education is a by-product.

Like everything else, ritual can be evil. It can empower to negative, destructive behavior. This would be possible if the “owned” empowering images are destructive. Obviously these images are not the Divine energies.

Or are they, but misunderstood? The problem of evil persists at the most profound levels! Would the universe present an individual with negative empowering images? That really doesn’t seem likely, but psychological terms, it would be negative images coming from the unconscious. And surely the unconscious isn’t always “benevolent.” Or, again, is it?

Is that very thought yet another aspect of patriarchal fear of the unconscious? Clearly, there can be psychological damage just as there is physical damage. I’m thinking just now of Annie Dillard’s demand of God, “What’s with the kids without faces?”

6) What Ritual Is. Ritual really does seem to have a two-fold purpose: empowerment to be who and what we are as individuals (“particle”) and communion with all our relations (“wave”). Ritual, too, manifests the wave/particle duality of quantum theory.

Becoming aware of the sacred ‘always and everywhere’ is a radical shift in contemporary consciousness. “Sacred” is what’s meaningful: what empowers each of us to be who and what we are, and to be in communion with the Rest. Quantum duality there, too!

Ritual is a wave/particle duality: its two-fold purpose is empowerment of individuals to be who/what we are called to be and communion with all our relations.

7) “The Mystery is always and everywhere giving itself.” This means not “just” in the details of everyday life, big and small, meaningful and seemingly insignificant, but in the totality of each person’s individuation process, as well as in human cultural evolution and in expanded global awareness of the planet as a whole both culturally and ecologically.

But also in the whole biological evolution process including its basis in planetary and geological evolution, in the very formation of the planet along with the rest of the solar system, as well as the formation of our galaxy, the local group of galaxies, and the whole cosmos.

What’s really needed here is poetry to try to capture all this in some clear way. The above statements need to be made into a hymn. But also to be expressed in art, and music and dance, etc.

8) Practical Aspects of the Recovery of Ritual and Spirituality. The images in which the Mystery is giving itself to us are precisely the only ones available for us to announce/proclaim and own. As a way to begin, the talking staff council may be exactly the right form to start with.

Some form of vision quest is a preliminary practical need in the process of recovering ritual. Our most important need to know what empowering symbolic images are being offered to each of us as individuals.

We also need, of course, to understand what’s meant by empowering images, symbols, visions.

      

The sacred us to be found everywhere. The question then is, In what images is the Mystery giving itself to us? It is our job to be willing to make the effort to be sensitive and responsive. Sensitivity is the quest for vision, responsiveness is dancing it on the earth before the assembled people.

9) Ritual and Personal Responsibility. It is because the evolutionary process continues precisely in individuals, via ‘individuation,’ that, as Jung says, “The salvation of the world depends on the individual soul.”

Each of us ‘counts.’ Each must be sensitive. Each must make the effort.

What a powerful way to say, “Your life is not trivial.” (And such understanding may be the essential content of ritual initiations.)

My own focus on self-awareness was apparent from a very early age.

It was fostered by Merton, Teilhard and Jung, and given practical help via monasticism and the liturgical movement. They both were the best helps available, that I knew of, then.

I was also exposed to, could see the great value of, NA traditions, thanks especially to Joseph Eppes Brown and Joseph Jastrab. He helped me get started with the concrete experiences.

And I did have a science background, too. It was specifically focused on evolution-- cosmic, planetary, biological, anthropological, cultural.”

I’m especially grateful that I was able to teach sacramental theology at SJU and to do all I've been able to in terms of promoting ritual-- in family life, small gatherings, churches and men's groups.

10) This book prompted a meditation-poem which I've called "The Momentous Act and His Role in It."

The “momentous act” needed to heal the world at this crucial point in human history is Percy-with-the-gross-phallus embracing the Christ. The religious tradition is never going to embrace the phallus. It will be the other way around: somehow, the phallotokoi will offer forgiveness to the religious tradition for its having demonized the sacred phallus.

I’m not clear whether it's the embrace or the forgiveness which is the momentous act. Percy-with-the-gross-phallus embracing the divine energies of the universe? Or, forgiveness of the religious tradition for its demonization of phallus? Probably both; and, probably, it’s really just one act.

      

In any case, it is not phallus which is to be liberated but the whole dualistic religious tradition, the institutional church and the secular culture which comes from it. It will be liberated from its separation from earth, healed of its alienation from matter, and reconciled with what it has considered evil: the feminine, the unconscious, “chaos,” especially the body and its genitals.

And this forgiveness of the institution by the numinous which it had demonized is somehow the work of the phallotokoi. This is an intuition I can almost not even get into any words, let alone good and satisfactory words.

But the forgiveness will be clear and strong evidence of the Kingdom, the basilia. It is a new proclamation of the gospel when the phallus says to the church, “Fear not!”

This is a momentous act, indeed! The demonized numinous knowing itself as, in fact, epiphany of God. It is a complete reversal of the Fisher King’s groin injury: the healing-recovery and affirmation of what had been lost for a hundred centuries. And it changes everything.

And some of us are called to do the needed imagining which will affect the "morphogenic fields" and allow phallus and maleness and manhood to once again be known as sacred. This is the idea of the “rainmaker,” one who “does what he does by being what he is.”

      

This one has been called to a rainmaker role. He does it via the sacred pipe, when he owns his vision by “smoking” it in a mandala of images, his ‘owning’ dance. He influences the morphogenic field surrounding sacred manhood by permeating it with the image of sacred phallus, an ‘owning’ of phallus as theophany.

This “breakthrough” is the only way out, the only way to break the evil spell.

       

This what he is called to, and what he did in his VQ III vision dance. It includes making bears and radiating phallic awe and wonder. It is what he does in this retirement contemplative stage of his life.

He is called, empowered, grounded and protected to enjoy good things, share them with others, and tell his story; especially to enjoy with others their good. That, now, is his earth-walk.

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#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

#8. Background to Biogenetic Structuralism

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This blog entry is intended to provide a background or introduction to the inter-disciplinary (anthropology and neurology) perspectives of Biogenetic Structuralism, views which I have found especially meaningful in terms of the contemporary convergence of science and religion.

I plan to follow it up with an overview of the basic ideas found in these creative scientists' initial 1974 book, and then to spell out some specific points which I find especially significant, such as the centrality of personal consciousness and our participatory role in the cosmic process.

The "first generation" Biogenetic Structuralist literature includes three books and numerous (and, unfortunately, jargon-filled) academic articles: the ideas are not only unfamiliar but difficult to deal with. In any case, its origins are found in the coming together of cultural anthropology and neurology in the early 1970s, and these research scientists consider the third of their three books to be its "definitive" expression: Brain, Symbol and Experience, by Charles D. Laughlin, Jr., John McManus and Eugene G. d'Aquili (Columbia U. Press reprint, 1993).

That book begins by facing squarely the fact that modern science has been damaged almost from its beginnings by its positivist-rationalist slant. They don't explicitly blame the "crisis" of science on its negative reaction to religious dualism; they only note contemporary science's lack of self-understanding, and they point out that its healing will come from not from the "hard" but from the human sciences.

As a perspective in academic anthropology, structuralism is based on the (roughly 1940s) work on South American rain-forest cultures by Claude Levi-Strauss, which focuses on relationships between elements of a social system. Levi-Strauss stressed that the components of such systems tend to occur in binary (complementary, not exclusive) pairs. 

The second generation researchers trace this fact to the functions of the brain and nervous system and use it to talk about, among other things, the nature of religious beliefs. (Complicated stuff!)

Levi-Strauss' structuralism was semiotic (synchronic). In contrast, biogenetic structuralism stresses the evolutionary (diachronic) perspective, and does so in terms of phylo- and onto-genesis (i.e., the evolution of biological groups and the development of individuals within those groups) as well as of the development of social-cultural systems.

Over the years, I've found it helpful to use Greek terms to talk about the material world, humanity and divinity: the meanings of cosmos, anthropos and theos are clear enough and yet relatively free of the conventional emotional connotations which the English words tend to evoke. The Immense Transition we are currently experiencing involves a significant change in our understanding of all three of these basic aspects of our existence.

Using the Greek terms, biogenetic structuralism can be described, in contrast to semiotic (non-evolutionary) structuralism, as empirical science dealing with a non-dual anthropos in a dynamic cosmos. 

Although its main focus is anthropos, it also includes the third aspect of the Immense Transition, theos, and there it makes use of jargon from quantum physics and David Bohm's Implicate Order, such as the Plenum, Void and the Akashic Field.

So, while it is empirical science, Biogenetic Structuralism seems to be totally congruent with humanity's classical mystical traditions (which typically emerged, both Western and Asian, in a static cultural context), and also with the intrinsically dynamic sophianic perspectives which remain a buried treasure at the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Among other things, Biogenetic Structuralism makes clear the importance of seeing the cosmic process from "top down" rather than from the conventional "bottom up" view of religious dualism and scientific positivism.

A main idea in the "top down" view is that evolutionary complexity produces newness. It recognizes three main levels to the cosmic process: sub-atomic particles producing atoms and molecules, chemicals producing self-regulating systems (living things: plants and animals), and brain cells producing neuro-gnosis (primate and human awareness).

While it doesn't hesitate to talk of the "mystery that we are," Biogenetic Structuralism does not, of course (or not yet), deal with what would seem to be the obvious fourth level to the evolutionary process: a unity-in-diversity of persons. That is: while it is not religion or theology looking at, or incorporating science into its perspectives, the Biogenetic Structuralist viewpoint does seem to be congruent with Jung's understanding of the three-dimensional "incarnation of the Self" and Bulgakov's "actualization of divine potentialities." These are some of the main ideas about the convergence of science and religion I hope to spell out in future posts.

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With regard to the cosmic process at the human level, Biogenetic Structuralism sees three stages to personal (ontogenetic) development: received (DNA-based) gnosis, ego experience, and trans-ego (contemplative) experience.

It understands ego-development (Jungian "individuation") in terms of the neuro-gnostic self adapting to its external environment for survival by assimilation and accommodation, and it understands trans-ego development ("advanced individuation") as the neuro-gnostic self adapting to the cosmic-ontogenetic process itself. That is, it sees the same process operative at both levels, but it is the process (rather than the external environment) that is its focus at the contemplative level (and which is seen as a kind of "ceiling" to the transformation process).

In response to positivist views, Biogenetic Structuralism offers as evidence for this deep trans-personal human experience the cross-cultural global phenomena of shamanism, symbol, myth and ritual.

I find Biogenetic Structuralism's combination of cultural anthropology and neurology for understanding of ritual and symbol to be extremely enlightening but also quite challenging. It recognizes ritual as a mean of enculturation: the incorporation of individuals into a cultural cosmology, which is fairly easy to understand. Far more challenging is its understanding of symbol in ritual: Biogenetic Structuralism sees the symbol-process as nothing less than the essential way the mind-brain works to produce personal transformation.

In neurological jargon: symbol is "a bit entrained to the whole," evoking what the whole brain already knows, and which, because it is not necessarily isomorphic with the operational environment stimulus, activates the cognitive imperative-- the fundamental drive (urge or impetus) of the brain and nervous system (arising from the cosmic process itself)-- to complete the stimulus-meaning-response cycle for its maintenance and development.

Meditation practice is understood similarly. While ritual can be either calming or exciting, and meditation is usually quieting, in terms of neurological activity both processes in their extreme extensions spill over into their opposite. It is when both processes occur together that unitary ("unitive" and, also, near-death) experience happens: no time, no space, no separation, "nothing" becomes the pleromic no-thing, "nowhere" becomes now-here, the "alone" becomes all-one.

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I find the third section of the "definitive" Brain, Symbol and Experience, to be the most fascinating part of the book. It's called Consciousness and the Limits of Experience. Its four chapters are:
9. Empirical Ego, Consciousness and Context
10. Dreaming, the Shaman's Journey, and Polyphasic Consciousness
11. Mature Contemplation
12. Conclusion: Neural Organization and Epistemic Process

Chapters 10 and 12, dealing with the shamanic and cosmic nature of consciousness, are especially stimulating. In terms of my own story, there's lots of work for me to do here and I hope eventually to share some of it with readers.

With regard to the convergence of science and religion, what I find most fascinating has to do with an idea which even the New Cosmology is (somewhat understandably) reluctant to deal with: what I've called, above, the "fourth level of the evolutionary process." If I'm understanding the neurological data correctly-- about the functioning of the brain's neocortical lobes resulting in our need for endings as well as beginnings-- it would seem that our hope for a final outcome to the cosmic process is generated by the cosmic process itself.

If so, then from a Biogenetic Structuralism perspective, it's not at all unreasonable to see cosmic evolution not only as creative and participatory but also, in Bruno Barnhart's words, as "rooted in divine sophia who bears the creation toward its fulfillment in a koinonia of persons and eucharistic Omega."

Spelling out ideas like that, as simply and clearly as I can, is what this project is all about.

sam@macspeno.com