#144. A New Way of Being Human

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ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 

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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

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This post #144 is personal notes from a 2002 reading of Brian Swimme’s The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos, Humanity and the New Story (Orbis, 1996). They are reflections sent to a friend especially interested in the New Cosmology.

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Brian Swimme places the New Science Story in the world’s wisdom traditions. He sees it not as science as such (which is conceptual) but as a science-compatible and science-inspired “cosmology.” I.e., it is a mythology of meaning dealing with the origins of the world and our place in it.

Supporting his understanding of the New Universe Story as wisdom, he even speaks of the need for “tasting” (i.e. experiencing) it, which is essentially, I think, what ‘sapientiae’ (the Latin form of "wisdom") originally means.

Science is the development of ideas and sensitivities for becoming aware of what is happening in the world around us, and modern science-- of the last 400 years-- has disrupted all previous world-views.

But that destructive phase is ending and the integrative period has begun. Personally, I can say that I seem to have been born into an early phase of that integrative period.

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Our task today is to integrate modern scientific perspectives with the more ancient wisdom intuitions.

The promise is, for the first time in history, a common meaning and program of action for all humanity. Rupert Sheldrake (of morphogenetic fields) says that with the present time-lag between scientific discoveries and their appropriation by people at large, the New Story should begin to kick in around 2030. (I hope he's wrong! We need it much sooner!)

Mentioning Rupert Sheldrake reminds me that my shamanic vocation continues in the form of forest-hut dweller-- someone who helps the world by influencing the morphic fields.

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Here at the beginnings of science’s wisdom phase, the basic question is, "What is humanity’s place in the evolving universe?" That has been one of two or three most fundamental questions the I have asked since my earliest years. My very early wording was, “What is our place in the vast scheme of things?”

I am coming to see that to respond properly to that question, an even more basic one needs to be asked: What IS the vast scheme of things? That’s where modern science comes in.

We live in a dynamic, evolutionary, unfolding universe. And that view is what makes modern science the basis for a new wisdom tradition. We really can’t say what our place is in the scheme of things if we don’t have a pretty good idea what that scheme of things is. I’m aware that from an early age I simply presumed it to be an evolutionary cosmos.

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Swimme notes that immense truths (visions, perspectives) are by their very nature difficult to transmit. And that to understand profound truths requires imagination.

This new form of consciousness is emerging, however, in a small slice of contemporary humanity, and we lack any easy, established or efficient way of transmitting it. And that is the story of my life!

I feel called by the universe to help change people’s minds about the universe! To help ‘channel’ a new perspective, a new vision-- something which is VERY difficult to do!

And yet the new consciousness IS emerging; indeed, I am evidence of that.

And I am NOT able to point to any roots of that consciousness in my genetic or cultural background. The best I can do is to mention my father who loved nature and my mother who loved her Polish Catholic religion, and both of them who always let me be myself.

For whatever reasons, which can only be called “grace,” I seem to have been born into that New Story perspective. From my earliest years, both science and religion were my main interests and, as I've said, I took the evolutionary perspective for granted.

I eventually received master’s degrees in both areas. Today I would call them simply nature and spirituality, or the natural world and our place in it; in more abstract language, cosmos and anthropos at the heart of cosmos.

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Swimme makes the point that spirituality has a three-hundred-thousand-year lineage, that "cosmology as a myth of meaning "has been with us from the start.”

He mentions the cave paintings of 20,000 years ago, and the caves themselves with evidence going back 300,000 years. I have personally been highly attracted to the cave paintings all my life, and was honored by one of my earliest students who brought back for me from a trip to Europe a large poster from Lascaux. It is still one of the main framed objects in my home.

I was delighted when I read Merton’s view that the cave paintings, along with Russian icons, are the most profound of all humanity’s religious art. In 1991 I took part in a research project in a canyon on the edge of the Black Hills in Wyoming, devoted to locating, recording and safe-guarding Paleolithic rock art.

Some of that work has been dated to around 11,000 BP. It was like working in America’s own Lascaux. When I first learned of Paleolithic peoples, I immediately identified myself with them. I think I was around eight or so. “I’m one of them,” I said.

It was not, “I want to be like them” but “I am what they are.” I have always felt part of that “three-hundred-thousand-year lineage.”

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Swimme does an excellent job at making clear how no living things other than humans require, as part of their genetic makeup, a cultural orientation to enter into the mysteries of the universe. Every culture, always and everywhere-- except for our own-- has provided such initiation.

Over the years I came to see that this “initiation” is one of the tasks the universe has called me to do. It has been my vocation, in the most literal and cosmic sense, to help provide the cultural orientation to the mysteries of the universe which we need in order to be human.

It is a shamanic calling, and learning to see myself in that role has been no easy process.

But this calling to shamanic initiation was not my primary calling. That was to be a hermit. Not in a literal sense but in terms of meaning: to the individuation process. I am to be who/what I am to be “on behalf of all and for all.”

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In Lakota society, the ceremonial initiation of youths is called “making a bear.” Being a bear and making bears has been one of my strongest archetypal images for many years.

The question of course is how to go about “making a bear” in a society which has no understanding of such things. One way I did it was by being a science teacher.

But, as Swimme notes, nowhere in science education is the meaning of things treated significantly. In fact, in our society, as Swimme says, our institutions keep us from engaging in such processes. He makes a good case for the fact that the initiation role has been abdicated and turned over to advertisers.

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The whole situation with regard to advertising is a true horror story of the worst type. It is literally terrifying, and very difficult to see how the culture allows itself to be so drugged/bewitched, and at the same time be so frightened by external terror of the Islamics.

Advertising provides a background to our lives which is so pervasive we don’t even think about it. Swimme notes that children by age five are exposed to many tens of thousands of TV commercials. And the main point of those commercials is to make us dissatisfied with our lives. Advertisers are not concerned with the well-being of our children. Their focus is to make us unhappy with what we have.

And this, says Swimme, is the dominant faith in our world today: we exist “to work, to earn money, to buy stuff.”

He also notes that unhappiness with what we have is what leads to aggressive violence to obtain what we want or need. The faith image of the ideal human in this world-wide religion of consumerism is a relaxed and carefree person, sitting around a swimming pool drinking diet-Pepsi-- unencumbered with any sense of the meaning of our existence.

As Swimme notes, none of this is news to teachers. He says that the New Universe Story is a first step out of the religion of consumerism.

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I started teaching in 1959 and during the more than forty years I worked at it, I found that students became not more but less and less open to the story of the origins of the universe and our place in it.

Swimme helps me understand why. He notes that Copernicus in 1543 breaks with a 2-million-year-old tradition of human knowing. Against all the visible evidence, the sun, not the earth, is the center of our world.

As I said above, Swimme does an excellent job at making clear how no living things other than humans require, as part of their genetic makeup, cultural orientation to enter into the mysteries of the universe; and that every culture, always and everywhere-- except for our own-- has provided such initiation.

Swimme notes that there is no science department in American higher education which has “change of perception” as a primary aim of the curriculum. Probably not any kind of department. (Maybe art departments?)

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I said above that learning to see myself in a shamanic role has been no easy process. To help initiate youths into a change of perception, given the all-pervasive power of commercial advertising faith, is to be marginalized nearly out of existence.

But it is precisely the shamanic role, as I eventually learned, to help change consciousness. And changed awareness, as Swimme notes clearly, comes not primarily via instruction or information but by experience.

He makes a very important point: that just as primates were a new way of being mammals, so when we appropriate the New Universe Story we enter into a new way of being human.

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Words are pathetically inadequate. We simply do not have the terms or the concepts. We have to learn to experience the universe-- to taste our place in it-- via art, ritual, education.

And this is in fact a VERY IMPORTANT POINT, that appropriating the New Universe Story is itself a significant and major cultural step and thus a stage of cosmic evolution.

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That emphasis on tasting and delighting in our participation in the cosmos is what makes the New Story not science but part of the wisdom tradition. It draws on science, but also on religion, art, philosophy, psychology. It needs creative artists, educators, thinkers.

Swimme notes that people within the consumer culture are likely to associate the Universe Story with drug use: drugs cut the pain of dissatisfaction and unhappiness of the consumer life-style.

He says he was often accused of being “on something.” (I had that experience only once that I’m aware of, although of course I’ll never know what was said when I wasn't around.)

In any case, the point is that we need new forms of initiation. We need shamanic bear-makers!

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Another major part of my forty years of active work dealt more explicitly with religion by way of teaching theology at the college level.

I also worked at promoting the experience of authentic religious ritual at every level from church liturgy to home life, small group rites and personal ceremonies. I seemed to have some kind of inborn knack for promoting ritual. That’s a story in itself, one I don’t want to go into here.

In both my science and religious work the main effort was the same: to insert into whatever was under discussion the changed perception which results from awareness of the cosmic context of our lives.

Talk about marginality! Sigh.

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An aspect of the wisdom tradition within Christianity, highly consonant with the dynamic evolutionary worldview, is that of the divine kenosis, the ultimate abyss of mystery emptying itself out to bring us and the world into existence and fullness of life.

Without mentioning the term kenosis, Swimme offers a wonderful example of it in his chapter on the sun as the center of our world.

Each second, he says, the sun transforms four million tons of itself into light. A fraction of this energy is transmitted to us, and we become it. (Or it becomes us; we and that light energy from the sun are one and the same thing.) The sun dies as sun and is reborn as life on the Earth.

Swimme calls this is “a new image for understanding the cosmological meaning of sacrifice,” and emphasizes that this same ("kenotic") activity is transmitted to us.

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As he says, those among us who give of ourselves for others tend to be recognized as being true to our human nature. To live our lives in communion with all, “on behalf of all and for all,” is what we are all about.

Louise de Montfort, in his unique writings on holy wisdom in the 18th century, the Russian Sophiologists of the 19th and 20th centuries, and contemporary astrophysics all tell us the same thing: generosity is the way of the universe.

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Swimme makes the point well that the necessary re-education takes courage, imagination and energy. He observes that it is depressing to realize how efficient we have been in sealing ourselves away from the universe.

But primal peoples and native cultures knew how to be at home, at peace, with the cosmos. We’ve forgotten how, and forgotten even that we’ve forgotten!

So, it is important that we go out at night and look at the Milky Way and see ourselves IN it. The 70-million-year-old primate orientation is to look up at the sky; we need to try seeing ourselves hanging from the bottom of the earth and looking down into space.

He notes that many of us can talk endlessly about matters of no significance, that we are immersed in soul-shriveling trivialities, and that we allow the CEOs of Nintendo and other videogames to dump their relentlessly repulsive violence into our children’s lives.

But we need for our children, instead, an Ecozoic education, so they will know themselves not just as political or economic entities but as cosmic events.

We can show our children how to look toward the center of the galaxy (in Sagittarius) and know that it was 30,000 years ago that the light from there left to enter our eyes today.

We need to remember the Paleo-Indians and wooly mammoths who lived then.

We can teach the kids to look at the Andromeda galaxy (ordinary binoculars will show its spiral shape) and to remember what was going on on earth when its light left to come to us 2.5 million years ago-- when humans were just beginning to discover tools.

Humanity’s journey in time is as immense as the galaxies are distant in space!

Then there is the Local Group of galaxies revolving around the center of the Virgo Cluster, and the Virgo Supercluster is only one of 10 million superclusters. In the vast universe the Virgo Supercluster is like a white dot, one petal from millions of apple blossoms stirred up by the wind.

What an experience for our children to be part of!

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Swimme also notes that it is in night-time that the news of the universe can more deeply be felt-- as the ancient shamans and story tellers knew.

One bit of news whispered by the universe to Albert Einstein is that the old idea, that the universe was simply a box, is wrong. Instead, the universe is expanding in all directions. And the farther apart galaxies are, the faster they are moving apart from each other.

This means that the universe had a starting point: that space and time, matter and energy, all erupted together. And this has been empirically verified when the predicted background radiation (21 cm band) was observed for the first time in the 1960s.

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Not only does the universe have a starting point. Every thing, every place, is the universe's center. We live in an omni-centric evolutionary cosmos.

Perhaps most startling is the new science concept of the quantum vacuum. Out of the absolute emptiness of the universe’s ground state comes particles (such as electrons and positrons) which erupt in pairs and quickly annihilate one another in what scientists call the “space-time foam.”

The main idea is that what’s most really real is not atoms or matter or energy but something else, an abyss of creative generosity.

Swimme calls it the All-Nourishing Abyss. Maybe “overflowing source” would also be a helpful term.

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In a good comparison, Swimme notes that because of our need to be in touch with the real, the most basically real, ancient people originally honored their king as God, or as a son of God or a divine representative. That was how they linked themselves with what was really real.

I note that this is similar to the way RCs and others have tended to link themselves to God, by treating priests with that same kind of divine reverence, and which in our day has led to so much trouble for children.

The point is that from the wisdom perspectives of modern science it is the universe itself which links us to the non-visible and non-visualize-able power which Swimme calls the All-Nourishing Abyss.

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Cosmology is the story of the origin, development and destiny of the universe, told to help us find our place in it. As humans at the heart of the cosmos we are all embedded in a living, developing universe, and so we are cousins to everything.

It is the task of education (of cultural orientation, of "bear-making"-- i.e., of initiation) to teach us how to enter into and inhabit the universe as a communion event.

Initiation is needed to help us by direct experience-- through our knowledge of time-space (from scientific cosmology) and of matter-energy (from the vacuum quantum)-- to experience that we are situated in the very place and rooted in the very power that is source of all.

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Swimme ends with some abstract words, to the effect that being part of the omni-centric evolutionary universe “is to experience the joy of radical relational mutuality.”

It’s that word ‘joy’ that I want to end with. Ultimately, that’s what this is all about: to enjoy, to delight in, to “taste” to the full the depths of our own reality.

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I’ve been having a great time with this material. Seeing myself as called to help tell the New Story, to change conscious awareness of our place in the vast scheme of things, to be a shamanic bear-maker, to put science/religion/ritual in a cosmic evolutionary context, to see that it is indeed a (new) wisdom tradition, that my place was early phase of it, that I really seem to have been born into it, and with a certain shamanic knack for ritual observance of it.... Great fun.

Thanks, K. -Sam

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#45. Midnight Wisdom: Sophia as Provider

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This post is the last of four dealing with the four main groups of images of Wisdom/Sophia found in the Hebrew Bible's wisdom literature.

I find these images tremendously helpful for a renewed understanding of the western religious tradition in the context of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution. They seem especially appropriate for the major transitional period humanity is experiencing in our movement beyond the limitations of a static cosmology and the patriarchal attitudes of religious dualism.

As in the previous three posts, my efforts here are to relate this fourth group of wisdom images to the other four-fold perspectives about which I've shared my thoughts in earlier posts. This includes the Jungian consciousness functions, the imagery connected with the four directions found in pre-civilization traditions such as the Native American Medicine Wheel, the four traditional ways of being religious, Karl Rahner's existential aspects of human experience, and the Immense Transition itself.

I've called this post "Sophia as Provider" because this fourth group of images sees Sophia as the source of food, shelter and protection for the Earth's children. Alternative names might be "Sophia as Protector" or "Sophia as Caretaker." It's an image of Divine Wisdom taking care of us, Sophia providing for our life and existence.

I've also called it "Midnight Wisdom" because it relates to the North on the Medicine Wheel. "North" especially evokes the darkness of night and the cold of winter, threatening times when alert attention to potential danger is needed and there is little leeway for carelessness or error. If an emergency arises in the middle of the night or in the dead of winter, delay in immediate action can easily result in major injury or death.

The primal element associated with North is earth; in some traditions it's said to be metal. The basic idea is the rock-hard solidity of stone or a chunk of iron, which is in strong contrast to the fluidity of water (the element associated with the West) and the fleetingness of wind, air and breath (East's element).

The solidity of rock and metal represents the harsher aspects of reality, what's sometimes called the world's "obduracy." So "earth", as the North's element, is an especially good expression of our need to attend to the material aspects of our lives, particularly to the needs of our bodies and to the safety and survival of those too young, too old or too ill to take care of themselves.

The main idea is that life is fragile and we need to give our attention to the details of the rock-hard realities of our physical existence.

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On the Medicine Wheel, the animal associated with North is the White Buffalo. For the Plains Indians, the buffalo was not only the main source of food but also of many other things needed for survival. The buffalo provided its skin for covering tepees, its fur for clothing, and its bones to make necessary tools such as scrapers, needles and knives; even the bull buffalo's scrotum was used to make rattles for religious ceremonies. The buffalo quite literally gives itself for the life of the people.

And as in the archaic hunting cultures, where hunting was considered a religious activity, the buffalo was understood to give itself willingly. It's not all that different from the understanding of creation by divine kenosis-- which I described in posts #33 (Talking About God) and #34 (Talking About Us)-- at the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The buffalo is indeed sacred. Even today when an occasional white buffalo is born Native Americans hold it in high honor as an image of this divine self-giving.

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It's important to keep in mind that, although the imagery is very different, contemporary scientists working in fields such as Systems Theory, Chaos Theory and Unified Field Theory are also saying something very much along these same lines. They see the world and ourselves in it as manifestations of an underlying order of reality for which they use terms like the "Cosmic Fullness," "Implicate Order" and "Quantum Sea." An Asian version of this same idea is the traditional Chinese description of the Tao as "the no-thing from which comes every thing."

As I mentioned in several previous posts, the Russian Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov expresses a similar understanding when he describes the world and human persons as "actualizations of the divine potentialities." Jungian analyst Michael Conforti, a contemporary pioneer in matter-mind studies in the realm of psychotherapy, uses a more traditional religious term; he says "the patterns of reality are continually being incarnate in space and time." Karl Rahner says something similar, too-- that we experience ourselves as the "embodiment" of the "incomprehensible source." Perhaps the best name for this self-giving on the part of the Mystery behind the universe is cosmologist Brian Swimme's phrase, "the all-nourishing abyss."

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

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In the fourth group of the Bible's wisdom images, Wisdom/Sophia is pictured in way that sounds very similar to the White Buffalo's self-giving. The Hebrew writers don't use an animal image, since the Hebrews were farmers, not hunters. In the wisdom literature, Sophia is pictured as a tree, plant or vine-- a source of food and shelter for humanity.

Here are some comments from Hal Taussig's book, Wisdom's Feast, Sophia in Study and Celebration, which I've referred to in each of these four posts dealing with images of Sophia. This group of images is especially relevant to these midnight and caretaker aspects of Divine Wisdom.

Taussig notes that in many of humanity's cultures "a tree comes eventually to symbolize almost every major mythical figure," and he suggests that this may be the reason the "Hebrew scriptures include a number of different images of Sophia as a tree or plant." Some well-known examples are Buddha under the Bo tree, Jesus on the tree of the cross, Thor hanging on the World-Tree.

Taussig says that the "most striking of these" wisdom images is in Ecclesiasticus 24. Here, Sophia herself is speaking: "I have taken root in a privileged people, in the Lord's property, in his inheritance," she says.

And this is followed with a series of wonderful images: "I have grown tall as a cedar on Lebanon, as a cypress on Mount Hermon; I have grown tall as a palm in Engedi, as the rose bushes of Jericho; as a fine olive in the plain, as a plane tree I have grown tall. I have exhaled perfume like cinnamon and acacia, I have breathed out a scent like choice myrrh, like galbanum, onzcha and stacte, like the smoke of incense in the tabernacle."

Sophia compares herself to a glorious oak tree: "I have spread my branches like a terebinth, and my branches are glorious and graceful." And also to a delicate vine: "I am like a vine putting out graceful shoots, my blossoms bear the fruit of glory and wealth."

Sophia gives of herself no less than the sacred buffalo of the Plains Indians: "Approach me, you who desire me, and take your fill of my fruits."

Taussig notes that this is likewise the case in Ecclesiasticus 1, where Sophia is described as a tree providing out of her own abundance: "She intoxicates them with her fruits; she fills their whole house with their heart's desire, and their storerooms with her produce."

Sophia also provides shelter along with her fruits; in Ecclesiasticus 14 she becomes a sheltering presence. Taussig notes that here the writer "mixes metaphors to describe Sophia's sheltering presence" as both a tree and a house. In this text, the writer is speaking of "one who meditates on Sophia."

"He peeps in at her windows, and listens at her doors; he lodges close to her house and fixes his peg in her walls... he sets his children in her shade, and camps beneath her branches, he is sheltered by her from the heat, and in her glory he makes his home."

In all of these images, Sophia gives of herself for the life of the people. She provides the food, shelter and protection especially needed in the dark of night and the cold of winter which are associated with North on the Medicine Wheel.

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It makes good sense that the Jungian consciousness-function associated with the darkness and cold of north on the Medicine Wheel is Sensation. With its attention to details, our Sensation function fits right in with the idea of care-taker and provider.

Sensation is a perception function (as is Intuition, which is associated with the west), and both Intuition and Sensation differ from the two judgment functions (Feeling and Thinking) because, rather than making a judgment about whatever environment we find ourselves in, the perception functions simply look at what's there. The difference is that while Intuition sees the forest, Sensation pays attention to the individual trees; it sees the details.

So the White Buffalo/Sensation function is in great contrast to our Black Bear/Intuition function. While Intuition is concerned with possibilities and potentialities, with the "what might be" of the future, Sensation is concerned with the immediate details of life in the here-and-now.

The mind's Sensation function is apparently based on the activity of the brain's Frontal lobe which allows us to focus our attention on particulars and is concerned with how we make use of things. It's a part of our evolutionary heritage from the ancient past when, as the Biogenetic Structuralists like to say, the main concern of our animal ancestors was to "get food without becoming food." People with a strong Sensation function focus more easily than the rest of us on the details of everyday life. We couldn't survive without them.

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Medical people, nurses and doctors, for example, are often better than the rest of us at being able to handle the immediate details of life and death situations. So are many others who give of themselves for the safety and protection of the rest of us-- firefighters, police, crossing-guards, construction workers, those who care for patients who have highly contagious diseases-- any who have dangerous jobs and are especially good in emergencies.

Care-takers devoted to the more routine service to others are also examples of this White Buffalo ability. Those who run drug rehabs, day-care shelters and food banks, those who provide for the homeless on cold winter nights, those who maintain houses of hospitality and soup kitchens, those who keep our homes and streets clean, those who see better than the rest of us the details of climate change and help us see what we can do about it-- all are examples of our White Buffalo/Sensation function. And as I said, we couldn't survive without them.

The need for this White Buffalo quality in political leaders has recently emerged as a result of the media's references to "the 3 AM phone call." But it's just as much needed by any mother or father when responding to a child's cry in the middle of the night.

These are all examples of our White Buffalo/Sensation function in action, providing the care and protection needed, not only for our safety and survival, but for life in its fullness. They are all expressions of our providing for the shelter and protection for others just as Sophia does.

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It's not surprising that the focus of the Sensation function and the Medicine Wheel's North finds expression in one of the traditional ways of being religious, the way of service. In scholarly circles, it's referred to as "the way of cosmic harmony."

Here, social action is seen as our contribution to keeping the world in balance; service to those in need is a way of being in harmony with the cosmic flow. We take care of one another simply because that's the way the world works; it's "the right thing to do." We provide for one another, as Divine Wisdom provides for us.

This White Buffalo way of being religious contrasts greatly with devotion to the Holy Presence, the way favored by the Green Mouse/Feeling function. In the Sensation function's "way of cosmic harmony," the Holy Presence is understood to be present wherever anyone is in need.

Many of us will remember the traditional works of mercy-- feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, visiting the sick, burying the dead. Martin Luther expressed this perspective well when he said, "Ever, ever goes the Christ in stranger's garb." Mother Theresa describes a leper dying in the streets as "Jesus in a distressing form." The Dali Lama says he can describe his religion in one word, "Compassion."

The native Maori people of New Zealand have an especially simple and powerful image that captures well this way of service and cosmic harmony. They see each individual who is born into the world as something like a fragile fern frond, to be taken care of until it grows up enough so that it can take care of other fragile fern fronds. The image of fern frond is found everywhere in New Zealand. It's even used as a logo for their "All Blacks" Rugby team and the "Black Caps" Cricket team.

What this way of being religious comes down to is offering a helping hand wherever it's needed. And as a "way of cosmic harmony" it fits right in, not only with these older insights of the world's religious traditions, but also with the vision of the New Cosmology we have from modern science.

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In the perspectives of the New Cosmology the idea of service to those in need is simply extended to include our taking care of the Earth itself. The focus is still in terms of survival and protection, but now the care is extended to include endangered species of wildlife and the details of the dynamic environment. In the New Cosmology our sense of the Holy Presence is extended to everything.

It's easy to see that this inclusivity is a major aspect of the Sensation function's focus on details.

In posts #39 (on Hebrew Thought) and #40 (on Sophia/Wisdom), I mentioned the French philosopher and author of A Study of Hebrew Thought, Claude Tresmontant, teacher of medieval philosophy and the philosophy of science at the Sorbonne. Tresmontant observed that from a dynamic-evolutionary perspective, war and violence are distortions of the cosmic process. We can see better now, thanks to the New Cosmology, that patriarchy is too. I have in mind specifically those attitudes of the patriarchal mind which result in the exploitation of the Earth's resources or the exclusion of people from full participation in life because of their age, gender, educational level or ethnic background.

In the New Cosmology, we see that it's a distortion of the cosmic process to exclude anyone. In our care of the Earth and its peoples, nothing is to be overlooked, no one is to be left out.

And this is not just the concern of Peace Prize recipients such as Mother Theresa, Al Gore and Africa's Wangari Maathai. In the Immense Transition, we are coming to see that care for ourselves and for "all our relations" is one of the main practical ideas in the new view of ourselves and world that's offered us by modern science. Just as we are coming to see, too, in this time of Great Turning, that humanity's cultural history is a continuation of the embodiment-- the actualization, incarnation, manifestation-- of the cosmic fullness, the incomprehensible source and all-nourishing abyss we know as Divine Wisdom.

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This understanding of ourselves as manifestation of the Mystery behind the universe is expressed especially well in Karl Rahner's existential analysis of our experience of being "a person in the world." He says that we not only experience ourselves at the deepest level as aware, open and free, but also that we experience ourselves as "blessed" or "graced."

The blessing we experience is nothing less than the fact that we belong to the universe. We know ourselves as blessed to be part of it all, graced to be not only participants in the cosmic process but also called to personally contribute to it.

In my experience, many who are interested in the New Cosmology find it surprising that the western religious tradition has a word for our participation in and contribution to the cosmic process. They find it even more surprising to know that the word is "liturgy."

Originally, "liturgy" just meant something like "public work." In the early days of the Roman Empire, when wealthy people donated funds for public works-- for what today we would call "civic improvements" which are of benefit to all-- that work was referred to as "liturgy." Basically, the word means work done "by the people and for the people."

Christians in the Roman Empire used the word "liturgy" to express their understanding of being called to act for the benefit of the whole human community. In theological texts liturgy is still defined as "the work of the people." And even today, in the liturgical services of the Eastern Christian churches, it's said explicitly that the service is being offered "on behalf of all and for all."

It's easy to miss that we still use the word "service" to refer to a religious ceremony. And it's fascinating to see that the term "liturgy" has become more widespread as a synonym for what used to be called "divine service." Jews have long referred to the "liturgy of the synagogue" and even Buddhists nowadays sometimes refer to their gatherings for meditation as their "zen liturgy."

But the connection between the existential experience of being graced or blessed and the subsequent sense of service to the world is found even in one of the oldest known religious "services," the sweat lodge ceremony of Native Americans. 

Sweat lodge rites go back many thousands of years, perhaps to the time of the Paleolithic hunting cultures. And even today the sweat lodge structure is covered (at least ideally) with buffalo skins. But even if it's covered with plastic tarps, the participants still proclaim, as they crawl naked through the small door that leads into it, that what they are doing is for the benefit of all. Each one says, "All my relations!"

I've never heard the sweat lodge ceremony referred to as a "liturgy," but Native Americans are as explicit as are Eastern Christians in their understanding that what they are doing in the sweat lodge is service on behalf of the world: "We do this so that all the peoples might live." And by "peoples" they mean the winged nations, the finned nations and the four-legged, as well as we two-legged peoples. It's not surprising that this ancient hunting culture ritual has become an important ceremony to many in the context of the New Cosmology.

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From Paleolithic hunting cultures to theoretical physics and modern existentialist analysis of human experience, the same fundamental vision emerges. Although in very different words and expressions, they all seem to be saying something much like the perspective that's at the root of the western culture's religious tradition: Divine Wisdom gathers us, guides us and provides for us, and calls us to contribute our service on behalf of all and for all.

In Taussig's words: "Sophia calls out to us to participate in the world in which we live."

And once again the question is, in Karl Rahner's words: "Are we are willing to make the effort to be sensitive and responsive?"

sam@macspeno.com

#34. Talking About Us

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

sam@macspeno.com