#88. Understanding Sacred Manhood

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 

http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

I've been writing this blog about the New Cosmology for more than four years. My intent from the start has been to be a teacher, offering simple and clear ideas about the many details involved in understanding the contemporary convergence of science and religion.

At this point I've written close to 90 mini-essays. If I haven't been able to say what I want to say by now, I probably won't ever be able to. 

Recently, it occurred to me that it might be helpful to offer an overview of all the various topics I think are needed for an accurate understanding of the contemporary science-religion perspective and its new cosmology.

When I began to think about it, however, I realized that there are two big topics I would want to include in the overview which I've not written about in separate posts. One of them has been mentioned frequently (symbols, rituals and sacred signs), although I've never presented what I consider an adequate post along those lines. I've shied away from it because, while I have some practical skill at helping people take part in rituals, I feel much less adequate when it comes to a conceptual discussion of those practical aspects.

The other topic I never got around to writing about is an evolutionary understanding of sacred manhood: the "masculine" seen in the light of the New Cosmology.

This topic may be even more difficult to write about than sacred ritual. As with signs and symbols, it deals with perspectives so radically different from the conventional views taken for granted in our culture that we don't yet have the language for it. But I'm going to give it a try; this post and the next will be about understanding and recovering sacred manhood.

===

As elementary as it seems, I need to start by saying what I mean by "manhood." It includes not just genes and genitals but "maleness" and the "masculine" in the very broadest sense-- physical, anatomical, psychological and cultural.

"But what," you may already be asking, "has that to do with either religion or science?" My answer? "Everything." As I see it, it's precisely because an understanding of sacred manhood is so different from the conventional perspective on maleness and the masculine that it can provide us with the very context we need for making sense of the convergence of science and religion. So please be patient. Thanks!

===

The difficulties involved in talking about a contemporary understanding of manhood are quite similar to the difficulties involved in talking about a contemporary understanding of God. For many centuries, Western culture has used the word "God" to refer to an external-only divinity, and there is no easy way to express in everyday words what's meant by an inner experience of what Thomas Berry calls the "numinous source of all things."

We obviously need a better way to talk about the “Ultimate" or the "Great and Holy Mystery" than the language which patriarchal culture allows us. The problem, of course, is that Western culture remains to a great extent stuck in its patriarchal assumptions about the meaning of "God."

It's also stuck in its assumptions about manhood. Just as there are alternative and richer ways to understand divinity than as a reality which is only external to us, so there are also alternative-- and indeed richer!-- ways to understand the significance of human maleness.

In both cases, recovering these alternatives is a major part of the New Cosmology. So this post is about understanding just what "sacred manhood" means, and the next post will be about ways in which sacred manhood is being recovered in our day.

===

Thomas Berry does a wonderful job in describing the roots of religion in humanity's genetic coding; he makes clear that, thanks to natural selection, our experience of the numinous in nature-- our sense of the Ultimate-- is in our genes. As he explains it, our Paleolithic ancestors were unable to survive in the face of an overwhelming cosmos without a sense of alliance with the Ultimate Mystery behind the cosmos.

The same is true with regard to sacred manhood. But just as our earliest ancestors' experience of the sacred in the natural world was eventually lost in Western culture, so too our early ancestors' experience of the sacred character of human manhood was lost.

Historically, that double loss-- of the divine-within as well as of manhood's sacred quality-- resulted in the attitudes and perspectives we know today as "patriarchy."

===

We tend to think of patriarchy primarily in terms of male domination of women; the second-class status of women continues to be a major aspect of Western culture in our day. But the loss of sacred manhood along with the loss of an awareness of the divine within us has also brought about two other significant and related features of the Western world. I've mentioned them often in these posts: religious dualism and reductionist science.

Reductionist science sees the world only in terms of matter and logic, from the "bottom rung of the Great Ladder." It's about 500 years old. 

And religious dualism, which is about ten times older, is characterized by its disdain for matter, its hatred of the body, and its fear of the feminine. These are the primary aspects of the Western world's patriarchal culture.

My point here is that patriarchy is a distortion of human maleness. And that we are as much in need of a recovery of primal (sacred) manhood as we are in need of recovery of primal (Cenozoic) religion.

The patriarchal expression of maleness has been a historical reality for only the last 2% of human history. On a walk from one goal line of a football field to the other, 2% is the last six feet of that hundred yard walk. Sacred manhood was the norm for 98% of human history-- 98 yards of our walk down the length of a football field.

Historically, then, this link between Cenozoic religion and primal manhood is fairly clear. When we recognize it, we can see that, for a renewal of contemporary religion and spirituality, our cultural understanding of sacred manhood has a central place.

===

The link between patriarchy and religious dualism is no less clear. 

Patriarchy may be somewhat more political, and religious dualism more psychological, but they come from the same need for control-- of the material environment and of other human beings-- generated by the patriarchal male's disdain for matter, fear of the feminine and hatred of the body.

From the unitive perspectives of the New Cosmology, it's especially clear that patriarchal dualism is the very opposite of the unitive worldview; it is the opposite of that cosmo-the-andric unity I've mentioned so many times in these posts. Whether we think of it in terms of scientific reductionism or of religious dualism, the distorted form of manhood we call "patriarchy" separates us from the rest of the natural world and from the world's numinous source.

===

Probably the most difficult idea to deal with here is the question of the origin of patriarchal manhood. Where does that male fear and disdain of matter, body and feminine come from originally?

This is an especially difficult problem because of our cultural assumption that the patriarchal form of manhood is, and always has been, the only natural one. Bringing long-submerged ideas into consciousness is never easy; and because we are, as Thomas Berry says, "doubly estranged," the very idea of a possible alternative to patriarchal manhood is only very slowly becoming part of our new cultural perspectives.

Over the years, I've found one relatively easy way to understand it. In terms of a historical perspective, we can think of patriarchy-- including both religious dualism and scientific reductionism-- as a reaction to the loss of primal (natural, sacred) manhood.

---

What exactly was it that got lost? What was especially sacred about maleness for the first several million years of human history? That's the main question in this post.

I need to put in a good word first about the term "patriarchy." At least since the 20th century, "patriarchy" has primarily been a label for the suppression of women's rights; but originally it didn't refer to a social evil. The Hebrew patriarchs, for example, were honored as men who were responsible for the welfare of their people-- much the way, even today, we honor George Washington with the title "father of our country."

"Patriarchy" in this original sense meant being responsible for others, providing especially for those less able to take care of themselves, such as women with children, the sick and the old. This was the very essence of the male role in the human community from the time of our earliest ancestors. For two million years, it meant that to be male was to be a hunter.

We know from the sciences of anthropology and archeology that the Hunting Culture persisted for 98% of our history. The final 2% of humanity's cultural development saw the discovery of agriculture in the Neolithic period about 10,000 years ago and the invention of writing, social organization and cities about 5,000 years ago. What we call "civilization" is only the final one yard of our walk down the football field.

It's difficult for us today to understand that, prior to the Neolithic and Civilization periods, hunting was a religious activity. For all those several million years, obtaining food for the life of their people was the very essence of sacred manhood.

For countless centuries, natural selection shaped males-- physically and psychologically-- for that task of being a hunter. But when the Neolithic-agricultural period of human history began, males gradually lost their several-million-year-old sacred role in human life.

What we call "patriarchy" today can be seen as a reaction to that loss. 

When we look at human manhood in light of these stages of humanity's cultural development, we see that in the modern, negative sense, patriarchy-- with its religious dualism, male superiority and suppression of women--goes back at least five thousand years. No wonder the people of Western culture-- women, no less than men-- take patriarchy for granted!

A way to summarize this historical perspective is to say that patriarchy is a backlash, a negative response to the loss of sacred manhood during the Neolithic period of the Great Mother Goddess. Patriarchy was an misguided attempt to restore meaning and significance to manhood by negating the "evils" of matter, body and women.

What constitutes the essence of sacred manhood, then, is the very opposite of that rejection of matter, body and feminine. It means to give oneself, as a hunter, for the life of the people.

As I've said, it's not easy to appreciate that hunting was once a spiritual activity, the religious work of our male ancestors. But we can more easily understand today that hunting was how human males participated in the cosmic process, that it was a sacred task carried out "on behalf of all and for all."

My main point is that while the Paleolithic hunting culture is long gone, the male need for significance, for participation in life by meaningful action, is not.

What constitutes the sacredness of manhood is precisely that spiritual meaning and significance of giving oneself "for the life of the people." 

And, as Thomas Berry says in his essay on reinterpretation that I described in the previous post, redemptive sacrifice is a primary characteristic of the cosmic emergence process. It's how evolution works.

===

I'm aware that I've presented a very big picture and that understanding it takes a lot of effort, so I considered ending this post right here.

But besides this historical perspective, I have one other way of understanding sacred manhood that I think is helpful, so I've decided to include it in this post rather than trying to incorporate into a later one. 

You might like to take a break before continuing to read on. I'll leave some space, to mark the place, when you come back to it.

*** space ***

As you may have guessed, my second way of understanding sacred manhood make use of the "tools" of the four-fold perspective which I have referred to in many previous posts. This too takes effort; it can get complicated and once again I ask for your patience!

Long-time readers will remember that the essential insight of the four-fold perspective is that we can be conscious in four different ways. And, as with so many other important understandings in this time of great transition, we don't yet have a commonly accepted language to talk about these four ways our minds work.

I've described a number of different versions of the four-fold perspective in previous posts. They include images from the Native American Medicine Wheel and from the Hebrew Bible's Wisdom literature, as well as the language used by teachers and thinkers as diverse as C. G. Jung, Ken Wilber, Michael Dowd and Karl Rahner.

As I noted in post #82 (Moving Up the Ladder), even the classical elements (earth, air, fire, water) make good tags for talking about how our minds work, as do the four directions (north, east, south, west), the four seasons (winter, spring, summer, fall), and the four times of day (midnight, dawn, noon, dusk). I think the simplest words to work with are body, mind, soul, spirit, however, especially when used in conjunction with the Jungian terms.

We are flooded with riches! We can easily get lost in all these treasures, so I want to make my main point as clearly and simply as I can with regard to the efforts needed for an understanding of sacred manhood: the patriarchal mind limits itself to two of these four ways of being conscious.

---

Using Jung's terms, it is the Sensing and Thinking functions which are considered masculine in the patriarchal perspective. That's body and mind in the older wording. We can see right away that restricting reality to only physical matter and logical thought is a perfect description of the limited perspectives of Western culture's reductionist science.

For Patriarchy, the Jungian Feeling function (soul, our awareness of connections) is considered feminine and therefore of no importance, while the Intuition function (spirit, the big picture of life's significance) isn't even acknowledged.

Nature imagery especially helps us to see what's missing from patriarchal manhood: fire and water, day and evening, the warmth of relatedness and the healing flow of meaning.

This imagery helps us to see why some of the essential religious perspectives of sacred manhood-- expressed, for example, in Native American prayers such as "All things are our relations" and "Great Mystery, we see you all around"-- simply make no sense to the severely limited dualistic view of the patriarchal masculine.

This lack of any sense of relatedness or significance explains why Western culture is only gradually coming to see the importance of human rights not just for some but for all, and to value environmental awareness. The two modes of human consciousness most needed in our present situation-- the Black Bear's big picture and the Green Mouse's sense of connectedness with all things-- are precisely what's missing from patriarchal manhood.

===

As I've said, understanding all this takes a lot of work! I hope these historical and psychological perspectives on humanity's cultural development and on four-fold consciousness are helpful in providing a positive understanding of sacred manhood and the importance of its recovery.

If I were presenting these thoughts in a college classroom it would take five or six sessions, since there would be so many comments and questions. There would be objections too, of course, since there's something here to upset almost everyone.

But objections and questions, about even the smallest details, are what help us clarify these basic ideas. I invite you to share yours.

sam@macspeno.com

=== +++ ===

Your feedback is welcome.

To send a comment: use either "Click here to send a comment" (below) or click on "Post a Comment" (at the bottom).

If you prefer, send your thoughts, suggestions and questions to my email address (above).

To email a link to this post to a friend, with your own message, click on the little envelope with an arrow (below).

If you would like to be notified when I publish a new post, let me know; I'll put you on the list.

+++

#84. Doubly Estranged

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 

http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

This post is being published on the fourth anniversary of my first blog entry.

I originally started the blog because I was annoyed at all the attention being given to the media-promoted opposition between religious fundamentalists and secular scientists in the autumn of 2006.

"Annoyed" doesn't really express it. "Aggravated" or "disturbed" would be more accurate descriptions of my reactions to the superficial accounts given in the media. With my life-long interest in religion and science-- and long-time experience as a teacher in both areas-- I knew there was a lot more to be said.

So I started the blog to share my thoughts with anyone interested in the convergence-- instead of the conflict-- between science and religion.

In terms of the technology involved, I hardly knew what I was doing. 

But I've learned a lot in four years. Well, a little about the technology. 

But a lot about the difficulties involved in trying to talk about the convergence of science and religion. In a culture where the superficial perspectives supplied by the media are all that most people have available to them, it often feels impossible.

We are "doubly estranged," says Thomas Berry. In an essay written around 1985 he noted that we've not only had a thousand years of religion telling us that the material world is evil but also five hundred years of science telling us that matter is all there is, anyway.

There's nothing but matter? And it's evil? No wonder we're so messed up!

And no wonder the idea of a blog devoted to the convergence of science and religion seemed so foolish! But I started with a fairly decent background in religion and science and a strong teaching instinct, and the past four years have turned out to be a great adventure.

Surely Thomas Berry is the most outstanding spokesperson for the convergence of science and religion in our time. The essay I mentioned above is part of a small collection of essays he wrote in the last quarter of the 20th century and which have recently been collected and edited by John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker under the title The Christian Future and the Fate of the Earth (Orbis, 2009).

Anne and I received a copy of the book from friends as a birthday present in late October (our birthdays are just two weeks apart). It's a great treasure. Most of the quotes by Berry in this post are from that collection.

===

The question at hand is: Are science and religion really converging?

I think they are. So do many others. While they obviously are different things--very different areas of human experience-- science and religion are both about the same thing.

But what that same thing is, is so fundamental to our existence that it's hard to express well. In fact, it's precisely our existence itself-- our real life in the real world-- that's what science and religion are both about. 

And it's our concern for life which explains why these two areas of human understanding and experience are converging at this time in history.

===

But-- and this is a big "but"-- we're talking about neither Western culture's dualistic religion of the last thousand years nor its mechanistic science of the last five hundred years.

The science we're talking about is that of the contemporary scientific perspective. It knows the world as billions of years old, and as developing from the primordial Big Bang and the evolution of stars and galaxies to the formation of the Earth, the emergence of life on it, and the appearance of human consciousness with its-- our!-- unique spiritual orientation.

And the religion that we're talking about is that basic religious instinct which is in found in our genes and which has been expressed in the traditions of our ancestors for many thousands of years.

It's contemporary science and primal religion that are converging.

===

I agree, if you're thinking to yourself, "Well, maybe." It is hard to believe. Even Thomas Berry said it's hard to believe. Here's what he had to say in one of his essays:

"Secularism, materialism and rationalism have prevailed for so long that we can hardly believe (Sam's italics) that the long course of scientific meditation on the universe has finally established the emergent universe itself as a spiritual as well as a physical process and the context for a new mode of religious understanding."

Note that he says "science has established."

By "scientific meditation" he means Western humanity's communal reflections on the understanding we have of the world based on the data obtained via our empirical (logical, cause-and-effect, scientific) thinking ability.

That "scientific meditation" also includes not just an understanding of the world but our understanding of ourselves as well. It's confusing because a major part of our self-understanding is the fact that we have some understanding of our self-understanding.

It sounds awkward, but that's precisely what "spiritual" means. As Berry says, the universe-- and humans as its conscious expression-- are "spiritual as well as a physical from the start."

And it's precisely this understanding of ourselves and the world together that provides us in our day with "a new mode of religious understanding."

Berry's point is that, thanks to the new scientific cosmology, we can now understand better than ever what religion is all about. I like to put it even more bluntly: in our day, religion only makes sense in terms of what we know about the world from science.

It's also important to keep in mind that by "science" I don't mean only the chemical, physical and biological sciences. I mean the human sciences as well: brain studies (neurology), mind studies (psychology) and studies of our cultural behavior (sociology). In our day, "science" means-- above all-- humanity's understanding of humanity.

It's important that we get this right, because it's only from this big perspective of ourselves and world together that we can see that religion and science really are converging-- and that, thanks to the new cosmology, religion really does make good sense.

Western society is growing up! As our culture matures, we recognize that there's more than just the bottom-rung viewpoint of the last several centuries. We're "moving up the ladder."

===

That bottom-rung viewpoint-- that only matter is real and only logical-sequential thinking is valid-- prevailed for so long that it's still hard to believe "that science has established the fact that the evolution of the universe is a spiritual as well as a physical process."

Berry stresses that it's simply no longer adequate to tell the story from a physical or material-only point of view. Because "the cosmic process is mental-psychic-spiritual ... from the start," we don't get an accurate picture if we see things only from the bottom rung of the Great Ladder.

As I tried to spell out in post #82, we need to take into account not just body but also soul, mind and spirit for an adequate view. And for that, we do have the tools now.

Those tools help us understand the fact that the universe is "a spiritual as well as a physical process." And while that may be a tough idea for many "anti-religion" people to take, the "anti-science" people also have something difficult to deal with: the fact that in our day we can only understand religion adequately in terms of the new scientific story.

Berry says it nicely: "Modern science gives us the story of who we are, how we came to be, and what our lives are all about."

And, as he notes, we don't have to take anybody's word for it! He points out that our story is being told to us by the universe itself: "by the stars and sky, by the mountains and rivers, by every wind that blows and every snowflake that falls, by every leaf in the forest."

===

I think the essence of this new story being told to us by the universe has two parts: that what we are comes from the fact that we are emergent from the cosmic process; and that when we know ourselves as emergent we experience our lives and existence as sacred.

For me, that's what "the convergence of science and religion" means. It's such a basic idea, but one that's very difficult to communicate in our culture of trivia.

In addressing a religious group, Berry put it this way: "For the first time we can tell the universe story, the Earth story, the human story, the religion story, the Christian story, and the church story as a single comprehensive narrative."

In brief, he says "Evolution is our sacred story." And it's now the context for "all education, healing and every human activity." It is "the basic foundation for the tasks before us."

Social issues such as gender and racial prejudice, environmental concerns such as global warming and the rise of the ocean levels-- even international conflicts, terrorism and our dysfunctional economy-- all have to be dealt with in terms of our sacred story.

===

So why do we have such a difficult time accepting our sacred story? Why is it so difficult for many in Western culture to see the contemporary convergence of science and religion?

As Berry says, "for a time" humans were alienated both from the natural world and from the spiritual world. "When we try to understand the universe and our place in it, we find ourselves doubly estranged." We have been alienated from the natural world by religion and from the spiritual world by science.

That's why "Doubly Estranged" is the title of this post. It's important that we realize that we were alienated from our very existence in the real world-- by both science and religion.

This is also why the Jung-Pauli book I wrote about in post #80 (Two Mavericks) is so important to me. In Deciphering the Cosmic Number, Arthur I. Miller spells out the problems involved and the breakthrough brought about by C. G. Jung and Wolfgang Pauli which allowed science to once again move up the Ladder-- to see the bigger picture of the human-divine-cosmic unity and our place in it.

When I began this blog four years ago, my hope was simply to express clearly the point that science and religion are converging. (Again, that's early religion and contemporary science!) Berry expresses it much better. He says we are "recovering reverence."

===

And it's essentially reverence for the natural world that we are recovering. Berry notes that "Religion rectifies not by domination but by invocation. Our difficulties are due primarily to distrust of the Earth and a mania to dominate it. We need to again appreciate and trust it."

And our trust in the Earth, as Berry says, "depends on our communion with it." It's been my experience that this idea of communion with the Earth is very difficult for many to understand. And that, of course, is precisely because we have been doubly alienated from it.

On the most practical level, trust is the basis for any sensible environmental-ecological action. We take care of the Earth only when we know ourselves as one with it and emergent from it. In environmental terms, the fate of the Earth depends on our awareness that we are non-dual with the universe, and indeed that we are the universe become conscious of itself.

The fate of the Earth depends on the convergence of science and religion.

===

I think the best way to express these thoughts about the convergence of science and religion is to see that the story of the universe, of Earth and life on it, is our personal story.

"The universe has a human dimension from the beginning," says Berry. We are so much a part of it, that the universe "as a whole is a larger dimension of our own being."

For this reason, says Berry, we need to listen to the voices of the Earth.

"We need to listen to the stars, the sun and moon, the mountains and plains, the forests and rivers and seas, the meadows and the flowering grasses, the songbirds and insects that sing in the evenings. We need to experience, to feel, to see this celebration of life. They are dimensions of the human soul, revelations of the divine being communicated to us, and inspiration for our spiritual life."

Berry's point is basic for each of us personally: "The inner world cannot be activated without these outer experiences of wonder for the mind, beauty for the imagination, and intimacy for the emotions."

"The stars at night, songs of birds at dawn, the smell of honeysuckle on a summer evening-- these are experiences of "that numinous reality whence the universe came into being and by which it is sustained in its immense journey." They let us see that the universe is a vast celebration-- which it is our role to enter into in our specifically human way-- and that this is the purpose of all existence.

Without these voices of the Earth, says Berry, "our souls shrivel."

===

Why would our souls shrivel? Again, the answer comes not from religion but from science.

It's because our souls-- our hearts and minds-- were formed during the Earth's Cenozoic period, the last 65 million years of the Earth's history, which Berry calls "the great lyric period in the Earth's development." 

The Cenozoic is "where we come from," he says, and it's to the Cenozoic that we owe "our specifically human-spiritual reality."

For me, this is where science and religion converge most clearly.

It's from science we know that the Cenozoic period was the great flowering era of the Earth. It's from science we know that we humans appeared during this the last big stage of our planet's development. And it's also from science we know that "our genes are integral with the Cenozoic," as Berry says. And "thus," he adds, "so is our soul life."

We have emerged out of it, we are "genetically coded" to it, and we are attuned to it in terms of our outer and inner realities. The Cenozoic is the very basis of our "soul life;" it is the sacred world of our origins.

One of the friends who gave Anne and me the copy of Berry's book for our birthdays said recently, "For science, this is discovery; but for religion, it's revelation."

===

It's like Amazing Grace. "We once were lost, but now we're found."

Western society once was lost; we were, indeed, "doubly estranged."

But now we're found; we are finding ourselves again as we come to realize the fundamental insight from the convergence of religion and science, that "Evolution is our sacred story."

sam@macspeno.com

===

P.S. I remember reading somewhere that when cosmologist Brian Swimme first met Thomas Berry he asked Berry what he could do to help promote the New Story. Berry answered, "Make it sing."

It looks like Brian has done just that with a soon-to-be-released beautiful documentary, Journey of the Universe.

It will be premiered at Yale in March, but a trailer is already available on a website which includes background information, a gallery of beautiful photos, and Mary Coelho's New Cosmology artwork. The URL is below. Click on "welcome" at the top. There's also a 6-minute overview a bit hard to find: first go to "Book and Ed Series," then to "Educational DVD Series," then down to "Click here for an overview clip of the project."

You might like to allow yourself 15-20 minutes to enjoy the whole site; it's a wonderful demonstration of the fact that we are no longer "doubly estranged."

http://www.journeyoftheuniverse.org/production-gallery/mary-coelhos-new-universe-story-artwork/

=== +++ ===

Your feedback is welcome.

To send a comment: use either "Click here to send a comment" (below) or click on "Post a Comment" (at the bottom).

If you prefer, send your thoughts, suggestions and questions to my email address (above).

To email a link to this post to a friend, with your own message, click on the little envelope with an arrow (below).

If you would like to be notified when I publish a new post, let me know; I'll put you on the list.

+++