#24. Ontogenesis: Phases One & Two

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Whether we call our consciousness "neuro-gnosis," "psyche," "mind," "soul" or "spirit," as individuals we have been "gathered," in Teilhard words, "from all time and the four corners of space into a wondrous knot" so that each of us is an utterly unique expression of the cosmic process and called to contribute to it nothing less than the mystery of ourselves.

Those are scientific concepts, although the language obviously isn't. I see them as good examples of the convergence of contemporary science and the deepest core of humanity's religious insights.

When we recognize that those concepts are descriptions of our place in the scheme of things, they are, in themselves, sufficiently powerful to move us out of the dreary perspectives of religious dualism and scientific rationalism which have haunted the western world for many centuries.

They provide a strong sense of meaning and purpose because they allow us to see our personal existence as part of the evolution of the physical universe. They also help us to realize that, as persons, we are no more static than is the rest of the cosmos. In the language of the neuro-sciences, the conscious ego is an actively fluctuating process, internally self-regulated and self-organized.

As I spelled out in entry #14 (Person as Process), "neuro-gnosis" (our conscious awareness) is the "informational content" of the media of nerve cells and networks of neural structures in which the informational content is "coded" and by way of which it gets modified via our life experience. That awareness, the brain's structuring of the cognized environment, depends on a number of things, including our genes, our developmental history, our present level of structural development and our external environment.

In everyday language, all those words simply mean that we grow and develop just as do the stars, planets and the living things of the Earth, and that the context in which we're growing makes a difference. And because we are in state of continuous dynamic transformation, everything we perceive from the external world is conditioned by our state of structural organization and thus expressed in us as a transformation of that cognized world.

But we don't grow and develop as isolated individuals. Our development takes place within that specifically social and communal context which the human sciences call "culture." That's the main idea in posts #22 (The Other Half of Person) and #23 (Ontogenetic Development). This present post and the next are about Biogenetic Structuralism's understanding of the three phases of our ontogenetic development within the cultural context.

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My emphasis on culture is a change in focus from the previous thoughts I've been sharing about the convergence of science and religion. It's a shift from neurological information about how the brain works to information from cultural anthropology about how we develop as conscious persons within the social-cultural context. It's an important transition in the perspectives I've been offering. Previously, those perspectives centered on how the human mind-brain got to be that way ("evolution" in the broadest cosmic sense); now the focus is on to the results of that emergence of conscious awareness (that is, on "culture" in the broadest cosmic sense).

My main point here is that our personal consciousness, which we can think of as "immaterial" or "mental" or "spiritual," is not only in continuity with the earlier levels of biological complexity, but also includes the development of the biological, behavioral, cognitive and emotional aspects of conscious awareness in a communal context. It's all the one same process.

In thinking about ourselves from this anthropological rather than neurological viewpoint, it's important to keep in mind that "culture" refers to whatever we do that's not controlled by our genes and instincts.

As I spelled out in the previous post, culture includes anything and everything that gets "passed on," for the sake of life's survival, from more experienced to younger and less experienced persons. It includes not only language and technology but all the learning, skills and information which need to be passed on precisely because they are not part of our instinctive or genetically-based behavior. And it's in this creative educational-cultural context that our "ontogenetic" development takes place.

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A problem in understanding culture as the context for our personal development is that the perspectives of cultural anthropology are unfamiliar to most of us. Our educational institutions and the media simply haven't caught up yet with this branch of scientific research. Cultural anthropology is probably the least familiar of all the contemporary sciences.

But it has much to contribute to a contemporary understanding of ourselves: it's nothing less than the scientific observation of how humans act in groups and the efforts of research scientists to understand our social-communal behavior. It's also the context in which the convergence of scientific and religious perspectives becomes especially clear.

As I've said, we're just not yet attuned to thinking in terms of culture, but it's what we need to do if we are to understand our place in the scheme of things. We need to see not only that the entire cosmic process takes place at three levels of increasing complexity (matter, life and mind) and that the development of human culture is in continuity with that process, but also and specifically that it's culture that is the context for our personal conscious development.

I've referred to this "long view" frequently. I spelled it out in posts #8 (Background to Biogenetic Structuralism) and #16 (Our Own Inner World), and I offered a quick review of it in the previous post (#23 Ontogenetic Development).

I'm emphasizing its importance because, while it's relatively easy to think of our individual selves as part of the cosmic process, it's not so easy to think in terms of our communal relationships within it. It's indeed challenging to see our ontogenetic development in terms of the one cosmic process which continues-- from the Big Bang fourteen billion years ago and the evolution of galaxies, stars and planets to the emergence of life on Earth, the development of the primate brain and the emergence of conscious awareness several million years ago-- to our group behavior at this very moment.

But that's the context in which our personal ontogenetic development takes place.

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Thanks to its origin in the field of cultural anthropology, Biogenetic Structuralism sees that the three phases of our ontogenetic-cultural development all have to do with the same ultimate question: "What is our place in scheme of things?"

In cultural anthropology, this understanding of "our place in the scheme of things" is called a culture's cosmology. It's described as a culturally-conditioned, cognized view of reality, where reality is seen as an organized whole which offers an account of all the significant elements and relationships that go to make up the universe. What those technical words come down to is that a culture's cosmology defines the place of the individual and the group within the universe.

The "group" can be small as a nuclear family or as large as all humanity of together, and it's in this largest, what might be called "planetary" sense, that the phrase "New Cosmology" is used in both contemporary scientific and religious thought. The New Cosmology is the essentially dynamic rather than static understanding we have today, thanks to modern science, of the place of the individual and the group within the universe. It includes cosmic, biological and human evolution.

Because science is cross-cultural, the New Cosmology is the birthright of all humanity. This is a new situation in our understanding of the world and for this reason the New Cosmology is often referred to as the "New Story" or the "New Story of the Universe." Of course it really is the new story of ourselves. And as Thomas Berry observed many years ago, it's a story we can all agree with.

In New Cosmologist Brian Swimme's words, "For the first time in human existence we have a cosmic story that is not tied to one cultural tradition.... but instead gathers every human group into its meanings."

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With regard to our ontogenetic development, cultural anthropologists have observed that most world cultures (although not that of the modern West) recognize that we humans have an internal drive to experience reality at all three levels or phases, and that (at least in all pre-industrial cultures) there is an impetus to guide members through those three stages of ontogenetic development. In the Biogenetic Structuralist framework, both the personal internal drive and the social impetus to guide members are understood themselves to be aspects of the cosmic evolutionary process.

The issue of guidance is a big topic, too big to talk about here; so to keep this posting from becoming too long, I will describe my understanding of the first two phases in this entry and save the third phase, where the issue of guidance makes most sense, for the next post.

Easy tags for the three stages (or levels or phases) of the development of consciousness are belief, experience and participation.

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"Belief" sounds like a religious term, but in the anthropological perspective it simply means whatever we accept on the word of others about our place in the scheme of things. It is vicarious knowledge rather than knowledge based on personal experience. Biogenetic Structuralism calls it "received gnosis" to emphasize that while it is our own conscious understanding, it has been given to us by others.

"Belief" doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what we usually think of as religion, although religious beliefs obviously would be included in this first phase of conscious development since they are the gnosis we have about the way things are because we have been told that that's the way things are.

The scientific study of the processes by which we are told that "this is the way things are" is a principal focus of cultural anthropology. The process is called "enculturation" and while it definitely includes catechism-like instruction, it also includes things like the stories, legends, dramas and rituals which are a normal part of every culture.

A good example of a means of enculturation in a non-western culture would be the puppet plays presented in a temple I visited when I was in Singapore. In our culture, Christmas pageants would have a similar role.

But this first phase of ontogenetic development includes all the beliefs a culture offers. In our contemporary situation that means, for example, all the taken-for-granted views about reality presented in TV shows and newspaper ads and on the Web. But it includes whatever we accept to be so, without personal experience of it: whatever we think is true because somebody else has said, or in some other way indicated, that it is.

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Despite all that, it's important to be aware that "belief" is not necessarily a bad thing. We couldn't survive the earliest years of childhood without it. And we continue to need and make use of "received gnosis" throughout our lives.

But because it has come to have a bad name, especially as the result of its exploitation by the advertising media and by political and religious authorities, I feel the need to stress that it's not necessarily something negative.

For example, many of the findings of science constitute beliefs for all of us. A trivial example is the existence of Halley's Comet. Most of us have heard of it and we may know that it returns to the Earth approximately every seventy-five years, but few of us have ever seen it. The existence of Halley's Comet is a belief rather than a personal experience for most of us. So is the existence of DNA or chlorophyll. We are dependent on phase one belief for much of our knowledge of the physical world.

Of course, religious beliefs also are examples of this "received gnosis." My point is that whenever we take someone else's word for something we are operating at this first stage of the ontogenetic development of our consciousness.

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According to the noted University of Pennsylvania neuro-scientist Andrew Newberg, this first stage of ontogenetic development is wired into the human brain. We can't do without it.

In previous posts I've mentioned that it was media reports of Newberg's work involving brain scans of meditating Buddhist monks and Catholic nuns which originally lead me to the discovery of the earlier generation of researchers (the Biogenetic Structuralists) with which his work is in continuity. Much of Newberg's research focuses on an understanding of the first phase of ontogenetic development in a religious context.

His most recent book is Born to Believe: God, Science, and the Origin of Ordinary and Extraordinary Beliefs (2007). It's the paperback edition, with a preface and for some reason a different title, of his 2006 book, Why We Believe What We Believe: Uncovering Our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality, and Truth. Obviously "belief" is a central interest for Newberg.

His earlier books have similar titles: Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (2002) and The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience (1999).

None of these books is light reading. They are challenging both in terms of their content and of their often less-than-easy-to-understand style. Essentially, they are attempts to respond to the question of what's going on in the brain during the various phases of ontogenetic development.

I've mentioned Newberg's books to emphasize the importance of belief not just in our everyday lives but especially to emphasize its importance for an understanding of the convergence of science and religion.

Because of the exploitation and abuse of this "received gnosis" by church, government and business leaders, we can easily have a negative attitude toward "belief" and overlook the fact that it is a significant phase of our ontogenetic development. As a foremost pioneering research scientist, Newberg helps us to see that belief is something we should not overlook. We need a clear understanding of it from both an anthropological and a neurological point of view.

The anthropological perspective is easier to understand than the neurological. I've offered the beginnings of an anthropological understanding of belief in this post. And sometime I'd like to offer simple and clear descriptions of the neurological understanding of things like what's going on in the brain when we accept something to be true on the word of others. I'm not ready to do that yet, but I hope I'll be able to, eventually.

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Meanwhile, I need to say something about the second phase of ontogenesis. Luckily, this one doesn't need a lot of explanation. We know from personal experience what we mean by "personal experience."

This second phase of ontogenetic development is no less fascinating in terms of what's happening in the brain during it, and nowadays frequent reports of studies along these lines appear in the media. It's impossible to keep up with it.

The main thing I want to point out here is that, in terms of the convergence of scientific findings and religious perspectives, the acquired perspectives and attitudes of phase one may, or may not, be confirmed via our personal experience in phase two. Personal experience may verify the information we previously accepted to be true on the word of others; but it also may contradict that received gnosis. The result is, of course, that we often find ourselves at odds with our upbringing and with commonly accepted social views and attitudes.

Obviously, dysfunctional families as well as dysfunctional religious institutions and dysfunctional administrative governments do a great deal of damage. Much healing is required in our society. People talk nowadays more freely than in the past, for example, about their struggles to recover from an alcoholic parent or to get rid of their "religious baggage." And we can hardly go anywhere nowadays without hearing talk about our need to recover from the phase one acceptance of military and environmental information given out by American political leaders.

My point is that because the healing process is so urgently needed for so many in our society and for society as a whole, we can forget that there's a third stage of personal development.

And it's precisely that third stage to which we have to turn if we are to see the real convergence of the contemporary scientific worldview and the deeper values of humanity's religious traditions. The third stage is where healing is found.

It is precisely the wholistic worldview of the New Cosmology which provides us with the wholeness-making process that's so urgently needed in our damaged culture.

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Biogenetic Structuralism understands the third level of consciousness beyond personal experience as nothing less than our personal participation in the cosmic process. It's this scientific understanding of the third phase which involves those things which in the two previous posts I called "in-between" ideas.

I called symbol, myth and ritual "in-between" ideas because they're not only perennial aspects of humanity's global religious practice but also objects of study in the sciences of cultural anthropology and neuro-physiology. They bridge the gap, as odd as it may sound, between science and religion.

But they are also "in-between" concepts in a second sense. Much like what the noted Canadian professor Charles Taylor called our "yearning for eternity" (in his recent Commonweal article which I quoted in the previous post), symbol, myth and ritual tend to be dismissed as belonging to an earlier and more immature stage of human development.

Note that, however, that dismissal itself is a belief. Along with individualism, it's a major belief of the western culture's materialist-rationalist cosmology.

But in terms of what I've called in post #22 "the other half of person" (i.e., the communal and relational parts of our human nature), these "in-between" concepts are essential aspects of our self-understanding. In the scientific perspectives of Biogenetic Structuralism, myths and symbolic rituals are understood to be nothing less than the tools by which we participate in the cosmic process.

As I've mentioned many times in these blog entries, I've been interested in both ritual and evolution all my life. So you can get some idea, I hope, of the delight I experienced when I first discovered, thanks to the work of Andrew Newberg, the scientific perspectives of Biogenetic Structuralism which embraces both and attempts to integrate them into its over-all understanding of our human place in the scheme of things.

I don't have the skill to convey those feelings well, but from my forty years as a teacher I've got some ability to spell out the concepts involved. Which is why, of course, I started this blog for "sharing thoughts about the convergence of science and religion." I've had to do a lot of clearing and plowing the ground before I could share these thoughts about ritual and symbol with readers, so I'm glad to finally get the point where I can do that.

sam@macspeno.com

#23. Ontogenetic Development

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I called my previous post (#22) "The Other Half of Person" to stress the point that there's more to the mystery of our selves than our individual consciousness.

The focus of many of my earlier postings has been the evolutionary and neurological perspectives of contemporary science which allow us to see that our individual consciousness is not something separate from, but an integral part of, the evolving universe-- and that each of us, as an utter unique expression of the cosmos process, is called to make a personal contribution to it.

In each entry I've also tried to show how I see these scientific findings about ourselves as individuals converging with some of humanity's core religious values.

Now I want to expand the context to include the social, communal and relational aspects of the mystery which we are, the "other half" of our reality as persons.

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Some readers may feel that seeing ourselves in a cosmic and evolutionary context is already a big enough challenge.

But that immense transition in human self-understanding, which began at the end of the 19th century and is essentially a shift from the static worldview of past centuries to the evolutionary perspectives of modern science, also includes the shift from a personal and private to a social and communal self-understanding.

Just as the words "science" and "religion" mean something more nowadays than they once meant, so does the word "person." So I want to look now at another area within the Biogenetic Structuralism perspective, one which especially helps us to understand the social and communal aspects of ourselves: cultural anthropology.

When we see person in the broadest possible scientific perspectives of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution, the resulting communal and social aspects of our self-understanding allow us an even richer sense of the convergence of contemporary scientific perspectives with the insights of humanity's core religious insights than we have if we are looking only at the individual aspects of the mystery of person.

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But the findings of cultural anthropology are even less familiar to the general public than those coming from contemporary brain and nervous system studies.

I'm often asked, for example, by persons who know of my interest in evolution whether I think evolution is still going on in human beings. When I answer, "Yes; it's called culture," I usually get blank stares. So the transition I'm making now in these blog entries, from an neurological to an anthropological focus, may not be clear to readers.

The problem is that we're just not attuned to thinking in terms of culture, let alone thinking of humanity's cultural development as a continuation of the cosmic evolutionary process that produced stars, galaxies, plants, animals and ourselves. It's tough enough for many to grasp the fact that human consciousness has emerged from the cosmic process; seeing cultural development as also part of the cosmic process is even more challenging.

But as I said in the previous post, it's only when we can see that the social-relational nature of personal consciousness is also a part of evolution of the universe-- from the Big Bang and the formation of galaxies and stars to the emergence of life on Earth and the development of the primate brain-- that it becomes clear why culture is such an important concept in the converging perspectives of science and religion.

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In moving from an neurological to an anthropological focus we need to keep in mind the distinction between the primal emergence of conscious awareness among our animal ancestors several million years ago and the growth and development of individual consciousness as it takes place in every human being today.

That first kind of conscious emergence is called "phylogenetic." It's what happened in that group ("phylum," in a broad sense) of mammals out of which primates and eventually humans arose. It's the transition from the second to the third stage of complexity in the cosmic process as it takes place on Earth.

To make sense of phylogenesis we need to think about primate brain structures in terms of things like the cognitive extension of prehension and cognized environment, and I have talked about those concepts in many previous blog entries. The key idea is an understanding of the neurological structures of the primate brain which allow for the adaptation of the individual and the species to the external environment.

Biogenetic Structuralist researchers use words like "assimilation" and "accommodation" to describe what's happening in the brain of individuals as they take in and/or adjust to what's encountered in their world. And they note that it's always for the sake of survival.

The second kind of conscious emergence, which the Biogenetic Structuralists refer to as "ontogenetic" development, has to do with the normal pattern in the development of self-awareness in individual human beings. ("On" and "ens" are Greek and Latin for "being.") It's this ontogenetic development-- ontogenesis-- that's a principal focus of cultural anthropology.

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While the findings of neuro-physiology help us to understand the phylogenetic emergence of human consciousness, the perspectives of cultural anthropology help us to understand the emergence and growth of self-awareness as it occurs in every human being.

That phylogenetic emergence was a transition from the second to the third level of complexity in the cosmic process, which first happened, probably in Northeast Africa, about two and half million years ago. In contrast, the ontogenetic development of human consciousness begins with the embryological development of every human child and continues throughout the life of each of us.

Biogenetic Structuralism sees three distinct stages to the ontogenetic development of consciousness. And, as I've said earlier, it's here-- in our perception of the growth and development of the "other half of person"-- that the convergence of understandings from the human sciences and from global humanity's religious insights begins to take on an even richer and fuller sense than previously.

So my focus in the next few blog posts will be on cultural anthropology, especially on how the Biogenetic Structuralist researchers see the development of human consciousness in terms of social and communal relationships taking place in three separate stages.

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To get a good sense of our communal and relational aspects we need to see something of how personal consciousness develops in each individual, of what ontogenesis is all about.

As I've said, the Biogenetic Structuralist perspective sees it taking place in three stages. And even from the brief descriptions of these stages which follow it becomes immediately apparent that they are of great significance in terms of global humanity's religious perspectives.

It might be better to call the stages "phases" since, while they are sequential, there's also a great deal of overlap.

And of course, as with everything connected with Biogenetic Structuralism-- or indeed with any specialized branch of science-- there's a lot of jargon to deal with. "Ontogenesis," as a term for the growth and development of personal consciousness, is a good example. And you may remember from earlier postings that these researchers like to use the Greek term, gnosis, for consciousness itself. They also use the term neuro-gnosis to emphasize that it's the structures and functions of the nerve cells in the brain which are the basis for our conscious gnosis.

So our topic here is ontogenetic neuro-gnosis-- or even neuro-gnostic ontogenesis. (It's no wonder these scientific findings haven't filtered down to the popular level!)

And even finding simple and clear names for the three stages seems to have been a problem.

Biogenetic Structuralists refer to the first phase of ontogenetic development as "received gnosis" but they also talk about it as "beliefs." The second stage of personal conscious development is simply called "experience" or "personal experience." And the third phase is referred to as "transpersonal" or "contemplative" experience.

Needless to say, that word "contemplative" will rings bells for anyone interested in religion and spirituality. I hope it can serve for now as a hint, at least, of the extent of the convergence of the perspectives which I think can be found in Biogenetic Structuralism's understanding of cultural anthropology and humanity's religious traditions.

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I will describe those stages or phases in the ontogenetic development of our personal self-awareness within the cultural context in the next few posts.

Meanwhile, I want to step back a moment to emphasize that we need to keep in mind that we're trying to see that ontogenetic development of each human individual in the very largest context possible: nothing less than the entire cosmic process as it takes place at three levels of increasing complexity.

I spelled out that long view in post #8 (Background to Biogenetic Structuralism) and more specifically in post #16 (Our Own Inner World). Here's a quick review.

The first level is that of matter: from the Big Bang and the evolution of galaxies, stars and planets. The second level is that of life: the emergence of life on Earth several billion years ago and the development by way of fish, reptiles and mammals, of the primate brain. And the third level of complexity is that of mind: the emergence of personal self-awareness several million years ago.

As I've said above and stressed in the previous blog entry, we also have to take into account the fact that there's an "other half of person," what we call it "culture"-- our social, communal and relational side.

And we need to keep in mind that, from the anthropological perspective, "culture" means whatever humans do that's not controlled by our genes and instincts.

It includes anything and everything that needs to be "passed on" from more experienced persons to the younger and less experienced for the survival of life: all the learning, skills and information which need to be passed on precisely because they are not part of our instinctual or genetically-based behavior.

My purpose in reviewing this "largest possible context" for human cultural development is to make the point that it's only when we can see ourselves in this very large cultural context that we can understand our place in the scheme of things specifically in terms of dealing with our contemporary concerns. I have in mind things such as equality, peace and justice issues and environmental problems.

The issue is still life's survival, just as it was in the original phylogenetic emergence of consciousness several million years ago.

When Al Gore acknowledged the Nobel Peace Prize, he observed that the ecological crisis is a spiritual issue. "It is," as he said, "a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

I couldn't find a better example of the need for an understanding of the contemporary convergence of scientific findings and humanity's core religious insights.

sam@macspeno.com

#20. Resurrection of the Dead

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I was especially delighted when I discovered the efforts of the Biogenetic Structuralists to understand our human condition in light of the scientific findings of cultural anthropology, neurophysiology and biological evolution because it brings together the two big interests in my life, science and religion. And it's a non-dualist perspective: it does not put humans in a unique category outside the rest of the natural world but sees us, rather, an integral part of the evolution of the universe. And it doesn't dismiss religion and ritual, as rationalist science does: it understands them to be a natural part of human life.

The Biogenetic Structuralist concept of cognized environment especially caught my attention because, among other things, it sounds much like what the Russian Sophiologist, Sergius Bulgakov, has to say about the relationship of personal consciousness to the external world.

Bulgakov was talking in the context of a theological understanding of the early Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, so it's an unlikely combination, to be sure. But I found it a remarkable convergence. In this blog post I want to share the two understandings. I'll just put them side by side, and you can see what you think.

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I've mentioned the Biogenetic Structuralism concept of cognized environment in many previous posts and it is the focus of entry #13. Unfortunately, these research scientists did not come up with better names for their ideas-- names which would be more clear-- and we have to deal with their scientific jargon.

The main idea of cognized environment is that personal consciousness, when understood in terms of the functions of the brain at the third level of the cosmic process, is seen to be nothing less than the matter of the Earth become alive and self-aware.

The great value of seeing the human spirit from this neurological perspective is that it doesn't separate us from the rest of the living world, as religious and rationalist dualism does, but helps us to see that the human spirit is rooted in the Earth and the cosmic process-- that the human mind and heart is, indeed, "the universe become conscious of itself."

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Here's a quick review of the main point. In trying to respond to the question, "What's going on in the brain?" the Biogenetic Structuralists distinguish between the operational environment and cognized environment. Operational environment is their jargon term for the external world outside ourselves: the physical universe as the environment (the world) in which we exist-- and within which, of course, our brain operates.

In contrast, they use the term cognized environment to refer to the inner world which is continually being created by the structural activities of the brain. That inner world is our personal awareness. These research scientists like to call it "neuro-gnosis", meaning personal awareness-- "knowledge" in a broad sense-- which arises from the activity of the brain's living cells.

We need to keep in mind that, as the most complex thing in the dynamic universe, our brain's neural cells and networks are a dynamic field of electro-chemical reactions, and that neuro-gnosis-- our personal consciousness-- is the result of that dynamic activity of the neuro-gnostic structures.

It also helps to remind ourselves that we're talking about the third level of complexity in the cosmic process.

Since we're not used to thinking in terms of levels of complexity, here's an easy example: At one level, the letters of the alphabet are only bits of colored ink on a piece of paper, or dark marks on a computer screen. When joined together in various combinations, however, meaning emerges even at a very simple level of complexity: the letters D, G and O, for example, can be put together to mean "dog" or "God." It's clear that meaning emerges via complexity. We can, of course, put those words together to make sentences and put the sentences together to make stories, so that at greater levels of complexity ever greater levels of meaning emerge.

Living things, including ourselves, work the same way. Chemical compounds make up cells, cells make up tissues, tissues make up organs, organs make up systems, and organ systems combine to make up a whale or a maple tree. At each level of complexity, something "more" emerges.

In our brain-- the greatest level of complexity known to us-- the "more" that emerges is what Biogenetic Structuralism calls "neuro-gnosis"-- and the rest of us call conscious awareness.

The rudimentary gnosis-structure we're born with results from natural selection and the cosmic evolutionary process, and as we grow and develop, our personal consciousness grows by corrections and modifications based on data coming in from the operational (i.e., external) environment.

It's an evolutionary survival mechanism. The main idea is that the brain's primary function is to construct an internal version of the external environment, which it does in order to moderate input from and response to that external world. It allows us to recognize what's potentially hurtful or helpful in the operational environment.

It provides an evolutionary advantage because the sense data is processed in terms of how it fits with previous information already stored in the brain and nervous system. From a biogenetic (evolutionary) perspective, neuro-gnosis is the "informational content" of the neurological structures, and the neuro-gnostic structures are the media of nerve cells and their networks in which this information is "coded" and by way of which it can be modified.

And as I've said before, all this wouldn't sound so strange if it wasn't ourselves that we're talking about. But the point of it all is that personal consciousness is the "environment, cognized." Our consciousness is the world, internalized. We are the cosmos become conscious of itself.

And ours is the first age in humanity's cultural development in which we can understand ourselves this way, based on objective data from scientific studies of brain and nervous system. The main thing I want to emphasize here is that the mystery which we are as persons is the result of the physical matter of the universe; at the third level of complexity in the cosmic process, we are the matter of the cosmos showing itself as persons, each of us utterly unique in the history of the world.

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In his discussion of the resurrection of the dead, Sergius Bulgakov says something that sounds very similar. A little background will help show why what he has to say is important.

Bulgakov was born in 1871 into what was still the medieval culture of Central Russia. He became an atheist in early adolescence, studied law at the University of Moscow and eventually became a noted Marxist economist. At the age of twenty-four he began a religious conversion. It's of great interest that his conversion was not occasioned by any church-related experience but by an experience of nature: his first sight of the Caucasus mountains while he was driving with friends in a sleigh across the southern steppes of Russia.

In his autobiography, The Unfading Light, he says, "Suddenly and joyfully in that evening hour my soul was stirred. O mountains of the Caucasus! I saw your ice sparkling from sea to sea, your snows reddening under the morning dawn, the peaks which pierced the sky, and my soul melted in ecstasy.... The first day of creation shone before my eyes. Everything was clear, everything was at peace and full of ringing joy. My heart was ready to break with bliss." He describes this was "my first encounter with Sophia-Wisdom." (The autobiography is not yet available in English, but quotes from it can be found in Christopher Bamford's forward to Bulgakov's Sophia, The Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology .

He eventually rejected Marxism for the idealist philosophy of the famous poet of the divine feminine, Vladimir Soloviev. After he was ordained he was exiled from his homeland by the Communists and he spent many years as dean of the Orthodox seminary in Paris. He was well aware of the scientific developments of his day, had a special interest in cosmology and anthropology, and was on good terms with religious thinkers in the English-speaking world, including the United States. He died in 1944. He is considered by many to be the greatest Orthodox thinker of the 20th century.

His most famous and comprehensive work is his book on the nature of the church, The Bride of the Lamb. Because of his educational background in law and economics, he wrote in a heavy Germanic philosophical style-- and originally in Russian-- so his work is not easy reading. Only in the last few years has it been published in English.

He helped to recover the sapiential religious thought of the first thousand years of Christian history. It differs from the static, dualistic and rationalist worldview familiar to western Christians in that is sees the universe as one dynamic process, moving from creation to fulfillment. This includes our personal development and the persistence of our relationships. If he were writing today, Bulgakov would say something like: We have to see that there is a fourth stage to the evolutionary process, the final completion and fulfillment of all things.

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What Bulgakov has to say about the resurrection of the dead is found in the Section III, Eschatology, in his book on the church, The Bride of the Lamb. Eschaton means "last" or "end" or "final things."

He begins by noting that there are no defined dogmas concerning the eschaton, although four statements concerning the Last Things are familiar from the ancient creeds: "He will come again in glory... Of his kingdom there will be no end... We believe in the resurrection of the dead ... and life in the world to come."

Much of what Bulgakov has to say is commentary on the many scriptural passages which deal with these four articles of the creed. His first point is basic and he makes it strongly: the “end of the world” does not mean that the universe will be annulled but that it will be renewed: it will be transformed and transfigured. “It will be, but in a new way.” Our world and the world to come are one and the same world, but it will be in a different state. This, he insists, is what scripture means by a “new heaven and a new earth.”

Bulgakov notes that our language is “helpless in trying to describe the reality” of the New Creation. He nevertheless has a good bit to say about it, and much of it is commentary on various eschatological passages in the New Testament, especially in the Book of Revelations. Of these, Bulgakov says clearly, “the images of this symbolic language are not to be taken literally.”

The resurrection of the dead and the presence of Christ at the Second Coming are one identical thing; Bulgakov emphasizes that “All rise in Christ.” Just as our one human nature shared by multiple persons was assumed in the Incarnation, so it is resurrected in the Universal Resurrection. Here, once again however, Bulgakov acknowledges that we can’t get any “real ideas about all this on this side of death and resurrection.”

At the same time, he reminds us that the essence of the Christian faith is that the body will be restored and the person will be changed. This is “the hope” without which, as St Paul says, “our faith is in vain.” This means, says Bulgakov, that the risen body “will be proper to each person.” It’s our body. At the same time, he says, it will also be “the one universal corporality which is the entire natural world.”

His heavy language can get in the way, but what he's saying is that each of us will have the entire transfigured cosmos as our own risen body, and that it will be held in a way that it is personal and unique to each of us.

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Both Bulgakov and the Biogenetic Structuralists are speaking from within an non-static and non-dualistic context. And while the scientists are talking about one thing (a neurological understanding of consciousness) and the theologian about another (the "new way we will be" at the eschaton of the world), they both share the same insights within that evolutionary and post-rationalist perspective: that human beings are the universe become aware of itself and that each of us is a unique manifestation of it.

Bulgakov says, "The risen body will be the entire natural world, held in a way that it is proper to each person." The Biogenetic Structuralists say, "Personal consciousness is the external world uniquely cognized by each of us."

I find the convergence of these insights remarkable.

However, considering that we're just coming out of several centuries of rationalist positivism, it's understandable that even many New Cosmologists are somewhat reluctant to deal with the idea of a "fourth level of the evolutionary process." But if I'm understanding the neurological data correctly, as I mentioned in blog #8 about the functioning of the brain's neocortical lobes resulting in our need for endings as well as beginnings: "it would seem that our hope for a final outcome to the cosmic process is generated by the cosmic process itself."

And in that context, the promised resurrection of the dead doesn't seem so unreasonable.

sam@macspeno.com

#15. Re-view and Pre-view

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Biogenetic Structuralism's combination of biological evolution, cultural anthropology and neurophysiology makes for a heady mix. But I find it delightful. As I've said a number of times in these blog postings, I think I was born into it.

In any case, it's definitely not trivial. Thanks to the dynamic world view of modern science, especially to the data about the workings of the brain and nervous system coming from contemporary neurology, we can see ourselves differently now from how we have seen ourselves in past centuries.

But holding together the different perspectives of evolution, anthropology and neurology isn't easy. This seems a good point in these blog entries to review what I've had to say so far and to preview what I hope to be describing in the next few postings.

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In contrast to the old static worldview, the contemporary evolutionary perspective allows us to see that matter, life and mind are three distinct developmental stages in the cosmic process.

We can recognize that life is a more developed stage of the world than water, rocks and clouds. And we can see that mind (soul, human consciousness) is the epitome of the development of life: that humanity is the "terrestrial head," in Teilhard's words, of the entire cosmic process.

This is the context which we now have to understand ourselves. It allows for a deeper understanding both of humanity's relationship with the rest of the physical universe (the anthropos-cosmos relationship) and of humanity's relationship with the creative source behind the physical universe (the anthropos-theos relationship).

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In recent entries, I described my understanding of several major points with regard to the relationship of humanity and the material universe.

The first, which I spelled out in postings #11 and #12, is that we simply don't need any more to hold to that separation of mind and matter which results in religious and rationalist dualism. Thanks to modern science, we now can understand that the human spirit is free not because it is alienated from, but precisely because it is rooted in, the Earth.

A second major point with regard to the relationship of humanity and the rest of the universe, described in posts #13 and #14, is that we can better understand ourselves not as an entity or substance but as a dynamic process. We can see that each person is a dynamic process precisely because each of us is the dynamic universe, internalized ("cognized").

These are major aspects of what has come to be called the New Cosmology and they have profound implications for our self-understanding.

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One of the most fascinating findings the neurological perspectives uncover for us is that we each have our own inner world. It's something we experience all the time but rarely give any attention to. I plan to spell out some of the details of this understanding in the next blog entry and to follow it up with several postings dealing with its specific religious implications.

Two of those implications have to do with how we are related to the rest of the universe, with what I've called, above, the anthropos-cosmos relationship.

One is that each of us not only has our own inner world, we also make that inner world. We create ourselves.

The other is that, in creating ourselves, each of us is making a personal and unique contribution to the evolution of the universe.

It's my view that, of all the various aspects and implications of the modern scientific worldview, this idea-- that each of us has a personal contribution to make to the world's development-- will be the most significant in the long run. I think it will have the greatest impact on how we live our human lives in years to come because it's the opposite of meaninglessness and despair. To know that we have something to offer the world, to know in the innermost depths of our being that we count, we matter-- that our existence isn't meaningless-- is a tremendously empowering perspective.

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Two other significant implications of the insight that we each have our own inner world have to do more explicitly with the anthropos-theos relationship: they have to do with how humanity, as part of the created universe, is related to the creative source of the universe.

Western religion begins with the idea that we exist to "know, love and serve God." Modern science helps us to better understand how we do that. In an evolutionary context, we can see that we serve the Divine Mystery precisely by contributing our personal self to the cosmic process.

It's a challenging idea, to be sure. But the second explicitly religious implication of the fact that we each have our own inner world is even more challenging. It has to do with an ancient religious doctrine-- older than Christianity and Judaism but enshrined in the earliest Christian creeds still used by countless persons and groups today-- the doctrine of "the resurrection of the body."

I'm sure even the most good-willed readers of this blog will raise their eyebrows at that last statement. All I can say is that I'll spell out my thoughts as well as I can, and you can see what you think.

I started this blog to share with interested readers my thoughts about the convergence of science and religion. It doesn't seem surprising, to me at least, that if we have a new understanding of matter and life, thanks to the modern scientific worldview, then that understanding should have some impact on age-old religious teachings as well. So why not on a teaching that declares the physical body to be of great value to the universe?

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Besides religious ideas, the findings of modern science also offer new insights into religious practices: what nowadays is sometimes called "following a spiritual path." We can expect that the data of biological evolution, cultural anthropology and neurophysiology will also have an impact on how we are religious; that is, on how we live out our inner life as the cosmos become conscious of itself.

My discovery of the Biogenetic Structuralists' perspectives was personally so exciting precisely because these scientific researchers in the field of cultural anthropology were using insights from evolutionary biology and neurology to understand better global humanity's religious practices.

Just knowing, for example, that cultural anthropology can trace a contemporary spiritual practice back to our Paleolithic ancestors of 70,000 years ago, and that it makes sense in terms of what's going on in the brain today, can make those who were bought up in the rationalist worldview a bit less uncomfortable with the inclinations they may find in themselves to engage in religious activities.

Knowing that the religious impulse is in our genes makes it easier to move away from the rationalist prejudice that every kind of religious practice is simply superstition. Ironically, it's the prejudices of scientific rationalism which, thanks to contemporary science, can be recognized now as uninformed superstitious views.

As I said, the "combination of biological evolution, cultural anthropology and neurophysiology makes for a heady mix." What I find most delightful about it is that it brings together my life-long interests in biological evolution and religious ritual.

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From an evolutionary perspective, we are neurologically wired by the cosmic process itself to be conscious. Biogenetic Structuralism calls this the "cognitive imperative." We seek not only to know and understand the world, but also (as they put it) "to understand understanding."

Because their basic starting point is the human sciences, specifically Cultural Anthropology, the work of Biogenetic Structuralists also is open to the fact that consciousness operates primarily by way of story, myth and symbol. Much of this is spelled out in their second book, The Spectrum of Ritual: A Biogenetic Structural Analysis, by Eugene G. D'Aquili, Charles D. Laughlin, Jr. and John MacManus (Columbia University Press, 1979).

It was references to these ideas-- which I discovered in second generation researcher Andrew Newberg's book, The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience (Fortress Press, 1999)-- that originally opened the door to, and hooked me on, Biogenetic Structuralism.

It "hooked" me for two reasons. It's clear in this context that ritual activity is a primary means by which our most intimate personal development is nurtured. But beyond that, it's also clear that because we are the universe become conscious of itself, religious ritual is the primary means by which the cosmic process itself proceeds at the human level.

My two life-long interests come together in this radical convergence of science and religion, where sacred ritual is seen to be the very means by which we enter into and are empowered by the universe to participate in the dynamic process of cosmic evolution.

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So that's where I'm coming from in this blog adventure, and a preview of some of the thoughts I hope to be sharing in the next few postings.

Meanwhile.... The noosphere is a global reality. Thanks to the Internet, it's at our fingertips. Please don't be intimidated by the mechanics of sending suggestions, comments and questions about these blog postings. You don't need a Google account: just click on "Comments" at the bottom of this post, and when it opens click on "Other" to use your regular e-mail. Don't hesitate to share what you're thinking and feeling with other readers. Thanks!

sam@macspeno.com