SEEING THINGS WHOLE: The Zeitgeist as Evidence of Subtle Patterns and Connections
This idea of the workings of the Zeitgeist might be connected, for our purposes in tracing the different forms of wholeness, with the earlier posting here about the subtlety of causal mechanisms implied in the statement, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped bring about the American Civil War.” See “SEEING THINGS WHOLE: Order vs. Chaos in the Flow of Events,” at www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=1065. In both instances, we are led to envision a much more organic, and intricately woven network of interaction among the elements of a cultural system than most of generally imagine, indeed moreso than the human mind could readily comprehend.
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In my younger years (the latter half of my teens), I was much taken with the insights and intellectual system-building of Sigmund Freud. One of his early and principle ideas was the notion of “free association” as a tool of uncovering the secrets of the unconscious.
Free association is in itself an idea that is founded on the existence of important and subtly hidden connections: the idea was that the patient, following the instruction to speak whatever came spontaneously to his/her mind, would show by the network of associations what were the hidden meanings and feelings and motives at work in the psyche. The psyche itself, in other words, is composed of important interconnections.
A month or so ago, as I was delving into Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, I was quite struck by some profound similarities between Proust’s approach and Freud’s idea of free association. Unfortunately, I myself cannot now remember some things not all that long past, i.e. I cannot recall the specifics of what I saw in Proust that seem so strikingly akin to the Freud’s method. (If anyone out might be able to describe what it likely was in Proust that I picked up on as being akin to free association, please come forward with your description.)
I thought, isn’t that an interesting kinship to find between such different minds.
Then, shortly after New Year’s, as it happened, I came across yet another kindred instance.
I had decided to read The Autobiography of Mark Twain. It’s called an autobiography, but actually it was assembled by someone else, almost a half century after the death of the great American author. Mark Twain himself had attempted autobiography a number of times, creating various fragments and, near the end of his life, giving lengthy interviews to someone who was to transfer them into print in some sort of publishable autobiography to appear long after Twain’s death.
I learned this history from the introduction to this volume. In telling that history, the editor (Charles Neider), presents Twain’s own concept of how his autobiography should unfold:
Finally in Florence, in 1904, I hit upon the right way to do an Autobiography,” Twain wrote: “Start it at no particular time in your life; wander at your free will all over your life; talk only about the thing that interests you for the moment; drop it the moment its interest threatens to pale, and turn your talk upon the new and more interesting thing that has intruded itself into your mind meantime…”
Even when that effort had petered out, and he’d turned toward the method of using an interviewer to record his ramblings, Twain “requested him to publish the Autobiography not in chronological order but in the sequence in which it was written and dictated.” About which Neider reflects: “What an extraordinary idea! As though the stream of composition time were in some mysterious way more revealing than that of autobiographical time!”
Yes, perhaps it’s an extraordinary idea in terms of the canons for effective autobiographical composition. But what strikes me is that –in that era– perhaps Twain’s idea was not so very extraordinary. What strikes me as really extraordinary is the way that same idea seems in this time in Western civilization to pop up in such different embodiments of the era: : a theorist working on a new psychology in Vienna at the beginning of the century, an American author and humorist with roots in Missouri and the American West, and a reclusive French novelist writing innovative fiction in Paris ten or twenty years later– all working from the belief that the path to meaning was to found in a similar way, trusting the associative links, following the subtle connections of mind and memory.
I’m not certain that this apparent parallelism in the thinking of Freud and Proust and Twain is a manifestation of some deeper pattern unfolding in Western civilization in that turn-of-the-century era, though I strongly suspect it. And if these instances do point toward some deeper pattern, I’m not prepared to interpret what it might say about the larger field of cultural forces and meanings, though my guess is that it quite interesting, possibly manifesting an effort of the life-force to create a space for spontaneity to break out of the strait-jacket of Victorian era over-control.
Regardless of the particular validity or meaning of this specific pattern, I bring it up as an illustration of something about the deep and subtle workings of cultural forces– something that has been designated by the mysterious concept of the Zeitgeist, which is German for “the spirit of the times.”
There are many instances of interesting patterns of thought appearing in different places in different contexts but in the same era, parallelisms that seem to be evidence of some kind of cultural force-field operating so as to shape the minds of many individuals and thus of what might be called the consciousness of the era.
(I hope it is evident enough why I suggested that this item could be paired, in terms of our exploring the many dimensions of SEEING THINGS WHOLE, with the previous piece that explored the implications of the statement about how Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped bring about the American Civil War. In both cases, the idea in question requires us to begin envisioning how incredibly intricate and deep and subtle must be the play of causal connections that constitute the human cultural system.)
I invite you to share any other concrete instances of how such patterns and connections, as are implied by the concept of the “Zeitgeist,” may have manifested in any other time and place. Where else have you heard about or read about or thought about plausible manifestations of any spirit of some particular time in some cultural system?
January 24th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Zeitgeist … this idea led me to recall the Suffragettes movement, the effort to influence the women`s voting rights. Well, prior to this, women, generaly, did not smoke, but this group, as a form of protest, smoked, in front of everyone. Now women began smoking, which delighted the tobacco industry, greatly increasing their profits. Frued was behind this, in a way, as one of his admirers (can`t recall the name), researched the method to use to influence women to smoke. There are very many hidden connections that could be presented to support the theory of the social interconnects but, they would be subject to ridicule and not enhance the secretive powers of intuition, which demand anonimity.
January 24th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Something similar happens in research. It sometimes amazes me that groups at different places in the world hit almost simultaneously upon a new research discovery in some field. Now, in some ways there is not a huge mystery: these groups are aware of each other and are in competition, so perhaps it is not different than the near “simultanaity” of first and second place in a race. Still, it seems to me that developments happen when all the conditions are right for them, like a crystal that is dropped into a supersaturated solution that suddenly crystalizes the entire solution.
I remember studying the ways in which Marx’s views arose along with many others with similar, related thoughts, as did Freud’s and Darwin’s in a cauldron of thought that each of these crystalized in his own way.
One astonishing simultanaity on a large scale was both the hippie movement in the US and Europe happening and the Cultural Revolution in China. Both of them were anti-intellectual, anti-traditional, populist, youth-based movements attacking the status quo. The differences were, of course, profound. In the Chinese case, Mao used the youth movement to further his own ends, which is quite different from the opposition of the youth here to Nixon’s and Johnson’s war. But the spirit was startlingly similar. I don’t know of any causal link between the two, but there may easily have been.
January 25th, 2008 at 1:00 am
Aren’t there cases of practical inventions and discoveries occurring in different countries almost simultaneously?
Our James has said that the strings are pulled from above.
I once heard the same thing from the pulpit, ie, that when the time comes for the world to be moved along in its course God drops the idea into the world. I have accepted this as the way it actually is.
(and of course the need is soon apparent and before long we couldn’t go back to the old way and do without the new. So it came more or less right on time)
January 25th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Three concepts come to mind in regards to this blog,
Synchronicity
Morphogenetic Fields
and
Memes.
January 25th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Synchronicity, I’m assuming, is Jung’s concept. Two questions: first, what evidence do you know of the reality of this “synchronicity.” And second, if it is a reality, how does it work?
January 25th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
I’ll be happy to write about it, Andy, with this aside.
My dilemma is how to take a shot at exploring a complex, “outside the box” concept like this without being too wordy. I struggle a lot with that, and at the same time find it very worthwhile to do so.
Sometimes I try to accomplish this by writing in segments, as time allows. However, it’s not unusual for a given thread to scroll off the main page (and out of focus, I assume), before the gestalt is completed. When all’s said and done, it’s OK. I’m usually willing to try to “give depth its due,” rather than not do justice to a subject at all.
I’m simply reporting my insights (and occasional frustrations) as they come up – just to keep current. I’m well aware that they do not change one of life’s most simple and yet profound truths: ———————— “What is, Is.”
And, as always, the challenge, moment to moment, is to fully accept the present moment as it is happening: as is said in AA: “Living Life on Life’s Terms.”
January 25th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
And Hanu, what are ‘Morphogenetic Fields’ and ‘Memes’?
Are these words I, as a reader, am supposed to know about?
You do that a lot, that you quote big words, and what do you expect?
Us to study them, or look up these concepts?
I somehow think it is your responsibility to talk about their meaning in your own words, and so that the ‘average reader’ can have some sense about the context, and meaning…and for you more, than for the author, who may well be referring to situations in a context other than we are.
Believe me, I struggle with the same problems as you do, as far as communication is concerned. It’s really hard.
January 26th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Thanks for your support Katrin. It’s often a matter of time as well.
Hopefully, re- a given thread, I have the leisure to speak in my own words and in some detail. But if, in a given instance, I’m unable to find the quiet time to compose my thoughts, I like to get my basic ideas out there. Or, at least some of the sources that I have found useful. This way, if it takes a few days (in busy periods) to get back to that thread, at least I’ve been able to share my “first thought.”
Then, folks can do whatever they please at a given moment – including skipping my post or following up a point that may intrigue them. (Thank Buddha-Nature for the internet!) Overall, my goal is to contribute as fully as I’m able, within the limitations we all have.
January 26th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Jung’s Synchronicity Story
In his article Synchronicity, An Acausal Connecting Principle, Carl G. Jung offers this first-hand example which has, over time, become famous:
“A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping.
“I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment.
Jung went to the window and opened it. He came back to the woman and opened his hand, saying, “There is your scarab.”
…..”The meaningful connection is obvious enough … in view of the approximate identity of the chief objects (the scarab and the beetle).”
Jung had noted that his treatment of this patient had initially quite difficult in that she was caught up in, and attached to, a certain kind of rationalism in which the possibility of the irrational phenomena would be completely refused. She, had desperately needed a change of perspective whereby her consciousness could open with respect to the non-rational (or trans-rational). Following this incident her treatment proceeded with significant success.
This kind of transformation of consciousness is often represented by one or more symbols of rebirth.
Jung writes: “The scarab is a classic example of a rebirth symbol. The ancient Egyptian Book of What Is in the Netherworld describes how the dead sun-god changes himself at the tenth station into Khepri, the scarab, and then, at the twelfth station, mounts the barge which carries the rejuvenated sun-god into the morning sky.” [CW, vol. 8, p. 845]
January 26th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Yes, I remember the scarab story. Wonderful story. And methinks Jung was an honest enough man that if he says that happened, it happened.
THat gives us two possibilities.
First, that it was a coincidence. A remarkable one, to be sure, but in the billions of events that happen –so the argument would go– once in a while, simply by chance, there would be remarkable coincidences of this sort. Kind of a miniature version of the idea of the monkeys at the typewriters: given infinite time, one of them by chance would surely write Hamlet.
Second, that it was not a coincidence. And that one raises the still further question: if something like that happens not coincidentally, how does it happen? Or, to put it another way: what the hell does that say about the order of the cosmos, and what’s governing the course of events, that a scarab is presented to that woman at just that moment, because evidently she needed it to?
I do not rule out that there is more to heaven and earth than is dreamt of in my son-of-a-Child-of-the-Enlightenment philosophy.
Be it noted, however, that this scarab example –with what it is being used to imply– takes us into a very different cosmos than the one to which I’ve been alluding with my Uncle-Tom’s-Cabin and Zeitgeist illustrations.
January 26th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Some initial thoughts from David Richo:
“Synchronicity gives us a clue to the deep underlay of purpose and meaning in the universe and how that purpose is working itself out in our lives. Our own wholeness has a foundation and support in the larger order of things. All objective events have a corresponding subjective configuration in our psyche.
“Synchronicity is an instant instance of this correspondence. Its spontaneous timely events are articulations of the continuous nature of creation, intimations about the [inescapable] unity underlying it.
“Synchronicity is always striking and sometimes eerie. The “other worldly” feeling we have when it happens to us may be an indicator that an archetype is arising into consciousness from the depths of our psyche.
“Yet synchronicity cannot happen by any conscious intervention of ego since it is a phenomenon of grace: an entry of the transpersonal world onto our personal turf. It is a moment that manifests the unity that always and already existed between psychological and spiritual, mind and universe, you and me, me and everything. It occurs when our unconscious is ready for a step into wider consciousness.”
From the online article: “Unexpected Miracles”
January 26th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Re- your last point, Andy, I’m heading there. First on the agenda is to unpack (a bit), as requested, the three “free associations” that came to me after reading your piece.
I definitely have more to say about synchronicity.
Re- your great question:
“What the hell does that say about the order of the cosmos, and what’s governing the course of events, that a scarab is presented to that woman at just that moment, because evidently she needed it to?”
My first answer is: “Egg-Zactly!”
Of late on NSB I have been trying to articulate/flesh out my contention that the cutting edge of science is moving beyond the “world of the Enlightenment,” as you put it…..and toward what can be described as a “Second Enlightenment.”
This, as I have said, does not mean negating the gains say, of the ideas of the Founding Fathers or other breakthroughs arising out of the movement for the Middle Ages to the period known as the “Enlightenment.â€? Rather, it is a “transcendence of,â€? which simultaneously is inclusive.
There is rapidly increasing support for a new view of the Cosmos, strangely enough, from the discipline of physics. For example, see the work of David Bohm on Wholeness and the Implicate or Bell’s Theorem re- the principle of non-locality.
January 26th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
I don’t know what it is about Jung, but ‘I do not trust him at all.’
I was thinking in this example, (and yes, I trust him as far as him telling the truth, alright. What I do not trust is on a different level)
The bug did not come to her, though. It came to him. And it seems that he was usually bored with his patients, unless they were of interest to him. So, maybe this thing flew by on many days, but this day he needed it, and so he noticed it, and made a big deal out of the occasion.
January 26th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Let me ask you something, HMJ. Here’s from your comment, starting with your quoting a question of mine:
Does “Egg-Zactly” mean that you are persuaded that the cosmos we live in IS ordered in whatever-the-hell way it has to be in order for a scarab to show up like that NOT coincidentally?
If you had to put a percentage sure you feel about that — from zero to a hundred (obviously, it’s not zero, or you’d not have brought up the subject of synchronicity and developed it in this way)– what number would you choose to express your degree of certainty.
There’s a part of me that’s always wanted –at least since the late sixties in Berkeley– to believe that the cosmos is more magical in various nifty and sacred ways than the scientists are able to perceive.
But there’s another part of me that believes that there is not enough evidence to support most such beliefs, and that has other ways of explaining the existence of such beliefs other than that they are true.
January 26th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Excuse me, but I prefer Katrin’s idea on the bug that happened to fly by maybe again as on many previous (and probably subsequent) occasions.
However, I know of and have experienced many incidents of ‘synchronicity’ and more or less rely on its occurence and when it is not happening I realize that I, myself, am out of tune.
But that is not a term that describes the ‘phenomena’ for me.
January 27th, 2008 at 1:22 am
Andy,
By Egg-Zactly I mean “exactly.� Just kidding.
My exclamation was more for the question you had posed, a sort of Hurrah!
I believe that in the coming decades we will all be faced with the necessity of framing similar questions, and particularly those successfully schooled in the materialist – mechanistic – rational worldview. I believe this to be true, because, along with many respected scholars and activists, my perception is that we are in the early stages of overhauling an entire cultural – and to some degree species-wide – worldview.
Alfred North Whitehead once shared the following observation:
“When you are criticizing the philosophy of an epoch, …there will be some fundamental assumptions which adherents of all the variant systems within the epoch unconsciously presuppose.
“Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them. With these assumptions a certain limited number of types of philosophic systems are possible, and this group of systems constitutes the philosophy of the epoch.�
By the “philosophy of an epoch� Whitehead is referring to the basic ways of perceiving, thinking, valuing, and doing that are associated with a particular view of reality. As well as speaking about elaborate scientific or philosophical theories, here Whitehead is speaking about everyday, commonsense knowledge.
Systems theorist, Buddhist scholar and anti-nuclear activist, Joanna Macy, views our situation from another angle:
“Like going down the birth canal we are being forced to be born into a new consciousness. The very crisis we face can be the opportunity and occasion for transformation. That is why the ‘tearing of the hair and the gnashing of teeth’ are important. In our tears is the evidence of inter-being.
“We are being pushed against all our old conceptions of what constitutes our well being…Vulnerability to pain and compassion [can] become the source of our power.â€?
In a similar vein, Willis Harman, who was senior social scientist at SRI Internation for 16 years, suggested that we are living in the midst of a “new Copernican revolution.”
In this sense we are like the people of previous eras who struggled with the massive shifts in perspective involved in accepting a world that was round, rather than flat, or an Earth that revolved around the sun, rather than visa-versa.
Yet, now, one of the elements of this transformation is that we shall cease assuming that the world resolves around the human ego. The self-transcending individual will begin the process of realizing that it is the ego which revolves around a greater Sun – the Light which has been called Divinity.
January 27th, 2008 at 2:27 am
Andy wrote:
“If you had to put a percentage sure you feel about that — from zero to a hundred (obviously, it’s not zero, or you’d not have brought up the subject of synchronicity and developed it in this way)– what number would you choose to express your degree of certainty.
“There’s a part of me that’s always wanted –at least since the late sixties in Berkeley– to believe that the cosmos is more magical in various nifty and sacred ways than the scientists are able to perceive.
“But there’s another part of me that believes that there is not enough evidence to support most such beliefs, and that has other ways of explaining the existence of such beliefs other than that they are true. ”
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“If you had to put a percentage sure you feel about that — from zero to a hundred (obviously, it’s not zero, or you’d not have brought up the subject of synchronicity and developed it in this way)– what number would you choose to express your degree of certainty.”
I’d say high 80’s to high-90’s. So, I’ll settle on 94. I’ll settle The movement itself from a “Newtonian to an Einsteinian” (and even “Post-Einsteinian”) worldview just makes sense to me.
I also find it very intriguing that, in a number of ways, (post) modern science is finding rather amazing parallels with the highest spiritual teachings and metaphysical visions.
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“There’s a part of me that’s always wanted –at least since the late sixties in Berkeley– to believe that the cosmos is more magical in various nifty and sacred ways than the scientists are able to perceive.
“But there’s another part of me that believes that there is not enough evidence to support most such beliefs, and that has other ways of explaining the existence of such beliefs other than that they are true. ”
One possible response can be found in these words from William James':
“Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
“We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.”
-from The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902, p 298.
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January 27th, 2008 at 3:50 am
Hanu: ‘I also find it very intriguing that, in a number of ways, (post) modern science is finding rather amazing parallels with the highest spiritual teachings and metaphysical visions.’
Really? I think it’s way overdue. I mean, if I have known this to be true all my adult life, I would think anybody can figure out that much, and do the necessary research. It’s so obvious, and not nearly as complicated to study and learn as most people assume. It’s as real as your heart and your thoughts, both of which are not directly visible
either, from the outside.
Hanu quote: ‘Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.’
I know that one too without above normal intelligence just from experience, and observation, and trusting what is happening. But I know equally well, that I won’t win the ‘Nobel Prize’ for this invention, and that I didn’t invent, of course, but just happen to notice, and not in either church, or books, but rather as I would a shadow, or TV screen. (since I don’t watch TV, perhaps)
And these other states of consciousness don’t always present themselves, or play out, right when it’s happening. You can sometimes pull the material out of storage later, or perhaps another part of you was paying attention to something else than you were.
January 27th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Hi Katrin,
You had asked me to say more about my other two “free associations,” – ‘memes’ and ‘morphogenetic fields.’
For now I want to stay a bit longer on “synchronicity,” so I’ll just include a few sketchy details about the other two.
By the way, given your comments on another recent thread, “Re-Fight the 90’s” (the article by Barney Frank), I just wanted to let you know that I’m finishing up my testimonial there, completing the circle I began.
January 27th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
I am in tune with your specificity and openness, Hanu Man Ji. However, on the issue of interpreting things unseen, I know a person very much into interpreting those things who habitually extends that confidence to things she has not seen but I have (or know not to be the case). On the other hand, some strange things have happened in her presence. Thus anecdotes, even in the aggregate, are unreliable. Challenges have been issued to any who have mastered calling forth these anomalies but such masters shy away.
To interpret your 94% confidence that “the cosmos we live in IS ordered in whatever-the-hell way it has to be in order for a scarab to show up like that” in a way meaningful to me means that you can identify conditions under which this synchronicity will occur 94% of the time. Have you done such an amazing feat?
Also, labeling has it’s Achilles heal. Andy’s “evil” carries much baggage. Is your ego’s sun the same as old conceptions of “Divinity” and might others arise to supplant it? Perhaps there’s a more open way to address such concepts.
January 27th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Hi Duane,
I’m with you on most of what you wrote. And I’m all for finding and using “open concepts.”
Re- things unseen —– the Sufi’s say, “Trust in Allah, but tie your camel to the post!” If we kick our analytic minds to the curb, we will find ourselves knee deep in New Age doo-doo.
You wrote:
‘To interpret your 94% confidence that “the cosmos we live in IS ordered in whatever-the-hell way it has to be in order for a scarab to show up like thatâ€? in a way meaningful to me means that you can identify conditions under which this synchronicity will occur 94% of the time. Have you done such an amazing feat?’
Well, first of all, no. Second, your conclusion about what my 94% ‘means’ doesn’t hold. That’s Your conclusion and your spin.
As I said, however, I do have a sense of how our cosmos would “fit together in way that is ordered and which includes synchronicity. Science is actually leading the way on this. So, my percentage is merely saying, “I have a strong feeling that this makes sense,” given my thinking, intuition and life experience. Sort of the way one in Medieval times might say, “I’ve got this Strong feeling that the Earth is round…and I know some smart people who are busy connecting the dots.”
******************* ++++++++++++++ ***************
By the way, here’s what Eckhart Tolle has to say about one “Closed Concept”….
Q: When you say Being, are you talking about God? If you are, then why don’t you say it?
“The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I use it sometimes, but I do so sparingly. By misuse, I mean that people who have never even glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about.
“Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is that they are denying. This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as “My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false,” or Nietzsche’s famous statement “God is dead.”
“The word God has become a closed concept. The moment the word is uttered, a mental image is created, no longer, perhaps, of an old man with a white beard, but still a mental representation of someone or something outside you, and, yes, almost inevitably a male someone or something.
“Neither God nor Being nor any other word can define or explain the ineffable reality behind the word, so the only important question is whether the word is a help or a hindrance in enabling you to experience That toward which it points. Does it point beyond itself to that transcendental reality, or does it lend itself too easily to becoming no more than an idea in your head that you believe in, a mental idol?”
When you say Being, are you talking about God? If you are, then why don’t you say it?
The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I use it sometimes, but I do so sparingly. By misuse, I mean that people who have never even glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about. Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is that they are denying. This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as “My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false,” or Nietzsche’s famous statement “God is dead.”
The word God has become a closed concept. The moment the word is uttered, a mental image is created, no longer, perhaps, of an old man with a white beard, but still a mental representation of someone or something outside you, and, yes, almost inevitably a male someone or something.
Neither God nor Being nor any other word can define or explain the ineffable reality behind the word, so the only important question is whether the word is a help or a hindrance in enabling you to experience That toward which it points. Does it point beyond itself to that transcendental reality, or does it lend itself too easily to becoming no more than an idea in your head that you believe in, a mental idol?
The word Being explains nothing, but nor does God. Being, however, has the advantage that it is an open concept. It does not reduce the infinite invisible to a finite entity. It is impossible to form a mental image of it. Nobody can claim exclusive possession of Being. It is your very essence, and it is immediately accessible to you as the feeling of your own presence, the realization I am that is prior to I am this or I am that. So it is only a small step from the word Being to the experience of Being.
January 27th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
” I do have a sense of how our cosmos would “fit together in way that is ordered and which includes synchronicity. Science is actually leading the way on this.”
What, specifically, do you have in mind about “science leading the way” toward our seeing the universe as such a place?
I don’t think there’s anything in relativity nor in quantum mechanics that points in that direction, is there?
When my PARABLE OF THE TRIBES came out, I was for a while a speaker at various conferences where big ideas –often New Age ideas– were the coin of the realm. It seemed to me, from what I was exposed to at that time, that various people were misusing some of the new science for a certain kind of spiritual agenda.
Yes, the world of Newtonian physics has been exploded in certain ways. But I am not sure that the current ideas that hold sway in science have opened the doors much to anything like a scarab appearing when a woman in therapy has been talking of a dream involving a scarab.
As for the idea of “morphogenic fields,” which I can imagine might be part of what you’ve got in mind, I’m not sure what to make of that. I looked into it back some years, and came away somewhat skeptical. Which doesn’t disprove its validity, of course. But I do feel fairly sure that contemporary physics –which has no reservations (some say, too few reservations) about heading off into something so weird as string theory, with its eleven dimensions (or however many), has not embraced the idea of morphogenic fields.
So I’m wondering: what science is there that’s leading toward an image of our universe as having the kinds of order we’re talking about here?
January 27th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
60’s Redux
That’s precisely where I’m going as time allows. T’was on the agenda for this evening. Although I was planning this, life had a different idea. (The short version of the John Lennon line is, “We plan. God laughs”).
I agree that it is essential that every one of us use our “critical intelligence” on this stuff. To date I’m satisfied I have done so. (The analytic mind seems to be doing fine). I expect you’ll be surprised by the consistently with which science is pointing toward a cosmos in which synchronity is not “supernatural,” but in actuality, only natural. It appears that we are the ones who’ve been wearing blinders.
(This, by the way, is perfectly consistent with Gepser and Wilber’s arguments that we are moving from the “deficient mode” of “mental” consciousness (which Gebser called “the rational”) to a next level, which he has called “integral”)
….From archaic, to magical, to mythic, to mental, to integral consciousness…
“What a long, strange trip it’s been!”
l
Meanwhile, the toughest task before me is to articulate this stuff with some measure of clarity.
January 27th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Maybe an ulterior motive behind the prohibition against uttering the “Sacred Name” was to keep the concept open. One could think about the concept but respect for ambiguity entered into any declaration. Language technology was probably very creative at it’s birth.
Regarding my “spin”, I’m just trying to establish your meaning. You know how language goes. Confidence in a model comes from how well it predicts (and often in comparison to alternatives) as well as the purveyor’s aesthetics. Of course I’m concentrating on the former.
January 27th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Andy, I would like to introduce NSB, to a science that I am not only familiar with, but have experience with. It can be learned, and it is one of those examples, where anybody introduced to this science experientially, would be in awe at how much more we can actually know, than we think we know. What’s there, of course, is already there, but one just needs to identify what it is, the different components, and the math behind it, and learn the rest.
I am using ‘sociometry’ here to illustrate, that science also applies to larger processes in the Universe. A person’s ability to reason, and objectively observe ‘reality’, is a man made belief of our times, but
this belief takes away from the truth, and it interferes with an individual’s motivation, and interest to trust incoming/outgoing information on all other levels. The subjective experience is not something that warrants to be ridiculed, dismissed, and/or minimized.
I will quote two rather brief elements of the workings, and definition of this field, and of course, the study and application is much more complex. But it is also real, and it is readily applicable, and extremely precise when dealing with any group.
SOCIOMETRY
The field of sociometry began with J. L. Moreno, MD, whose vision involves a philosophy and methodologies encompassing the expanding world of small groups until the whole of humankind is identified as interconnected, belonging and contributing. Moreno believed that freedom in its broadest sense is possible if people have the information and skills they need to negotiate their world.
Sociometry is based on the fact that people make choices in interpersonal relationships. Whenever people gather, they make choices–where to sit or stand; choices about who is perceived as friendly and who not, who is central to the group, who is rejected, who is isolated. As Moreno says, “Choices are fundamental facts in all ongoing human relations, choices of people and choices of things. It is immaterial whether the motivations are known to the chooser or not; it is immaterial whether [the choices] are inarticulate or highly expressive, whether rational or irrational. They do not require any special justification as long as they are spontaneous and true to the self of the chooser. They are facts of the first existential order.â€? (Moreno, 1953, p. 720).
January 29th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Hi Katrin,
Just following up on the subject of “memes.” Recall, I had said that this was one of three “first thoughts” I had when considering the questions Andy had posed on this thread.
I really don’t know much about this “field” or the subject in general, and in the past have filed it away as “something interesting I might want to look into — later.” That category.
There is material in summary form at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
In briefly looking that over, I realized that various well-known academics have been giving quite a bit of thought to this topic, and that there is more to this study than I realized. The truth is that I don’t know much about this area, and don’t have a clue where I stand amidst the controversies which attend it. Memes still remain on a back burner and and filed away under the category above!
I feel a slightly more able to talk about the idea of “morphic fields, and the like.
And perhaps even a bit more able to articulate some thoughts about “synchroncity.”
As time is limited today, I’m not sure how far I’ll get, but I haven’t forgotten about either area.
April 20th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
I would like to thank HMJ for his contributions, if he is still reading this thread.
I sympathise with the difficulty in stating the ideas in a coherent verbal form, and while not throwing away reason and Enlightenment forms of thought, I am in favor of developing new pathways to experience – along the lines Jean Gebser book, The Ever Present Origin, which you, and only you, mention in one of your posts.
Perhaps mathematical/algebraic equations would work as sort of a meta language? I’m not very good at grammar but it doesn’t look like there are subject/object division in an equation, while there is vast consolidation and a sort of elegance.
I’ve always been taken by the beauty in them.
April 20th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Also, the “free association” question posed by the article (Freud, Proust, and Twain) was answered in part by a guy out in Berkeley in the early ’60s: T.S. Kuhn. His development of “paradigms” purported to explain the simultaneous (presupposes a common time) occurrence of similarities.
Andy, you probably met him.
One could add James Joyce’s stream of consciousness in Ulysses to the list.