How does Teilhard’s ‘lens help to bolster our mystical imagination with empirical findings?

Today’s Post

     Last week we suggested that mysticism is alive and well, not only in the religious sense, but in the secular sense as well.

This week, we will look into what it is that these modern mystics are seeing that adds a ‘liminal’ characteristic to our empirical findings as we begin to ‘make sense of things’.

‘Zero Sum’ vs ‘Win-Win’

We have previously seen how Johan Norberg identified nine facets of human evolution documented in examples of increases in human welfare that show them all to increase by an unprecedented explosion over just the most recent hundred fifty years.  In his book, “Open”, he goes on to address how such undeniable data contradicts the prevalent but dystopian concept of ‘zero sum’.

To many, the idea of ‘zero sum’ underlays the popular belief that any gain is necessarily countered by a comparable loss.  Norberg sees such a belief as essential to a prevalent current political belief that one side must necessarily triumph over the other side in any disagreement.  The viewpoint of ‘zero sum’ as opposed to ‘win-win’ can also be found in nearly all expressions of religion, alongside that which sees life as a ‘rise’ in some places countered by a ‘fall’ in others.

Norberg makes the case that if life were a ‘zero sum’ game, it would not progress.  Any increase in welfare encountered in human life would be paid for by degradation encountered elsewhere.  Nowhere is this perspective more prevalent than in the distribution of wealth.  In his book, “Progress”, he takes aim at the conventional wisdom that sees increases in wealth of the few as paid for by increases in poverty on the part of the many.  From such a dystopian perspective, “wealth is accumulated off the backs of the poor.”  The total wealth of the world, by this reckoning, is static, effectively ‘zero sum’.  In a Malthusian conclusion, human evolution eventually requires all the wealth to be owned by a few, collapsing society and leading to human extinction.

Norberg’s data, however, shows quite a different trend, and leads to a contrary conclusion.  The data not only shows world wealth increasing exponentially, but it also shows poverty to decrease at the same rate.  Effectively, by this reckoning, total global wealth is increasing.  ‘Win-win’ isn’t the exception: if you know where and how to look at history it’s the norm.

Norberg asks the question in his book, “Open”, where does this global trend come from?  In a mechanistic universe, in which energy is neither created nor destroyed, the rule of ‘zero sum’ would seem to dominate.  Teilhard poses an insight into the same phenomenon: in all relationships, not only does “true union differentiate”, it leads to increased fullness.  As in the case of Norberg’s nine metrics of human evolution, how does the increased ‘fullness’, now quantified in the increase in human welfare, occur?

The ‘cosmic spark’, postulated by the sages of the Axial Age, articulated so clearly by Teilhard, and addressed by the nascent science approach to ‘information’ is clearly at work in Norberg’s nine metrics.  Repeating John Haught’s insight:

“Running silently through the heart of matter, a series of events that would flower into ‘subjectivity’ has been part of the universe from the start.”

   This of course simply reflects Teilhard’s insight that the energy of evolution by which the universe rises to increased levels of complexity (and hence ‘consciousness’) necessarily continues in the human product.  Recognition of this ‘cosmic spark’ has been the goal of nearly all religious enterprises and is echoed in every mystic’s quest.  As Norberg’s insight shows, traces of it can be seen be seen in the most mundane facts if we but choose to cast our nets of understanding widely and deeply enough.

Evolutionary Mysticism

Insights such as this, a small example in a much larger group of perspectives of human existence, are illustrations of how a trained eye can be paired with a comprehensive set of facts to result in a much clearer perception not only of our environment, but much more importantly, the part we play in it.  This offers a ‘secular’ definition of mysticism.  When put into an evolutionary perspective, our understanding of ourselves and our milieu can come together into a comprehensive worldview that makes it possible for us to navigate our own personal evolution in a way that insures our collective survival.  The ‘evolutionary mystic’ is simply one who learns how use the insights of intuition to integrate the data available to us into a coherent context in which our own lives are resonant.  Teilhard employs his ‘lens of evolution’ when he says

“Evolution is the elaboration of ever more perfect eyes in a universe in which there is always more to see”

   While this perception of mysticism might be seen as distinctly contrary to the mystical experiences of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, with their emphasis on emotional ecstasy and separateness from society, the common ground is there: seeing.

One concept that Teilhard identifies as essential to human evolution is the ‘psychism’, by which humans pool their insights in such a way that a new insight is born, one which is deeper and more comprehensive than that of any individual.  In summary the psychism is simply a group of humans who collectively undertake a quest.  It can be a group of carpenters building a house, or a group of scientists discovering the treatment of a virus.  To varying degrees, such undertakings result in a satisfaction in what is accomplished, but whose progress is guided by a vision of the unfinished product and the need for depending on each other to achieve it.  The more difficult the job, the more necessary will be the triad of confidence, vision, and relationship (Paul’s faith, hope and love) that is active in the group’s work.

The holistic vision which sees the whole emerging from seemingly disjoint parts is just as alive in the psychism as it is in the desert mystic with her ecstatic emotions.  It is perhaps more profound in the psychism because it is a celebration of the fruit of human relations instead of requiring the recoil from them.

Put into the sweep of cosmic evolution, evolutionary mysticism can be seen in instances of ‘empirical mysticism’.  Teilhard’s “intuition bursting on a pile of facts” is described by secular thinkers such as Albert Einstein in terms of ‘joyful awakening’ to a clearer vision of universal cohesiveness.

The larger psychism, consisting in the groups of scientists which developed the molecular concept of genetic activity by which a treatment of the Covid-19 virus emerged, all report the same reaction to uncovering how the Covid virus attacked the human gene.

The Next Post

This week we explored the idea of increased ‘holism’ in the human attempt to more fully grasp and understand the objective reality that we reflect in our subjective minds.

Next week we will take a closer look at such a seemingly dualistic idea as ‘empirical mysticism’

   Secular mysticism today

Today’s Post

     Last week we continued our look at mysticism, this time looking at it from the role of ‘imagination’ in filling in the missing details that occur when we attempt to become ‘aware’ of the world outside the dark cave of our skulls.  This process can be seen as resonant with John Haught’s assertion that

“…every aspect of religion gains new meaning and importance once we link it to the new scientific story of an unfinished universe.”

This week we will focus Teilhard’s ‘lens’ on seeing how this plays out today

The Modern Mystic

Haught’s insight recognizes that religion and science need each other’s insights if they’re to help us make sense of things.  This simple realization is one of the pillars of modern mysticism: seeing things as a whole.

Humans have been learning to see things more holistic for centuries.  The simplest first step is to recognize that every action has a consequence.  A close second step is to recognize that all consequences cannot be foretold.  This of course is at the base of the record of human ‘trial and error’ that has taken us to where we are today.

An example of this process can be seen in the human approach to ‘fuel’, addressed in more detail in  February of 2020.  In this example, the earliest choice of fuel was wood, which quickly became a problem as society became more densely packed with the advent of cities.  Since it requires a lot of volume to produce heat, the logistics of chopping and shipping wood quickly overcame its caloric benefit.  Once it was realized that coal was much more efficient and required less logistics, it became the primary fuel but once again its ill effects on the increasing density of human population became a detriment.  This trial-and-error process has proceeded into development of many potential sources of fuel that are necessary for the continuation of human evolution, but which all bring a widening net of delivering technology as well as unwanted consequences which must be managed.

The size of the net, measured in such metrics as logistics, health hazards and cost, requires an ever-widening perspective.  Not only does the linear size of the net expand, but the necessity for understanding how consequences barely seen today can increase over time, such as the impact of lead paint on the development of cognition in children.  As the net of ills expands, it becomes necessary to widen the net of understanding the consequences.  Continual increases in the holism of the recognition of consequences are needed.
While seeing ‘mysticism’ in the pedestrian concept of learning to see things more holistically might not connote the rapt ecstasy depicted by Renaissance painters of St. Theresa of Avila, the effects are more profound.  Norberg’s nine facets of human evolution summarize the way human life can be improved and individual lives uplifted by such secular manifestations of Teilhard’s ‘psychisms’ in which human groups come to realize fundamental truths about both human needs and our capacity to meet them.

Teilhard, as a font of such an integrated view of reality, influencing Haught, Rohr and the many others we have met along the way, is an example of the ‘modern mystic’.  His highly integrated perception of the universe as a single thing in which traditional human concepts such as ‘one and many’, ‘natural and supernatural’, ‘sprit and matter’ are all knitted into a colorfully integrated fabric of reality in which the opposites addressed in each duality simply become single things with different ways to make sense of them.  It is not that the contrasts inherent in their traditional dualistic treatment disappear but are now recognized as points in a spectrum.  Blue is not the opposite of green, but simply another color that can be found in a single, integrated ray of sunlight once you employ a prism through which their particularities can be distinguished as different wavelengths of a single, multispectral beam of energy.  Using Teilhard’s ‘prism of evolution’, the long list of dualities which has mired religion in the mud of irrelevancy can be overcome, permitting it to regain its place in the human quest for the sense of things.

We have seen this insight from Teilhard before, but it becomes more relevant in the light of modern mysticism:

“I doubt that whether there is a more decisive moment for a thinking being than when the scales fall from his eyes and he discovers that the is not an isolated unit lost in the cosmic solitudes and realizes that a universal will to live converges and is hominized in him”

  To Teilhard, the ultimate mystical insight is the perspective that each of us participates in the universal upwelling of complexity that has infallibly risen over the span of fourteen billion years. While this might sound like a religious sentiment, Teilhard also recognizes the value of such a cosmically integrated perspective to secular science:

“To explain scientifically is to include the facts in a general coherent interpretation.”

   The degree of truth of a statement, he is saying, is directly proportional to the ‘general coherence’ which it reflects.  In such a way, the ‘evolution of truth’ can be seen as we use our mysticism to better understand what has been referred to as ‘the ineffable’.

The common ground between science and religion becomes more clearly delineated by such “secular mysticism”.  As science’s understanding of the universe unfolds, it uncovers the coherence of all things. As it does, this coherence can increase our own nondual recognition of not only our fit into the universe but the intimate relationship between the core of our being and the axis of evolution that nourishes it.

By focusing Teilhard’s lens, we have seen how the recognition of ourselves as ‘the fruit of the cosmic spark’ can result in a profound sense of our rootedness in the cosmic sweep of evolution.

Mysticism therefore isn’t a state only achieved by those who would withdraw from the teeming and throbbing mass of humans being painfully compressed as they advance across the globe.  The modern mystic, as modelled by Teilhard, is one who would recognize the single heart beating at the core of this phenomenon, the one to which we can hear our own heart resonate if we but learn to listen.  There is only one reality, and the authentic mystic seeks to discover how it manifests itself in the seeming contradictions in which it presents itself.

The Next Post

This week we have shifted our focus onto mysticism as it can be found in today’s secular world.

Next week we will address how evolution is proceeding in the human species today to identify what can be seen if we look at It through the eyes of a ‘modern mystic’.

   How can Teilhard’s ‘lens’ be focused on the Mystical Approach to Making Sense of Things?

Today’s Post

     Last week we took a final look at the many facets of orienting our lives towards in a way which makes us more open to Teilhard’s ‘winds of life’ so that we may be ‘carried by a current’ to the fuller being which is possible to us as products of a ‘complexifying evolution’.  Or, as Karen Armstrong sees it, we seek ways to experience the moments of ecstasy and rapture in which we inhabit our humanity more fully.
This week we will begin a look at yet another facet found in nearly every expression of religion, that of ‘mysticism’.

What is Mysticism?

Nearly every form of religion includes the highly subjective practice of ‘mysticism’. Traditionally, it is thought of as a communication between the natural and supernatural, often enhanced by prescribed rituals, and occasionally by psychedelic herbs.  Whatever underlies the experience, it is often profound, and felt by the mystic to open the door to a deeper, more inclusive insight into reality.  To many, it is less insight into reality and more a deeper experience of it

It is also deeply subjective.  What the mystic ‘sees’ is highly colored by personal biases and predispositions, all of which require interpretations to establish meanings.

The mystical experience has often been mistrusted by the established order of religious hierarchy, seen as potentially threatening to orthodoxy and hierarchy since most mystics saw their experience as a direct connection to the divine and therefore in no need for ecclesiastical mediation.  In the West, this dichotomy is evident in the distinction between monastic orders and diocesan priests.

In either case, the mystical experience itself is real, and evident in all forms of belief.  As in other concepts woven into religious belief, it can be viewed through Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’.

If it indeed is a way to understand reality which is more complete, one which sees ‘the whole’ in place of ‘the components of the whole’, it is a valuable tactic for a clearer understanding of ourselves and our ‘fit’ into this reality.

The Incarnational Nature of Liminal Space

Liminal space is the realm of the half-imagined margin between sleep and wake, in which our minds are unfettered, allowed to roam uncaged by the spreadsheet-like structures that we erect in our pursuit of a systematic grasp of reality as we seek to make sense of our lives.  This is the space prized by the historical mystics that have accompanied the structure-bound journey of orthodox religious thought in the quest for God.

In our own personal journeys, liminal space is that in which our insights can rise to light the darkness of unconsciousness, one in which the first stirrings of such recognitions as we have explored:

We are equal

Matter and spirit are bound by an implicit energy which grows over time

To become more I must love more

Fuller being always results from closer union which leads to fuller being

My failures do not define me

I can trust myself

Beneath and beyond what I see there is always more

The future can be better than the past

   And eventually the greatest insight

“It is I, be not afraid”

   The navigation of liminal space can be seen in the endless attempt by artists to solidify the flicker of insight seen in this milieu, to extend a line from the firm shore of the left brain to the translucent swirl of half-seen patterns of the right; from the elusive, transient ephemeral flash to the eternal solid written word or play of colors upon a canvas, from imagination to articulation.  As Tennessee Williams succinctly put it

“The object of art is to make eternal the desperately fleeting moment.”

   “The word was made flesh, and dwelt among us”.  This famous line from John could be rephrased as “the word becomes flesh and dwells within us”.  As we have seen, the term “word” is understood by Teilhard as the cosmic spark by which matter gathers ‘spirituality’ (as he defines the term) as it rises from the simplest of granules to the highly complex configuration found in the human brain.  Seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens’, his cosmic spark can be seen as active in our lives, that which lightens the cavernous pathways upon which we trod as we explore this liminal space within us.  Seen this way, it can give us confidence that what will be found is truly fuller being and can be trusted to lead us into greater, as Anderson puts it, “habitation of our humanity”.

This is ‘incarnational’ because the ‘word’ is indeed not only the blueprint for our being, but the light by which the search for what is ‘incarnate’ in us is directed.

As Jung sees it, the subconscious mind borders on the conscious mind in this liminal space.  It is Tennyson’s predawn lit by the ‘casement slowly growing a glimmering square’, filled with the ‘pipe of half awakened birds’, or the ‘teeming brain’ calling out for Keats to ‘glean’.

The Evolutionary Side of Mysticism

Christianity traditionally sees the roots of mysticism in the explosion of asceticism and monasticism that accompanied Christianity’s new legal status in the third century, one which led to the many “Desert Fathers and Mothers”.

Karen Armstrong, in her book, “The Great Transformation”, sees the roots of mysticism arising much earlier in the ‘Axial Age’ as the locus on God began to change from an exterior to an interior perspective.  During this critical period, thinkers across the globe were beginning to use their own lives and their own intuitions as reference points for their insights on human life.  As she saw it

“For the first time, human beings were systematically making themselves aware of the deeper layers of human consciousness.  By disciplined introspection, the sages of the Axial Age were awakening to the vast reaches of selfhood that lay beneath the surface of their minds.  They were becoming fully “self-conscious.”

 An intimate awareness of this ‘liminal space’ was beginning to be recognized as an authentic source of insight.

The Christian mystics tapped into the new hermeneutics introduced by Christianity to expand these insights.  As Richard Rohr puts it

“The 12th century Rhineland mystic Hildegard of Bingen, and later Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) and his early followers, brought back what I call “incarnational mysticism”—finding God through things instead of ideas, doctrines, and church services, which still persists as the mainline orthodoxy down to our time.”

  Rohr cites Charles Péguy (1873–1914), French poet and essayist, as he wrote with great insight that

 “…everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.”

   Rohr articulates this journey as he notes that

“Everything new and creative in this world puts together things that don’t look like they go together at all but always have been connected at a deeper level.”

   Thus, to him mysticism seeks that deeper level, to a unified mode of nondual thinking where contradiction and paradox can be held in tension by the right brain until the left brain can begin to see the connections between them.  In this event, as Teilhard puts it

“Intuition bursts on a pile of accumulated facts.”

   Rohr notes that such activity is pervasive in Christian history.

“Just as Augustine reinterpreted Christianity in light of Plato in the 4th century, and Aquinas integrated Aristotle in the 13th, today there are dozens of theologians across the spectrum re-envisioning the Christian faith. Whose ideas are they integrating now? Darwin, Einstein, Hubble, Wilson and all those who have corrected, and continually contribute to, an evidence-based understanding of biological, cosmic, and cultural evolution.”

   This ‘evidence-based understanding’ is the product of the left brain’s integration of the right-brain’s intuition.  It is another example of our ‘principles of reinterpretation’ that we saw earlier, and reflects the insight of John Haught that

“…every aspect of religion gains new meaning and importance once we link it to the new scientific story of an unfinished universe.”

The Next Post

This week we saw how mysticism, as a facet of religion, seeks a deeper view of reality in which our understanding of it is less important than our experiencing of it.

Next week we will continue this focus on mysticism, looking at how such an approach to understanding and participating in reality can be seen today.