Bolstering our mystical imagination with empirical findings

Today’s Post

     Last week we suggested that mysticism is alive and well, not only in the secular sense, but in the modern 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 be found in nearly all expressions of religion, alongside that which sees life as a ‘rise’ in some places and a ‘stalemate’ 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 increases in wealth on the part of the few is 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.  , one which is deeperTeilhard 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 the nine metrics of human evolution in which Norberg charts, 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 energy (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 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 of 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 imagination to integrate the data available to us into a coherent context in which our own lives are resonant.  Teilhard sees cosmic evolution in this way 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’.

     What part does mysticism play in developing our sense of what’s real? 

Today’s Post

   Last week we moved into the terrain of ‘mysticism’, seeing it from the perspective of religion but recognizing its presence in the human ability to gain better understanding of the reality in which we live.

This week, we’ll look more closely at the part that ‘secular mysticism’ plays in this process.

Human ‘Sense Making’

As we have suggested several times, Science and Religion are simply two of humanity’s principal ways of making sense of what we see around us so that we can become more adept at dealing with it.  Evidently, humans require confidence in the way they live their lives in order to be able to survive, and for millennia they derived this confidence from the belief that somehow reality was intelligible and somehow they could come to understand it well enough to thrive in it.  As humans became more proficient in the process of supplementing this intuitive approach to reality with physical and intellectual tools that increasingly became more empirical, the concepts and beliefs of the past could begin to become objectively understood, and hence more rooted in the objective nature of the reality which surrounded them.

The process of perfecting the mind’s grasp of what the eyes see is a perennial subject for philosophy, Science and Religion.  All three recognize that no matter how ‘correctly’ we grasp reality, there is always a facet of objective reality that is still beyond our gaze.  We cannot escape the reality that our brains are locked securely within the ‘pitch black bony vault’ of our skulls, dependent on a long trail of sensory and neurological processes before conscious awareness can begin.  And such awareness is simply the first step in an even less understood process involving such things as memory of prior experiences, emotional states and objective knowledge gained from our learning experiences.

The myriad and labyrinthine nature of this path from objective reality through sensory processes through mental gymnastics to truth as a more correct repackaging of reality in our brains has led many to suggest that whatever we think we know, we don’t.  This suggestion resembles that of Richard Feynman, ‘the father of quantum theory’, when he asserts that “Those who claim to understand quantum theory, don’t”.  While such dystopian perspectives are not without their nuggets of truth, the more realistic conclusion, based on the human’s success in evolution thus far, is that good enough can suffice as today’s step to tomorrow’s better.

Imagination and The Flow of Awareness

Consider for a moment what happens when we go through the process of ‘seeing’.  The electromagnetic energy that enters our eyes through the lens is projected onto the retina in the form of a multispectral waveform.  This energy is transmitted along the optic nerve to the receptor neurons in the brain.  Somehow, by a process not clearly understood, the neurons in the brain precipitate this signal into distinct images (or concepts of images) which correspond to what our brains have been taught about images of the real world.

If all this is true, and understanding the pathways from objective reality to grasping the truth about it is the key to ‘making sense of things’, where does mysticism come in?  A clue to the answer is in the concept of ‘imagination’.

It is common to contrast ‘imagining’ and ‘seeing’, as if they refer to two completely different mental processes.  In contrast to this simplistic duality, modern science is finding that the flow of awareness from that outside the eye to that finally grasped by the mind is quite complex.  Anil Seth, neuroscientist at the University of Sussex, puts it this way:

“Perceptions come from the inside out just as much, if not more, than from the outside in.”

   From this point of view, we can begin to understand how objective reality is represented in our consciousness as subjective reality.  To some extent, we create our own reality.  At the extreme end of the spectrum, our subjective reality is understood to be so completely disconnected from objective reality that we cease to be able to function normally in society.  For most of us, a cause of such a disconnect can simply can be seen in our biases.

However, Seth’s perspective also addresses a positive characteristic of human psychophysiology: humans are capable of filling gaps in their understanding of reality.  Most of us come to realize that no situation that we face can be completely understood before we are forced to deal with it.  As a result, all our actions are subject to some level of unexpected consequences, requiring us to make choices in the face of gaps in our understanding of the situation.
We fill in those gaps with our imagination.  While this ‘imagining process’ is influenced by memory, emotion and accumulated knowledge, it still addresses the ‘unknown’ which lurks in the future as well as providing us an ability to successfully deal with it.

Human history can also be seen in the light of such gaps and our attempts to fill them.  Johan Norberg, in his book, “Open”, charts the rise and fall of successive civilizations in terms of their ability to develop answers to the questions raised by such gaps as ‘how much freedom should the individual have in society and how much should the society have?”  In his book, “Progress”, he charts the exponential rise of global welfare as successive waves of society have become more proficient at answering them by ‘imagining’ ways to frame them and inventing social structures to better manage them.

Thus, at both our personal level and at the level of cultural evolution, our ability to ‘imagine’ that which is missing from our attempt to capture reality in our minds is a factor in our dealing with this reality.  If our actions are based on ‘what we know’, this knowledge is always enhanced by what we can imagine.

This is where ‘secular mysticism’ comes in.  In true human growth to maturity, our experiences lead us to a more comprehensive and thus more successful relationship with reality, and our ability to successfully use imagination to fill the gaps in our understanding increases as well.  Most of us realize the necessary incompleteness of our knowledge as we evolve in a world which is also evolving, but as we mature we can become more confident in the mystical sense which finds a faithful unity underlying an oft-chaotic diversity.

‘Secular mysticism’ therefore is nothing more than our efforts to ‘fill the gaps’ between what we know we know and what we know that we do not know.  Humans have been aware of this ‘ineffable’ quality of reality for centuries, and musicians and poets are adept at leading us to it.  Whether tears come to our eyes when we listen to Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ or tap our toes to Brubeck’s dizzying ‘Time Out’, we are responding to this awareness of the ineffable weave of the real.

The Next Post

This week we took a deeper look at the slippery topic of mysticism, understanding that it, in the form of imagination is a natural part of increasing our sense of understanding what’s real.

Next week we will carry these secular insights into this perspective on human ‘knowing’ into seeing how they play out today.

September 9, 2021 –  Secular Mysticism

   The Mystical Approach to Making Secular 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’.
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.  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 the orthodoxy and structure 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 in our perspective of the ‘Secular Side of God’.

If it indeed is a way to understand reality in a way that 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 meaning in our lives.  This is the space prized by the historical mystics that have accompanied the structure-bound journey of orthodox religious thought in our 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.  This 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, giving us confidence that what will be found is truly fuller being and can be trusted to lead us into greater possession of ourselves.

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 for Keats to ‘glean’.

The Secular 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 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 secular product of the left brain’s integration of the right-brain’s intuition.  It is another example of the ‘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.

Living a life more open to the forces of evolution which can bring us to ‘fuller being’

 Today’s Post

     Continuing our look at how our response to Teilhard’s ‘winds of life’ can carry us ‘to the open sea’, we have seen the ways that the thread of universal evolution rises in us both as a species and as individual human persons that together can move us forward in ways that we are led, as Karen Alexander pus it, “into a deeper possession of ourselves”.

This week we will look a little deeper into this dual aspect of human evolution as it moves us forward.

The Progression of Human Evolution

We have attached a great deal of significance to Johan Norberg’s documentation of the exponential rise in human welfare over the last 150 years.  As we pointed out, Norberg’s plethora of statistics clearly shows a global trend which documents a rise in the general state of humanity.   This rise goes against the popular perspective that the state of humanity is deteriorating.  But, even the atheistic scientist, Richard Dawkins, agrees that something is nonetheless stirring in human evolution in his book, “The Selfish Gene” when he contrasts this facet of human evolution to Darwinistic genetic change.

“I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet.  It is still in its infancy, drifting around in its primordial soup, but is already achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene panting far behind.  The new soup is the soup of human culture”, and this new replicator “conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission”.

Dawkins’ insight that human evolution continues faster by way of ‘memes’ (units of cultural replication) than in genes (units of biological evolution) correlates well with both Teilhard and Norberg.  All three recognize the ‘something new’ that is happening with humans that suggests an undercurrent to biological Natural Selection, which requires genetic changes to produce new species.

As we have seen many times, but particularly emphasized by Teilhard, this ‘undercurrent’ isn’t something that comes into play with the human species.  As John Haught succinctly puts it

“Running silently through the heart of matter, a series of events that would flower into ‘subjectivity’ (the ‘person’) has been part of the universe from the start. So hidden is this interior side of the cosmos from public examination that scientists and philosophers with materialist leanings usually claim it has no real existence.”

   And, as we have seen, finding and cooperating with this undercurrent as it is active in individual human life is an essential step towards reaping the existential reward of ‘fuller being’ that is granted to us as a ‘fruit of evolution’.  But while it might be possible to take this step, in what form does it present itself?

Taking the Steps Toward Personal Evolution 

We have seen many examples of how both scientists and theologians, as well as atheists and theists can objectively recognize in nature today what was seen only a few hundred years ago as ‘supernatural’.  Understood in this way, The ‘reward’ was granted as an action of an extrinsic and supernatural god, prompted by piety, and only fully realized after death.  The dimensions of ‘correct’ piety were defined in the tenets of organized and dogmatic religion.

We have also seen how such a thread of belief was paralleled by the continuation of the more intrinsic concepts of God, such as found in Paul and John, and kept alive by the ‘Desert Fathers and Mothers’ of the early Church.

Elaine Pagels suggests a third strand, closely related to the second but decidedly seen by the hierarchical church as heretical, one which shows up in what are called the ‘Gnostic Gospels’.  In such writings as “The Gospel of Thomas”, she finds resonance with the concept of secular meditation that we addressed earlier.

“(The Kingdom of god) is a state of being that we may enter when we come to know who we are and come to know God as the source of our being.”

   This ‘state of being’ is the same ‘interior side’ as described by Haught above and seen as the object of discovery of the process of mediation.

Thus, the awareness of its existence, and the importance of coming to recognize its agency in each of us is a necessary prerequisite to our full immersal into the flow of life as it carries us to ‘fuller being’.

As we have seen, Teilhard addresses how the human species can continue its evolution by

“…continually find(ing) new ways of arranging (our) elements in the way that is most economical of energy and space” by “a rise in interiority and liberty within a whole made up of reflective particles that are now more harmoniously interrelated.”

We also saw how Norberg showed concrete examples of how the three legs of the table of increased human welfare are related in this succinct statement:

• The rise of interiority reflected in the importance of the individual person in legal codes
• The rise in liberty reflected in assertions of equality and individual freedoms which enable innovation and invention
• The necessity of fruitful and productive human relationships which multiply the products of such innovation and invention

Teilhard’s succinct description of steps towards continuation of human evolution can be seen to be mirrored in individual life.

• ‘Finding new ways of arranging our lives’ requires a constant re-evaluation of our lives with a view to how we can reorient our perspectives, become less subjective, recognize and overcome our biases and other of the many practices suggested by the vast body of spiritual thinkers.
• “Most economical energy and space” refers to the ‘spiritual energy’ that we expend. How much of our time is spent in concerns about things we cannot control instead of exploring ways that it can be focused on a ‘clearer disclosure of God in the world’?
• “Increasing our interiority and liberty” by searching into ourselves more deeply on the one hand, while expanding our ‘field of view’ of the world around us on the other. This is closely mirrored by Teilhard’s dyad of “centration and excentration” in which every increase in our grasp of reality contributes to a deepening of our fullness, which in turn enables us to see things more clearly.
• “More harmonious relationships” occur when we apply this dyad of ‘centration and excentration’ to our individual relationships. In Teilhard’s insight into our relationships, the energy of evolution that incessantly causes ‘the stuff of the universe’ to unite in such a way that more complex products emerge is active in the human in the phenomenon of ‘love’.  While this phenomenon obviously powers the advance of the human species, its activity in the human person effects the personal ‘complexification’ required to move it forward.  In his succinct statement, he understands ‘fuller being’ to emerge from ‘closer union’, which itself is facilitated by ‘fuller being’.

The Next Post

This week we have addressed how our evolution as a species is dependent on our evolution as individual persons.  While Teilhard and others clarify steps toward the ‘fuller being’ that is possible to us, increasing our understanding of ourselves and the reality in which we are enmeshed can be difficult.  It calls for us to be able to see beyond the obvious, the everyday stuff of life, and our own limitations of habit, bias and often, fear.

Next week we will begin to take a secular look at the “state of being that we may enter when we come to know who we are and come to know God as the source of our being” as suggested by ‘The Gospel of Thomas”

   Living a life more open to the forces of evolution which can bring us to ‘fuller being’ 

Today’s Post

     Last week we saw how we can train ourselves to be more open to the energy of evolution that Teilhard describes which runs through our lives.  This week we take a closer look at some specifics.

The Aspects of ‘Fuller Being”

In addition to Paul’s list of the facets of ‘the Fruit of the Spirit’, in Corinthians he provides another list, this time of the manifestations of love in our lives (From 1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

Patience                           Calmness

Kindness                              Truthfulness

Self-confidence                              Trust

Humility                               Hope

Respect                                             Non-egotistical

Perseverance

   This list clearly parallels his list of the eight facets of ‘The Fruit of the Spirit’ that were addressed above but have the same reciprocal relation to our quest for ‘fuller’ life.  Both sets of characteristics identify what can be found because of authentic human growth, but as commonly reflected in religious thinking, they are less ‘results’ than they are behaviors which must be practiced.

We have seen how Carl Rogers lists the facets of a ‘fuller’ life.

–more integrated hence more effective

– more realistic view of self

– stronger valuation of self

– increasing self-confidence

–more openness to experience, less denial or repression

–more accepting of others, seeing others as more similar

-clearer in communication

-more responsible for actions

-less defensive and anxious

   Like Paul’s lists, these characteristics identify a ‘fuller’ life, but like Paul’s characteristics they also reflect the ‘work in progress’ necessary to get there.  Paul’s recommendation to ‘Put on Christ’ by adopting the behavior suggested by these lists is simply a method of training our neocortex brains to become more adept at dealing with reality.  Like Sacks’ ‘rewiring the brain’ by ‘rerouting the writing’, our success in dealing with life increases when we practice such behavior.

One distinct example can be found in one of the most fundamental human activities: relationships.  As we have seen many times, from Teilhard’s expanded vision of the nature of the universe, relationships (connections) are essential to the universe’s emergence in the form of increased complexity.  Connectivity between granules of ‘the stuff of the universe’ recurs endlessly in evolution to effect the increase in complexity which eventually manifests itself in the human person’s ‘awareness of ‘consciousness’.

The ‘fly in the ointment’ suggested by almost every religion and reflected in Yuval Harari’s ‘Sapiens”, is that, with the human person, the previously infallible force of ‘instinct’, so successful in our pre-human ancestors, is potentially undermined by our two-edged ‘gift’ of ‘choice’.  While ‘choice’ might well carry on our personal and cultural evolution, the making of it is frequently problematic.  Because of this, as we have seen, there is no guarantee that evolution will continue its fourteen billion year rise in the continuation of the human species.

Teilhard shows how the energy which has so faithfully raised the complexity of the universe thus far can be seen in that which energizes our human relationships: ‘love’.   We have explored the many aspects of this energy by which we are woven into the relationships necessary to our collective states.  In keeping with Teilhard’s convergent spiral nature of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’, ‘love’ can be seen as not only as a state of relationship but as the agency by which state emerges.  As Confucius suggests, to get love we must give love, and that’s where ‘choice’ comes in.

From this perspective, love is quite distinct from the emotional or procreational impetus to unity, it is the ontological basis of the continuation of human evolution.  To love we must decide. Harari is correct when he intuits that with the human mode of consciousness in which we become aware of our awareness, choice is now necessary for its evolutionary continuation.  He is also correct that a dystopian facet of ‘belief’ has wound its way through our history, one which threatens a mode of belief which is more confident, more optimistic and more conducive to our future is.  ‘Belief’ and hence ‘love’ must therefore be consciously ‘chosen’.  Love is, in the human, ultimately a ‘decision’.

Thus, the ability to make decisions in favor of our continued evolution, both as persons continuing our quest for ‘fullness’ and societies continuing their fabrication of the noosphere, we must become more skillful in using our neocortex brains in modulating the instincts of our lower brains.  One way to hone this skill is to adapt the behavior which reflects the presence of the manifestations of it that we have explored thus far.  The lists that Paul and Rogers provide above consist of basic practices which can move us in this direction.

An example of such practice can be found in nearly every human relationship.  In our most intimate relationships, found in the lives of committed partners, we profess to ‘love’ each other.   But there are clearly times when the ‘feeling’ of love is absent.  The increasing divorce rate in the West is evidence that this state frequently leads to dissolution of the union.  The recognition that it is possible to continue the relationship is a ‘choice’, one not easy to make but frequently resulting in a deeper relationship.

It is obvious that conflicts are inevitable as two persons pursue their own growth as they are fashioning their relationship.  Faith in one’s unearned capacity to grow and in the ‘grace’ (Chapter 20) that comes with this capacity is necessary to cross this bridge while we are building it.  The ‘putting on’ of Jesus that Paul recommends is a straightforward step towards the other side.

In a society which values such appearances of maturity as Paul and Rogers list, their translation into the aspects of human welfare documented by Johan Norval are abundant.   If the trends he identified continue, the emergence of a welcoming future becomes certain.  The skills required to continue them, to build a bridge over which we are crossing, are ones in which we must also become proficient.

As we have seen, a welcoming future is not guaranteed.  There are tendrils woven into the complex fabric of the human species that are very capable of resulting, as Harari predicts, in an early demise of Homo Sapiens.  But as Teilhard sees it, while we might be early in the game of making sense of things, the tools are for doing so are nonetheless taking shape.  Norberg’s articulation of the shape that they are taking might be an early one, but his articulations are nonetheless examples of what can be seen as we learn open our eyes to the true immensity of the universe and its path to a future into which we are constantly being welcomed.

The Next Post

This week we took a closer look at how we can posture ourselves to become more open to the energy of evolution as it manifests itself in human life.  While such a practice might saturate most religious teachings, Teilhard shows how they also are intuitive attempts to align life with the flow of evolution that rises trough it.  Once again we are reminded of his poetic observation the

“Those who spread their sails to the winds of life will always be borne on a current towards the open sea.”

   Next week we will take yet another look at this activity to see how Teilhard’s insight can be reflected in individual human life.

Posturing life to be more open to the forces of evolution which can bring us to ‘fuller being’

Today’s Post

     Last week we saw how Teilhard’s ‘spiral of evolution’ depicts the process by which the rudimentary elements described by physics reciprocally unite, complexify and re-unite as evolution rises in the universe.

This week we continue our focus on universal evolution to address how it continues in human life.

The Noosphere as the Catalyst to Human Evolution

Teilhard offers a second venue for such reciprocation with his concept of the ‘noosphere’ (February 11).  In its more common understanding, the noosphere is simply the aggregation of human lore, innovations built up over centuries of human cultural evolution.

But to Teilhard (and to some extent, Richard Dawkins in his concept of accumulated ‘memes’) the noosphere not only exists as a passive ‘bank of ideas’ but as an active agent in human evolution.  Along with the treasure trove of technology that it provides, increasing the individual and collective welfare of our societies, it is the underlying and ever clarifying quantum of guideposts to our behavior.  As Johan Norberg notes, while the innovations and inventions we have seen clearly contribute to our increasing welfare, they are not possible without the cultural insistence on the importance of the human person and the betterment of human relationships.

Thus, the noosphere, as Teilhard sees it, is a key reciprocal agent to our evolution.  As we better understand ourselves and enhance our relationships, we contribute these insights into a collective wisdom that increases our capacity for a clearer understanding that will continue to further our personal as well as our cultural evolution.

Thus, we are back to the chicken-egg conundrum proposed by Sacks last week.  Do we act because we evolve, or do our actions cause us to evolve?  Considering the universal convergence that Teilhard sees in the noosphere, the answer is ‘yes’.  The actions of generations of Westerners, demanding more freedom by way of many cycles of ‘charters’ and ‘constitutions’ has contributed cultural ‘DNA’ to an evolutionary process resulting in a society in which increased freedom leads to increased welfare.  While Sacks’ connection between action and neurology might not be strongly suggested here, there seems to be little doubt that the world today (as Norberg documents in posts from Feb 20, 2020 ) is strikingly different from that experienced only a few generations ago.  Actions can lead to consequences which enable further actions.

But the question still remains: how do we keep this recursive cycle going?  How do we assure a future in which the unprecedented progress documented by Norberg will continue?  Put another way, what is required at the unique granularity of the human person to foster the increasing convergence of the aggregate species in such a way that our personal and collective growth to ‘fuller being’ is ensured?

Values and Virtues as ‘Training for the Future’

We saw in the posts beginning April 8, 2021, how Paul masterfully summarizes what Jefferson refers to as “The Morals of Jesus”.  To some extent, Paul addresses Richard Dawkins’ ‘de-baggaging’ of the gospels in his summaries of Jesus’ precepts.  Focusing less on the ‘Stories of Jesus’ found in the gospels, Paul extracts and summarizes the teachings themselves into such lists as the three ‘Theological Virtues’ the eight examples of the ‘Fruit of the Spirit”..

One of his metaphors is the admonition to “Put on Christ”.  A traditional interpretation is to understand such an action as ‘armoring’ one’s self against unbelievers, but a more direct interpretation is simply to see Jesus as a model for correct behavior.  Of course, the rationale for ‘correct behavior’ as evolved in Western Christianity has traditionally been satisfying God’s criteria for ‘salvation’ as promotion into the next life.  From Teilhard’s insight, however, ‘correct behavior’ involves that which positions us for ‘closer union through fuller being, and fuller being through closer union’, the two essential steps of both human evolution and personal growth.

We saw in the above reference how Paul’s concepts of the ‘Theological Virtues’ and the ‘Fruit of the Spirit’ translate easily into the insights of Teilhard as aspects of human evolution.  We can do likewise as we explore situating ourselves more securely into the ‘tree of evolution’.

We have suggested frequently that a necessary aspect of human evolution is developing the skill of using the neocortex brain to modulate the instinctual stimuli of the ‘lower’ reptilian and limbic brains, and further learning to use the two (left and right) thinking modes of the neocortex harmoniously in dealing with reality.  As we saw last week, Sacks observes how the performance of skills such as writing sharpens our mental ability to think more clearly.  This reflects one of the most common adages in history, ‘Practice makes Perfect”.  Athletes train, scholars and linguists memorize, children are taught to read, pilots train in simulators.  All anticipate an increase in the skills to which they train.
We have seen how Paul’s eight facets of the ‘Fruit of the Spirit’ can be understood as facets of the ‘happiness’ that is possible as we move toward Jesus’ ‘fuller being’.  They can also be seen as both aspects of behavior which reflect an inner maturity and acts of ‘training’ which can lead to the ‘fuller being’ that Jesus suggests is possible for us.  As in all ‘training’, repetition of an action expands our ability to act.  Thus, when Paul tells us to “Put on Christ”, he suggests that acting out the behavior that he identifies as resulting from ‘an indwelling of the spirit’ will lead to the ‘fullness of being’ in which these facets can be found.

The Next Post

This week we moved from an approach to understanding evolution as it proceeds in the universe to looking at its traces on human existence.  As Teilhard suggests (and echoed by Haught and others) a rising awareness of this phenomenon in our personal lives is not only critical to the quality of life, but also to the continuation of our species.

Next week we will continue this approach to see how Paul’s insights into such aspects of human life are echoed in today’s psychology.

    Understanding our evolution as a step towards managing it

 Today’s Post

For the past several weeks we have been exploring the slippery phenomena of human happiness, concluding that a clearer understanding of our fit into our evolutionary process can bring us into ‘fuller being’ and hence greater satisfaction.

This week we will begin a closer look at how such a clearer understanding of this process can help us to do this.

How Did We Get Here?

We have seen how Teilhard and other contemporary thinkers offer insight into the critical process of ‘making sense of things.’  Very few thinkers from the full spectrum of these insights believe that humans are near the end of their process of becoming what it is possible for them to become, from the materialists who cite the ongoing mutations of the genomes that are the machinery for our future morphological manifestations to those who sense the incompleteness of our understanding of the universe and our role in it.

At the same time, we recognize that there is little agreement between these two poles of thought on what is essential to the continuation of the evolution of our species.  We can paraphrase Carl Rogers’ insight on personal maturity into an insight about the potential of our species to

“… reorganize itself at both the personal and cultural levels in such a manner as to cope with life more constructively, more intelligently, and in a more socialized as well as a more satisfying way”.

   This is deeply resonant with Teilhard’s assertion that we must

“…continually find new ways of arranging (our) elements in the way that is most economical of energy and space” by “a rise in interiority and liberty within a whole made up of reflective particles that are now more harmoniously interrelated.”

   While surely a daunting task, we saw in posts from Feb 20, 2020  how Johan Norberg, in one of the first attempts to gather data on such a process as these two thinkers propose offers a relatively unambiguous picture of our potential for evolutionary advancement.  Building the bridge upon which we are travelling is surely risky (as we saw in in the post of March 26, 2020), but if we understand how to put our history into an objective perspective (as Norberg suggests above), we can’t help but be encouraged in its construction.

Therefore, a recalibrated look at the past helps to see how far we’ve come and extrapolate to a future which we can see as one which welcomes us.  We have seen John Haught’s’ insight that such a recalibration helps us to read

“… nature, life, mind and religion as ways in which a whole universe is awakening to the coming of more-being on the horizon.  It accepts both the new scientific narrative of gradual emergence and the sense that something ontologically richer and fuller is coming into the universe in the process.”

   For all that, then, how are we to go about Roger’s ‘reorganization’ and Teilhard’s ‘rearrangements’ to ensure Haught’s realization of a ‘richer and fuller’ future?

Thinking With The Whole Brain

We saw in the posts from Feb 20, 2020, how human history can be seen to unfold as humans began to supplement the long legacy of reasoning through ‘right brain intuition’ by introducing the skill of ‘left brain empiricism’.  Jonathan Sacks traces this ‘neurological’ path through the slow reversal from ‘right to left’ writing (primarily written by the left hand) to that of writing in a ‘left to right’ direction (primarily written by the right hand).  He tracks this transformation as seen in the evolution of writing from the Phoenicians in the tenth century BCE to that of the Greeks by the sixth century BCE.   While this might initially be seen as simply a change in custom, Sacks goes further as he correlates this ‘custom’ with the unprecedented rise of empiricism seen in the explosion of Greek thinking with the appearance of Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Pythagoras and many others whose empirical thoughts laid the ground for the later emergence of Science.  He cites the neurological aspect of this evolution by noting that not only did the ‘handedness direction’ change, so did the hand commonly used to do the writing.  Right-to-left writing is done by the left hand, but left-to-right writing is done by the right hand.  Since such ‘handedness’ is controlled by brain hemispheres the shift that Sacks notes indicates a shift in the brain activity which controls the writing.

The ‘long’ period from the emergence of Greek empiricism to the first stirrings of Western Science, (approximately two thousand years, a blink of the evolutionary eye) is evidence of the slowly emerging skill of ‘thinking with both sides of the brain’.  The practice of using of the neocortex brain to modulate the stimuli of the ‘lower’ reptilian and limbic brains predates this relatively new skill, as can be seen in nearly every ‘pre-empirical’ society in their growing awareness that a conscious relationship to both the environment and to our fellow humans is necessary for social stability.  The many expressions of ‘correct’ human relationships can be seen as evolving from the basic axiom of Confucius,

“Do not do to others what you would not like done to yourself”.

   However, the many historic examples of human activity which are orthogonal to this axiom offer evidence of how difficult it is to practice.

The Reciprocal Nature of Evolution

Such difficulty is much in evidence as the ability to address ‘self’ emerges in human culture.  In our rapidly increasing access to ‘news’, afforded by the exponential growth in communication technologies, we are constantly inundated with evidence of the ills of our times.  As we saw in April 2020, there is a tendency towards a ‘moral lassitude’ which presents itself as a diminishing confidence in the future.  To many (as can be seen frequently in history), belief in an ‘end times’ offers the ‘promise’ of a supernatural intervention in which God will finally be repair the mistakes of his creation.

Such dystopia is clear evidence of the difficulty of practicing Confucius’ axiom.  What’s the alternative?

We can start by recognizing the reciprocal nature of the evolutionary process in which we are enmeshed.  An example of such a phenomenon can be found in Sacks’ example of the relation of thinking to writing.  In his example above, a chicken-egg question arises.  Did the practice of writing change from left-to-right because the skill of using the left brain emerged, or did the left- brain practice emerge because the ‘handedness’ of writing changed?  Either way, we can see a cultural norm and a neurological capability change in concert with each other.  This suggests that the use of a skill supplements its facility, which in turn enhances the use of it.

We can see another example in the common cycle of intuition-to-empiricism activity found in the human pursuit of ‘energy’.  Newton began this cycle with the intuition of the existence of an agency of motion.  He goes on to articulate this agency as ‘force’, framing it in an equation which relates the mass of an object to its rate change of velocity to determine the force.  This in turn leads to other intuitions of how this force can be ‘employed’, which leads to further application of Newton’s articulation into designs of machinery which supplement human work.  This blossoms into standards of conduct for the human activity in which these machines can be employed.

Each of these steps involves a collaboration between states of ‘imagining’ (right-brained intuition) and processes of ‘implementing’ (left-brained empiricism) in a spiral which leads from less complex results to ones that are more complex.

We can see this reciprocal nature of evolution at work in the very essence of universal evolution.  In the post of November 8, 2018  we outlined Teilhard’s ‘convergent spiral’ in which the union of grains of matter can result in new grains whose enhanced complexity further enhances its capacity for future union.  This reciprocity recurs in the convergent spiral of history, with the ‘coefficient of complexity’ becoming larger in each cycle and thus increasing the potential for union all the way up to the evolutionary phenomena of the human person.

The Next Post

Putting our evolution into the context offered by Teilhard, Jonathan Sacks, Richard Rohr and John Haught is essential for ‘making sense’ of things in such a way that we can begin to ‘pay attention’ to how evolution emerges in our lives.  This week we took a first look at how evolution can be seen on a ‘macro’ level.  Next week we will narrow the focus to how these forces play out in human life, and, more importantly, how we can posture ourselves to be become more aware of them.

Today’s Post

For the past nine weeks we have been exploring the phenomenon of ‘human happiness’ from reaction to the ‘pain of convergence’ caused by the facets of our evolution to outlining the eight facets of happiness that occur when we manage to open our lives to it.

This week we’ll sum up these nine posts.

Why Pain?

We concluded exploration of the preceding subject, the ‘Terrain of Synergy’ by identifying the recognition of such terrain as a step to ‘reconnecting our individual parts to the whole’.  Richard Rohr frequently mentions this as a very basic goal of religion, ‘re-ligio’.

The problem arises, however, when such a connection becomes difficult, seemingly impossible, and we are caught up in what is often referred to as ‘existential angst’, pain which is unfocussed and leaves us feeling alienated and alone.  In such a state, ‘better’ is always the enemy of ‘good enough’, “yesterday was the best day of the rest of our life”, and the ability to feel satisfied denied us.

In addition, we are caught up in the inevitable side effect of human evolution: convergence.  With the crowding that we see increasing every day, on our streets, in our schools, in our neighborhoods our personal space increasingly dwindles.   The need for re-connection is countered with the need for de-connection.

As Yuri Harari points out in his book, “Sapiens”, these articulations of our existential angst can be traced to our breaking of the ‘evolutionary covenant’ that ancestors enjoyed in their millions of years on this planet: the evolution of their species proceeded at the same pace as the evolution of their environment.  Yuval notes that, distinct from our pre-human ancestors, we have evolved much faster than our skills of accommodation with the environment could develop.

With humans, in contrast to ancestors, our evolution proceeded much faster than that of our environment.  To make matters worse, we exacerbated this disconnect by degrading the environment itself.  And even worse, our ancestors dealt with population growth by simply disseminating, a tactic that we can no longer employ as once-empty spaces disappear.
According to Harari, this has robbed us of the evolutionary balance that our ancestors enjoyed with their environment, and thus opening us up to a future of continued disconnect with not only our environment but to ourselves as well.  This ‘evolutionary singularity’, as he sees it, prevents us from experiencing true happiness.

Toward Happiness

We went on to consider this dystopian conclusion in the light of three perspectives on happiness that show a different outcome to our evolution:

• Happiness from the material perspective

There is much in contemporary society, news, religious lore and scientific theory which address the human experience of ‘happiness’, but as we noted on August 8, very little of it is consistent, and much contradictory.  Other than being highly subjective, and subject to physiological stimulation, one does not come away with a comprehensive understanding of what it is and how to come by it.

• Happiness from the evolutionary perspective

We noted that if Teilhard’s perspective on evolution is applied, and the ‘rise of complexity’ from the big bang to the present is still alive in human evolution, then some optimism in the future can be justified.  Therefore, such an insight into the process of evolution is a facet of ‘being happy’.  Just ‘belief in the future’ alone contributes to our happiness.   As Patricia Albere, author of “Evolutionary Relationship”, puts it, this long history of rising complexity suggests that we have only to allow ourselves to be “lifted by the evolutionary forces that are ready to optimize what can happen in our lives and in humanity”.  To do this, “we only have to begin to pay attention”.

• Happiness from the ‘spiritual’ perspective

We noted that Teilhard’s use of this term differs considerably from that of traditional religion, spending more time on this particular perspective than the other two.  Key to this perspective is the ‘terrain of synergy’ in which the insights of science and religion can be seen to overlap.  As we have addressed many times, science and religion have much to offer each other, and the subject of happiness is no exception.

We also noted the insights from John Haught which clearly delineates this terrain from that of traditional religion and science.  Such delineation also opens the subject of happiness to understanding it from the perspective of Western religion.  This insight provides further articulation to how Albere’s suggestion of ‘paying attention’ can take place.

We ended our look at happiness by proceeding with the process of ‘reinterpretation’ of traditional Christian tenets, first addressed back in May, 2016.  Once again, we saw how Teilhard’s ‘principle of evolutionary context’ makes it possible to understand anew how our religious lore can become more relevant to our lives, and hence our continued evolution.

We first looked at how Teilhard’s three ‘vectors’ of universal evolution: ‘forward’, ‘inward’ and ‘upward’, manifest in every step of evolution from the big bang to the human person, can be seen as active in us when we reinterpret Paul’s essential actions of ‘faith’, ‘hope’ and ‘love’.

Finally, we reinterpreted Paul’s ‘Fruit of the Spirit’ into articulations of nine facets of human life which underlie the dimension of human happiness.  While the subject of human happiness might well be a ‘slippery subject’, the facets of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control certainly offer an outline for a relationship to life that brings us ‘happiness’.

In this search for Harari’s ‘accommodation to evolution’, we have generally taken two approaches to Patricia Albere’s suggestion to ‘pay attention’ so that we can learn to trust evolution, one from Maurice Blondel and the other from John Haught.

From Blondel,

“In the light of evolution, religious tenets can be reinterpreted in terms of human life.”

   Then Haught,

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

  Therefore we have seen, using Teilhard’s evolutionary hermeneutic, how happiness is not only possible in our species, to a large extent it is both necessary for our continued evolution and the payoff for the finding of our place in it.

The Next Post

This week we wrapped up our look at the experience of human happiness, tracing it from “The Terrain of Synergy’ to a practical way to relook at our religious lore and reinterpret it in the light of Teilhard’s hermeneutic of cosmic becoming.

John Haught proposes that such an approach to the nature of the cosmos can also bring about a profound sense of ‘belonging’ once we begin to trust the upwelling of wholeness warranted by fourteen or so billion years of ‘complexification’.

“An anticipatory reading of the cosmic story therefore requires a patient forbearance akin to the disposition we must have when reading any intriguing story.  Reading the cosmic story calls for a similar kind of waiting, a policy of vigilance inseparable from what some religious traditions call faith.  Indeed, there is a sense in which faith, as I use the term…, is patience”.

Thus the anticipatory approach to the cosmic story requires a certain patience with the ongoing process of complexification, certain in confidence in a future that somehow will be better than the past.  Placing the universe into the context of becoming requires us to understand that

“Not-yet, however, is not the same as non-being.  It exists as a reservoir of possibilities that have yet to be actualized.  It is a realm of being that has future as its very essence.”

Albere’s “paying attention” is echoed in Haught’s tapping into this ‘reservoir of possibilities”.  As Teilhard puts it, “Those who set their sails to the winds of life will always find themselves borne on a current to the open sea”.

Next week we move on to the idea of living life in a way in which Albere’s “paying attention” can bring us into a closer resonance with the energy of evolution that Teilhard asserts rises in us.

Last Week

For the last several weeks we have been addressing human happiness from the perspectives of materiality, evolution, and spirituality.  This week we will look at a fourth and fifth facet, those of psychology and religion.

The Psychological Facet of Happiness

As we addressed the idea of meditation as a search for the ‘cosmic spark’ that lies at the core of each product of evolution, and therefore at the core of ‘personness’, we recognized the practice of psychology as a science-based approach to facilitating this search.

Specifically, we noted the approach taken by Dr. Carl Rogers  (September 10) as he introduced an approach to this facilitation in which the ‘therapist’ acted as a guide to the ‘client’ in undergoing such a search.  We listed many of the outcomes that Rogers records in such ‘facilitations’ and how they are examples of the results of the searching.  In all cases, Rogers records a path from ‘less whole’ to ‘more whole’.

As nearly all religions and most psychological schools assert, such a journey, if successful, will result in an increased degree of ‘happiness’.

Thus, Rogers’ articulation of the journey’s discrete steps and distinct outcomes offers an articulation of the concept of happiness itself.

As we saw, Rogers starts with a basic belief that humans are capable of happiness, and that the client can

“… reorganize himself at both the conscious and deeper levels of his personality in such a manner as to cope with life more constructively, more intelligently, and in a more socialized as well as a more satisfying way”.

   This potential to ‘reorganize himself’ in such a way as to ‘cope with life’ in a ‘more satisfying way’ is clearly one of the essentials of human happiness.  In the actualizing of this potential, we begin to move from the position that happiness ‘comes from without’ and that we are dependent on circumstances for our happiness, to the position that happiness can indeed result from our readiness to ‘reorganize ourselves’. We can become responsible for our own happiness.

Rogers goes on to list the characteristics of such reorganized life:

–more integrated hence more effective

–more realistic view of self

– stronger sense if valuation of self

– increasing self-confidence

–more openness to experience, less denial or repression

–more accepting of others, seeing others as more similar

-clearer in communication

-more responsible for actions

-less defensive and anxious

   He summarizes the characteristics of such a person:

– Increasingly open to personal experience, permitting less defensiveness

– Increasingly “existential”; living more fully in each moment, in touch with experiences and feelings

– Increasingly trusting of his own organism, able to trust those feelings and experiences

– Increasingly able to function more completely

   In Rogers we see an ‘articulation of happiness’: objective measures of the presence of maturity that is possible in human life and surely constitute many of the dimensions possible in human happiness.

The Religious Articulation of Happiness

All religions in some way address ‘how we should be if we would become what we can be’.  Many stress the necessity to undergo ‘diminishments’ in ‘this life’ in order qualify for ’reimbursement’ in ‘the next’, which suggests that, as Harari does, we should not expect much in the way of human happiness.  Others insist that real happiness in this life consists of disassociation with society so that an ecstatic union can be consummated with the divine.  Still others suggest that since life is such an unfair proposition, all that is left is resignation.  Christianity, put in the context of Jewish tradition, can be seen to reflect most of these positions.

But not in all its manifestations.
The New Testament, with its insistence on the potential of intimacy with the ‘ground of being’, contains an articulation of what can happen in the human person when they become aware of the ‘indwelling’ of ‘the spirit’.

For the most part, as Christian theology has evolved, this has suggested a reward ‘in this world’ for ‘faith’.  From the vantage point of Blondel, and then Teilhard, the evolutionary approach to understanding makes this facet of belief, as it makes many others, ripe for reinterpretation.

The ‘Fruit’ of the Cosmic Spark

The ‘Fruit of the Spirit’ is Paul’s term that identifies nine attributes of a person or community living ‘in accord with the Holy Spirit’.  Chapter 5 of Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians lists them:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

   Reinterpreting the concept of the ‘Spirit’ involves understanding ‘spirit’ in terms of the secular vein of energy that rises in us as a manifestation of the universal energy of evolution.  As we saw three weeks ago, Teilhard understands spirituality as

“…as neither super-imposed nor accessory to the cosmos, but that it quite simply represents the higher state assumed in and around us by the primal and indefinable thing that we call, for want of a better name, the ‘stuff of the universe’.”

    Thus ‘spirituality’ can be seen, as Paul Davies puts it, as the ‘software’ by which the ‘hardware’ of matter increases in complexity over time.

This is the ‘hermeneutic’ which we have used throughout to ‘reinterpret’ the tenets of Western religion as we approach the ‘filtering’ of it in search of how this ‘software’ can be seen to work in our lives.

From this vantage point, we can reinterpret Paul’s ‘Spirit’ as simply that which lifts us into ‘a higher state’ as we evolve.

With this in mind, among our several attempts to objectively quantify the attributes of a ‘full’ or complete human life, such characteristics seem high on the list.

Love –  We have addressed the attribute of love several times, noting the significant difference between the traditional understanding of it as the emotion by which we are attracted to each other and Teilhard’s insight that it is a manifestation of the universal evolutive energy by which things become more complex, and hence more united over time in such a way as they become more complete.  By participating in love we become more complete, more whole.  As Teilhard succinctly puts it

“Fuller being from closer union, and closer union from fuller being.”

Peace –  It is hard to imagine something more conducive to happiness than peacefulness.  Such a state can arise in us when we realize that our efforts to grow more complete are assured by a universal energy which rises unbidden and unearned within us.  God, as Blondel understood ‘Him’, is on our side. Life, as it is offered to us as a gift, is guaranteed to be open to our strivings, and is welcoming to our labors.  As the Ground of Being is uncovered as our own personal ground of existence, it is understood more as father than as fate.

Patience – Patience becomes more than long-suffering, teeth gritting endurance necessary for ‘salvation’, but the natural acceptance of what cannot be changed in light of Teilhard’s “..current to the open sea” on which we are carried when we ‘…set our sails to the winds of life.”

Recognition of the Cosmic Spark within us, the ‘gifted’ nature of it, and confidence in where it is taking us, can instill a patience with the vagaries of life that was would have been previously considered to be naive.  It is the state that can be experienced as we “awaken to the coming of more-being on the horizon” (John Haught).

Kindness – As an essential building block of both society and personal relationships, kindness is prescribed by nearly every religion in their variations of the ‘Golden Rule’.  Beyond this prescription is the natural emergence of kindness as a recognition that not only is the Cosmic Spark active in ourselves, but in others as well.  Treating others as we ourselves would be treated requires us to be aware of how our own Cosmic Spark is the essence of being by which we all reflect Teilhard’s ‘axis of evolution’.

Johan Norberg attributes the exponential increase of human welfare that he documents in his book, “Progress” to the increased value of the human and the improvement of human relationships which underpins it.  Kindness is one of the building blocks to the effectiveness of relationships.

Goodness –  Goodness, of course, is that tricky concept which underlays all the ‘fruits’ of Paul.  In Paul, as echoed by Teilhard, that which is ‘good’ is simply that which moves us ahead, both as individuals and members of our societies.  If we are to have ‘abundance’ of life, whatever contributes to such abundance is ‘good’.

Faithfulness – As we saw in our look at the Theological Virtues, faith is much more than intellectual and emotional adherence to doctrines or dogmas as criteria for entry into ‘the next life’.  Faith has an ontological character by which we understand ourselves to be caught up in a ‘process’ which lifts us from the past and prepares us for a future that, while it might be unknown, is nevertheless fully manageable.

Gentleness – As a mirror to ‘goodness’, ‘gentleness’, once we have become aware of the Cosmic Spark not only in ourselves but in all others, becomes the only authentic way of relating to others.

Self-Control – Self-control acknowledges that while we might be caught up in a process by which we become what it is possible to become, this process is dependent upon our ability and willingness to choose.  Being carried by Teilhard’s ‘current towards the open sea’ (‘Patience’, above) still requires us to develop the skills of ‘sail setting’ and ‘wind reading’.  The instinctual stimuli of the reptilian and limbic brains do not dissipate as we grow, but the skill of our neocortex brains to modulate them must be judiciously developed.

Next Week

This week we took a second look at how traditional Western religious insights into human life can be extracted from their traditional religious vernacular and understood in a secular context.  This week, just as we saw last week, those insights proposed by Paul are easily placed in a secular evolutionary context when seen from the perspective of Teilhard’s evolutionary world view.

This, of course, is another example of Blondel’s approach to religion: in the light of evolution, religious tenets can be reinterpreted in terms of human life.  Or, as John Haught puts it

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

This permits us to move, as John Haught suggests, from the “nonnatural mode of causation” fostered by traditional religion to one which not only is “..linked..to the scientific story” but retains traditional religion’s emphasis on the human person (as understood by Thomas Jefferson).  This emphasis can, in turn, sharpen the focus with which the human person is treated by traditional science.

Next week we will sum up our exploration of the human attribute of ‘happiness’.