July 2, 2006
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Martin Luther King, Jr., in being asked to publish some of his sermons, wrote in the preface to his book, ““. . . a sermon is directed toward the listening ear rather than the reading eye. . . I offer these discourses in the hope that a message may come to life for readers of the printed words.”” This is my hope for you, dear reader. ——Rev. Linda
July 2, 2006
SPIRITUALITY IN TOMORROW’S WORLD:
HOPE FOR HUMANITY
by Norman Hirst
A multi-millennia cycle is coming to an end. An evolutionary shift is occurring. The old worldview is passing. Science is investigating ideas that never would have been acceptable in the past. Many of our institutions are in ruin. Spirituality comes to the forefront as we now learn about how life-itself functions. Societies are evolving by spiraling and oscillating through the next stages 6 and 7 from Learning to Live Together to Restoring Viability to a Disordered World.
A well known philosopher-scientist wrote a book setting forth his view of current science and where it seems to be going. A reviewer expressed her disappointment. She expected to learn some science but found the author was a new age advocate who did not understand science. I am sufficiently well acquainted with the author’s work to know that he understands science as well as anyone. Yet, the book, in parts, did have a rather new age flavor. For many leading scientists our views of reality are changing radically.
What is now happening is the paradigm change that so many have been expecting for so long. A paradigm change is a change in consciousness. It is happening now. We are beginning to glimpse the new reality. It is not unprecedented. The psychologist Claire Graves studied the evolution of reality. Grave's work indicates that societies evolve by spiraling and oscillating through the following list of existential problems:
- Maintaining physiological stability, staying alive
- Achieve relative safety
- Live with self awareness
- Achieve peace of mind
- Conquering the real universe
- Living with the human element
- Restoring viability to a disordered world
- Accepting existential dichotomies
Each problem requires different ways of perceiving and thinking. As each problem is solved, a change of consciousness is required to solve the next problem, i.e., a paradigm change. I believe we are finishing up Stage 6, Learning to Live Together and beginning Stage 7, Restoring Viability to a Disordered World. We might ask how the world became disordered.
Western philosophy and science were based on Greek metaphysics producing worldviews consisting of things along with cause and effect. Current science today is based on how forces can be applied to effect things. It has been the view that if we want things to act or be the way we want them, there has to be controlling forces. However, something alive has the ability to just get up and go as it pleases and it will. Life cannot be controlled. As the human element comes together in all its diversity, there appears to be chaos and plenty of would-be leaders who want to remove the chaos by getting control by force. What they get is death and destruction instead. Control simply interferes with life's unity and its ability to manifest of its own accord.
Now I believe I see a world-wide change in consciousness preparing us to solve the problems of stage 6. A great deal of new information and ideas are developing. I would like to briefly present some of them.
It is said that all life is connected and we are all connected. Back 50 years ago when I was learning physics, I would have dismissed that idea as nonsense. But in the 70’s two physicists, Targ and Puthoff did a challenging experiment. Working with a series of two people at a time they designated one as the sender and the other the receiver. The receiver was placed in an electrically shielded isolation chamber. The sender was taken to a room to be exposed to flashing lights. It was known that exposure to flashing lights would cause the sender's brain waves to go into a definite pattern that results from flashing lights. When the sender’s brain waves went into the flashing light pattern so did the receiver's. Now that was hard to argue with! What is the connecting link? Since then there have been many experiments proving that we are all connected through thought, feelings, values, through an invisible energy.
Next I introduce autopoiesis, the theory of self-making. Living organisms are self-making. There is a lot of talk of self-organizing but self-making goes beyond it. Our bodies make their cells and organize them to carry out what is needed. The subject of autopoiesis is beyond our time today, but it has consequences we should know about. It reverses theories of perception by 180 degrees. It has been thought that perception begins by senses picking up data from the world, that the data is passed to the brain to make sense of it. Then the brain calculates a response and stores some kind of representation of the world so we can find our way.
What autopoiesis has discovered is that the perception process begins with activities within the organism. The nature of each of us, called our identity, seeks to express itself in the niche we live. Living organisms are constantly acting in some way to search for effective acts to achieve that. Their survival depends on being able to realize these effective acts. Acts are done and then the senses are asked what changed. An act is considered effective if the change satisfies the intent of the act. The organism learns by establishing an effective act repertoire, not by learning about what's outside itself and storing representations. Since our learning depends on the history of our acts, we may all live in different worlds, like parallel universes. As we move into this new era, knowing how different we can be will be key to finding our way. The way we actually communicate may even surprise us. It has something to do with love. (Come back next week to learn more from Skye about that.)
Finally from biophysics in 1992, Mae Wan Ho, a leading biophysicist discovered that living tissue is liquid crystalline. This makes communication in the body so fast that the body can and does function holistically as a single entity. There is body awareness before there is nervous system awareness. Further she describes the body as having 75 trillion cells functioning in a pure democracy. The body is like a jazz band playing our theme in 72 octaves. There are no controllers, no hierarchy, and no computing. All the cells enjoy maximum freedom provided they satisfy the body’s coherence conditions. The identity is an unchanging set of coherence conditions through which infinite improvisations occur. All the cells communicate instantly to one another so they can all choose what effective acts they must perform to keep the whole of me alive and thriving. They do it as an amazing ensemble, adapting, harmonizing paradoxes, and weaving solutions for being alive moment, by moment, or nano seconds.
I remember the first time I watched and listened to a jazz band. I used to play the trumpet so I paid careful attention when the trumpet player stood up to play a solo. I soon realized that what he was playing had never been done before. As I watched, the other musicians were happily accompanying him. When he finished they looked as if they wanted to stand and applaud. I did not understand how this could happen until Skye explained it to me. What I thought of as music theory were coherence conditions. Within that framework, and the fact that they were all listening to each other they were free to improvise to find elegant new and aesthetic expressions never before formed.
From these discoveries alone I would argue that our social institutions are anti-life as they attempt to control, force and restrict with so many rules. Recently a doctor said to me, “Our piecemeal medical model is not working”. Of course it isn’t. It is focused on the idea that our bodies have parts like a machine. Different doctors can specialize in different parts. For a heart arrhythmia, a cardiologist is called for to fix what is wrong with the heart. But the heart might not be at fault. It may be responding to something else not even in the body, but in the energy fields.
Cutting up cadavers to see their internal structures reveals what looks like parts. But now that we have the technology to see inside an organism as it lives we see that functionally there are no parts. If you've ever seen an ultra-sound, you see everything moving, vibrating. Nothing is still unless there is something diseased. A lack of aliveness is the lack of vibration, of communication between cells.
But how can a collection of free and uncontrolled entities create order. The key seems to be that they are all related. In logic there are two kinds of relationships. There are external relations such as John is taller than Mary. That relationship has no effect on John or Mary. There are also internal relationships such as John loves Mary. That relationship will change John and may even change Mary. In logic much is said about external relations. Internal relations are virtually never mentioned. Yet it is internal relations that help us understand how life works.
Thus a living entity works by establishing coherence conditions and connecting everything by internal relations. Now we might ask what is a living entity? We are living entities. The cells in our bodies are living entities. There is even reason to say that subatomic particles are not entirely non-living. Further, if all life is connected is there a larger life in which we are cells? I believe there is. I believe the cosmos is alive. I call it God. We are all cells in God’s life. Certainly not the God I remember from Sunday school but a loving God. Just as our identity establishes coherence conditions for our cells I believe God establishes coherence conditions for us.
Coherence conditions are to enable freedom. Freedom for all of this diversity to live and act in concert, like the jazz band does it. I believe God’s coherence conditions are the laws of value. Yes, laws, but laws that enable, not laws that constrain. We are free to choose our own values. Within us lives an awareness of three kinds of values. Some values will concern all that is living, the intrinsic. Some will be about valuing concepts, parts as in things, the extrinsic. Some will be about ideals, rules and laws that help the higher values work together. the systemic. As we prioritize them in our daily choices, intrinsic is highest because it includes all, followed by extrinsic, followed by systemic. As the value philosopher Robert Hartman said we have inverted the hierarchy making our rules and laws the highest with black and white, rights and wrongs. And this is where the world has focused from its historic beliefs in the need to control life. Notice how it feels when you hear a rule or judgment thrown your way. You contract, feel stopped especially when there is no room for your ideas or knowing. This over valuing of the systemic is where war comes from. No ideal can justify taking life.
We have much to do. Each of us is learning these revelations in our own way as daily challenges are insisting on finding new solutions. The same ole ways simply are not working. We are each participating in this shift as we rise to the occasion of finding effective acts for being ourselves, alive, fully vibrating, letting go of old ways of control, finding new ways to celebrate our differences and work cooperatively, fully expressing what we know and believe. In these challenges we are growing, evolving and life supports us through it all. Life is good. Celebrate each time you feel something holding you back. It's something in you that wants to be in communication, to be out in the light. As we allow the dark shadows to come to light, we are shifting consciousness, one person at a time. Don't forget, we're all connected and what one does is felt in us all.
Next week Skye will be sharing "What's Love Has to Do With it?" Thank you for sharing this time together.
