Finding God through secular meditation

Today’s Post

In the last two weeks we have followed Carl Rogers as he described his observations of a client in the process of finding his kernel of person-ness, a process that we have referred to as “secular meditation”.  He also describes what emerges when we begin to trust and cooperate with this fundamental energy which Teilhard identifies as the ‘thread of evolution’, and Karen Alexander as the ‘cosmic spark’, as it rises in us.

This week we will take a summary relook at the three approaches we have addressed in the past few weeks, those of Sigmund Freud, Teilhard and Carl Rogers, as they relate to the process of ‘secular meditation’ in search of a ‘core of personness’.

From Freud: The Dark Side

Even the most casual study of human history reveals a ‘dark side’ of humanity.  All the great books of ancient religions recognize it and warn against a turgid undercurrent which thwarts our ‘better nature’.  To make things worse, with the explosion of popular media in our time, we are awash in the hyperventilating but financially rewarding reports of dystopia.

Sigmund Freud was the first to systematically apply the emerging practices of science to a study of the human person, and as we saw a few weeks ago, assembled a magnificent edifice of concepts, terminology and theory which was applicable to diagnosis and treatment of human emotional problems. Unfortunately, as we also saw, his premise of the dangerous nature of the basic human, combined with his disdain for organized religion, colored this remarkable undertaking with a deep-seated pessimism that was to permeate his ‘school’ of psychology.

Freud’s view of human ontology was surely influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution, in which the human was seen to evolve from a non-human animal ancestor, complete with the ‘red tooth and claw’ predisposition that this entailed.  Freud held that this evolution explained the source of our ‘dark’ side, and hence had to be overcome if we were to rid ourselves of our ‘psychoses’.  The “taming of ourselves” required the “taming of the ancestral animal within”.

While Freud (and Darwin) accurately identified these roots and how they affect us, they don’t consider another perspective on such evolution.  Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ identified the many ‘transitional’ states of evolution, such as the formation of particles of matter from raw energy, atoms from subatomic particles, cells from highly complex molecules, and self-aware persons from otherwise conscious animals.  He points out that in every case the first manifestations of each of these ‘new’ entities initially are virtually indistinguishable from their predecessor.  He refers to the emergence of the earliest, prokaryotic (non-nucleus) cells as ‘dripping in molecularity’.  If it were possible to see them in a population of highly complex, non-living molecules (such as amino acids), it would be very difficult to distinguish them.  In contrast, at the evolutionary level of, say, neurological cells, the uniqueness of living tissue has become obviously differentiated from complex molecules.

Teilhard sees the same thing happening with the human.  Were it possible to see the first homo sapiens individual in a jungle filled with pre-humans, how would we tell them apart?  Today there would be no problem with such an observation.

We humans have indeed emerged as animals with more complex brains, but that makes all the difference.  The pre-humans, with only their reptilian and limbic brains, are at the mercy of their instinctual stimuli.  The reptiles fight or flee, breathe, eat, and procreate according to their basic, instinctual brain stimuli.  Mammals add new powers of nurturing offspring, clannish connections, and improved adaptation to environment changes.  These new behaviors, due to their new limbic brain, are in addition to the stimuli from their reptilian brains and endow them with more instinctive evolutionary fitness.

Even though we humans have a third layer to our brains, the instinctual stimuli of the lower brains is still active, but the neocortex provides the capability of modulating them.  The key manifestation of evolution in the human person can be found in the evolving skill of the neocortex to ‘ride herd’ on the instinctual stimuli of the lower brains.

So, even though Freud correctly recognizes the ‘dark side’, his assumption that the kernel of the person is dangerous does not consider that it is through engagement with this kernel that the human evolves from the emotional immaturity of the child toward the personal wholeness of the mature adult.  It’s not that the child’s essence is negative, but that its growth towards maturity is incomplete.

From Rogers: Toward the Light

As we have seen, Carl Rogers assumes a view of our personal evolution that is quite different from Freud.  He assumes that each human person comes into the world with a quantum of potency, and that instead of being broken, is incomplete and capable of personal evolution –growth– towards fuller being.

It should be noted that Rogers’ articulation of the emerging characteristics of a maturing person are purely secular.  His methods are those of science: observe, theorize, and test.  They require no adherence to religious belief (and are often antithetical to some), but rather a basic, fundamental belief in the trustworthy nature of the basic self, and a willingness to cooperate with it.

While there might not be a universally accepted list of the characteristics of human happiness or articulation of human potential, Rogers’ list of the characteristics displayed by a person in the process of growing is not only an excellent beginning but universally applicable.

Combined with the unique (and universal) nature of Rogers’ therapeutic relationship, ‘religious’ concepts such as belief, faith and love not only assume a new, secular, meaning, but one more relevant to human life. His approach offers a structure for a true, secular, employment of secular meditation as a means of self-discovery.

From Teilhard: The Light Itself

As we have frequently seen, Teilhard starts from the ‘other end’, describing how the ‘ground of being’ is manifest in the very basic manifold forces which power the evolution of the universe itself.  He describes how these forces combine to effect all that we can see and are not only active in the human as a species but in individual human persons as well.  In his view (and that of Blondel, Rohr and others), it is impossible to distinguish where these forces leave off and where we begin since each act of such distinguishing requires the action of this force as it rises in us.

Freud, Rogers, and Teilhard in a Nutshell

Freud applies science to atheism, “It is Id, be very afraid”

Rogers applies experience to science, “It is myself, I am trustworthy”

Teilhard applies science to religion. “It is I, be not afraid”

As Teilhard affirms, finding ourselves is finding the thread of universal evolution as it rises in ourselves.  As Rogers discovers, the legacy that we receive as our basic human birthright can be trusted to power our growth towards more complete being.  God can not only be found, ‘He’ can be embraced.

The Next Post

After identifying God as the agent of evolution,

by which things increase in complexity over time,

through which the process of evolution is possible,

From the big bang to the human,

as products of evolution: even in our individual lives,

with which we can come into contact

by searching for the kernel of ourselves

using the emerging insights of science,

the next post will now go on to the final stage of Relating to God: ‘Loving God’

What can be found in in the ‘search for self’?

Today’s Post

Last week we saw in some detail how the approach developed by Carl Rogers was applied in his ‘guided inner search’ (our ‘secular meditation’) and how it resonated with Teilhard’s insistence that the personal core within us was an individual manifestation of the cosmic uplifting of all things, the energy of the ‘first cause’ working within us as within all things.

This week we will look a little deeper into how Rogers observed the finding of this inner core as he participated in the client’s emerging ability to cooperate with it.

What Rogers Found in His Clinical Experience

In Rogers’ clinical experience, he conducted many psychological surveys in which he observed the following changes taking place in his “clients” as they undergo therapy:

– The individual becomes more integrated as well as more effective

– Fewer of the characteristics are shown which are usually termed neurotic or psychotic, and more of the healthy, well-functioning person

– The perception of self changes and becomes more realistic

– They become more like the person they wish to be, and value themselves more highly

– They are more self-confident and self-directing

– They have a better understanding of themselves, become open to experience, and deny or represses less of their experience

– They become more accepting in their attitudes towards others, seeing others as more like themselves

Rogers saw the role of the therapist as “facilitating” these changes, fostering them by way of offering the client a relationship in which the client can feel safe enough to discover the value of the person that Kierkegaard believed “to be that self that one truly is”.

Rogers used the results seen in his clinical experience to articulate the steps which clients undergo as they become more aware of themselves and increasingly ready to cooperate with the energies of their lives.  He saw the following things happening in such a person:

– Feelings evolve from being remote and un-owned to fearlessly experienced in the immediate present

– Experiences evolve from very remote and meaningless to immediate, and as an acceptable referent for accurate meaning

– Congruence between experience and awareness becomes more complete as experience becomes safer

– Communication becomes clearer as the internal connection between feelings, experiences and awareness improves

– Problems become recognized, understood, and owned

– As experiences are perceived as a trustworthy guide to behavior in relationships, the danger perceived in relationships is lessened

The Person that Emerges From Assisted ‘Secular Meditation’

In general, Rogers saw the maturing person as

– Increasingly open to experience, which permits 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 feelings and experiences

– Increasingly able to function more completely

So, against the Freudian belief that human persons are basically irrational, and that their impulses, if not controlled will lead to the destruction of others and self, Rogers saw the human person as capable of becoming freer, less defined by the past and more open to the future as he grows.  Since the basic nature of the human person is now seen as constructive and trustworthy, as he matures the person will become more creative and live more constructively.

The relationship that Rogers sees as necessary between the client and therapist is very like that seen in the mature love between human persons.  As Rogers asserts, echoing Teilhard,

“There seems every reason to hypothesize that the therapeutic relationship is only one instance of interpersonal relations, and that the same lawfulness governs all such relationships.”

Every human relationship touches on some aspect of the characteristics that Rogers identifies in the process of “becoming a person”.  In all relationships, from the most intimate to the most fraternal, such skills as management and expression of feelings, owning of experience, congruence between experience and awareness, clarity of communication, responsibility for behavior and honesty manifest themselves in patience, empathy, and tolerance.  In all relationships, when we are welcomed into an accepting environment, we are able to move a little closer to “being that person that we are”, and when we welcome another in the same way, their own “becoming” is invited.

The Existentialists and Teilhard

The new perspective pioneered by the existentialists can be seen in the focus of Teilhard’s ‘lens’ onto the human person as a product of evolution.   This insight itself comes from the emerging concept of general evolution in human thinking precipitated by the scientific discoveries of Cosmic “size”, “duration” and “unfolding”.  To begin to understand everything “in the process of evolving” can be interpreted as seeing everything “in the process of becoming”, since each step in evolution comes from ‘something’ becoming ‘something new’, and the new ‘something’ which results is more complex than its precedent.

Since the human person can be seen as simply the latest manifestation of this fundamental cosmic process, Teilhard asserts that we can expect the same dynamic to be working in our lives as well.  Each day offers us the opportunity to grow from the ‘someone’ that we are to a ‘new someone’ that we can become.  The new aspects of our person which emerge, if this growth is authentic, are consistent and congruent with the forces of the universe.  They are well articulated by Rogers and consistent with the positive expectations of the existentialists.

The Next Post

Next week we will recap where we have got to in our ‘Search for the Core of Personness’ or, In our vernacular, ’ Secular Meditation’.

How can Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ bring psychology into sharper focus on human life?

Today’s Post

Last week we saw how psychology has evolved from Freud’s analysis and diagnosis to a guided inner search for the authentic self and hence can be seen as a secular meditative experience.

This week we will explore one of the pivotal practitioners of such psychology to see how this ‘guided inner search’ can unfold and what can be expected from it.

Carl Rogers

Dr. Carl Rogers was one of the psychologists who was key to the evolution of psychology from Freud’s analysis and diagnosis to a very personal level of psychotherapy which focuses on the guided inner search for self. Rogers was one of the earliest psychologists to depart from the then-prevalent viewpoint that saw the therapist as a clinically objective analyst, sitting above and against the analyzed, translating the patient’s feelings and actions into prepackaged characteristics derived by Freud such as libido, ego, and superego.

Rogers’ goal was to uncover hidden motivations and use the clarity of such insights to motivate clients to change their behavior, taking a decidedly different approach from Freud. He speaks of his perspective in the introduction to his book, “On Becoming a Person”:

“It is about a client in my office who sits there by the corner of the desk, struggling to be himself, yet deathly afraid of being himself- striving to see his experience as it is, wanting to be that experience, and yet deeply fearful of the prospect. I sit there with that client, facing him, participating in that struggle as deeply and sensitively as I am able. I try to perceive his experience, and the meaning and the feeling and the taste and the flavor that it has for him. I bemoan my very human fallibility in understanding that client, and the occasional failures to see life as it appears to him, failures which fall like heavy objects across the intricate, delicate web of growth which is taking place. I rejoice at the privilege of being a midwife to a new personality- as I stand by with awe at the emergence of a self, a person, as I see a birth process in which I have had an important and facilitating part.”

This is significantly different from the relationship that Freud formulates, as can be summarized by Rogers’ understanding of the role of the therapist:

“How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?”

instead of,

“How can I diagnose, treat, cure, or change this person?”

The goal of both approaches is treatment of the individual, but the methods and the implicit assumptions are clearly different.

Rogers echoes Teilhard’s ‘ontological’ insight into love when he states that

“Change appears to come about through experience in a relationship”.

He states his overall hypothesis:

“If I can provide a certain type of relationship, the other person will discover within himself the capacity to use that relationship for growth, and change, and personal development will occur”.

In Rogers’ approach, the therapist’s role changes from “analyst” to “facilitator”. His approach changes from assuming that the person to be found is “dangerous” to recognizing it as “a reliable base for human growth”.

Rogers expands on this approach:

“The individual has within himself the capacity and the tendency, latent if not evident, to move forward to maturity. In a suitable psychological climate this tendency is released and becomes actual rather than potential. He sees this potential as evident in his capacity to understand those aspects of his life and of himself which are causing him pain and dissatisfaction. This is an understanding which probes beneath his conscious knowledge of himself into those experiences which he has hidden from himself because of their threatening nature. As a result, the person who emerges tends to reorganize his personality and his relationship to life in ways which are regarded as more mature.”

Further,

“It is my hypothesis that in such a relationship the individual will 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”.

So, against the Freudian belief that man is basically irrational, and that his impulses, if not controlled will lead to the destruction of self and others, Rogers sees the human person as capable of becoming freer, less defined by the past and more open to the future as he grows. Since the basic nature of the human person is constructive and trustworthy, as the person matures, he will become more creative and live more constructively.

How Is This ‘Meditation’?

We can see how the process described by Rogers is highly resonant with Teilhard’s description of his meditation from a few weeks ago.

Step 1: Recognizing the Facets of our Person

“…understanding those aspects of his life and of himself which are causing him pain and dissatisfaction.”

This is exploration of the ‘scaffolding’ of his person: those influences which affect the development of personality: beliefs, faiths and fears but provide a degree of emotional safety. Rogers describes how this difficult task can be facilitated by the therapist.

Step 2: Moving past the Safety of the Scaffolding

“Moving past those “experiences which he has hidden from himself because of their threatening nature”.

Once the client begins to become aware of these ‘scaffoldings’, Rogers shows how the therapist can provide a safe way of exploring both the ways that the client is being inhibited by them as well as tactics to be employed in overcoming them.

Step 3: Encountering the Font of Our Consciousness

“…the other person will discover within himself the capacity to use that relationship for growth,”

In Rogers’ insight, this process leads a client to realize that at his core, he is a trustworthy agent who can safely experience, own, and trust his emotions and insights.

Step 4: Using this insight to live a more complete life

“…the individual will 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”.

As Karen Armstrong puts it, such a person ‘inhabits his humanity more fully”

The Next Post

Having established the perspective of seeing the basic human self as constructive and trustworthy, and the role of the therapist as ‘facilitator’, Rogers went on to observe how these characteristics precipitated positive changes in the lives of his clients. Next week we will see how he saw such growth taking place.

How has Psychology evolved In Its search for the “Cosmic Spark’ in the human person”?

Today’s Post

Last week we opened the subject of psychology as offering a secular approach to what the mystics have been practicing for millennia: finding God by finding ourselves. We saw how Freud pioneered this undertaking in his objective, secular and empirical approach (as opposed to that of religious intuition). We also saw how, while offering a magnificent array of new concepts, and working empirically, Freud’s psychology nonetheless seemed predicated on a very dystopian view of the human person. To him, meditation, even via psychology, can be very dangerous indeed, since it shows our basic selves to be highly unreliable, even untrustworthy.

This week we will address an orthogonal approach to psychology which emerged in the last century. This different approach, while also consistent with the empirical perspectives and methods of science, assumed a core of the human person which was radically different from Freud.

From Freud to Existentialism

As we saw in the previous post, Freud was successful in developing an integrated system of thought which objectively addressed the whole of human activity. He pioneered the understanding of the human in terms of inner energies, motivations, stimuli and even “economies” that determine his development from birth to death. Further, he did this while adopting the objective approach of science.

His treatment of human irrationality and sexuality is unmatched. However, his underlying materialism, misogyny and overall pessimism left him with a highly pessimistic outlook on the human person’s potential for satisfying relationships and personal maturity.

But we can find agreement between Freud and Teilhard on two things, such as the existence of a personal core of energy which underlies human growth and relationships, and understanding love as manifest in the reciprocal exchange of this energy between individual persons.

They sharply disagree, however, on the nature and source of this energy, and the role that this reciprocal exchange could have in growth, maturity, and even creation of the person involved in its exchange. The difference between these two perspectives sharpens further when they are applied to human relationships at the social level.

Freud’s thinking began to be reevaluated and modified as an increasing number of Western psychologists began to assemble a large body of empirical data which could be analyzed to assess the propositions which originally formed the basis for Freud’s thinking. The relationship between the analyst and the analyzed evolved as well, due to the increasing educational level of the middle class, the growing acceptability of psychology by religion, and the emergence of expectations on the part of those undergoing analysis.

The Pioneers of Existentialism

In the mid twentieth century, several psychologists emerged with a distinctively different and more positive understanding of the human person and the dynamics of personal growth and relationships with others. This approach generally became known as “existential”. Their general methods became known as ‘counselling’ and were adopted by in many religious expressions as “pastoral counselling”.

Rollo May understood the basic tenet of existential psychotherapy as “that which stands with scientific analysis as expressed in the genius of Freud”. However, he saw the empirical data that science also brings into the picture as unfolding the understanding of the human person on a deeper and broader level than Freud. This deeper understanding assumes with Freud that it is possible to have an objective ‘science of man’. It does not, however, ‘fragmentize’ him by breaking him down, as did Freud, into compartments, and thus lose the grasp of the whole in the tangled archipelago of the parts. Unlike therapeutic interpretation as practiced in Freudian psychoanalysis (which consists of referring a person’s experience to a pre-established theoretical framework) existential interpretation seeks to understand how the person himself subjectively experiences reality, then works with him toward actualizing his potential to become whole.

With May, psychology began to progress from analysis and diagnosis to guided inner search. In doing so, it was emerging as assisted secular meditation.

Abraham Maslow took a different approach. Instead of focusing on psychopathology and what goes wrong with people, he formulated a more positive account of human behavior which focused on what goes right. He was interested in human potential, and how it could be actualized. He believed that each person has a desire for self-fulfillment; namely, the tendency for him to “become actualized in what he is potentially”.

As we have seen, this requires us to first find ourselves, and then cooperate with the primal force which rises within us, and in which lie our potentialities.

How has the ‘science’ of psychology emerged as a quest to find the ‘cosmic spark’ within us?

Today’s Post

Last week we showed how Teilhard’s seven steps of meditation can be seen in terms of Karen Armstrong’s secular search for the ‘immortal spark’: that essential agent of cosmic evolution which increases complexity which eventually manifests itself as our core. While Teilhard inevitably takes the tone of Western religious tradition, we saw how his approach to meditation is nonetheless basically secular.

This week we will carry this one step further: to look at how meditation, the traditional religious search for self, underlies a practice entirely devoid of religious belief: psychology.

The Emergence of Psychology

The increasing depth in the way that human persons began to experience themselves in the emerging awareness of their unique human person seen in the “Axial Age” also molded the form that this thinking was taking. In doing so, human evolution began to move from attributing the vagaries of life to supernatural agencies to attempts to understand them as natural phenomena. This movement gave rise to the empirical approaches of science. Initially constrained to the ‘material’ world, this approach eventually began to apply itself to the human person itself, based on clinical observation instead of religious doctrine and biblical interpretation.

Sigmund Freud pioneered this new scientific approach to understanding the human person. He applied the new methods of science to the making and testing of hypotheses of human growth and relationships. He was virtually the first major thinker to address the aspect of human nature which underlies sexuality (and therefore relationships) in objective, secular terms.

In Irving Singer’s comprehensive analysis of human relationships, “The Nature of Love”, he comments,

“Like other thinkers of the time, Freud sought to explain the human condition in terms of the rationalistic concepts that science was uncovering. He proposed a completely new lexicon and analytic approach to understand the nature of “affect”, which includes all of what we normally call feelings, emotions, sensations, “intuitive” and “instinctive” dispositions, erotic attachments, hatred as well as love, and also kinesthetic impressions of any kind. For that job we require a totally different type of methodology.”

Historically, some thinkers, such as Plato, Plotinus, and Augustine, had generally proposed a positive interpretation of reality, believing that what is ultimate in reality sustains, even conforms to, human ideals; while others, such as Lucretius, and Hobbes came to see the universe as neutral, even hostile, to such optimistic assumptions. Freud falls into this second, pessimistic, category.

Singer contrasts these two perspectives, showing the duality of thinking which results from this dichotomy:

”Philosophers have often tried to reduce the different senses of the word “love” to a single meaning that best suited their doctrinal position. To the Platonists, “real love”, being a search for absolute beauty or goodness, must be good itself; to the Freudians, love is “really” amoral sexuality, though usually sublimated and deflected from its coital aim. The Platonist argues that even sexuality belongs to a search for the ideal, and otherwise would not be called love in any sense. The Freudian derives all ideals from attempts to satisfy organic needs, so that whatever Plato recommends must also be reducible to love as sexuality.”

Freud In An Oversimplified Nutshell

Freud’s thinking provided a monumental, unprecedented, and unified approach to understanding the human person and relationships. Like Teilhard’s finding of the ‘personal core’ addressed last week, Freud understood the person as an entity possessing a certain “life force” which empowers survival and procreation and is at the center of personal being. He saw this force, identified as ‘libido’, based on sexual instinct, as the ultimate agent of human growth.

In Freud’s thinking, the libido therefore is a manifestation of the energy that nourishes the self, and he identified the object of the libido as sexual union. Therefore, relationships that do not lead to sexual union interrupt the flow and replenishment of libido and lead to impoverishment of the self. As Freud saw the self as initially focused on itself, the “narcissism” at birth represents a state to which the self always seeks returning. “Nourishing the libido” therefore requires us to maintain our narcissism which is essential to our sense of self.

Freud believed that relationships required the person to “idealize” others; it was necessary for the lover to transfer an ideal to his beloved that he has difficulty achieving within himself. To Freud, we love that in the other person which we feel will compensate for our inadequacies, and thus we will recover the security of primal narcissism and by doing so maintain our libido. The dependence upon relationships, in Freud’s approach, was therefore risky. Failed relationships would undermine our libido and therefore diminish ourselves.

Further, Freud saw the force of libido as possessing an undercurrent of hate. He therefore saw love as the mixture of ‘eros’ with “man’s natural aggressive instinct (the’ death drive’)”, which is inseparable from it. In his words,

“Eros and destructiveness are intertwined within all erotic relationships. Love is not at the basis of everything unless you add hate to it”.

While Freud saw love as energy, and one which effects the uniting of human persons, the resulting relationships were potentially harmful to the person because they are predicated on a personal core which is not to be trusted.

Love is dangerous, as he saw it, because at our core we ourselves are dangerous.

While Teilhard heard a voice from the bottomless abyss from which flowed his life: “It is I, be not afraid”, Freud would have heard a different voice: “It is ego, be very afraid”.

While Freud understood the human kernel as energy, and one which effects the uniting of human persons, its complex love/hate constitution leads to relationships which could harm the person. Due to this underlying flaw in our basic core, he asserts, not only does love fail to solve human problems, but can cause them as well.

Thus, Freud, while pioneering the objective secular application of science to the study of the human person, nonetheless arrives at a position orthogonal to Teilhard’s proposition that the kernel at the core of the person is a trustworthy manifestation of the same agent of rising complexity afoot in the evolution of the universe.

The Next Post

Freud’s approach to psychiatry, like Luther’s earlier approach to Christianity, burst upon emerging Western society and immediately began to ramify into parallel but radically different expressions. As can be seen in today’s versions of psychotherapy, American positivism has muted much of Freud’s pessimism, materialism, and misogyny. Many of these newer approaches to psychology focus equally on the relation between therapist and patient as well as the therapist’s skill in plumbing, analyzing, and articulating the labyrinthine depths of the patient.

Next week we will examine such different approaches and explore how they can be seen as ‘secular’ versions of meditation’.

If the transmission of cultural values is necessary for human evolution, how can it be understood?

This Week

Last week we saw how Teilhard’s three ‘levels’ of universal evolution (monads, dyads and psychisms) play out in human evolution, but that both he and Richard Dawkins suggest that the phenomenon of ‘culture’, a product of human interaction, plays a large part.

This week we will take a closer look at this fourth of Teilhard’s ‘levels’ as we address his concept of the ‘noosphere’.

The Agency of Human Cultural Transmission

Karen Armstrong addresses one of the new insights of the Axial Age in the recognition of Teilhard’s third level of human evolution (psychisms) that we addressed in Chapter 3.

“When they (group rituals) were perfectly executed, something magical occurred within the participants that gave them intimations of divine harmony”.

Thus, we are introduced to Teilhard’s fourth level of human evolution. The first two levels, the monad and the dyad apply as equally to the vitality of subatomic matter as it does to that of the human person. The appearance of the third level, Teilhard’s psychism, captured in the United States’ motto of “E pluribus unum”, can be faintly seen in the ‘higher’ mammals. But the fourth level, which can be seen as encompassing the ‘monistic’, ‘dualistic’ and ‘psychism’ phenomena, is unique to human evolution. At this level the result of the activities of the first three levels, the products of their respective unifications, are accumulated into what Teilhard refers to as the ‘noosphere’. While traces of these three phenomena can be found in our immediate pre-human ancestors, they take a significant leap in the human not only in the degree of complexity of the products, but more importantly in the retention and interaction of them as well.

Our prehuman ancestors relied on their evolutionary instincts, with stirrings of group ‘culture’ in the latter hominids, as guides to life. With the human ability to accumulate objective cultural insights, as oral traditions are supplemented by written materials and formal education, the results of the progress made by monads, dyads and psychisms become increasingly available to their offspring as fuel for further development.

This ‘noosphere’ is unique to the human species but is much more than a simple bank of ideas, as valuable as this can be seen to be. As Teilhard points out, human evolution not only contributes to the noosphere, but it also draws on it as a catalyst for further evolution. Thus, as the vectors of human evolution can be seen at work in monads, dyads and psychisms, the recursive nature of the convergent spiral can be seen in the interaction between the human person and the noosphere.

The very nature of the noosphere leads to new methods of articulation, such as book printing and formal education. These inventions themselves are further elaborated and intensified by expanded communication, which provides an increase in both the volume and the accessibility of information. The amount of information not only increases but at the same time becomes more intimate and ultimately inextricably woven into the texture of human culture.

A parallel can be drawn with the increase of ‘information’ in the universe. As Paul Davies sees it in “The 5th Miracle”, universal evolution occurs because each grain of matter possesses some small quanta of ‘information’ by which it can be ushered into a connection with other grains. He notes that the entity which results from such connection not only possesses the aggregated ‘information’ provided by its predecessors, but a new facet of information also emerges by which the next interconnection can result in an even more complex product. This application of Teilhard’s convergent spiral can be seen in the appearance of complex molecules from amino acids, resulting in compounds such as DNA, which instructs RNA in the production of proteins, necessary for cellular function.

Thus, the noosphere can be understood as a latter manifestation of such subcellular activity. It can be envisioned as the collection of all the ‘information’ that it has been possible for humans to assemble to date. It is no longer necessary for each product of evolution itself to contain the increased information by which it has evolved. With the noosphere, each product now can benefit from the accumulation of other products as well.

Such information as can be seen in this manifestation does not consist of just factual data, but also the insights, and therefore the meaning of the data which permits its valuable function as catalyst to future human evolutionary steps. This information is not only accumulated but assimilated as humans become more adept at navigating their evolution. In doing so, it is recursive as it is fed back into us as fuel for our continuing journey.

Next Week

This week we introduced the fourth level of Teilhard’s human steps of evolution, the ‘noosphere’, and explored its recursive contribution to human evolution.

Next week we will take a closer look at how the noosphere is active in human evolution.

How does Teilhard use his ‘lens’ to open the door to connecting to God?

Today’s Post

Last week we saw how the recognition of the ‘core of person’, and the realization that such a core is also a manifestation of Karen Armstrong’s ‘immortal spark’, is that which connects us to the universal agency which ‘sustains and gives life to the entire cosmos’. While this recognition may well bring us closer to a clearer understanding of God, it still does not address how a relationship with such a God is possible.

This week we’ll apply Teilhard’s ‘lens’ to the opening of that door.

Teilhard’s Seven Steps of Meditation

All religions include rituals that are intended to put us in touch with the ultimate ground of being, be it the Eastern Brahman or the Western God. One practice common to most of them is ‘meditation’, the goal of which is both increased awareness of ourselves and of this ultimate life force which lies at our core.

Of course, while each expression may have the same goal of finding both our ‘true’ selves and this ‘core’, each brings its unique presuppositions to the practice. As a result, the word ‘meditation’ often brings with it a presumption of some religious dogma or hermeneutic, hence introducing this concept here might be seen as distinctively contrary to the ‘secular’ approach employed in Teilhard’s ‘lens’. As we shall see, however, echoing Richard Dawkins, “the divesting of all the baggage that the word ‘God’ carries” works equally well as a method for experiencing God as it did for his definition.

We’ll start with an example of Teilhard’s use of his ‘lens of evolution’, which closely follows Maurice Blondel in understanding God as the ‘immanent ground of being’. Teilhard described this experience of meditation in his book, “The Divine Milieu”. This description is independent (“divested of the baggage”) of most traditional religious assumptions and demonstrates a framework for a ‘personal contact’ with God as we are exploring.

Step 1: Recognizing the Facets of our Person

“And so, for the first time in my life, perhaps, I took the lamp and, leaving the zones of everyday occupations and relationships, where my identity, my perception of myself is so dependent on my profession, my roles- where everything seems clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates.”

Here Teilhard begins with an exploration of the ‘scaffolding’ of his person: those influences which affect the development of personality: beliefs, faiths, and fears. How much of who we are and what we believe have we consciously accepted, as opposed to those facades which we have erected as a protective skin to ward off the dangers of life?

Step 2: Moving past the Safety of the Scaffolding

“But as I descended further and further from that level of conventional certainties by which social life is so superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent, with the removal of layers of my identity defined from without, a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. “

How can we begin to objectively see ourselves, steeped in our facades and scaffolding as we are? What happens when we begin to recognize these facades and scaffoldings, and try to imagine the consequence of divesting ourselves of them? How can we ultimately trust that what lies beneath is indeed ‘trustworthy’? Upon what can we place our faith in our capacity for the ‘dangerous actions’ that we must undertake each day?

Step 3: Encountering the Font of Our Consciousness

“And when I had to stop my descent because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and from it flowed, arising I know not from where, the current which I dare to call my life.”

Where does our life come from? Every day we are barraged by stimuli from our instinctual brains, fears, elations, and ideas that arrive unbidden from what we refer to as our ‘unconscious’. One philosopher refers to our life as “what happens while we were making other plans”. How does that happen?

Step 4: Facing the Intangibility of the Font

“What science will ever be able to reveal to man the origin, nature, and character of that conscious power to will and to love which constitutes his life? It is certainly not our effort, nor the effort of anyone around us, which set that current in motion. And it is certainly not our anxious care, nor that of any friend of ours, which prevents its ebb or controls its turbulence.

We can, of course, trace back through generations some of the antecedents of the torrent which bears us along; and we can, by means of certain moral and physical disciplines and stimulations, regularize or enlarge the aperture through which the torrent is released into us.”

While we might well recognize that there is a font from which flows the stuff from which we are made, it cannot be empirically articulated. Whatever the source, it is beyond our grasp.

Step 5: Accepting Our Powerlessness Over The Source of Our Life

“But neither that geography nor those artifices help us in theory or in practice to harness the sources of life. My self is given to me far more than it is formed by me. Man, scripture says, cannot add a cubit to his nature. Still less can he add a unit to the potential of his love, or accelerate by another unit the fundamental rhythm which regulates the ripening of his mind and heart. In the last resort, the profound life, the fontal life, the new-born life, escapes our life entirely.”

In addition to our inability to rationally and empirically articulate this flow of life into us, we are also unable to control it. Our only choice is to accept it and come to enough appreciation of it that we are able to cooperate with it.

Step 6: Recognizing our Entwinement in the Fabric of Existence

“Stirred by my discovery, I then wanted to return to the light of day and forget the disturbing enigma in the comfortable surroundings of familiar things, to begin living again at the surface without imprudently plumbing the depths of the abyss. But then, beneath this very spectacle of the turmoil of life, there re-appeared before my newly-opened eyes, the unknown that I wanted to escape.

This time it was not hiding at the bottom of an abyss; it disguised itself, its presence, in the innumerable strands which form the web of chance, the very stuff of which the universe and my own small individuality are woven. Yet it was the same mystery without a doubt: I recognized it.”

Teilhard recognizes not only the source of life within us, but how this source is also interwoven into the ‘innumerable strands which form …the very stuff of which the universe and my own small individuality”

Step 7: Recognizing the Face of the Ground of Being

“Our mind is disturbed when we try to plumb the depth of the world beneath us. But it reels still more when we try to number the favorable chances which must coincide at every moment if the least of living things is to survive and succeed in its enterprises.

After the consciousness of being something other and something greater than myself- a second thing made me dizzy: Namely the supreme improbability, the tremendous unlikely-hood of finding myself existing in the heart of a world that has survived and succeeded in being a world.

At that moment, I felt the distress characteristic to a particle adrift in the universe, the distress which makes human wills founder daily under the crushing number of living things and of stars. And if something saved me, it was hearing the voice of the Gospel, guaranteed by divine success, speaking to me from the depth of the night:

“It is I, be not afraid.”

How do I dare believe that whatever is at the source of my being, indeed of all being, it is nonetheless (As Blondel puts it) ‘on my side’? How is it possible to see this ‘fontal’ life which pours into me at each moment as an individual instantiation of the general forces which have brought (and are still bringing) the universe into fuller being? How do I dare trust that these forces, welling up over billions of years, will continue to well up in me.? How can I begin to recognize, trust and more importantly cooperate with this inner source of energy so that I can be carried onto a more complete possession of myself?

In this short but very personal and straightforward description of the journey into himself, Teilhard offers an outline of meditation that is ‘secular’ but addresses the full gamut of a quest for the ‘ground of being’ that is within us that we call God.

Secular Meditation

There is nothing religious about these seven steps. The assumptions about the nature of the universe that science and biology assert, once the phenomenon of increasing complexity is added, are all that is necessary to state them. As Teilhard suggests, the addition of this phenomenon, while not yet a specific scientific theory, is not only necessary for inclusion of the human person into the scope of scientific enquiry, it is also necessary for the process of universal evolution itself.

A universe without increasing complexity would not evolve.

There is a similarity between these seven steps and the very successful “Ten Steps” of Alcoholics Anonymous. The foundational step of exploring and learning to trust oneself is at the basis of much of Western thinking. Psychology, as we will see in the next few weeks, can therefore be seen as ‘secular meditation’.

The Next Post

This week we explored Teilhard’s approach to meditation as a skill through which we can make contact with our ‘core of being’, and through this with God. We saw his meditation exercise in the practical and secular seven steps he took in his search for the ‘cosmic spark’ which enlivens all things.

Next week we will move on to see how psychology can be seen as a form of “secular meditation”.

How do we use Teilhard’s ‘lens’ to find God in our lives?

Today’s Post

Last week we focused Teilhard’s ‘lens’ on the history of ‘looking for God’, and how the focus of the Christian church slowly shifted from the intimacy expressed in Jewish tradition to the Greek-influenced ‘over against’ decried by Blondel.

This week we will continue our employment of Teilhard’s ‘lens’ to refocus upon the process of finding God in human life.

The Search for the ‘Cosmic Spark’

As we have seen, Teilhard asserted that any search for God begins with a search within ourselves:

“It is through that which is most incommunicably personal in us that we make contact with the universal “

Most of the ancient sages, including Jesus, point to the belief that the most essential core of our being must be uncovered for us to attain our most authentic expression of being. This isn’t necessarily the ‘happiest’ or ‘most powerful’ state, but rather one in which we are ‘more complete’ and more aware of and able to achieve our full potential as persons.

Karen Armstrong, in her sweeping narrative, “The Great Transformation” identifies several areas of common ground among the six lines of thought (Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, Monotheism in Israel and philosophical rationalism in Greece) in four parts of the world that constituted a new understanding of God and Self in the ‘Axial Age’ (900-200 BCE). She describes one of the earliest such insights in the Upanishads as:

“There is an immortal spark at the core of the human person, which, when participated in – was of the same nature as – the immortal Brahman that sustained and gave life to the entire cosmos. This was a discovery of immense importance, and it would become a central insight in every major religious tradition. The ultimate reality was an immanent presence in every single human being.”

Armstrong saw this emerging realization as

“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. This was one of the clearest expressions of a fundamental principle of the Axial Age. Enlightened persons would discover within themselves the means of rising above the world; they would experience transcendence by plumbing the mysteries of their own nature, not simply by taking part in magical rituals.”

Through Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’, God can be seen as the upwelling of complexity in evolution, the ‘cosmic spark’, that leads to the ‘person’. From his perspective, we can begin to see how ‘plumbing the mysteries or our own nature’ is a primary means of connecting to the ‘mystery of all nature’. It opens the door to an approach to “Finding God”.

Each of the Axial Age’s six lines of thought brought their own practices to this undertaking. Further, with the seemingly inevitable duality that emerges in each new philosophy, many different and often contradictory practices emerged within each of the lines. Within Christianity, for example, the influence of Greek thinking led to seeing God as ‘other’, as opposed to a universal agent of being and growth at the core of our person.

So, as it is easy to see, the path toward a connection to this inner source of life recognized by nearly all religions, is not a simple thing. Finding a way to do so without being bound by the scaffolding and facades which abound in the canons of traditional religion can be a very difficult undertaking.

The Next Post

This week we began to address the search for God as an active, immanent agent of our personal life. But this does not answer the second part of our question: what does it mean to say that we can have a ‘relationship’ with such a God? Having seen how we are connected to God by participating in this cosmic upwelling of complexity, next week we will address the undertaking of such a relationship.

How can God Be Considered as a ‘person’?

Today’s Post

Last week we addressed the uniquely Western concept of ‘the person’, and asked the question: “Given the perspective of Teilhard and science in general, how can the phenomenon of ‘person’ as understood in the West be brought into resonance with our working definition of God?”:

“God is the sum total of all the forces by which the universe unfolds in such a way that all the entities that emerge in its evolution (from quarks to the human person) each have the potential to become more complex when unified with other entities.”

How can God be a ‘person’? This week we will address this question.

‘Personization’ in Universal Evolution

Seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens’, the ‘person’ is a product of evolution which emerges as an effect of increasing complexity over long periods of time. If we are to understand God in terms of the definition proposed above, where does the characteristic of ‘person’ come in? If a person is a product of evolution, and God is a person, does this mean that God evolves?

To Teilhard, the phenomenon of ‘complexification’ (increasing complexity over time) is the essence of the cosmic upwelling that we refer to as ‘evolution’. Once the agent of complexity is added to the scientific canon of forces as found in the Standard Model of Physics and Biology’s theory of Natural Selection, not only does evolution as we know it become possible, but Teilhard shows how this increase in complexity can be seen to lead to the advent of ‘personness’ as found in the human.

As any educated atheist would point out, isn’t this teleology? In teleology, one reasons from an endpoint (the existence of humans) to the start point (the purpose of evolution is to create humans). In such teleology, creation exists for the purpose of making humans. Teleology therefore seeks to rationalize history in terms of what has emerged. Teleology is frequently used by fundamental Christianity, which sees God as intending humanity as the goal of ‘his’ creation.

Stephen Jay Gould, noted atheistic anthropologist, asserted that “rewinding the tape of evolution” would not necessarily result in the emergence of the human. He believed that the many random events which have occurred in history, such as asteroid impacts which, by effectively wiping out entire species, cleared the way for the rise of mammals. He suggests that other, different, accidents would have had other different outcomes, which would not have necessarily led to the emergence of humans.

While offering this insight as an attack on teleology, Gould’s statement nonetheless reflects his belief that evolution would still have proceeded through any combination of such disasters, and would therefore have continued to produce new species, just not necessarily mammals. It does not acknowledge that such continuation of life would have also reflected a continuing rise of complexity in order to proceed. Therefore, conditions permitting, evolution would still have had the potential to produce an entity of sufficient complexity to have eventually become aware of its consciousness.

Therefore, a different play of the tape of evolution which does not produce a human person is only part of the picture. Recognizing that the increasing complexity of any emergent entity would have led to some sort of consciousness is the other part.

Teilhard asserts that this potential for ‘rising complexity’ to eventually lead to consciousness is a phenomenon of the universe itself. While entities recognizable as ‘human persons’ may not be evolving elsewhere in the universe, the probability of the appearance of entities aware of their awareness is not insignificant. Therefore, Teilhard sees the agent of complexity at work everywhere in the cosmos, and given the appropriate conditions, it will raise its constituent matter to higher levels of awareness:

“From this point of view man is nothing but the point of emergence in nature, at which this deep cosmic evolution culminates and declares itself. From this point onwards man ceases to be a spark fallen by chance on earth and coming from another place. He is the flame of a general fermentation of the universe which breaks out suddenly on the earth.”

Evolution, therefore, requires complexification, which results in consciousness which leads to personization.

So, if God is to be understood as the ‘sum total of all forces’ (as proposed in our working definition), and the essential evolutive force is understood as that of ‘complexification’, then, among all the other forces (gravity, electromagnetism, chemistry), God can also be seen to be active in the ‘force of ‘personization’.

How can Teilhard’s lens be focused to see this force in play?

The Next Post

This week we began to use Teilhard’s lens to understand how God can somehow be considered ‘a person’ by recognizing how the upwelling of complexity in universal evolution slowly, as Teilhard phrases it, “declares itself”.

Next week we will refocus his lens to see how this declaration manifests itself in human evolution.

’Is God a ‘person’?

Today’s Post

Last week we saw how an outline of the nature of the fundamental principle of existence could be derived from the writings of Richard Dawkins, well-known atheist. In keeping with Dawkins’ secular worldview, we saw how this outline offered an excellent start to addressing God through Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’. Based on this brief outline, a working definition of God emerged:

“God is the sum total of all the forces by which the universe unfolds in such a way that all the entities that emerge in its evolution (from quarks to the human person) each have the potential to become more complex when unified with other entities.”

With Dawkins’ outline of the fundamental aspects of God, this working definition, and the principles of reinterpretation that we have developed, this week we will address reinterpretation of the traditional Christian concept of God as ‘person’.

‘Person-ness”

The concept of the ‘person’ is somewhat unique to the West. It is related to the fundamental Jewish concept of time as seen as flowing from a beginning to an end, unlike the cyclical and recursive concept of time as found in the East. It also sees personal growth as the process of becoming not only ‘whole’, but distinctively so, as opposed to the Eastern concept of human destiny fulfilled in the loss of identity as merged into the ‘cosmic all’. This Western concept of ‘person-ness’ is one into which the idea of evolution fits readily, which leads to the religion-friendly idea of emergent complexity.

The idea of the human person emerging from the evolutionary phenomenon of neurological development is also unique to the West. While there is still much disagreement on how (or even whether) the person, with his unique mind, is separate from random neurological firings in the brain, the idea of the ‘person’ is well accepted. At the level of empirical biology, however, the distinction is difficult to quantify.

Nonetheless, Western society has proceeded along the path that however the neurons work, the effect is still a ‘person’, and recognized as such in the laws which govern the societies which have emerged in the West. While materialists can still claim that consciousness results from random neurological activity and that the basis for our consciousness is ‘just molecular interactions’, very few Westerners doubt the uniqueness of each human person.

Further, this concept of the person as unique provides a strong benefit to Western civilization. While perhaps rooted in the Jewish beliefs which underpin those of Christianity, the Western concept of ‘the person’ nonetheless underpins the other unique Western development: that of science. The evolution of language and use of both brain hemispheres led to the Greek rise of ‘left brain’ thinking (empirical, analytical) from the legacy modes of the ‘right brain’ (instinct and intuition), thus laying the groundwork for science.

As Jonathan Sacks sees it, when the two great threads of Greece and Jerusalem came together in Christianity, this framework evolved from a way of thinking to a disciplined facet of human endeavor. As many contemporary thinkers have observed, it is this connection between the uniqueness of the person (and the associated concepts of freedom) and the power of empirical thinking that account for the unique successes of the West. As Teilhard asserts, (and Johan Norberg thoroughly documents in his book, “Progress”):

“…from one end of the world to the other, all the peoples, to remain human or to become more so, are inexorably led to formulate the hopes and problems of the modern earth in the very same terms in which the West has formulated them.”

Not surprisingly, the uniqueness of the person is reflected in Western religion. Further, while the many different expressions of the three major monotheistic religions might disagree on the specifics, they all agree that persons are somehow uniquely connected to God, and that therefore God is in some way a ‘person’ who saves and damns, rewards and punishes, and provides guidance for life.

Our working definition (above) and our outline of the attributes of God from the last post, however, do not explicitly reflect such an aspect of the Ground of Being. Does this mean that from our point of view God is not a person?

‘Person-ness’ and God

The earliest human societies were all painfully aware of the forces in their environment which they could neither explain or control, such as weather, earthquakes, predators and sickness. They commonly attributed these forces to the work of intelligent beings, gods, as being in control of all these mysterious phenomena. Most of them imagined these gods as being human-like, but with much greater power. In the earliest societies, the many aspects of their mysterious environment were personified, even given names.

As society evolved, and humans grouped themselves into increasingly larger units, from families, to clans, to cities, to states, their emerging ruling hierarchies resulted in kings, sultans and other ‘heads of state’. Many societies evolved their understanding of the gods in similar ways, resulting in an ‘anthropomorphism’ of the gods: “like us but more powerful”.

When Jewish belief moved from a pantheistic understanding of ‘the gods’ to belief in a single god, the person-like aspect of this god was preserved. As Christianity began to emerge, it took with it the concept of God as ‘a person’. The writings of thinkers from Irenaeus through Augustine to Aquinas identify the attributes (as well as the gender) of God as personal. ‘He’ is omniscient (knows everything), omnipotent (all powerful) but still judgmental, and capable of jealousy and anger.

Such characteristics invite contradictory interpretations. If God gets angry or jealous, generally considered negative human behaviors, how can ‘he’ be said to be ‘good’? If he is all powerful, how can he permit evil? If he knows everything in advance, then the future is predetermined and how can human freedom be possible?

On the other hand, if God is not a person, in what way can humans be considered as ‘made in his image’? How is it possible to have a relationship with ‘him’ if ‘he himself’ is not a person?

So, with all that, Richard Dawkins’ question remains unanswered.

The Next Post

Next week we will begin to address these questions. Are our starting definition and list of attributes for the Ground of Being antithetical to the time-honored Western concept of God as ‘person’, or can the long development of the unfolding cosmos somehow be understood as compatible with our human personness?