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CTR's First Annual Invitational Conference on
Evolutionary Metaphysics
December 3 to 8, 2006
Summary Written by Frank Poletti
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The summary of our inaugural December 2006 gathering that follows here serves as a foundational document for this series. It contains concise summaries of Hegel, Bergson, Teilhard, Barfield, Aurobindo, Gebser, and others. The reader is welcome to read straight through the summary, which is ordered in the same sequence that the presentations were given at the conference, or click on the presenter's name below to forward directly to a particular presentation further down in the document. Each presentation can be read and understood on its own, although the presenters frequently made reference to one another's ideas throughout the week. A number of the presenters directly addressed or made reference to a set of seven discussion issues that the facilitators disseminated in advance to act as a guide for the week's conversations. Before reading the summary of the individual presentations, it will likely help the reader to look at these discussion issues first. Of course, a conference of four days length could not possibly address all of these issues in great depth, but each one was at least touched upon during the week. The Esoteric Roots of Hegelian Panentheism
Kicking Away the Ladder:
Tri-Phasic Development and the Spiral of History
Why Is the Panentheistic Vision Not Dominant in the Current Age?
Teilhard de Chardin, the Christian Sapiential Tradition,
Romanticism, Owen Barfield, and the Present Situation
Sri Aurobindo and Evolutionary Panentheism
The World Hidden Within the World
Jean Gebser: The Mutation of Structures of Consciousness
Henri Bergson and Evolutionary Panentheism
Wednesday Evening Program
Telos is Torus: The Evolutionary Geometry of the Universe
The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion
Discussion Issues for CTR's Inaugural
Glenn Magee
On Monday morning Glenn Magee opened the conference presentations with a paper titled, "The Esoteric Roots of Hegelian Panentheism." The summary that follows here is a condensed version of that paper, so if the reader would like the full essay, please contact Magee directly, or see his book length treatment of the topic, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (Cornell, 2001). Magee began by briefly reminding the audience about some of Hegel's core views. Hegel was a panentheist because he conceived the Infinite (God or Absolute Spirit) as containing within itself the finite and temporally bound world. Absolute Spirit would be less than complete if it were separate in any way from the finite world. And for Absolute Spirit to become actual it must be fully embodied in a self-reflective form. Thus, the telos or purpose of the universe is for God to come to self-awareness through humans. This was why Hegel was so interested in art, religion, and philosophy. The history of each revealed something about the process of God's coming to self-awareness in human form. But for Hegel philosophy played a special role among humanity's cultural achievements, because it alone was the most mature and clear articulation of Absolute Spirit in self-awareness. Only with the abstract conceptual clarity of philosophy can self-aware humans be completely and fully reconciled with Absolute Spirit. And this is why Hegel saw all previous attempts to accomplish such reconciliation as stations on the road toward this mature accomplishment in philosophy proper. For Hegel the "Mystical" is the "Speculative" As he turned to his main topic, Magee asked the conference participants to imagine a series of lectures by Hegel on the philosophy of mysticism. Magee said that Hegel never gave any such lectures, but that we could nevertheless reconstruct from Hegel's lectures, papers, and books what he likely would have said on this topic. Hegel, most likely, would have seen his system as the completion of the historical development of mysticism. Between 1824 and 1831 Hegel made reference to this view in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, which he gave four times during this period, revising them along the way. In the lectures of 1827 Hegel said, "As a whole the mystical is everything speculative, or whatever is concealed from the understanding." In this sentence Hegel was comparing favorably his own system of speculative philosophy directly to mysticism, because both of these go beyond what Hegel called the understanding (Verstand) and instead exemplify the Reason (Vernunft). These two terms were crucial for Hegel. By understanding (Verstand) Hegel meant a type of rigid rationality that could only perceive opposites in a permanent and static mode. While by Reason (Vernunft) Hegel meant a more dynamic type of thinking—dialectical thinking—which can hold opposites in a more fluid and developmental manner. As Hegel saw it, both mysticism and his speculative philosophy were attempts to overcome the rift between the finite and Infinite, or man and God. Interestingly, Magee pointed out that for Hegel religion does not accomplish this task, even what he believed to be the best or most highly developed religion of all, Christianity. Instead, all religions are stuck in a literal and mythic "picture-thinking," which cannot move beyond their sensuous orientation to images and metaphors. The mystical impulse within religions is the attempt to overcome these inherent limitations in the religions themselves. In short, mysticism is religion's immanent critique of itself, and mystics are the incomplete forerunners of speculative philosophers like Hegel. Hegel's main critique of the mystics, like Jakob Böhme, was that they relied too much on images and metaphors, which, according to Hegel, are inherently inferior to the more pure apprehension of abstract concepts. It was only with Hegel's purely conceptual articulation of Absolute Spirit in the form of philosophy that the nature of Absolute Spirit itself was finally articulated in a full and clear manner. It was in this sense that Hegel saw philosophy proper as the culmination of the process of the Absolute Spirit coming to its own mature self-awareness in humans. Hegel's Stages of Humanity's Religious Consciousness Next, Magee gave a brief overview of Hegel's philosophy of religion, which focused on how humanity's religious consciousness had developed over the centuries and eventuated in the need for mysticism and philosophy. For Hegel, the Philosophy of Religion has three moments: 1) The Concept of Religion was Hegel's adumbration of the topic of religion itself, in which he claimed that the world religions express humanity's innate desire to know Absolute Spirit. But even so, these religions are not self-aware of this very point. 2) Determinate Religion was Hegel's natural typology of the world's religions according to their adequateness and maturity. 3) Consummate Religion: Hegel saw Christianity as the only consummate religion, for the way it attempted to reconcile the human and Divine in Christian doctrine. A Hegelian Taxonomy of Mysticism Having covered some of Hegel's basic ideas about the development of religion, Magee turned next to his own Hegelian-styled taxonomy of the major approaches taken by mystics over the years. In true Hegelian fashion, Magee's taxonomy has three key moments:
This is a typical dialectical triad because the first two moments are reconciled in the third. They are also shown to have an underlying identity. Importantly, the third moment shows how the Absolute Spirit can be both immanent and transcendent at the same time. Next, Magee described each one in detail. 1. The Mysticism of the Transcendent Absolute For this stage of mysticism Magee highlighted a number of examples, starting with the mystery cults of ancient Greece. This rudimentary form of mysticism is unsatisfying from a Hegelian viewpoint because it lacks clear intellectual and conceptual understanding or articulation. The ancient mystery cults were primarily focused on initiation, fertility rites, and strict secrecy. They lacked a clear philosophical articulation of their practices. Magee covered three other examples from this stage: Shaivism, Vedanta, and Taoism. With each the divide between the finite and Infinite is overcome by annihilating or ignoring the human "I" or ego, which is often considered an illusion. These mystical approaches tend to strip away all self-conscious subjectivity, thus resulting in an abstract and contentless mystical vision. At best they can only marry our animal-instinctual-sexual self with the Divine, as with Taoism and Shaivism, thus leaving out humanity's self-conscious awareness. 2. The Mysticism of the Immanent Absolute In this second stage of mysticism the transcendent Absolute is obliterated in favor of an immanent pantheism. Magee said that when Hegel was a young student in the late 18th century, there was a controversial revival of Spinoza's pantheism. The philosopher Jacobi was accusing Spinoza (already dead at that time) of being essentially an atheist for denying God's transcendence. Mindful of these debates in his youth, Hegel clearly distinguished his own system from mere pantheism and refuted any charges similar to those made by Jacobi. In the East a similar pantheistic view is apparent in Zen Buddhism, which claims that we must go completely beyond concepts to experience a sudden and ineffable awakening (satori). But this still leaves us without the conceptual understanding of what we are awakening to. Magee explained that, from a Hegelian perspective, these and other forms of pantheism seek to overcome the diremption between the finite and Infinite by essentially annihilating the finite. In pantheism there is no metaphysical difference between daffodils and dragonflies, nor humans and bricks. It is like the night in which all cows are black. But whether it is the finite or the Infinite that is annihilated, the two are not thereby reconciled. Thus the Mysticism of the Transcendent Absolute and the Mysticism of the Immanent Absolute reveal themselves to be fundamentally identical, and fundamentally flawed. 3. The Mysticism of the Transcendent and Immanent Absolute (Mystical Panentheism) Magee used Jewish Kabbalism and Christian mysticism to illustrate this stage, both of which were influential on Hegel's own system. In Kabbalism the rift between the finite and Infinite is overcome through a developmental conception of God. God is conceived as the self-overcoming of an unknowable transcendence (Ein Sof). God "expresses himself" in nature and in human beings, who in some sense complete or perfect God's self-expression. Nature and human Spirit are viewed as aspects or moments of God's unfolding. Hence, Kabbalism is a form of panentheism with strong parallels to Hegel's own system. However, from a Hegelian point of view the Kabbalist Isaac Luria's rich and colorful cosmogony went awry because it led to the conclusion that the only way for humanity to reconcile with the Divine is through adherence to the law. Individual personality is thus immolated on the altar of a rigid moral code, and the reconciliation between the Infinite and finite once more annihilates the self-aware finite individual. So, is there any form of mysticism that affirms the dignity, self-awareness, and moral autonomy of the individual? According to Hegel, Christian mysticism comes the closest and thus can be seen as the true forerunner to Hegel's own system, which places the self-aware individual at the centerpiece. After all, in Christianity an individual becomes God and realizes the Divine nature. Furthermore, Hegel believed that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity expressed in mythic terms the three key moments of the Absolute's process of coming to self-awareness. The drive to understand the inscrutable nature of the Incarnation and the Trinity is what gave rise to Christian mysticism. The mystic who most influenced Hegel was Jakob Böhme (1575-1624). Influenced himself by the Kabbalism just discussed, Böhme saw God as an active process which unfolds itself in creation. The world is the body of God. Crucially, Böhme wrote that "nothing can be revealed to itself without opposition." Therefore, if God is a self-knowing mind, then He must "other" himself in the creation of the world in order to know himself in that world. Magee said that in his book Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, he presents at length the evidence that Hegel was well-acquainted with Böhme's writings and strongly influenced by them. But Magee added that Böhme's thought exhibited more clearly than any other the inherent defect of mysticism. As Hegel wrote in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, "Böhme's great mind is confined in the hard knotty oak of the senses—in the gnarled concretion of the ordinary conception—and is not able to arrive at a free presentation of the Idea." In other words, Böhme's thought is expressed entirely in "picture thinking" and does not deal with the Idea in its proper element, purely conceptual thought. Conclusion In conclusion, Magee concurred with Heidegger's famous claim that in Hegel Western metaphysics reached its own climax. But are we any better off for it? As a conceptually-articulated philosophy, Hegel's system may be quite perfect. But when Hegelianism deals with mysticism it inevitably winds up—as the preceding account nicely illustrates—distorting mysticism, because it cannot deal with it as anything other than doctrine. Hegelianism thereby misses what is crucial to mysticism: the claim that true wisdom may not be reducible to doctrine, but may involve an experience which cannot be fully articulated in concepts. Thus, Magee ended by calling for a new evolutionary panentheism that is not merely a philosophical system but also an encouragement and means toward direct experience of the transcendent and immanent Divine. We must seek, in other words, a panentheism that is a state of being: a life lived inside God. Frederick Amrine
On Monday afternoon Fred Amrine gave a presentation titled "Kicking Away the Ladder," which is a reference to Wittgenstein's Tractatus of 1921. At the very end of this dense analytical book, Wittgenstein concluded in an enigmatic yet profound way:
With the title "kicking away the ladder," Amrine was suggesting that, like Wittgenstein, Goethe, Fichte, and Schiller were making use of inherited epistemological structures ("ladders") to reach experiences that don't look anything like the ladders themselves. Because of this paradox, these thinkers were often misunderstood, but they nevertheless made seminal contributions to the Romantic and Idealistic movements that followed in their wake. To elucidate their ladder-kicking contributions, Amrine discussed three of their texts, all of which were published concurrently with the French Revolution during the tumultuous decade of the 1790s: Goethe's The Metamorphosis of Plants, 1790
Through his interpretation and analysis of these texts, Amrine set out to show how Goethe pioneered a revolutionary new sensory empiricism of the natural world, how Fichte pioneered a revolutionary new inner empiricism or phenomenology of the ego that would become a crucial seed for German Idealism, and how Schiller pioneered a revolutionary view of morality and freedom via the route of aesthetic cultivation. But to begin to understand what each of their revolutions was attempting to kick away, Amrine said that he needed to begin by explaining some of the equally revolutionary features of the genius that preceded them: Immanuel Kant. The Kantian Revolution and Resulting Limits of Knowledge At the time Kant published his pivotal philosophical treatise The Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, there were two great lineages in Western philosophy. The first was the largely British school of empiricism, whose most prominent exponent was David Hume. As is well known, Hume's corrosive skepticism of attempts to draw causal inferences from experience had stirred Kant from his dogmatic slumber. The second was the largely Continental school of rationalism, a lineage that followed in the footsteps of Descartes. In his first Critique Kant strove to reconcile these two great strands of philosophy with the incipient Romanticism and emotionalism of Rousseau, whose writings, at least in part, were a response to the lifeless mechanism of Newtonian science and the cold Enlightenment rationalism then prevalent in European intellectual circles. Kant's growing concern over the certainty of science, reason, and faith had come not only from these sources but from his own discovery of what he called "the antinomies of reason" as well. After laborious and careful thinking, Kant concluded that all of the great metaphysical questions about God, freedom, and immortality can be argued on both sides equally well. Human reason was thus demonstrated to be unreliable for these matters, and so Kant thought speculative metaphysics had revealed itself to be incapable of answering such questions in principle. In the wake of this devastating critique of the capacity for human reason to "know" that which transcends reason, Kant realized that the only way for philosophy to go forward would be for it to revolutionize its premises and aims. Following his first Critique, Kant wrote two more (The Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgement, published in 1788 and 1790 respectively) and thereby helped usher in a triple revolution in epistemology, morality, and aesthetics. But even his own enthusiastic followers found his conclusions at once compelling and disturbing. In order to accomplish his mighty task of saving the integrity of reason and faith, Kant had insulated human cognition from the reality which it seeks to know. The ungraspable noumenal realm (the thing-in-itself) could not be directly apprehended by the human mind. According to Kant, behind our thinking there is a transcendental unity of apperception, which is a pure synthetic activity that we can never know directly but must presume is going on. The result of Kant's revolution was the erection of rigid limits upon human knowledge. Amrine said that as admirers of these weighty Critiques, Goethe and Fichte started in the 1790s to work in the spirit of Kant against the letter of Kant. Even though they were working in different arenas, Goethe in botany and Fichte in philosophy, they shared a common desire to turn Kant's epistemological limit into a threshold. Goethe sought to overcome the limit by contemplating our epistemological interface with the natural world, in particular, plant morphology, while Fichte sought to overcome the limit by contemplating the constitution of own inner minds, in particular, the egoic structure of the subject/object divide. And according to Amrine, they both succeeded admirably in their goals, but not necessarily in their ability to communicate their new methods to their colleagues. One reason for this was that both Goethe and Fichte set out to work in ways that superficially resembled the old modus operandi of empiricism and philosophy but, in effect, were really radically different approaches that would take time to assimilate. As Amrine put it, "Goethe's plant morphology looks superficially like the old empiricism, but isn't. And Fichte's epistemology looks superficially like the old rationalism, but isn't." Even though they spent their later lives writing subsequent drafts to explain their projects better, they did so without complete success. To provide more detail about the challenges they faced, Amrine turned first to Goethe. Goethe's New Sensory-Empiricism: A Holistic-Dynamic Way of Seeing Goethe started his botanical research by turning to the Swede Linnaeus, whom he studied like the Bible. But as it turned out, Goethe needed to pioneer his own botanical method. In fact, Goethe once quipped that he had learned everything from Linnaeus, except botany. As Goethe discovered for himself, the well-known Linnaen taxonomy of plants was completely arbitrary. It was based on the counting of pistils, stamens, blossoms, and leaves. But through his own botanical investigations Goethe found ambiguous organs and plants that didn't fit into Linnaeus' neat categories. As a result, he crafted a very different taxonomic scheme. In particular, Goethe's new scheme stated that what makes plants plants is not their static form, but their living growth process, which unfolds dynamically and continuously. Inspired by his trip to Italy in the late 1780s, Goethe developed a dynamic theory of plant morphology. His focus was on the developmental movement between the static forms of plants. In this manner Goethe was pushing through Kant's outer epistemological threshold in order to see plants in their pure dynamic movement. Because Goethe's dynamic approach to plants is still not readily understood, Amrine turned to the late Ronald Brady's essay "Goethe's Natural Science: Some Non-Cartesian Meditations," which he has found particularly helpful. This essay uses the metaphor of music to help elucidate Goethe novel way of seeing plants. In music, we ask, "What is a melody?" And the answer is that a melody is not this note or that note—nor is it the sum of a sequence of notes. Instead, melody is what moves between the notes. And so likewise for Goethe's botany. Goethe's project in The Metamorphosis of Plants was to encourage us to see plants dynamically as the movement between forms. Like music, a plant is never static; its ideal form is always coming to life between static moments. Amrine said that Goethe's way of seeing plants is thus a kind of pure, ideal, synthetic activity. The real plant is something ideal in the sense that it never manifests empirically as a complete whole all-at-once. Instead, we must learn to intuit the ideal plant from within the real one. Amrine suggested that this is comparable to Zeno's paradox of the arrow flying through the air. When we look at it, the arrow is never moving. Our eyes never really see motion. What we call motion is ideal. We intuit it from within the real, which is always stationary and moment-by-moment. Thus, what we discover when following the metamorphosis of a plant is the activity of our own minds as knowers. Goethe's insight was to make an about-face toward recognizing the constitutive activity of the knowing mind. This was clearly something revolutionary in his time. Amrine commented that the threshold Goethe had crossed might be called today an integral way of thinking and perceiving, in which we immediately apprehend the organic wholeness of a plant as it manifests through time. Kant's third Critique had specifically denied this possibility. For Kant, there may be supra-humans who have access to the intellectus archetypus (the immediate apprehension of the whole), but human thinking is inevitably discursive. We have only the intellectus ectypus. When responding to Kant's Third Critique, Goethe directly challenged this restricted view of humanity's epistemological capacity. At the end of The Metamorphosis of Plants, for example, Goethe wrote about the proliferated rose. What grows out of the rose is a miniature version of the entire plant with a stalk like a barber pole. Thus, the whole of the plant is there within the part. These seemingly pathological forms, Goethe discovered, were examples or windows onto the whole of the plant. To capture the wholeness of the plant in each organ, Goethe coined the phrase "Alles ist Blatt" (everything is leaf). As one looks at a plant, one can see this ideal entity metamorphosing. In his book, Goethe attempted to illustrate what he meant with non-leaf like species, such as the tulip. Through these illustrations, Goethe was, in a sense, turning his book into a workbook or primer for learning to see in this holistic and fluid manner. He was attempting to shorten the perceptual gap so we could learn to jump it intentionally (in the phenomenological sense of that term). Later in the 19th century, the prominent physicist Hermann von Helmholtz completely misunderstood and dismissed Goethe's novel method. The key that he missed was that Goethe was not making a propositional statement about plants. Instead, he was showing us how to see them anew. In Wittgenstein's sense, he was kicking away the ladder of our common apprehension of the natural world. He was teaching us how to see a plant's fluid life. Thus, for those who embrace this method the forms of plants become an occasion to engage in a meditative practice of enlivened thinking. Although Helmholtz didn't understand or appreciate what Goethe had developed, Goethe's younger contemporary Hegel did. In the preface to his seminal Phenomenology of the Spirit of 1807, Hegel draws on Goethe's plant morphology to describe what philosophy should be like. Amrine quoted from the second paragraph of the Phenomenology:
So, as Hegel had discovered, Goethe's new sensory empiricism was really a model for holistic thinking. What had looked like the old empiricism was really the antithesis of it. In brief, Goethe's new way of seeing had penetrated Kant's limit and found a way to the other side. Amrine noted that in some respects Rudolf Steiner's book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds took Goethe's The Metamorphosis of Plants as its model, because both are workbooks that train one to see and perceive in new and more holistic ways. The first exercise in Steiner's book is to follow the development of a plant as a way of practicing enlivened thinking. In sum, Amrine said that Goethe's The Metamorphosis of Plants should really be understood as a workbook that strengthens one's perceptual capacities. Amrine once wrote an article titled "The Metamorphosis of the Scientist" as a play on Goethe's own title, because Goethe's own book was really not about the transformation of plants. It was and is about the transformation of us—of how we see. Fichte's Inner Revolution: The Positing Activity Underneath the "I" Like Goethe, Fichte found Kant's Critiques fascinating and revolutionary, yet incomplete and intolerable as well. Amrine pointed out that Kant had left a number of small hints toward potential solutions to the dangling and unresolved problems in his three great Critiques. In the beginning of The Critique of Pure Reason, for example, Kant provided an arboreal metaphor that revealed both his view that the knower could not reach the knowable as well as a possible route for bridging these divided worlds. He wrote that understanding and sensibility are like two trunks of one tree with a common root, but that root is underground and we can't dig for it. Boldly, Fichte thought he could dig underground and find the common root for what Kant said we could never connect. In 1793 Fichte was given a book to review titled Aenesidemus. Published anonymously but widely thought to be the work of G.E. Schulze, this book was largely an empiricist-skeptical critique of Kant's transcendental-idealistic view of the human mind, in which the innate categories of the mind are what structure our experience of the world. Fichte realized in writing his review that Schulze was correct in some of his criticisms of Kant's position. So, at the end of his short book review of Schulze, Fichte offered an ad hoc introduction to his proposed resolution to the problems Schulze had raised. It was in this review that Fichte's original voice was first put to writing (such as the mutually implicated relationship between the "I" and "not I", and the emphasis on eternal striving and self-positing). At the time the book review was published in early 1794 the chair of philosophy at the University of Jena had become vacant. Goethe had just read his book review and suggested that Fichte be invited to fill the vacant chair. At the time of Goethe's invitation, Fichte's was known primarily for an essay, The Critique of All Revelation, that some had mistakenly thought Kant himself had authored. With Goethe's recommendation, Fichte got the chair, but upon one condition, which was that he write a textbook on logic within the next year. Deciding to kill two birds with one stone, Ficthe turned his very first lectures at Jena in 1794 into the text of his ambitious Wissenschaftslehre. In haste, he completed the abstruse text in three months. And all the while, he was giving stunning lectures that captivated a young generation of German students, including a rising star on the horizon named Friedrich Schelling. Like Goethe's Metamorphosis, Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre was both challenging and revolutionary. In it, Ficthe offered a new explanation for the synthetic activity that underlies thinking itself, which Kant had called the transcendental unity of apperception. Written like a textbook on logic, Fichte's Wisenschafttslehre begins by taking up Aristotle's identity principle of A = A, which had become the tried-and-true Cartesian bedrock of philosophy. The famous Cartesian cogito (I think therefore I am) had laid the foundation for Western philosophy by stating that you cannot doubt that you doubt. Or, you can't think that you don't think. The internal consistency of the thinking self is indubitable. But indubitable to whom? Indubitable to the ego, Fichte soon discovered... For Fichte quickly realized that the identity principle is a judgement, and all such judgements happen in a self. Thus, a more penetrating analysis of the identity principle brings one to a simple egoic reflection: I = I. This is both a fundamental axiom of epistemology and simultaneously the recognition of self-consciousness. Fichte continued by asking, "Why does this work?" And the conclusion he came to was: the subject is the object. The two are "mutually implicated" as we might say today. Fichte had realized that the rational Cartesian foundation was problematic and that a deeper insight into the nature of "I" and "not I", or subject and object, was called for. Amrine pointed out that the great Idealist scholar Dieter Henrich called this "Fichte's original insight" (in an essay by the same title). Fichte's relentless path of Buddhist-like self-observation had led him to an analysis of the very nature of the subject/object divide itself. How could the "I" appear as both subject and as object? Fichte came to see that the "I" is always already there in the moment one inquires about it. So, in self-introspection one is not finding the "I." It's already there. After further introspection, Fichte realized that his solution was correct. The moment one says anything, the "I" is already implicit and present. Delving deeper into the nature of his own mind, Fichte was then led to a Zen-like koan, "Where is the 'I' before it is spoken?" The answer Fichte derived: The "I" is an act of will—an act of pure positing. It stems from a pure activity of the creative will. This deeper activity, creativity, or "positing" (setzen = to posit) is what creates the "I"—and thus creates the subject/object divide itself. How is this so? Fichte had realized that the moment one speaks the "I", one instantly defines the "not I." And thus the world is split into subject and object, I and not-I. The problem of finding a rational Cartesian foundation for the "I" thus cannot be accomplished by rational thought alone. The problem of "I" can only be resolved through a deeper and more penetrating inner empiricism or inner phenomenology. In doing this for himself, Fichte realized that he could watch Kant's pure synthetic activity come into being as such. He realized that he could watch the subject/object split precipitate out of a realm of pure spiritual activity. Fichte then further concluded that the "I" posits itself absolutely, continuously, and dynamically. What philosophers should have been searching for is not the "I" as a thing, but the "I" as a continuous activity. And so much like Goethe, who went searching for the structure of plants only to find that plants are dynamic and fluid, so too did Fichte find a dynamic activity underlying what had been thought to be a static and unchanging "I." To attempt to capture and describe his monumental insight about the dynamic nature of the "I," Fichte invented a neologism from the German Tatsache, meaning fact or thing. He coined the word Tathandlung, meaning roughly in English "doing-done" or "acting-act." So, what is this process of inner empiricism that Fichte discovered? In Fichte's terms, it is an originary intellectual intuition. The dynamic activity of pure positing cannot be apprehended or understood simply by logical inference at the level of thinking and ego. To help explain, Amrine again returned to his core Wittgenstinian metaphor: logic was the ladder that Fichte had climbed to get there, but then he promptly kicked it away when he left logic and discursive thinking behind him. To kick away the ladder is thus to enter into a mode of direct seeing and real Imagination. As Wittgenstein would put it, more than a century after Fichte: the saying of propositional logic must become the showing of originary insight. Whereas Kant had previously said that one is blocked from seeing the pure synthetic activity that underlies every act of cognition, Fichte was now showing that we can see the very structures of logic and reason come into being. Because his revolutionary insight was so novel for his time, Fichte could only point his peers and students in the direction of this fresh wellspring of truth, but only a few of them were able to drink from it for themselves. Amrine concluded his comments by pointing out that Steiner, who wrote his dissertation on Fichte, considered the Wissenschaftslehre a true initiation book—a book that takes one across the threshold. And like Goethe's Metamorphosis, it is also workbook that invites us all to a reflexive practice of spiritual contemplation. What Fichte had pioneered in the wake of Kant's impenetrable thing-in-itself was a new philosophy as quasi spiritual practice. Fichte, like Goethe, beckoned his followers to behold what unfolds within our own creative imaginations below the level of ego and discursive logic. To summarize, Amrine said that with Goethe, we see someone who started at the pole of empiricism who then arrived at a new concrete-sensorial thinking that is ideal without being abstract. And with Fichte, we see someone who started at the other, inner, pole of rationality, who then arrived at a new inner empiricism. Thus, when looked at together, we find that Goethe's and Ficthe's seminal and concurrent insights interweave with one another as diagrammed here:  Amrine noted that the later German Romantics eventually called for a dialectical integration of Goethe and Fichte. They thought that only with a full union of these two approaches can one have a true transformation. In crossing the outer threshold, Goethe discovered an enlivened thinking; in crossing the inner threshold, Ficthe discovered a higher empiricism. Thus, the great epistemological split in human cognition was woven together at a higher level, and both thinkers discovered anew the ancient, archetypal truths captured in such images as the goddess Natura weaving at her loom, or the interweaving snakes in the hem of Athena's cape. Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind
With his remaining time Amrine turned to yet another revolutionary, the dramatist and historian Friedrich Schiller, who also was working to resolve the divisions and limits within Kant's philosophy. Amrine started by saying just how inspired he has been by Schiller, but also how puzzled he has been over the way Schiller concluded his most influential work, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind. Amrine said that Schiller was not able to completely see just how revolutionary the implications of his Letters were. Schiller's immediate inspiration for writing the Letters was twofold. First, he was repulsed and dismayed by the French Revolution then unfolding across the border in Paris, which had devolved into the Reign of Terror. And second, he was equally stirred by Kant's second and third Critiques. Written during 1793 during the heart of the Terror in Paris, Schiller begins his Letters by picking up where Kant had left off. Kant's second Critique on morality and ethics had concluded with a harsh Prussian message. Essentially, Kant had argued that good ethical behavior involved the imposition of duty and the suppression of natural inclination by one's own conscience. For Kant, humans are free only to the extent that we make an individual choice to rationally impose duty and morality on our baser drives. But Schiller asked if we are really free in Kant's picture? As he heard news of the barbaric Jacobins in Paris, Schiller concluded that Enlightened rationality does not transform us at our depths. Instead, it only represses the natural side of our being and corrupts the finer sentiments that had once guided us ethically. Hence, the epigraph to the Letters is from the great Swiss prophet of feeling, Rousseau:
Hearing that the French revolution of rationality had devolved into barbarity, Schiller realized that Kant's abstract moral duty would not transform our human nature but only repress it. And, on the other hand, if our baser human impulses continue to pop up and rule our behavior, brute force will eventually intervene to restore order. Amrine noted that when addressing this issue in the Letters, Schiller had indirectly prophesized the advent of Napoleon in France. So, the pressing question before Schiller as he wrote his Letters seemed initially to be: How can humanity safely and successfully make the transition from the sensuous state of nature to the kingdom of pure rationality? Schiller argued persuasively that the great mediator of this process is art. In a work both daring and creative, Schiller claimed that only art can bring forth a mature and well-integrated freedom in both individuals and societies. The only lasting solution to the quest for political freedom is through the transformative medium of art, which alone can synthesize all of humanity's various drives. In fact, one interesting feature of Schiller's Letters is his analysis of the different drives of humans. In this sense, he was a precursor to Freud, who used the same word Trieb (drive) in his psychoanalytic theory a century later. According to Schiller, humans have two conflicting drives: the sensuous drive (Sinnestrieb) and formal drive (Formtrieb), but also a third drive capable of dialectically integrating the first two, called the play drive (Spieltrieb). The word "play" in the third drive has the same connotations in German as it does in English, so that when Schiller spoke of the play drive, he meant both play in the sense of children but also play in the sense of the theatre and dramatic works of art. In his Letter, Schiller asserted that we are most human when we play. When contemplating the way that art can transform us, Schiller took one of his cues from Fichte, particularly the idea of two opposite poles working together to transform each other (the dialectic). Schiller developed the idea of a reciprocal interaction that results in a mutually transformed unity. Thus, like Kant, Schiller had his own version of the antinomies. But in Schiller's version, the antinomies of Infinite and finite, matter and form, and the sensuous drive and form drive, ultimately transform one another through beauty and art. The great extent of the Letters is concerned with beauty and the beautiful. Schiller extolled the transformative power of art and beauty as he described the different kinds of beauty, such as melting beauty (schmelzende Schönheit) and energizing beauty (straffeude Schönheit). For Schiller, beauty could ease the transition from our natural inclinations to rational duty. Thus, beauty was not an end in itself; it had a specific transformative moral impact as well. At its most optimistic, the Letters portray how the free engagement of the play drive results in a future utopia of unending beauty. In letters 19 and 20, Schiller offered a justification for an aesthetic experience that would actively balance our senses and reason such that our lower compulsions would be annulled (aufgehoben). Schiller thereby sought to enter a realm of active or achieved indetermination, that is, freedom. He envisioned a new model of autonomy that was not the isolated autonomy of Kant, but one that would be cultivated through aesthetic experience. In letters 21 and beyond, Schiller asserted that aesthetic experience recreates us and gives us our basic humanity to use freely each time afresh and anew. In the end for Schiller, our ability to appreciate beauty is the only real proof of our human moral freedom. After all, beauty is the only place where the Infinite and finite intersect. And if that is true, then it resolves Kant's great moral dilemma of duty versus natural inclination. Amrine noted that in a general sense Schiller's argument is akin to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: we enact ethical resolves in the world by becoming moral artists. Artists know how to embody the ideal within the real. Each moral situation requires a unique aesthetic intuition appropriate to it. Amrine pointed out that Steiner would later pick up this theme in his work The Philosophy of Freedom (published in 1894), particularly the notion of moral imagination. As he concluded, Amrine came back to his theme from Wittgenstein. For Schiller, initially, art is the ladder we are supposed to climb up to reach pure rationality—the means to an end. But when Schiller reached the top of his ladder, he found something quite different from what he thought he would find: art as an end in itself, because we are most human when we play. By the time he concluded his Letters, Amrine said that Schiller stopped short of a complete revolution. Schiller could not fully kick away the Kantian ladder he had climbed up. What specifically does this mean? In Amrine's view, Schiller was unable to kick away the idea of art as an object, and enter the realm of the productive imagination (produktive Einbildungskraft), the realm of pure, spiritual activity. Sean Kelly
On Monday afternoon Sean Kelly addressed humanity's present moment of planetary ecological and social crisis through the lens of Hegel's tri-phasic (three-phased) thought. How can we make sense of ourselves as a species—one that is simultaneously so brilliant and destructive? One that is so filled with light and shadow? Drawing from the French complexity thinker Edgar Morin, Kelly said the human species might be re-envisioned not as Homo sapiens but as Homo sapiens-demens—the wise-insane animal. To begin to wrestle with this inherent complexity in our nature, Kelly said we can turn to Hegel's seminal insights about the purpose of human evolution, many of which still have relevance today in our globalized age. Hegel's Absolute: The Dynamism of Opposites Kelly opened his remarks on Hegel by quoting a couple key passages from one of his favorite books on the Romantic period, Natural Supernaturalism by M.H. Abrams (these originally come from Hegel's Phenomenology of 1807):
Kelly said that Hegel's original definition of the Absolute came from one of his first essays in which he compared the philosophies of his mentor Ficthe and his brilliant peer Schelling. Kelly said that if we distill the essence of that definition, then we arrive at: the Absolute is the identity of identity and difference. Kelly added that Edgar Morin picked up on this formulation when he defined the elusive term of "life" as the union of union and disunion. This clever insight into the developmental generativity of opposites by Hegel and Morin actually grows out of a lineage that stretches back to the Greeks and the medieval period. Kelly said that the notion of a coincidentia oppositorum or complexio oppositorum was apparent in Heraclitus's description of the Logos as a unity of opposites. And Nicholas of Cusa developed the idea in the medieval period, as did Meister Eckhart and, a bit later, Jacob Böhme. In the twentieth century, Carl Jung picked up the term and used it as his definition for the Self. But what is unique about Hegel's use of this idea? Kelly said that in Hegel's thought the dynamism and developmentalism of the opposites is fully recognized. Hegel's philosophy opened the possibility for thinking and intuiting that a full unity can preserve the living dynamism of two opposites that comprise it. From the End of History to Many Endings at Once Kelly turned next to Hegel's famous (or infamous) pronouncement that history had come to an end. Kelly quoted from The Philosophy of Right:
Put differently, wisdom can only come to us when a process has reached its end. As Hegel said, the owl of Minerva (the symbol of wisdom) spreads its wings only at dusk. Hegel saw his project as the culmination of the Western mind's search for a true philosophical wisdom. Kelly remarked that with this Esalen conference taking place in December 2006 we have reached the bicentennial of the publication of Hegel's great work The Phenomenology of Geist (originally sent to the publisher in the fall of 1806 as Napoleon himself rumbled into Jena on horseback). Two hundred years after Hegel's epochal pronouncement, it would seem that he was right in his vision but premature in his timing, because it is only today that we have arrived at a better view of a series of "endings" that are approaching us from the near horizon. With this idea in mind, Kelly proceeded to adumbrate these endings, each of which is an ending for an increasingly shorter period of time than the period previous to it: First: We are at the end of the Cenozoic era, a 65 million year geological cycle, that began after the dinosaurs went extinct. All of the major flora and fauna that we are accustomed to seeing evolved during this era. This is a 65 million year period. Second: We are at the end of the Holocene, a shorter period within the Cenozoic, which can be dated from the last global Ice Age. Toward the end of this stable period of relatively warm climate, Homo sapiens (or Homo sapiens-demens) quickly came to dominate the globe. This is about a 10,000 year period. Third: We are at the end of human history proper, which began in Sumeria approximately 3,100 BCE. This period has been dominated by nations and ethnic peoples jockeying for absolute political-military power. Today, this mode of human history has ended because humanity can no longer engage in totalistic power-conquests without nuclear self-annihilation. This is a 5,000 year period. Fourth: We are at the end of the two-thousand year Christian epoch, which Jung described in his book Aion. This transition has also been characterized by astrologers as the end of the Age of Pisces and the beginning of the Age of Aquarius. This is a roughly 2,000 year period. Fifth: We are at the end of what historians call the modern period, as we pass through the so-called postmodern era. This transitional period has been dominated by an economic ideology of limitless growth, progress, and human domination of the earth's natural resources. The modern era is a 500 year period. Sixth: We are at the end of the era of cheap oil and fossil fuels. A number of commentators have aired the notion of "peak oil output" after which oil can only become more expensive as demand outstrips supply. The Buddhist systems-thinker Jo Anna Macy has called this the end of industrial-growth civilization. At present, we are just beginning to see the next era based on renewable energy sources and the battle against global warming and climate change. This is a 150 year period. Seventh: Lastly, we seem to be at the end of an even shorter period that has stretched from the counter-cultural burst of the 1960s to the present. This is a forty year period. So, after listing this series of endings, Kelly asked where do we go for guidance during this eschaton of eschatons? One place we might turn for wisdom is the historical process itself, as illuminated by Hegel. This can give us guidance in the form of pattern-recognition, because history is not just a random sequence of events signifying nothing but existential contingency. Instead, Kelly argued in the next part of his presentation that history displays patterns of development and meaning that can give us not only guidance in terms of understanding but also reassurance that a larger pattern is unfolding right before our eyes during this era of multiple endings. Hegel's Tri-Phasic Developmental Scheme Kelly said that the core pattern that Hegel identified in history is a three-phased developmental sequence that repeats itself at several different scales. In this sense, it is a fractal pattern that may show up on different levels, of which we have perhaps only begun to identify a few. Kelly also highlighted how Hegel's basic pattern is resonant with the three-phases of Joseph Campbell's idea of the hero's journey:  When explaining the diagram above, Kelly said that if Hegel is right that the Absolute is always in the process of its own becoming, then we can look for these three stages in any developmental process:
Kelly illuminated how this works with a number of examples from different scales of time in history and evolution. The first pattern he started with was the broad scope of the development of Homo sapiens as a global species: Identity: In Phase One we can see that Homo sapiens emerged sometime between 100,000 and 20,000 years ago as the dominant self-reflexive and symbol-using species (after all other hominid species died out, such as the Neanderthals). This period was our original Promethean moment of separation and autonomy from our animalistic and instinctual background and thus the early dawn of our journey as a self-aware species. Difference: In Phase Two Kelly drew on the work of Karl Jaspers, particularly his book The Origin and Goal of History, in which he proposed the idea of an "Axial Age." As humans became the dominant hominid species on the planet, they also fanned-out or diversified in their self-expression. Humanity became a geophysically and culturally diversified species, leading to our different skin colors, languages, and physical appearances as we covered the planet and impacted each bioregion we inhabited. An important moment in this phase was the Axial Age (centered around 575 BCE), at which time the diverse world religions and philosophical systems were simultaneously seeded by the likes of Lao Tzu, the Buddha, and the pre-Socratic philosophers, among many others. Identity-in-Difference: In Phase Three (what we are in now) humanity is involved in the long and challenging process of becoming a unified and global species. We are learning to unite in the sense of a common humanity or solidarity among human communities. Kelly said that Jaspers described both a differentiation and integration phase to the long saga of human history, which ultimately aims at the formation of a larger unified identity. Today, paradoxically, the amplification of plurality and differences is met by growing more interdependence. An epoch-making step in this third phase was the dawning recognition of the Earth as a planet. Kelly said this recognition can be said to have begun when Ferdinand Magellan's fleet circumnavigated the globe (Magellan died in the Philippines) and culminated when the first astronauts looked back at the Earth from the Moon in 1969. Although we are making some gains in this phase, Kelly did not seek to glamorize or white-wash it. He mentioned that thus far it has been dominated by colonial and imperialistic contact among humans and is still far from being truly moral and humane. We are still only at the very beginning of forming a new planetary identity for humanity. Kelly argued that this basic tri-phasic pattern is the meta-pattern of human history, and if we look carefully we can recognize similar but shorter fractal patterns circumscribed within this larger arc of humanity's development. See Figure 1 "The Arc and the Spiral:" The Role of Christ and the West in the Arc of a Planetary History Kelly turned next to address the often misunderstood role of the West within this picture. He noted that it has been fashionable in academic circles the past 30 years to focus on the immense shadow side of the West. Patriarchy, Euro-centrism, ecological destruction, capitalism, etc., are some of the prominent scars that have been left by the rise of the West. But Kelly emphasized that we need a fully complex mode of thinking, such as that offered by Edgar Morin, in order to honor both the light and shadow of the West. Only this can keep us from entertaining simplistic progress metanarratives that lack the nuance, compassion, and wisdom of an authentic planetary era. In the early 19th century when Hegel was trying to understand the role of the West in human history, he came to the view that philosophy ultimately served as the articulation of the truth of religious symbols, particularly the Christian symbols of the Incarnation and Trinity. Kelly said that Hegel's privileging of the symbol system of the Christian West was more than just a case of naïve Euro-centrism on his part. Instead, Hegel's insights carry something crucial for our understanding of the emerging planetary era. If we take a planetary perspective, Kelly said that we can see better today how some of the key revolutions necessary to create a globalized economy and society could only have happened in the West. The most notable example is the Copernican shift to a helio-centric cosmology, which eventually led to the birth of modern science, economics, colonial conquest, and ultimately globalization as we know it today. One of Hegel's best-recognized interpreters, Alexandre Kojève, argued in the mid-20th century that these inter-related developments could only have happened in the Christian West. Kojève thought that the core Christian symbols offered an imaginal-symbolic and historical matrix out of which the modern scientific revolution and its consequences grew. Because China, India, and even ancient Greece lacked this key symbolic background, despite themselves also being axial cultures, they did not develop science as we know it today. Kelly said that Hegel saw the development of consciousness in the West as the historical articulation and unfolding of the deep structure of the Biblical worldview with the three phases of creation, fall, and redemption. Hegel saw the entire sweep of human history as a three-act play on a grand scale: Identity: In the first phase the Alpha (God) is the original identity. Moses's original revelation was that God uttered "I am that I am." Kelly noted that in this pronouncement we can recognize a self-reflexive loop. The initial "I" feeds back into itself. The original "I" wants to know that it is an "I." To accomplish the full articulation of the Mosaic insight, the Divine must develop through time and history. This was the Judaic revelation about God's relationship (covenant) to humanity that played out through history. Difference: In the second phase humanity differentiates from the Divine identity as history unfolds or unpacks the original Mosaic revelation. Hegel traced this process through the Roman period, the Middle Ages, and the rise of the modern worldview. Identity-in-Difference: In the third phase, this developmental relationship between the Divine and humanity comes to self-recognition. And it was precisely this that burst forth during the Romantic-Idealistic era between 1780 and 1830. Fichte was a crucial breakthrough figure in this regard, as Fred Amrine noted in his presentation just before Kelly's. One of Fichte's original insights involved the tri-phasic process that Hegel later fleshed out in great detail by adding rich historical detail and psychological nuance to them. Hegel also connected the tri-phasic process to the unfolding of Christian symbolism. For example, the core three-phased symbolism appears in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, such that:
Kelly said that this symbolism can also be found in the symbolic narrative of the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ. Foreshadowing some of the comments to be made by Bruno Barnhart on Tuesday, Kelly mentioned the inherently incarnational trajectory of Christian symbolism. The Tightening Spiral of History Next, Kelly described some of the shorter arcs of history that are inscribed within the larger one. His main point was that the fractal repetition of the core pattern generates a tightening spiral of history, whereby each new repetition takes place in less time than the previous one. Kelly emphasized that each new turn of the cycle creates an opportunity for resonance, or amplification, of themes from the previous one. Each new turn thus brings out more of the richness of the overall pattern and brings it to fruition. The next iteration of the cycle that Kelly described was the development of the modern period. Its three core phases were:
In this developmental arc of about 400 years, the birth, loss, and return of an organic and living cosmology can be seen. During the Italian Renaissance, and the esoteric revival that followed in its wake throughout Europe, there arose an organic cosmology that was rooted in some of the West's core esoteric insights that dated back to the Corpus Hermeticum. This initial phase was followed by the rise of the Cartesian-Newtonian cosmology of a dead and mechanical universe. Kelly said the transition between these two phases has been captured well by Carolyn Merchant in her book The Death of Nature. In the second phase, the West saw the institutionalization of the scientific worldview, particularly in England with the Royal Society and in France with Voltaire and the rationalist Enlighten-ment. With the advent of the counter-cultural movement of Romanticism and Idealism came the third phase in this arc of development. In this period, Goethe and Schelling developed their versions of a holistic and archetypal Naturphilosophie, as did Hegel, along with his philosophy of history based on the evolution of consciousness. In the next iteration of the cycle, bringing it into our own lifetimes, Kelly described how the spiral of time has become even tighter. Here are its three phases:
In this sequence the awakening of the Romantic-Idealistic period becomes the seed for the next cycle. Each ending identity is thus the seed for a new turning of the spiral. In this turn, Kelly pointed to the disenchantment of the modern cosmos by Darwin, T.H. Huxley, Marx, Freud, and several others, such as the more contemporary figure Richard Dawkins. Kelly noted that the movements of positivism and materialism so thoroughly pervaded the modern academic establishment that the counter-cultural thrust of the third phase needed to establish its own institutions like Esalen and CIIS to birth its own new paradigm. Concluding Thoughts: Planetary Awakening As Kelly concluded, he made some general comments about the overall pattern. Each time the cycle moves into the phase of negation, it prepares the ground for a more complex articulation of the differentiated contents during the next cycle. This was one of Hegel's core insights: each opposition is a necessary part of a larger cycle of development. Likewise, in Edgar Morin's complex thinking, which draws out this Hegelian insight, there is an emphasis on how to include the antagonistic and destructive as constitutive parts of any new paradigm vision. As many have noted, evolution and development thrive on a type of creative destruction. But out of each negative and destructive moment there is the chance for a new birth and new cycle of generativity. Each new third/first moment incorporates key features from the preceding moment. For example, the Romantics did not simplistically reject the rationality of the Enlightenment. Instead, they incorporated its best features into their own thinking as they moved beyond its limitations. Kelly noted that understanding the "negativity" or oppositional character of the second moment in the three-phased dialectical process helps us make sense of the current Neo-Conservative and fundamentalist backlash to the liberatory quality of the Sixties counter-culture. Lastly, Kelly commented that this entire meta-pattern of human history is only fully intelligible when the driving assumption is that the process is headed toward planetary consciousness or full planetary awakening. This is the telos for the arc of human history, and the shorter fractal patterns become intelligible only within this context. As Hegel knew, the goal of history is self-awareness, but today we know that this must take place within a complex human community striving to bring forth the planetary era. Richard Tarnas
When Richard Tarnas was invited to participate in this inaugural conference series at Esalen, he was asked to address the following question:
On Monday evening Tarnas opened his response to this question by asking the conference participants to recast the question itself. Have the advocates of panentheism today really lost hold of a previously prominent position in the public eye, as if there were once a golden age? Suggesting that this may not be the case, Tarnas highlighted the creative efflorescence that has followed in the wake of the 60s counterculture. Briefly citing a number of places and events from memory, Tarnas listed the vibrancy of Esalen, Schumacher College, the ITA (International Transpersonal Association) conferences, Pacifica graduate school, the Institute of Noetic Sciences, the Eranos conferences, the Anthroposophical Society, various Jungian institutes, the Omega Institute and Open Center in New York, Findhorn in Scotland, the British Scientific and Medical Network, and more. Such names as Fritjof Capra and Rupert Sheldrake have become much sought-after stars in our time. Thus, when we take pause to scan the broad and influential scope of the contemporary counterculture, we might perhaps think that the glory days are now, not then. Tarnas suggested that the current cultural wave may be more robust and influential than what was happening during the height of the Romantic period in England, the 1810s and 1820s. The Romantic and Idealistic awakenings of that time were not so immediately dominant that we could say that they have since been lost or diminished. For example, we should note that hardly anyone was reading Blake's revolutionary poems at that time, and Wordsworth was only lionized very late in his life. So, at a conference like this one at Esalen, why is the tendency to feel a nostalgic loss of a former awakening and golden age? Perhaps, it is because we look to the mainstream universities to assess progress, Tarnas offered. But the mainstream may not be the place where the most creative winds are blowing today, nor in ages past. After all, Tarnas asked, what gave birth to the Renaissance? And what provided a crucial cultural-intellectual background for the emergence of the Copernican revolution? In an important sense it was the leading countercultural institution of its own time, the Florentine Platonic Academy. This center stood outside the universities, which had become sclerotic in the late medieval period. Overall, Tarnas suggested that the counterculture, rather than the mainstream establishment, is most likely to carry forth the evolutionary panentheistic vision. Thus, an important question to ponder is whether this vision may be intrinsically esoteric, and thus not readily translatable into a mainstream or exoteric form. In light of his deconstruction of the topic's underlying assumption, Tarnas proceeded with a reframing of the question as follows:
He then took a look at this question from three angles or levels:
After this, Tarnas then concluded with a few comments about how to revitalize the panentheistic vision today. The Level of High Culture To begin, Tarnas noted that the critique of the fledgling Idealistic metanarrative was nearly concurrent with its own birth in the Romantic era. Running not too far behind the lineage of Fichte-Schelling-Hegel was the lineage of Schopenhauer-Kierkegaard-Nietzsche. In response to their reading of a magnificent vision of pervasive order like Hegel's, this latter group emphasized that history and evolution are not divinely informed at every step. Instead, the process is more often filled with acute existential suffering, uncertainty, and accidental events. Tarnas turned next to the Darwinian revolution, which he said must be central to any discussion of panentheism's inability to win the minds of the high culture today. After Darwin, the detailed features of the natural world could be accounted for by a purposeless mechanism called natural selection. From that point onward, evolution could be explained reasonably without recourse to a Divine plan. Tarnas remarked that the panentheistic lineage never recovered from Darwin's monumental discovery. But he hastened to add that the Darwinian revolution took place within a larger intellectual gestalt. The broad trend toward naturalism and materialism aided the rapid acceptance of Darwin's revolution. Thinkers like Marx, Freud, and Bertrand Russell were some of the prominent figures who exemplified this trend. Their proclivity, which was so expressive of the emerging modern self, was to doubt metaphysical realities altogether. Tarnas said this broadly expressed doubt towards metaphysics played a crucial role in why Romanticism and Idealism did not capture the imagination of today's high culture. Looking further into the 20th century, Tarnas mentioned that this doubt took on different and more subtle articulations in Heidegger's critique of metaphysics, James's and Dewey's pluralistic pragmatism, and Wittengenstein's narrowing of philosophy to linguistic analysis. Tarnas noted that the American pragmatists, particularly James, were ardent in their critiques of Hegel's Germanic Idealism. With respect to the scientific temper of the 20th century, Tarnas said that the neo-Enlightenment metaphysical materialism of Bertrand Russell is still dominant in many science departments today. If modern scientists were asked to assess panentheism, they would surely offer the critique that it cannot be readily and accurately tested. On this note, Tarnas emphasized that many at this Esalen conference, particularly Michael Murphy, would argue that it certainly can be tested, but that sufficiently sophisticated and nuanced modes of testing have not been accepted by mainstream scientists, thus leaving the contemporary scientific mind still to be persuaded. Another compelling reason for the failure of panentheism to be broadly received is the dominance of postmodern thought in Humanities departments at universities, particularly the French school of Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard. What could be more inimical to evolutionary panentheism than Lyotard's famous definition of the postmodern as "an incredulity toward metanarratives"? If there ever were a grand metanarrative, it's certainly the Romantic-Idealistic evolutionary panentheistic one! Given the postmodern mood that still prevails in higher academia, Tarnas suggested that the best we can do is to recognize postmodernity as an extremely rich maelstrom that is dissolving old established certainties. Tarnas briefly mentioned David Ray Griffin's noble effort to redefine "postmodern" by setting forth a "constructive" version of it, saying that academic deconstructive postmodernism should more accurately be called "most modern," but for several complex reasons, Tarnas thinks this and other attempts to redefine and reappropriate the postmodern are lost causes. Tarnas went on to note that the feminist, multicultural, and ecological critiques, which have been so central to the postmodern turn, have each been critical in different ways of privileged frameworks for the evolution of consciousness that they would perceive as undergirding evolutionary panentheism. These critiques have rigorously debunked the unconscious privileging of any particular culture, viewpoint, species, or singular person. Lastly, Tarnas commented that the thinker who has perhaps most triumphed amidst this postmodern maelstrom is Nietzsche. And it may be he who holds some hidden promise for a revival of panentheism, much more than the disenchanted postmodernists could ever imagine. The Level of Popular Culture and World View Tarnas acted as a sociologist of ideas when turning to analyze the popular level of culture. He said one clear reason evolutionary panentheism is not better known today is that it's so complex! The average person on the street simply cannot readily grasp the interplay of Infinite and finite, human and Divine, etc., which in this vision mutually interpenetrate one another in complex and paradoxical ways. The masters of panentheism, like Hegel, Whitehead, and Steiner, for example, each had rich, complex, and often hard to penetrate characterizations of the evolutionary process, even for contemporary scholars to comprehend let alone the general public. Tarnas added that a literalistic and dualistic interpretation of Christianity also subverts the essence of the panentheistic vision. This is particularly ironic given that the seeds of evolutionary panentheism are encoded within it. The root concepts of incarnation, the immanence of the Holy Spirit, and O Felix Culpa, as well as the view of life as redemptive suffering on behalf of the birth of a Divine Being—"all of creation groaneth in travail"—are all present in what Tarnas calls "deep Christianity." To the extent that there is an intimation of these views in the mainstream Christian world view today, it is only "subconsciously prehended" (to use a Whiteheadian term). Tarnas said the fullness of the original Christian vision has not risen to a conscious level in the public, even if it is in the background today, much like the Christian symbolic framework was in the background of the Copernican-Newtonian revolution (to draw on Kojève's argument that Sean Kelly mentioned in his presentation). Tarnas mentioned a second, and perhaps obvious, reason at work. This is the brutal tragedy of 20th century history, particularly the World Wars and the Holocaust. If these were hard hits for Enlightenment progressivism, then Tarnas said they were even more devastating blows for Germanic Idealistic panentheism, particularly because of its unwarranted association with Nazism. Although such associations to German Idealism are really distortions, philosophers in the later German tradition like Heidegger helped confuse the matter. Unfortunately, someone associated with German Romanticism like C. G. Jung, who in fact was highly critical of the Nazis (e.g., in his 1936 essay Wotan), has been called a Nazi in publications like The New York Times. On this note, Tarnas recalled remarks made by Ty Cashman, a participant in a number of CTR conferences over the years, to the effect that the origin of Nazism was with German Idealism (a view perhaps stemming from George Santayana). Overall, Tarnas suggested that emotionally-laden and historically conflated interpretations of German Idealism are part of a larger cultural reaction formation to the trauma of the Holocaust and the World Wars. Tarnas mentioned two more ideas influencing the public response to evolutionary panentheism before turning to his last level of analysis. The first was the dramatic nature of many of the personalities associated with Romanticism and Idealism. Some of the major protagonists of these movements had flamboyant shadow sides, including bouts of madness, ego-inflation, suicidal tendencies, and reckless and scandalous behavior. Much like the larger-than-life personas of Esalen in the 60s, these figures offered plenty of grist for the sensational news mill, which inevitably had a disillusioning impact on the reputation of both Romanticism and Idealism. Tarnas said the second point came to him from the sociologist Robert Bellah, who has pointed to the need for any new paradigm or world view to have a social-cultural infrastructure to develop and disseminate it. Thus, if most of the leading proponents are mystics and mavericks, then the tensile strength of the budding vision is not strong enough to sustain it. The only alternative to this Tarnas could think of would be a deep shift at the overarching cosmological level. Only a shift at this level, which can eventually encompass and transform an entire cultural gestalt, can do the job. And so far, contemporary evolutionary panentheism has not compellingly made the case for such a cosmological shift. The Level of the Unconscious Collective Psyche Shifting to his last level of analysis, Tarnas said it is crucial to see how the unconscious collective psyche is informing and shaping events from this deeper level. Tarnas argued that in our time the well-fortified resistance to the evolutionary panentheistic vision seems to be rooted in a lingering trauma in the West's collective psyche. This trauma occurred during the modern West's birth out of the ancient-medieval cosmic-ecclesiastical womb. Today, to entertain a view of history as in any way divinely informed evokes the refrain: "Never again!" For the prominent defenders of the modern mind, to do so would be tantamount to a regressive move back to the medieval womb, with its naïve religious superstitions, authoritarian hierarchies, and oppressive attitudes about knowledge and freedom. Tarnas said that this response seems to be operating at a very unconscious level. After all, what could explain the irrational fervor that accompanies the disenchanting pronouncements of Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Daniel Dennett, and Steven Weinberg? There is something apoplectic about the tone of their rhetoric when they are asked to entertain any evidence suggestive of a spiritual-teleological view of the cosmos. Tarnas added that the rigid intellectual armoring that protects this trauma in the modern Western mind is apparent in the contemporary scientific response to evidence for the anthropic principle. In light of this evidence, in order to maintain the modern mind's regulative assumption of ultimate randomness, some cosmologists, like Lee Smolin, have hypothesized an infinity of universes outside of our own on which a cosmic form of natural selection operates, thereby making our own anthropically teleological universe a mere random oddity. Tarnas commented that if we look from the standpoint of the history of ideas at this move to extend Darwin's natural selection to the cosmic realm by means of such an extremely speculative hypothesis, we can see a striking resemblance to the later stages of Ptolemaic astronomy involving increasingly awkward efforts at "epicyclic elaboration." Before Copernicus's epochal shift of viewpoint, medieval cosmologists could only add more and more intricate and confusing epicycles to Ptolemy's geocentric cosmology in order to maintain the starting assumption in the face of the evidence. Similarly, the entire endeavor of defending a disenchanted cosmology, infused as it is with emotionally-charged rhetoric, is looking more and more like adding epicycles to a fundamentally misconceived paradigm—a paradigm that, like an armored ego-structure, shields the modern mind from facing its fundamental transformation in the face of evidence it finds threatening to its old identity. Another factor influencing the unconscious collective psyche is the pervasive presence and power of the corporate utilitarian mind-set, which was set in motion by the disenchanted modern cosmology. Tarnas emphasized that within the contemporary cosmological setting and mood of pervasive disenchantment, nothing can be sacred. And what naturally follows from this is that everything can be highjacked by utilitarian ends and made to serve the profit motive. Because a culture's cosmology acts as the container for all of its values and actions, today's pervasive disenchantment has very practical consequences, most dramatically in the way it drives the globalized corporate juggernaut. Furthermore, this same utilitarian mind-set has also taken over the public media and is now subtly entrancing, entraining, and hypnotizing the collective psyche. It serves, in Max Weber's image, as an iron cage around our minds and lives, selectively filtering out any evidence that contradicts it. Ultimately, Tarnas said, disenchantment is what underlies the frenzied techno-consumeristic race that is cannibalizing the planet today. Ironically, this race is pursued in order to fill the spiritual emptiness produced by the same disenchantment that set it in motion. In light of these profound issues at the heart of the Western, and now global, world view, Tarnas turned to another deep pattern in the collective psyche that he thinks is operative here. Over the past several hundred years, there seems to have occurred a spontaneous, organic unfolding of the modern self. It is as if an autonomous, rational, empirical, egoically-centered modern consciousness needed to differentiate itself from its previously embedded relationship to the medieval cosmic womb. To achieve this, it perhaps needed a disenchanted and less metaphysically subtle and complex cosmic framework than that of the evolutionary panentheism these Esalen conferences are trying to revive today. The forging of an autonomous self seemed to go hand-in-hand with the disenchantment of the cosmos by modern science. But even though it did happen that way, Tarnas emphasized that this does not imply that it had to happen this way. After all, there was nothing about the Copernican revolution that was inherently disenchanted. The Copernicans (Galileo, Kepler, Newton, etc.) were neo-Pathagorean mathematical mystics who believed strongly in a divinely informed universe. But as the irony of fate would have it, their mystically-inspired cosmological revelations eventually turned into the mechanistic cosmos of today. Tarnas offered that we might view this entire arc of history as akin to a drama of Shakespearean proportions. There seems to be an existential evolution that has been taking place involving a dramatic separation of the modern self from the larger matrix of being followed eventually by a powerful descent. This is apparent in the progressively alienated cultural trend that runs through figures like Nietzsche, Freud, Woolf, Kafka, Heidegger, Beckett, Foucault, and, in the history of film for example, a master like Ingmar Bergman. Tarnas postulated that something very powerful has been dragging the modern self into an ineluctable initiatory journey that involves an authentic cosmic estrangement. This requires a dark night of the soul, a deep crisis of meaning, a deconstruction of identity, a crisis of faith, and even an encounter with mortality on a vast scale. But when we step back to view the entire journey panoramically, we can begin to see it as a kind of work of art saturated with dramatic narrative and powerful aesthetic coherence. How Can We Revitalize Panentheism Today? Tarnas concluded his presentation with some thoughts on the nature of initiation. In many of his public talks, Tarnas says that humanity is in a race between initiation and catastrophe. In multiple forms and on many levels, grand acts of initiation seem to be happening concurrently today. At the personal, societal, and planetary level, such initiations are recursively interacting with one another to effect a great transformation of the human spirit. However, even though humanity is in the midst of this larger process, at the cultural level we have largely lost the regular practice of initiatory rites of passage. In the past these ceremonies channeled the danger-seeking impulse of youth by providing them with a powerful encounter with death and the depths of their own interior psyches. It seems that only in these moments can the deeper meaning and purpose of life be accessed. Tarnas cited Albert Hofmann's belief that it was the failure of the West to provide initiatory or sacramental containers which contributed to the crisis surrounding the popular use of psychedelics like LSD. So, why has our own civilization stopped doing such rites of passage? Tarnas offered that it is not simply that we naïvely forgot these rituals. Rather, it seems that our discarding of initiatory practices is somehow a mysterious part of the larger process of our own cosmic initiation. Not only the West, all of humanity is going through an initiation crisis today, and there could be no more powerful pressure cooker than what is upon us now in the form of global ecological catastrophe. Tarnas said that as a result of the modern disenchantment of the cosmos humanity has been, in a sense, separated from the larger tribe or community of the universe itself. Such separation from the community is a classic component of any authentic initiatory crisis. So, just as the young initiate is separated from his tribe for the initiation to proceed, the modern human community seems likewise to be in a phase of separation from the cosmic tribe or womb that once held us in its enchanted embrace. As he closed, Tarnas said that we will likely misperceive the reasons that evolutionary panentheism is not dominant today, in either the high culture or public mind-set, if we do not look to see if something vaster is driving the process. This something larger seems to be calling out humanity's own moral choice to play a crucial role in the outcome. An authentic initiation necessitates that there be no guarantee of success. If and when humanity comes through the initiatory fires of the present moment, Tarnas believes that the cosmos too will be transformed, because the inner psyche and outer cosmos are at the most profound level reflections of one another. The fates of both the cosmos and humanity are intertwined in this journey. Bruno Barnhart
On Tuesday morning Bruno Barnhart gave a presentation focused chiefly on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's evolutionary panentheistic vision, viewed from the perspective of the Christian Sapiential tradition. Barnhart emphasized that Teilhard's vision constituted a revolution within the long historical arc of Christian thought. Teilhard's favorite image was fire, and in his struggle toward an evolutionary theological vision, he became an embodiment of the "Western fire," which during recent centuries has driven Western culture further and further from the "Eastern light" that presided over its initial sapiential phase of the first millennium. Teilhard thus presents a promising invitation to develop a new Western Christian wisdom or sapiential vision. In Part I of his presentation Barhnart described Teilhard's overall model, then in Part II he sketched out two alternative models of the relationship between Christ and history. Part I: The Christian Evolutionary Vision of Teilhard de Chardin
Teilhard was born in 1881 to a noble French family and displayed an early interest in geology. His two "first loves" were Jesus and matter, and throughout his life he worked to articulate a unitive vision of the universe in which Divinity and matter were inseparably joined, rather than separated or even opposed (as in the dominant theologies of western Christianity during preceding centuries). When he turned 18, Teilhard joined the Jesuit order. His early travels included China and Egypt; he taught chemistry and physics in Cairo. In his twenties he studied theology in England, where he was ordained in 1911. During this time, he read Henri Bergson's controversial book Creative Evolution, a pivotal experience in the development of his own synthetic vision. Before the war, he furthered his interest in paleontology while working at the Natural History Museum in Paris. During World War I, Teilhard worked as a stretcher bearer. For four years, he carried mutilated bodies from the muddy trenches. His lifelong optimism and idealism were tested, at this time, by the grim realities of life. After the war, he accepted an offer to go to China, where he participated in many archeological expeditions over the next 20 years, including forays to Africa, Java, and India. Teilhard participated in the famous expedition that unearthed Peking man. After many years abroad, in 1938 he completed the first draft of his major work, Le Phénomene Humain, translated into English as The Phenomenon of Man. His thought could only deepen while he was immobilized in Asia as the hectic events of World War II unfolded all around him. Later in his life, Teilhard moved to the United States, but because of his ongoing difficulties with church authorities, his more important works – the religious and philosophical books containing his synthesis of theology and science – could not be published during his lifetime. Teilhard died on Easter day in 1955 in New York.
Teilhard had an optimistic and progressive view of life, and an intellectual breadth within which theology, science, and philosophy were encompassed and fused. The result was a powerful evolutionary vision, which, despite its scope, is characterized by an elegant simplicity. The synthetic gravitational force of this vision, together with Teilhard's grasp of the Pauline "mystery of Christ," bring it back, after centuries of a more analytical scholastic theology, into relation with the Christian sapiential consciousness. Teilhard brought to the sapiential tradition, however, a dynamic new perspective "from below," that is, from within an evolving planetary whole. Teilhard's synthesis was constructed on the basis of his vast knowledge of the earth's evolutionary record, particularly the various branches and lineages of plant, animal, and hominid species.
Barnhart proposed that the essential distinction between Teilhard's vision and other evolutionary views lies in his focus upon the "within" of evolution, that is, the dimension of interiority or of consciousness that pervades not only human and animal life but – in some manner and degree – all matter. Going beyond Darwin's understanding of biological (that is, basically physical) development through natural selection, Teilhard brought to light the "within" of the evolutionary process as a progressive development of "psychism" and consciousness not only in all living organisms but in the planet itself. Though it is difficult to recognize at the level of matter, Teilhard posited an interiority or sentience present in material forms from the very beginning. At higher levels of complexity, such as with hominids, evolution transcends natural selection's work at the biological level and becomes increasingly directed from within, that is, by consciousness and choice. It thus becomes a predominantly psychic-cultural process, rather than a biological-physical one. On this new level, "heredity," as the handing on of acquired characteristics, takes place through conscious, deliberate innovation and transmission, that is, as culture. Teilhard saw the whole of evolution as a single, continuous process moving through the stages of matter, life and mind toward an ultimate point of convergence. A typical scientific model of evolution resembles a tree, branching outward as it grows from a single trunk. The organism ramifies, differentiates, proliferates into different forms as it becomes complexified. This fan-like image represents the exterior of evolution. According to Teilhard, evolution has an inside as well. The direction of development of this "within" is not a fanning out but a convergence. This interior convergence increases at each level, thus symmetrically complementing the fanning out of exterior forms. Starting with matter, there is not much organization, except for the structure of the atom and then of the molecule. Centeredness is distinctly present but only in an anticipatory way. But when life emerges, a stabilized interiority and centeredness capable of reproducing itself (through DNA) becomes apparent. Matter gathers itself into a more concentrated unity, a centeredness illustrated well by the nucleus of bacterial life. Corresponding to this new centeredness, and the corresponding new complexity, is a new level of "psychism," sentience, or proto-consciousness. A new level of interiority has been reached. Figure 1: The "Without" of Evolution as a Tree or Fan, Widening as it Ascends  Figure 2: The "Within" of Evolution as a Pyramid of Convergence 
With the emergence of hominids, evolution reaches what Teilhard called the "threshold of reflection." This is the point at which consciousness starts to become aware of itself. This notion of a reflexive consciousness as the threshold of human life was anticipated by Fichte, Hegel, and even Thomas Aquinas. With humans, evolution began to turn inward on itself in a new and decisive way. In the unitive center which is human consciousness, there is present a dimension of transcendence—a potential for unlimited comprehension and for a corresponding unlimited freedom. In the human person the universe itself can be said to find a unifying center. At the same time, a new zone of consciousness—the noosphere—comes into being around the already existing concentric planetary spheres: barysphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. At the human level, socialization and shared culture begin to play a new and crucial role in evolution. Teilhard looked toward a unification of human consciousness and human society over the whole planet, which he called planetization (or socialization). Within this emerging common consciousness there is a growing historical awareness, yet another form of reflexive consciousness, which looks back to our own origins and past. Teilhard proposed a law of complexity consciousness, which requires that a greater degree of exterior physical complexity accompany each advance in the level of interior consciousness. For Teilhard, evolution is directed. This direction is from within, rather than proceeding exclusively through the external competitive process of natural selection. The overall evolutionary process is directed—outwardly—toward the development of a more complex nervous system and brain. The corresponding inner direction of evolution is toward greater interiority, centeredness, psychism, consciousness, and spirit. Evolution is anthropocentric in the sense that its direction toward an increasing complexity and consciousness finds its decisive realization in the human person. By integrating evolution with the Judeo-Christian concept of creation, Teilhard arrived at the notion of cosmogenesis. Creation is not merely an event that occurred once but a continuing process of realization. The universe is not a static cosmos, but an ongoing cosmogenesis. Creation is evolution; evolution is creation. The process of evolution is a process of increasing unification: it can be imagined in the form of a cone, with the conclusive Omega point at its apex. See figure 3. It is essential to realize that two successive thresholds are reached at the human level: first, reflexive consciousness, and secondly, socialization, or planetization. Both initiate new levels of concentration or reflexivity, firstly on the plane of individual centers of consciousness and then in the birth of a new collective consciousness and planetary human community. Teilhard saw the turn from a divergent to a convergent phase of evolution appearing in our own time, in the great awakening of a planetary humanity which is signaled by what we call globalization. Teilhard foresaw, as the process moves through this collective phase and approaches its convergent summit, the appearance of a kind of "super-consciousness." Figure 3: Increasing Unification Toward Omega  As the concentration or centering (unification) increases in the conical ascent, the intelligibility of the process increases as well. In a reversal of the usual logic, the evolutionary process is moved not from below but from above, not causally but teleologically, from the Christ-Omega, who is both the goal of the evolutionary process and the supreme principle of unity. At this point the rationalities of science and philosophy yield to a theological light. For this collective consciousness to reach its fullness, Teilhard asserted, it must have a center. Christ becomes a gravitational center within the universe which pulls everything together through humanity, as humanity itself becomes one. The idea of "global consciousness" or a "global brain" was thus anticipated by Teilhard well before the advent of the internet, cell phones, and email. Ewert Cousins's idea of a "Second Axial Age," marked by global convergence, had its origin in Teilhard's vision. When the culminating Omega Point is attained, all humanity will have been gathered into a unity, pervaded by the Christ-consciousness. Thus, the entire evolutionary process can be seen as a progressive incarnation of the Divinity in the whole of humanity—or the birth of a plenary Christ. This one birth that encompasses the whole of history and evolution would be a birth of the universe as Christ, through the intermediate creature who is humanity. There is some parallel here with Hegel's idea of the realization of the Geist in self-reflexive human thought. But Teilhard's view remains resolutely incarnational and physical. In his preface to The Phenomenon of Man, he had set out the two basic assumptions that governed this principal expression of his vision: The first is the primacy accorded to the psychic and to thought in the stuff of the universe, and the second is the 'biological' value attributed to the social fact around us . . . The pre-eminent significance of man in nature, and the organic nature of mankind . . .
Barnhart mentioned a few of the critical questions invited by Teilhard's bold synthesis. On the grand scale of planetary evolution, many of the dynamics of human existence do not appear. The tragedies and evils of human life are hardly suggested in the great synthetic vision. The synthesis has been criticized from the theological perspective for obscuring the distinction between the supernatural and natural realms, and from the scientific side for the way in which Teilhard sometimes credited bold hypotheses with a quasi-certainty. While he often claimed to speak simply as a scientist, the reader continually feels in his thought and language the passionate momentum of prophetic faith. Barnhart's own chief concern focused on what he feels to be an insufficient recognition of the pivotal re-direction of history and evolution by the 'central' historical event of Christ (See Part II). In the overall ascending direction of Teilhard's evolutionary movement, the new descending movement which appears in the New Testament is hardly reflected. One may also speak, in Jungian terms, of an insufficient recognition of importance of the Shadow and its integration in pursuing the understanding of reality.
Next, Barnhart presented Teilhard's evolutionary vision within the context of the long arc of development within Christian thought, which can be schematized in three great phases: 1) Augustine; 2) Thomas Aquinas; and 3) Teilhard de Chardin. In each phase, a different view of human nature and humanity's role in the cosmos was brought forth by a great mind. For the followers of Augustine, who wrote as the Roman Empire was beginning its collapse around 400 AD, original sin had enveloped the whole of creation: a prison-like container from which only a few would, through God's grace, escape. All those outside the Church lay in darkness, unsanctified. This vision continued to dominate the theology of the Christian West for many centuries. During the High Middle Ages, however, Thomas Aquinas integrated Biblical revelation with Aristotelian natural philosophy in a beautifully positive vision that integrated human reason with Christian faith. For Aquinas, human persons were created as autonomous "secondary causes," with the realization of our own potentialities as part of God's plan. Then in the twentieth century, the leading edge of Christian thought swung all the way over to reach a counter-pole to the Augustinian pessimism in Teilhard's evolutionary optimism. The dominant paradigm of Christian theology and spirituality has been, since the second century, a trinitarian figure. The individual was envisioned as admitted through grace to a spiritual participation in the life of the three divine Persons, while the material universe disappeared more and more completely from the scene. But with Teilhard's thought there reappeared, though still implicitly, an earlier and more holistic view of the mystery of Christ (which was originally evident in Paul's letters to the Colossians (ch. 1) and the Ephesians (ch.2) and in the writings of Irenaeus of Lyons as well). This can be diagrammed as a quaternary figure in which the whole of creation – the universe and humanity within it – is united with God through the mediation of Christ and the Holy Spirit. It is Teilhard's Pauline principle of the divinization of the cosmos that opened the way toward a restoration of the fullness of the Christian mystery. Within Teilhard's early conception of a twofold love – for God and for the World, or for Jesus and Matter – lay the intuitive seed from which finally grew his mature revolutionary synthesis published after his death. Part II - Barnhart's Two Solar Arcs The presence - or energy - of Christ, while it pervades the movement of Teilhardian evolution, is most evident at the beginning (Alpha) and at the end (Omega). But this picture lacks the crucial inflection in the course of history – and thus of evolution – namely the Christ event. Barnhart proposed two alternative models for the overall process of history and evolution, in both of which the historical Christ event appears at the center, ultimately determining the overall form of the movement. Barnhart introduced the first of these models – the solar arc of history – with a wide-reaching and powerful passage from Hegel's Philosophy of History:
Barnhart proposed that Hegel's solar arc reaching from ancient East to modern West suggests yet a further interpretation in terms of a movement from the unitive and transtemporal contemplation of the Axial Asian traditions (Hindu Vedanta, Buddhism, Taoism) to the personal and cultural dynamism and accelerating historical movement of the modern West. This long day's journey from the morning to the afternoon of the human spirit progresses from the Light of the East to the Fire of the West. See figure 4 and comments by Richard Tarnas further below for extended interpretive commentary. Figure 4: Solar Arc combining features from Barnhart and Tarnas  Next, Barnhart described a second version of the solar arc, with its noonday placed at the historical point of inflection of the thirteenth century (or, more broadly conceived, the period ca. 1100-1500 CE). See figure 5. The power of this figure emerges from the symmetries which can be traced around its crest, which is identified with the historical zenith of the Roman Catholic Church. Barnhart acknowledged that any observer of large historical patterns is always at the center of his own vision or worldview, and thus this second diagram is self-centered to the Catholic view. But he also said that if carefully handled and presented, this figure discloses from within itself a kernel of objective truth. The center or noonday is to be understood as the point of maximal objectivization of the mystery or event of Christ – the "solar event." This corresponds to Joachim of Fiore's "Age of the Son (or Word);" preceding it (i.e., before noon), and represented particularly by the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the "Age of the Father." Following on the afternoon slope of the Solar trajectory is the "Age of the Holy Spirit," represented ecclesially by the rise of the Protestant churches. Figure 5: The Differentiated (and Imaginary) Solar Arc  This symmetry of the three Christian churches (Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant) is the strong center of the figure, to which Barnhart ascribed a true theological weight. The further extensions of the arc to the left and to the right – to early morning and to evening – can be understood as more tentative, heuristic suggestions. Following Protestantism [at the right] we can place the secular modern West, and before the Eastern Christian churches [at the left] we can place the pre-Christian Asian traditions. The symmetry between these two segments – extending beyond the central region of Christian faith in both directions – suggests a more imaginative questioning, finding expression in such pairs as:
The movement from Eastern light to Western fire is an incarnational progression along a trinitarian path from unitive contemplation to immanent and creative divine energy. If this solar arc is extended further, we can imagine one further stage in each direction: from 'Buddhism' in the early morning on the extreme left, to 'Postmodernism' in the evening, on the extreme right. The relationship between these two extremes appears most obviously – and significantly – in the 'deconstructive' tendency present in both these movements. At this point the symmetry is hardly that of polar opposites; rather, the extremes are bending to join with one another at the bottom underneath. We may imagine the completion of this figure as the solar arc closes below to become a circle at a 'metaphysical midnight' (or epistemological nadir). The attractiveness of Buddhism to the contemporary Western consciousness may be an expression of our nearing this midnight of our journey. The midnight of apophatism or deconstruction is the polar opposite of the noonday of objective articulation of the mystery of Christ, which Barnhart identified somewhat apologetically with the 13th century Catholic Church – the unsurpassed model of dogma and institution, of external clarity and fixity. In response to Barnhart's two solar arcs, Richard Tarnas commented that we may indeed be approaching the metaphysical midnight in the solar journey. In the evening phase of the sun's journey, the light is seemingly extinguished by its descent into the starry night. Tarnas said we thus need to include the night journey as an essential part of the entire solar arc, describing the bottom portion of the circle. In the late 19th century Nietzsche prophesized the darkness of the twentieth century—the West's sunset moment. In his tempestuous philosophical works Nietzsche called on courageous souls to go down below to the dark midnight where the death/rebirth initiation mystery can take place during the night sea journey of the sun. Furthermore, in Carl Jung's work the conjunctio oppositorum (the union of opposites) occurs at the midnight hour in the circular journey of the rising and setting sun, which will one day rise again. Barnhart further unpacked his images of Eastern light and Western fire. He said Teilhard had a paradoxical relationship with the East. Although he spent 20 years in China, he never acquired a real appreciation of the Asian sapiential traditions. Apparently they lay outside the scope of his own destined vision and mission. Barnhart later explained that as he seemed to resume the varied world of the Asian religious traditions in the single term "nonduality," he was speaking from a viewpoint belonging to a particular context. Nonduality (or advaita) corresponds to the extreme Eastern pole of the religious-philosophical world of Christianity and of the West, although it is explicitly meaningful for only a minority in the religious world of Asia. Within the term "nonduality" cohere a constellation of realities: the "monastic archetype" (Panikkar), contemplation and contemplative life, and the dimension of Christianity expressed by the Gospel of John. In contrast to this luminous Eastern pole stands the archetypal West within which burns the fire of history, moving along the ascending curve of the solar arc which follows the noonday of incarnation (or its analogous recurrence in the course of history). Now the divine light has descended into the human person and become a new active and creative energy within the world and within the process of evolution. Teilhard's evolutionary vision belongs to our late postmeridian age, diametrically opposed to the Asian nondual light, which was invisible to Teilhard himself, for whom the divine Unity emerged as an embodied reality at the end of the evolutionary process. The West's afternoon descent along the solar arc brought a new personal autonomy and empowerment, a this-worldly and empirical rationality from which Western science developed. In the early twentieth century Oswald Spengler spoke of the West's Faustian soul, an insatiable and expansive drive in every direction of human cultural and scientific expression. Barnhart proposed that this Faustian energy, with its thrust toward an embodied infinity, derived basically from the divine infusion of life and light in the event of Christ. It is another quasi-synonym for the "fire of the West." Under this same impulse, the West's sense of a progressive history took hold. More recently, this "fire of the West" has found expression in the title of Richard Tarnas's book, The Passion of the Western Mind. Robert McDermott
On Tuesday morning Robert McDermott gave a presentation on the English thinker, Owen Barfield (1898-1997). As his talk unfolded, McDermott also wove in a few observations about Rudolf Steiner and his influence on Barfield's work and overall development. Both Barfield and Steiner made contributions to the lineage called "participatory epistemology," which started with the Romantics Goethe and Coleridge, and others, and bears upon this conference's quest for a contemporary evolutionary panentheism. After covering some of the main features of Barfield's life and thought, McDermott then showed how Barfield would have addressed the seven discussion questions guiding this conference. Owen Barfield: A Life of Inquiry and Integrity McDermott began with a personal anecdote about his own affection for Barfield. In 1989, when Esalen was co-sponsoring its third and final conference in its Revisioning Philosophy series at St. John's College in Cambridge, McDermott made a trip to Barfield's residence in England. Coincidentally, this also happened to be near McDermott's 50th birthday, thus adding to the trip a sense of spiritual pilgrimage at a significant point in his life. McDermott added that his own affectionate connection to Barfield is not that unusual. Many of Barfield's students deeply loved and admired him for his immense integrity, which came across not only in his personality but also in the exquisite beauty of his thoughts. McDermott said that one particular feature of Barfield's thought was that it was truly integrated with and expressive of the life he lived. Barfield always wrote from his own experience and level of spiritual-epistemological attainment. Furthermore, his writings are imbued with an abiding affection and warmth. When reading Barfield, one can feel a gentle artistry running through his imaginative writings as well as his philosophical arguments, which were also crafted as carefully as a barrister arguing his case before a court. Born in 1898, Barfield was thoroughly English. Deeply rooted in Shakespeare, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, he wrote History in English Words (1926) which grew out of his master's thesis at Oxford (1922). During the course of his life, he often met with a group called both the Inklings and Oxford Christians, which included his good friend C.S. Lewis as well as J.R.R. Tolkein and Charles Williams. When asked once about Barfield's creative potential, C.S. Lewis once remarked, "We didn't know the form it would take, but the genius was there early." When he was in his early twenties, Barfield encountered Rudolf Steiner's works at an East meets West conference. He joined the Anthroposophical Society when he was 25. McDermott noted that by the time Barfield encountered Steiner's thought, he had already written History in English Words, and Poetic Diction, but had not published them yet. McDermott said Steiner was doubtless a strong influence on Barfield, but that Barfield was an original thinker in his own right. In 1976 when Barfield was in his late seventies, the anthology Evolution of Consciousness: Studies in Polarity was published. In one of the first chapters, which was an interview with Barfield by Shirley Sugerman, he was asked how he got started as a philosophical thinker. His response was that he wanted to make a contribution to the evolution of consciousness. McDermott paused to emphasize that Barfield's aim was not merely to write about the evolution of consciousness but to make a lasting contribution to it. He dearly wanted to bring something to humanity and the earth that could help overcome the prevalent presuppositions of contemporary western thinking. McDermott said that Barfield did this by thinking and writing in a way that artfully combined thinking, feeling, and willing, a trio that he found in the work of Steiner. Overall, Barfield worked and lived in a way whereby these very activities contributed to the evolution of consciousness. Mature Romanticism: Concept Meets Percept in Barfield's Rainbow To bring a bit of Barfield's ambiance into the room, McDermott read aloud a few key quotations. The first was one from Barfield's Romanticism Comes of Age. McDermott said he is using this quotation as the epigraph for an essay, "Participation Comes of Age: Owen Barfield and the Bhagavad Gita," that he is currently writing for the forthcoming anthology The Participatory Turn:
McDermott related this quotation to Michael Murphy's comments earlier in the conference on the topic of "broken lineages," in which a movement grows in fits and starts over the years, and thus lost lineages must be re-discovered and developed to maturity by new thinkers. McDermott said that the lineage of participatory epistemology that started in the Romantic era with Goethe and Coleridge went a long way towards maturity and fulfillment in Barfield's thought in the 20th century. Next, McDermott quoted a couple of passages from Barfield's sparsely elegant book Saving the Appearances, published in 1957. This first quotation serves as the opening to that book:
In other words, we need to see from a new angle of insight how we are involved in composing what we take for granted in the "external" world. Then the second quotation:
McDermott said that the above quotation is at the heart of Barfield's project. Humans are so accustomed to being objectivists and naïve realists, it is extremely difficult to acknowledge the essential degree to which what we think is "out there" is necessarily the result of our prior conceptualizing. In short, if we do not first give a concept to an unconceptualized percept, then it is not truly known. All knowledge of a seemingly objective and independent world requires the active contribution of a concept, which we must form and apply. But we all do this so quickly, we rarely notice it. To draw on Wittgenstein, as Fred Amrine did in his presentation on Monday, we might say that we learn this when we learn our language. McDermott turned next to Barfield's History in English Words. In this work Barfield traced the history of how words complexify and differentiate into various new meanings. Building on comments made earlier by Bruno Barnhart, McDermott noted an interesting parallel in the work of Teilhard and Barfield: both described the complexifying and differentiating process of evolution. But whereas Teilhard described this process in biology and anthropology, Barfield recognized this process at work in the evolving complexity of language, which he saw going hand-in-hand with the evolution of human consciousness. To be specific, Barfield said that as a word evolves, it can no longer hold all of its original meanings and associations. As it branches, it breaks apart its literal and figurative meanings. So, later in the evolution of consciousness, it takes imagination and metaphor to bridge the resulting gaps and reconnect the meanings. In History in English Words Barfield offered an epistemology that could rejoin these fissured meanings through acts of imagination. In these acts we rejoin what the evolution of complexity has sundered. Thus, Barfield's view of the evolution of consciousness cannot be characterized as a simple march of linear progress resulting in more inclusive views and states of consciousness. Rather, Barfield saw how complexification was a double-edged sword, which later necessitated active human participation to re-reconnect that which had been differentiated by complexity's march. Barfield and the Conference's Seven Discussion Issues In the next part of his presentation McDermott showed how Barfield's work addressed the guiding discussion issues for this conference. [Note: the reader can refer back to page 3 of this conference summary for a full description of these discussion issues.] Discussion Issue Number Five: How much Telos? For issue number five titled "Degrees of Telos, Directionality, and Contingency," McDermott distinguished some of the places of overlap and difference between Barfield and Steiner regarding the purpose and goal (telos) of evolution. Although their visions are compatible, Barfield was independently minded and not a mere mouthpiece for Steiner's worldview. Barfield was well aware of and influenced by Steiner's wide-ranging works on Fichte, Goethe, world spiritual figures, biodynamic gardening, etc. But given his English literary background, he chose to focus on the role of the poetic imagination, particularly in one of his best books, Poetic Diction. Barfield's basic vision for the purpose of the evolution of consciousness unfolds over the course of three core phases: First: Original Participation This is most often associated with the primal consciousness of indigenous peoples, for which there is hardly any gap between Spirit, Nature, and humanity. Examples include the emotional-spiritual immediacy apparent in Homer's Iliad, the book of Exodus, and the Vedas. There is very little self-reflective consciousness in these texts. Instead, there are descriptions of direct communication between the spirits and some representative or leading figure of a society, one who channels the higher wisdom. Barfield said that this original participation often involved an automatic receiving, particularly by some of the great souls of human history (Zoroaster, Moses, Krishna, Buddha, Hermes, etc.). Thus, the archaic era was one of great transmission and dissemination of wisdom teachings to human society. But McDermott pointed to a more contemporary example as well, when he mentioned the Native American mystic of the 19th century, Black Elk. McDermott said we should not discount this phase in the evolution of consciousness. Many of the experiences we read about today were at those times very vivid and real for the people who wrote them down for us to read about and (with great imaginative effort) reexperience centuries later. Second: The Loss of Participation McDermott said that this broad period of time has stretched across much of recorded history. Since the dawn of civilization and writing around 3,000 B.C., humanity's growing power over the natural world has resulted in a steady distancing from our once intimate relationship with nature-spirits who were akin to parental figures in our lives. As humanity has slowly grown up, matured, and become more autonomous during the course of history, the spirit world has correspondingly "pulled back" from nature and the cosmos. McDermott compared this overall process to adults who learn to pull back as their children go off to college. Healthy parents—and healthy spirits—encourage their children to separate and differentiate. But we must acknowledge that there is a loss in this process, and a potential for adolescent and young adult development to go wildly wrong at times. For Barfield, humanity's journey into independence and a rational-isolated consciousness was phase-appropriate for our journey. Third: Final Participation Today, we are getting closer to the possibility of re-connecting with spirit as mature adults. A differentiated and autonomous consciousness has been slowly regaining the intimacy of original participation but with the maturity that has been achieved in the interim. Perhaps we are just beginning to see it as being more sweet to regain that connection, after having once lost and/or left it. As a marker point along this journey of separation and re-connection, Barfield looked to Goethe, whose life and work gave expression to a tremendous Faustian self. Both Goethe the author and Faust the character harbored a desperate desire to know everything. Living in a time of historical transition and increasing sensitivity and self-reflection, Goethe expressed in his works, such as Sorrows of Young Werther, a sense of limit and loss. He saw through the conventional cultural and religious forms of his day and found them insufficient for his Promethean quest. He looked beyond the Christian church, and felt the need to engage in a broader search for fulfillment. For many, he became an archetypal seeker on behalf of humanity. At the same time, McDermott emphasized, Goethe's life revealed a reciprocal loop or return to connectedness, in which he perceived the divine in the natural world and let it speak back to him. McDermott emphasized that Barfield's three-phase journey of consciousness has a real evolutionary thrust and purpose to it. Although we can see that humanity is now in a dark time, an amazing possibility for a participatory way of thinking and loving has been developing all the while. This could not have been accomplished if we had stayed "in the womb" epistemologically as a species. It seems that only after humanity has gone through its share of bumps and bruises, can our more mature self and capacity for participatory relationship with the world emerge. Throughout all of his books, Barfield illuminated this grand evolutionary context. It was his constant background theme and mission. Discussion Issue Number One: Degrees of Evidentiality With his remaining time, McDermott turned briefly to the other discussion questions. With respect to issue number one titled "Epistemology and Degrees of Evidentiality," McDermott said that what we define as "evidence" depends to a great extent on who is in charge. Furthermore, what we call evidence is rooted in a set of prior assumptions and cultural power constraints. Thus, there is a need for a rigorous sociology of knowledge before approaching or defining what counts as evidence. Turning to Barfield's approach to the topic, McDermott said Barfield's main concern was that when we think imaginatively, poetically, and metaphorically, and when we make a vivid connection in one of those "aha" moments, those are real epistemological/evidential moments. They have noetic value. Alhough he was deeply concerned with the nature and evolution of language, Barfield's method was not limited to the poetic; it was—and is—a way of knowing that actively puts the world back together again by joining ideas into an original unity. Discussion Issue Number Two: Experience and Metaphor In response to the second discussion issue, titled "From Experience to Imagery, Metaphor, and Metaphysical Vision," McDermott said that the thrust of Barfield's project was to show just how deeply intertwined experience is with metaphor, concept, and idea. Although we tend to think that a naked experience is had by some great figure in history like Jacob Böhme or Hegel, and then only afterward translated into a specific metaphor or metaphysical vision, Barfield instead considered those two phases to be intimately interconnected. For Barfield, ideas are available to be experienced. What we call "experience" comes about through or by ideas that we grasp and express. Ideas and experience cannot be neatly separated. For Barfield and others in this Romantic and participatory lineage, such as Coleridge, ideas are real and alive and constitutive of our experience. Of course, some ideas are made up, or contrived. Coleridge called these ideas "fancy"—not imagination. Authentic and heart-felt ideas and imagination connect us to the subtle worlds of spiritual truth. And Barfield emphasized that we can access the spiritual world by means of an affectionate and active thinking. Discussion Issue Number Three: The Evolution of the Soul McDermott briefly mentioned that Steiner's works had very detailed comments on the evolution of the human soul, including a delineation of several stages to the process. Not focused on this issue, Barfield's work addressed how a modern self can live in the midst of a thoroughly material and de-spiritualized world. Discussion Issue Number Four: Subtle Beings and Realms McDermott said that for Barfield, what we call ideas come from or reside ultimately in subtle realms that transcend our physical world. Thus, these worlds or realms are very real, and we should learn how to interface with them as best we can. Discussion Issue Number Six: How the Geist Hides and Seeks In response to this issue, McDermott said that Barfield is very persuasive and clear. The three phase journey leading from Original to Final Participation is a model for the evolution of consciousness that provides us today with a historical context for grappling with the darkness of our own moment. Without a doubt, we are in a "dark night" today. But if we read and understand Barfield, then we can begin to see that this phase is stage-appropriate. Although humanity has never been more "on our own," we nonetheless have the opportunity before us to make a mature resolution to the long journey—one that maximizes love and freedom in a novel way never before possible. Discussion Issue Number Seven: The Pragmatic Value of a Vision As he concluded, McDermott made brief mention of the immense pragmatic value of both Barfield's vision and Steiner's esoteric and institutional legacy, which included such items as Waldorf schools and biodynamic gardening, among many others. Barfield's unique task was not institution-building but the original treatment of the evolution of language and literature in order to help us see today the value inherent in the evolution of consciousness. As McDermott considered Barfield's larger contribution to the lineage of evolutionary panentheism, he said what stands out with Barfield is his insightful treatment of language. Like few others, Barfield could help us see how someone like Shakespeare brought out the rich complexities of human character. Barfield was a modern person who enabled us to see what is not given but can only come through humanity's active imagination. In Barfield's vision, the great dramatists and artists like Shakespeare held a special role in the creation of language, metaphor, and personality typology, such that they could bring forth for all to see and experience a world that is dependent upon imagination. Eric Weiss
On Tuesday afternoon Robert McDermott gave a brief overview of Sri Aurobindo's life and thought. Because this material has been summarized before for the Esalen CTR website, the reader is encouraged to read more information on Aurobindo's background. Eric Weiss followed McDermott's overview with a number of observations about Sri Aurobindo's metaphysics and cosmology. He started by sharing a bit about his personal path to Sri Aurobindo. After reading a great deal of the theosophical literature in his youth, Weiss was involved in Tibetan Buddhism and studied closely with Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, for seven years. But due to his longing for a more personal God, he kept searching until he finally discovered Sri Aurobindo's works. Weiss said that today he worships the Divine in the cathedral of Sri Aurobindo's thought. Weiss's sense of connection to him is through his books only. He has never been attracted to the Mother or the culture of the Auroville ashram. Weiss said that Aurobindo provides a panentheistic metanarrative of extraordinary depth. His ideas were some of the first to integrate the mystical attainments of the East with the scientific discoveries of the West. In an interesting parallel, Weiss said, Sri Aurobindo did for the Vedic tradition what Teilhard did for the Catholic tradition by bringing the post-Darwinian knowledge of evolution into a mystical framework. Arobindo's thought is thoroughly panpsychist. For him, matter and consciousness are completely intertwined, as even in Sachchidananda – what Sri Aurobindo suggests as the largest and most comprehensive idea of the Divine that embodied mentalities can form - there is both Consciousness and Force (or Energy). In his work to overcome the split between spirit and matter, Sri Aurobindo often referred to the two denials: First, the materialist denial of Spirit. And second, the ascetic denial of Matter. Ascetics from both the Eastern and Western traditions have absolutized Spirit/Consciousness and have regarded matter and all phenomenal existence as illusory. This is apparent in Advaita Vedanta and certain strands of Buddhism. In contrast, Sri Aurobindo attempted to forge a middle path in which he sees matter and all phenomenal existence as intrinsic to a process of Divine self-manifestation. Sri Aurobindo sanctifies both spirit and matter. One of Sri Aurobindo's most distinctive contributions to the narrative of evolutionary panentheism is his notion of the Supermind. The Supermind is that factor in existence which mediates between the Divine Absolute, on one hand, and the phenomenal world on the other. The Supermind is the creative organ of the Absolute, bringing forth into manifestation specific, determinate universes out of the infinite reservoir of Divine possibilities. In the Supermental process, the Divine manifests as Transcendent, Universal and as individual. In Sri Aurobindo's model, Enlightenment does not obliterate individuality. Instead, a realized individual can operate as a fully self-conscious Spirit. By understanding Sri Aurobindo's notion of Supermind, we can come to understand how the individual Divine Spirits (the jimatmans) that are an intrinsic component of the Divine Unity in the complexio oppositorum of Brahman can come to expresses themselves as isolated and separate egos like ourselves. Also, we see how it is possible for us to recover our unity with the Divine without ceasing to be individuals. Sri Aurobindo claimed that individuals could simultaneously know their unity with the Transcendent ground of Brahman and maintain their ability to autonomously function in the world. Weiss turned next to Sri Aurobindo's way of accounting for the initial conditions of evolution. Evolution starts in the physical world, which is, initially, a world of essentially automatic and compulsive processes devoid of Life and Mind. But where did the material world come from in the first place? According to Sri Aurobindo's doctrine of involution, the Brahman becomes the material world through a process of self-differentiation, self-limitation and self-absorption. Weiss emphasized that Aurobindo offers a different approach to the perennial question in Western philosophy: Why is there something rather than nothing? In the West the bias is to think it is more natural for there to be nothing. While in contrast, Aurobindo grounds his whole system in Sachchidananda, which is an infinite bliss-filled appreciation of self-existence. So, the classic Western question is thus reversed: How is it that the manifest world, with all of its darkness, separation, ignorance and misery, comes about if the ground of existence is self-knowing appreciation of blissful existence? Sri Aurobindo's a doctrine of involution is the process whereby the Divine intentionally self-forgets and self-limits to create manifest worlds where evolution can occur. Weiss described this involutionary process as a top-down process. As the involutionary descent reaches the level of ego-like individuality, it first manifests as a world of pure minds in telepathic interaction. Then, through futher self-limitation, it becomes an imaginal world of beings that interact through the energy of emotion. Only through a self-limitation of the imaginal (astral, vital) world does the physical world come into being. Thus, as the involution reaches the physical world, the mental and imaginal worlds have already been brought into existence. Thus, in Aurobindo's model, the mental and imaginal worlds are ontologically prior to the physical world. In this context we can see that the subtle worlds are superimposed over and intertwined with the evolution of the physical world in an intimate way. Weiss said the proper way to understand the evolution of physical forms is that the subtle planes are in the process of incarnating into the physical world through that process. So, the logical and possibly temporal priority is with the subtle worlds. Living beings are simply astral beings in incarnate form. Thinking beings are mental beings, incarnate in both imaginal and physical forms. Ultimately, Aurobindo saw the entire process moving toward the incarnation of the Supermind in the physical world. The Intelligence, Power, and Love of Sachchidananda will one day be fully incarnated in a human-like body. The entire process is a play of manifestation in the physical world, which will ultimately transform the current darkness and suffering into a future of embodied bliss. Weiss noted that Sri Aurobindo's narrative is deeply dramatic, and that there is a large place in his narrative for the importance of evolutionary cycles. While Teilhard and Hegel emphasize the linear vector of evolution and history, Sri Aurobindo saw the process in organic and cyclical terms. He envisioned grand build ups of biological and cultuarl complexity, followed by and crashes and extinctions, like those that are taking place on the planet today. Because Aurobindo's panentheism starts with Brahman and goes down into matter and then evolves back, what biologists call evolution is seen as a linear segment within a larger circle. This cyclical view thus reflects what Jean Gebser would call a mythic component to Aurobindo's vision. See Weiss's presentation on Gebser. There is a bit of Shakespeare and Dante in Sri Aurobindo. He envisions reality as unfolding in a series of dramatic stories. Overall, Weiss said Sri Aurobindo's though reflects what Gebser would call the magical, the mythic and the mental mutations of consciousness. Lastly, if Sachchidananda is Infinite Bliss crafting these dramatic narrative stories, then why is there so much suffering and evil in the world? Weiss said that Aurobindo's theodicy is interesting for the way that it denies God's goodness. For Aurobindo, God is not about the good (in human terms) but about Bliss. All moments of pleasure and pain are inflections of this larger Bliss. From the Divine's perspective it's all enjoyment, even the misery. Thus, we torment ourselves when we project human categories of good and evil onto God. If there is a way that Aurobindo does incorporate the category of good into his system, it is defined in an evolutionary context. What is good is what furthers the evolutionary advance. Following Weiss's discussion of Aurobindo's cosmology and metaphysics, Michael Murphy added some rich commentary about Aurobindo's own life. He said that although he strongly admires the breadth of what Aurobindo accomplished in his life and the vast creativity of his thought, Murphy nonetheless has maintained a deconstructive attitude toward how some of his ideas have been interpreted by his followers at Auroville and elsewhere. This coming February 2007, Murphy will visit Auroville for the first time in 50 years, so he is excited to peruse the archive of Aurobindo's vast written records. Peter Heehs is one of the custodians of this archive, and Murphy is looking forward to seeing how it will impact his ongoing interpretation of the legacy of this vast scholar and sage. Freya Mathews
On Wednesday morning the Australian philosopher of panpsychism Freya Mathews took the conference in a new direction by inviting the participants into a different mode of engagement. Rather than giving another discursive presentation about one of the great titans of evolutionary panentheism, like Hegel or Aurobindo, Mathews attempted to bring forth in the conference—that is, in the quality of conversation and the ambiance of the meeting itself—a more panentheistic mode-of-being. What does this mean? As Mathews presentation unfolded, she suggested that if this conference is concerned with fostering a new panentheistic vision or metaphysical system, then the group may want to engage its process in a way that invokes the surrounding world of Spirit and Nature to actually participate in and meaningfully inform the conversation. Or, to put it in the terms of the seven discussion issues for this conference, Mathews was suggesting that the group intentionally invoke subtle beings and worlds so that they can contribute to the new metaphysical vision attempting to be born at these Esalen meetings. As Mathews described a bit about her background, she said that her panpsychist worldview has been shaped by her life experience growing up in the ancient and powerful land of Australia. As a result, she has come to take quite seriously the "energy" and "subjectival presence" of special lands and places. In particular, through the influence of Aboriginal peoples she has come to see how the narrative form of story-telling can act as a means to enter into a deeper state of relational conversation with presences in land or place. Australian Aborigines call the practice of invoking the poetic dimension of the world "singing up." By living their daily lives in a storied mode, they enter more fully into the flow of subjectival meaning of a surrounding landscape. This practice of "singing up" may seem a bit strange to Americans and Europeans, but that is because it is premised on a panpsychist/panentheistic orientation in which plants, animals, nature, and the cosmos are considered to be fully alive and imbued with a subjectival dimension of their own. Thus, from an Aboriginal perspective, if this Esalen conference wants to develop a new panentheistic metaphysics, then a good way to start would be to invoke a dialogue with the world of meaning that is hidden within the world all around us. Perhaps, it is time to let the responsive presence of the surrounding world inform the conversations happening here at Esalen? Mathews' own presentation attempted to do this by mixing together elements of Daoist cosmology and nature mysticism with Australian Aboriginal experiences of Dreaming. The brief summary of it that follows here can only hint at the richness that was evoked by the storied and poetic style that Mathews employed, which had a strong impact on a number of participants and helped deepen the group's process during the week. If the reader would like to pursue these topics in more depth, please contact Mathews directly to get a copy of her paper for this conference, or see her book For Love of Matter: A Contemporary Panpsychism (SUNY, 2003) for a full treatment, or see this weblink:
http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet The Magic of Hamilton Downs: Humans and Nature in One Conversation Mathews started her presentation—her own invocational "singing up"—by describing a truly magical experience she once had a few years ago at Hamilton Downs, a retreat center located on a cattle ranch deep in the wilds of the Australian outback. She was gathered there with several scholars, artists, Aboriginal peoples, ecologists, and others to discuss how it is that humans can experience a palpable sense of place. As this 5-day gathering unfolded, Mathews said that it took on a magical panpsychic quality in which the natural surroundings started to actively participate in the proceedings. For example, birds would chirp at just the right moment in response to the human conversation, lightning would strike at a perfectly dramatic moment, or frogs would start to croak after a number of participants had just engaged in a symbolic frog dance, etc. It was as if the natural world had become completely integrated into the human conversation occurring at this event. Humanity and nature had become one unified story—one unified thread of poetic meaning. Mathews said this experience went far beyond Jung's concept "synchronicity" because everything had become a synchronicity; everything was participating in the unfolding revelation of meaning in the group's discussion. The "normally" objective and non-animate world of nature had become fully imbued with meaningful responses to the human inquiry into the sense of what makes a place a place. After describing a bit of what happened at Hamilton Downs, Mathews chose to use her vivid experience there as a touchstone for her presentation here at Esalen, which was not a discursive talk attempting to define panpsychism, so much as an imaginary dialogue among a similar group of scholars who were conversing over a blazing campfire while they attempted to explain the magical and mysterious capacity of humans to enter into a fully panpsychic relationship to nature. How can we come to live more often in this enchanted and meaning-filled way? How can more of us see and experience the so-called outside world as part of our own insides, that is, as a living subjective presence that we are a seamless part of? How can we learn to experience the world hidden within the world? Discovering Le-an by Attuning to the World Hidden within the World As Mathews described the imaginary campfire conversation, she introduced a number of colorful participants, including a Daoist scholar named Professor Wong, a Chinese medicine practitioner named Sun Dew, a Dutch naturalist named Frans Hoogland, Australian anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose, psychocultural theorist Craig San Roque, and Mathews herself, who summarized the diverse perspectives on panpsychism being discussed by the fire. The conversation began with Professor Wong and Sun Dew describing the ancient panpsychist practices and cosmology of Daoism, for which there is no rigid inside-outside distinction between mind and matter, as there is in the modern scientific West. Instead, in Daoism subjectivity is understood to pervade and unify all of humanity, nature, and the cosmos. The living presence that does this is called the Dao. Laozi (aka, Lao Tzu) experienced this subjectival quality of the Dao directly, and he taught his students to detect its underlying flow and energetic presence in all of reality. In ancient China rigorous training in the Daoist arts enabled one to work harmoniously with the Dao and its streaming flow of psychic energy. But Professor Wong pointed out that the energy of the Dao is not identical with the energy described by Western physics. In Daoism "energy" takes on a richer and fuller meaning because it contains a psychic and subjective component that cannot be captured in an equation like E=mc2. Its flow is an energetic flow for sure, but, crucially, this flow is also a flow of meaning. As the campfire conversation continued, the Dutchman Frans Hoogland spoke next. He has lived extensively with the Aboriginal people in the Australian outback and has the intuitive flair and gifts of a naturalist. He described a concept and experience very similar to that of the Dao that he calls le-an. According to Frans, to experience le-an is to be called by the world into the world in a fresh and vivid way such that the world itself is transformed into a place of subjective and communicative meaning. The hidden and inner aspect of the world comes to the forefront in the experience of le-an. To illustrate, Frans described what it is like to live in the ambiance of le-an and have one's actions be imbued with its living presence:
From this excerpt we can start to sense that the ancient Daoists or someone like Frans can enter into a flow state and begin to respond to the voice of nature as if it is inside and inseparable from their own interiority. Someone living completely and effortlessly in the presence of le-an has become attuned to a field of communicative meaning that pervades nature. The movements of eagles and turtles are not just exterior events; they communicate significance for one's own interior life. Nature starts to come alive as one starts to feel life as one continuous event that is lived inside the body the world. Sentience, aliveness, and meaning are potentially everywhere, and all one needs to do is to tune into the flow of le-an. Story and Cosmology: The Universe as a Tissue of Meanings As the campfire conversation continued, Mathews herself responded to Professor Wong and Frans by deepening their insights into what it is like to live in a panpsychic world. Mathews took the inquiry in the direction of how each of us can attune more readily and frequently to the hidden, inner world of le-an. Do we all need to be as immersed in nature as someone like Frans is—living among plants and animals in the Australian outback? Mathews said that there are practices that any of us can engage in to open us more deliberately to le-an. One crucial practice is to intentionally activate the world's poetic dimension through storytelling. As she looked back on her experience at Hamlton Downs, Mathews remarked that the participants there had created a narrative context or poetic frame of reference into which the natural world could blend its own voice. Mathews suggested that it is the mode of story—perceiving a meaningful and coherent unfolding to daily events—that may be the lingua franca underlying all diverse panpsychic experiences like the flowing Dao in Daoism or the experience of le-an by Frans. What unites these experiences is the storied mode that the practitioner invokes and enters into. To understand the role of story better, Mathews turned to address the issue of cosmology. According to Western science, the cosmos is akin to a dead rock that has no sentience or subjective meaning. Scientists perceive the universe as if it were run by mathematically describable laws. But Mathews pointed out how odd it is that Western science has no way to account for where its laws come from or why they would work in the first place. Why does the universe described by science "hang together" at all? The coherence of the universe is considered a contingent side-issue from the purely objective and mathematical point of view. But Mathews said that from within the panpsychic worldview, the coherence of the universe makes natural sense. Because if an inner, subjectival dimension is integral to the nature of physicality, then the necessity of this cohering of physical existence is explained. Why? Because subjectivity is by its very nature fieldlike, holistic, internally inter-permeating, indivisible, and unbounded. One's own subjectivity – or psyche – cannot be constituted atomistically, as an aggregate of discrete units of experience that obey laws that are external to them. But why is this so? Why is psyche necessarily a field-like continuum? One answer is that this field-like nature of psyche is a function of meaning – of the intrinsically inter-weaving, over-layering, and inter-permeating nature of meaning - and of the constitution of experience through meaning. The kind of holistic continuity that confers unity on psyche, in other words, is a continuity of meaning. Subjectivity is the medium for a tissue of meanings that cannot be pulled apart without ceasing to be meanings - and without subjectivity thereby ceasing to exist. In other words, it is to the extent that psyche finds meaning in its experience that that experience coheres as the unity that is subjectivity. Of course, it is possible to identify individual experiences by abstracting them out from the larger field of experience – as this sense datum or that itch or this moment of elation - but these experiences cannot actually exist in isolation from the entire field of the subject's experience, which is a field of meaning. Thus, for the cosmos as a whole to "hang together" it must be viewed as one gigantic story—one continuous narrative of unfolding meaning. After all, we do call it a uni-verse—one singular and unified song or story. The view that the universe can be known as a story has interesting implications for what we call "self" or "selfhood," Mathews continued. What complexity theorists are now calling self-organizing, self-maintaining, and self-realizing systems (everything from spiral galaxies to ecosystems) have both subjectival and physical aspects. The subjectival aspect expresses itself in each self-organizing system's specific interests. What defines or demarcates a "self" in the concept "self-organizing" is its constitutive interest. All selves have specific desires and purposes relative to their self-maintaining and self-realizing interests. Furthermore, a self that has purpose, desire, and interest is a self that is best known and described in the mode of story. From this point of view, the universe itself starts to seem like a self-realizing system that is one large and unfolding story. Mathews added that although the universe conforms externally to the laws of physics, the subjective and poetic order of le-an and the Dao coexists with the causal and law-like descriptions of science. These two ways of experiencing and describing the universe are not mutually exclusive. They can co-exist or overlap without contradicting one another. Reconciling Aboriginal Dreaming with the West's Linear-Progressive Time Mathews drew Deborah Bird Rose into the conversation to explain how some of the most interesting intuitions about the storied nature of the universe have come from the Australian Aboriginal notion of "Dreaming." For Aboriginal peoples Dreaming is the original field or source of the manifest world. Through Dreaming the universe stories itself into existence. Thus, Aboriginal people view Dreaming as the generative source for the temporal experience of past, present, and future. Dreaming is an immanent source out of which the ephemeral world of daily life emerges. Mathews noted that the Aboriginal awareness of Dreaming is so thoroughly integrated into their lives that it directs their decisions, actions, and collective affairs as routinely as practical thinking and sensing does for Western people. Because of this thorough integration with Dreaming, all aspects of Aboriginal culture are built on a ground of poetic and storied invocation, which serves to "sing up" the world in which that community dwells and make that world an active participant in their communal life. For them, Dreaming is the interior, psycho-active aspect of reality, which is called forth into narrative communicativeness by narrative overtures that provide it with the poetic elements by means of which it can speak in the practical and day-to-day world of events. Thus, for Aboriginal people the Dreaming stories are not just told or spoken; they are enacted and lived. Dreaming is part of everyday real life. Stories aren't something extra that they do for fun; they are a seamless part of their existence. Mathews contrasted the Aboriginal orientation to Source or Dreaming with the Judeo-Christian orientation to the forward vector of time. The West has structured time teleologically as the purposeful unfolding of events toward a specific future. It is no accident that Hegel's vision of the meaningful unfolding of history arose in the Christian West. Hegel's view of the progressive unfolding of history is embedded within a larger Western context that views time as a linear sequence of events. Likewise, the modern idea of techno-economic progress is also embedded in this specifically Western orientation to time. So, at a conference that is looking at the historical lineage of evolutionary panentheism, how might Mathews' orientation to Origins in Aboriginal Dreaming be reconciled with the Western orientation to evolutionary progress? Before coming to the conference, Mathews was unsure how to achieve such a reconciliation between Western and indigenous perspectives. But as a result of her conversations during the week with Eric Weiss and others, she said her own understanding has opened to a new way to hold this seeming tension. She said she has come to consider it possible to be oriented both to immanent Origin and to the pulsing change of evolution and time. How is the Romantic-Idealistic Vision Different from Aboriginal Experience? After Mathews finished her presentation, Glenn Magee, Sean Kelly, and Fred Amrine responded with a number of related points worth noting here because they bear on the question of what is different about the experience of panpsychism in the contemporary West in comparison to the way it has been experienced by indigenous cultures in the past and present, such as the Australian Aborigines. Magee said that Mathews' presentation can be interpreted dialectically, because she presented a core dichotomy between the Aboriginal orientation toward Origins and the orientation toward the future and evolution by Westerners. This dichotomy can be overcome dialectically by integrating these two orientations in a "higher" or "larger" view that encompasses both. Magee thinks that for humanity to continue to evolve we must recover the panpsychic intimacy with nature so prevalent in Aboriginal experience as we continue to realize the developmental achievements of the Western mind. Sean Kelly followed Magee by saying that there is, in effect, a Western indigenous tradition that began with the Romantics, who were passionately attempting a poetic reconfiguration of nature and life. Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads was particularly resonant with many of the themes mentioned in Mathews' presentation. Fred Amrine then commented that Wordsworth's Prelude of 1805 was profoundly invocational in the manner that Mathews had just described. Amrine continued by saying that a "larger" panpsychic experience is possible now when compared to the Aboriginal experience because it can be more inclusive. This does not mean that it is better or higher, but it is more inclusive of several developmental achievements in Western thought and culture, particularly the Western emphasis on psychological individuation and reflexivity. In counter-response to this series of points, Mathews said that her own view about how to compare the West with indigenous experience has been impacted by her experience here at these Esalen conferences. She said she is more reconciled to the Western evolutionary or dialectical view now, but added that she prefers the word "larger" to "higher" when making any such comparisons. But Mathews made a crucial point of distinction about her own view. She said that in the Hegelian or Idealistic vision, human consciousness is at the center of the evolutionary process. The Geist comes to know itself through humans. Humanity alone is the end point or telos of the entire evolutionary process. But in the storied and invocational panentheism that Mathews has described, the accent is significantly shifted. Instead of humans being at the center of the drama, the relationship between humanity and nature is central. It is the entire I-Thou relationship that is important. In this view, the poetic reconfiguration of the life world and humanity's communicative engagement with it is the primary goal. Thus, the accent is not on humans per se, but our capacity for deepened relational engagement or encounter with the world. She said chapter four of her book For Love of Matter addresses this point in detail. In sum, the development of human subjectivity that is celebrated in the West as an evolutionary advance has come as a function of the revelation of the world to us. As the world becomes more transfigured before our eyes, it impacts our own psychic development. Mathews concluded by returning to the conference's present task of building a contemporary panentheism. She said that if Dreaming is the source of the manifest world, and the source is located in the psycho-active dimension of life, then our metaphysical task may simply be to "sing up" this psycho-active dimension, and allow ourselves to be drawn into story with it. Actively engaging in the poetics of reality in this way, providing opportunities for the articulation and elaboration of the meanings that are the fabric of its subjectivity, might indeed be helping reality to evolve—that is, to realize itself. At the same time, the more we engage in such poetic practice, the more we will inscribe ourselves deeper into Dreaming - the narrative dimension of being. This will help us achieve the state of self-realization or evolutionary fulfillment we are interested in. In the end, if a poetic engagement with reality is our goal, then this does indeed imply an orientation to origins, to Dreaming, in the sense that it involves orientation to the psycho-active interior of reality. But in order for us, as moderns, to achieve that goal – to achieve it consistently, and not just on a one-off basis, as at Hamilton Downs –a large-scale cultural transformation would be required that could certainly be described as evolutionary, at least if evolution is understood in social as well as genetic terms. For such a shift would entail investing all our praxis – our industry and technology, for instance, our production and consumption, our education and enculturation – with a poetic and dialogical dimension quite inconsistent with the instrumentalist tenor of modernity. And this was an appropriate note to end on, because in the next presentation Eric Weiss picked up on this theme as he described Jean Gebser's multi-faceted vision for the future of our world. Eric Weiss
On Wednesday morning Eric Weiss followed Freya Mathews with a presentation on the historian, sociologist, and linguist Jean Gebser (1905--1973). In her lecture earlier that morning, Mathews had invoked the synchronistic and meaning-filled ambiance of le-an that had characterized the Hamilton Downs meeting in the Australia outback. As he presented, Weiss also invoked le-an and worked to bring that same feeling into the room. The ambiance of le-an is similar to what Gebser called the magical structure of consciousness. In both, there is a palpable sense of co-participation between humans and the natural world and the immediacy of the moment unfolds in a fresh, unexpected, and vivid way. As the ocean waves crashed against the shore outside the meeting room, Weiss pointed out that it is all too easy to get swept up in the rush to arrive at a powerful new intellectual articulation of evolutionary panentheism - after all, isn't that what we are here to do at this Esalen conference? Weiss suggested that by giving in to this sense of time anxiety and "hurry sickness," we might be making the mistake of falling into the type of thinking and being that characterizes what Gebser called the "deficient mental," which is a mode characterized by clock time and calculative intelligence. To counteract this habitual impulse, Weiss's presentation broke out of the clock time we are all so familiar with and instead brought forth evocatively some of the other structures of consciousness that, in Gebser's vision, were characteristic of earlier modes of consciousness and are still latent in us today. An Overview of Some Key Features in Gebser's Vision Weiss started with a brief overview of the nature of Gebser's work. First, he said that it is important to distinguish Gebser's approach to the unfolding of consciousness from the more Hegelian approaches that had been discussed earlier in the conference To read Gebser in a Hegelian manner, as Ken Wilber does with his popular slogan "transcend and include," is, in a sense, to grasp the letter of Gebser while missing the living spirit of his work. Gebser himself discussed the limits of the famous Hegelian dialectic. He said that because mental thought tends to be dichotomizing, it necessitates the generation of a third term to move toward reconciliation. But even this third term (the Hegelian" synthesis") is in turn split again as the overall process marches onward. Gebser saw this dialectic as an unsatisfying expression of the deficient phase of the mental structure of consciousness (which will be described below). Overall, Weiss wanted to be clear that Gebser's thought should not be mistaken for a new version of Hegelianism, nor should it be reduced to it, and in his own life Gebser tried to distance himself from Hegel's work. Second, Weiss said that Gebser was clear that his work did not describe a linear evolution, development, or progress of consciousness. Instead, he claimed that the process described in book The Ever-Present Origin was more complex and nuanced. Gebser used the term "mutation" to describe the process of moving from one consciousness structure to another, but this was not intended to reduce the development of consciousness to a biological metaphor. Rather, he used this term to emphasize the discontinuous nature of the various structures of consciousness. The word "mutation" connotes the sense of a leap that is more sudden in comparison to the gradualism of Darwin's biological evolution. Gebser viewed each structure of consciousness as a latent possibility or inherent disposition within Origin – i.e., within the ultimate origin of all that is. He saw humanity as naturally predisposed to the discontinuous transformations that have taken place during the course of history and pre-history. But crucially for Gebser, the later mutations do not "transcend and include," as in Wilber's model of evolution. Instead, they are discontinuous and autonomous modes of awareness, each of which has its own intrinsic validity, and for which the perception and appearance of time and space are radically different. While it is true, Weiss said, that Gebser saw each structure as an increase in dimensionality and complexity, what is usually left out is that he also saw each subsequent structure as bringing a decrease in intimacy with Origin. Overall, each new mutation exfoliates certain patterns implicit from the beginning within Origin, but each one also hides Origin more completely. Thus, the vivid presence of Origin has diminished as humanity has lived through the magical, mythic, and mental structures. Third, Weiss pointed out that the cyclical view of human development suggests a very different interpretation of history. While we are accustomed to think of history as aligned with the privileged axis of evolution, such that things are getting better and better, in the cyclical view the unfolding of history is a descending movement, an increasing alienation from Origin. As our technologies get more sophisticated, our intimacy with God and with life gets more and more attenuated, and life gets worse and worse. The real progress only occurs as we move from the end of one cycle to the beginning of the next – from an "Iron Age" to a new "Golden Age" which is, we hope, a higher turn of the spiral. Fourth, Weiss emphasized that Gebser's work brings attention to economics and technology as important factors constitutive of every new consciousness structure. Weiss suggested that any telling of the evolutionary panentheistic story that does not have something really interesting to say about economics and technology will not be able to have an impact in a world where those factors so thoroughly dominate everyday life. Weiss urged that the conference pay deep attention to these areas, and suggested consideration of sources such as Marx, Mumford, Ellul as well as other more contemporary texts. Fifth, Weiss said that Gebser highlighted how important it is to view each structure of consciousness as a very specific and autonomous way of thinking, seeing, and perceiving. If this insight is accurate, then what we moderns take for granted as true and objective may really just be the result of life as seen from within the current structure of consciousness. How "the real" presents itself to human consciousness is different for each structure. Gebser, in particular, emphasized how there is a distinct experience of space and time that is specific to each structure. Weiss said this is extremely difficult for modern scholars to grasp because we have been conditioned so strongly by the deficient mental mode of consciousness. Today, we claim to have finally explained the true nature of space and time with relativity and quantum physics, and thus we think all previous understandings were simply naïve errors. Weiss cautioned that to understand Gebser's work is to understand that each structure has a specific experience of space and time, each equally valid and accurate. Furthermore, each reveals a different aspect of existence that remains relevant to every subsequent mutation, even though in our own time we have largely repressed and forgotten the important role of these earlier structures. Sixth, Weiss addressed a common confusion about Gebser's work, which is to think that there was no rational-mental thought before the rise of the mental structure in ancient Greece. Weiss said that individuals living thousands of years ago harbored all of the structures within themselves in a latent form. Thus, during the magical era, mental thinking did occur in a rudimentary form, but it was mediated or filtered through the dominant magical structure. Lastly, Weiss discussed the "integral-aperspectival" structure of consciousness that, according to Gebser, is now in formation on planet Earth. Weiss suggested that in articulating his vision of the integral-aperspectival, Gebser has done a remarkable job of giving expression to the new mode of experience towards which so many of us seem to be oriented. This new structure of consciousness will bring the earlier mutations –magical, mythical, mental and rational (deficient mental) into mutual transparency (diaphaneity). Thus, he sees this new mutation as one in which we will have an intimate sense of the divine power and presence (magical); intimacy with the living gods and goddesses of a properly re-enchanted universe (mythic); and a deep appreciation of the steady purposes that drive evolution and of the principles through which that purpose is expressed (mental). Weiss suggested that we consider the possibility of taking Gebser's vision as a standard, so that we try, in our theorizing, to do justice to all of the mutational levels of our being. Note: The only main text by Gebser in English is The Ever-Present Origin, which was first published in German in 1949 as Ursprung und Gegenwart, and went through several editions before Gebser died in 1973. The English translation by Noel Barstad and Algis Mickunas came out in 1985, and this is what Weiss drew upon for his interpretation of Gebser. The Archaic Structure Weiss started his description of the various structures of consciousness with the archaic. There is no precise way to date the beginning and ending of this initial structure, but generally speaking it characterized the life of early hominids that preceded the emergence of Homo sapiens. During the course of the global spread of Homo sapiens out from Africa (starting around 60,000 years ago), the magical structure started to emerge, and for that structure there is substantial archeological and anthropological evidence to help describe it. So, even though there is only vague evidence for the archaic, Gebser did consider it a distinct structure that was characterized by a pre-spatial, pre-temporal, and zero-dimensional mode of consciousness. If we think back to the dawn of early hominids, we might imagine that they were immersed in a non-differentiated relationship to the natural world. The evidence Gebser adduces for this is not archeological but mythic, particularly allusions to a Golden Age or Biblical paradise. For example, Chuang Tzu wrote "dreamlessly the true men of earlier times slept" (Ever-present Origin, p. 44). Gebser interpreted this to mean that the soul of man was still dormant; it had not even begun to dream. Another possible feature of this structure was the inability of early hominids to distinguish between the colors green and blue. Weiss said that there is some evidence that infants also cannot distinguish between these colors. So, if true, how would this have impacted early hominids? Weiss suggested we could get a sense of this by imagining looking up from a green earth to see a green The sky would not, in that circumstance, appeared far away, nor would it be experienced as "heaven above." Gebser associated this identity between earth and sky with an identity between the inner experience of humans and the outer realm of nature. In a sense, man and the universe had not yet been differentiated, and what we call self-consciousness did not yet exist. The Magical Structure Weiss turned next to the magical structure. In this period humans were just beginning to become self-aware and most likely had a sense of identity only in relationship to the tribal group. An individual might have experienced him/herself as something like a limb on the larger tribal body. Furthermore, consciousness in this structure was still largely external to humans. As Gebser put it, "consciousness was not yet in man himself, but still resting in the world." (Ever-present Origin, p. 46). As the first structure to emerge out of the zero-dimensionality of the archaic, it was one dimensional according to Gebser, and can be pictorially characterized by a spaceless and timeless point. To get a feel for the ambiance of this structure, Weiss said we must imagine the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. For example, some African pygmies go out before dawn, and in response to a dream they draw an antelope in the sand by the river. Then, as they watch the sun come up they shoot an arrow into the neck of the drawing of the antelope. Later that same day they go hunting and come back to the tribe with a dead antelope that they shot in the neck, just as in the drawing. In this scenario, we can see how there would be a deep connection and interpenetration between humans and the animal realm. This is apparent in the totem poles of Northwest Indians, who have animal features intermixed with human ones. So, what was the sense of time like for these pygmies or other indigenous peoples living in a magical (or at least close to magical) structure of consciousness? Weiss said that in the magical structure, there is a timeless sense of the now moment. When humans are naked in the woods, tracking the flow of animals and of signs (or synchronicities) in the natural world, there is barely a sense of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Instead, there is just this now moment forever. Some Australian Aboriginal peoples, who may be the closest approximation we have to the magical structure, have reported that their sense of temporality only stretches back to their immediate ancestors and grandparents. After that, there is only the atemporal Dreamtime. So the magical sense of time is a full and rich now moment that exists within a sea of Dreaming. In this context there is no sense of temporal causality, in which event A linearly causes event B. All is of a totality, in which whole and part are interchangeable within the point-like perception of timelessness and spacelessness. Weiss noted that in the magical structure there was less distinction between the physical world and the subtle worlds accessed in dream states. In this structure one is not restricted to the physical senses to establish "reality." One's intuitions and dreams are taken as seriously as the data coming from one's external senses. Furthermore, because the experience of space is point-like, all locations are "magically" linked in this spaceless and timeless world. What we call "voodoo" thus makes sense within the magical structure. One can impact events far away by doing a specific act here because here and there are already intimately connected. Through a type of ongoing telepathic mode of interaction and communication, individuals likely had connections with other tribal members, and possibly plants and animals as well. Given that a strong egoic sense of boundaries and differentiation did not exist yet, the psychic interpenetration of different subjectivities was likely common. Weiss added that a prominent feature of the magical structure was the notion of "mana," in which a person or thing attained power, significance, potency, success, enormity, and a numinous living vitality. Some indigenous peoples have spoken of individuals or objects possessing mana, and Gebser speculated that mana was a concept that preceded the concept of "soul," which arose first during the mythic structure. Since mana was what gave life and force to physical reality, when a talented hunter died, his fellow tribesmen would say that he lost his mana. Weiss said that the perceived universe in the magical structure must have been vastly larger than the universe we are familiar with today. It would have encompassed all the domains of dream, myth, imagination, as well as subtle and physical worlds. The magical universe of long ago had not yet been chopped into geometrical units as it would be later by the mental structure. Lastly, Weiss emphasized that when humans were in this magical structure, the world presented itself as a series of meaningful synchronicities. Attuning to this more animistic world was not just for fun either. Instead, the successful capacity to harmonize with the signs of nature enabled humans to survive in the here-and-now of the woods and forests. The Mythic Structure Beginning with the horticultural and agricultural revolutions (circa 10,000 to 3,000 BCE) that preceded the rise of the literate civilizations like Sumeria and Egypt, a new techno-economic basis emerged along with the mythic structure of consciousness. As people learned to live in trans-tribal groups in one place near their crops, they withdrew from the magical intimacy with nature. People started to live in small villages and farming communities, which were surrounded by the darkness of the wild forests. As humans became increasingly attuned to the ever-recurring seasons and agricultural cycles necessary for planting and growing crops, the timelessness and immediacy of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle started to transition into a new focus on cyclical time. Weiss said that in this structure of consciousness the direct awareness of time itself began in earnest. People emerged from the eternal now of the magical into the recurring, cyclical time of the mythic. This new awareness of time included the telling and singing of stories, tales, and myths, which were repeated over and over again in rhythm with the seasons and agricultural cycles. Homer's famous Iliad was a rhythmic song-like poem that was sung out loud by wandering bards in ancient Greek villages. Other mythic practices included animal sacrifices by humans as offerings to the gods to ensure the recurrence of the cosmic rhythms that provided humanity's sustenance. Because the time of the mythic structure was perceived as cyclical, the future appeared as the direction from which the past would approach yet again. All causal explanations were cyclical too. Mythic gods and goddesses were the personified explanations for natural cycles, like Apollo riding his chariot across the sky to explain the rising and setting of the sun. Weiss described how the experience of space changed dramatically with the onset of the mythic structure. A new emphasis on the night sky arose, which now appeared as a moving dome above humanity on the earth. Whereas in the magical mode, space was perceived as vault-like and cavern-like, now the cave began to rotate. Thus, there was a sense that the entire cosmos was moving around the earth (the geocentric cosmology). In accord with this cyclical movement, the symbol for the mythic structure is a circle, just as the point had been for the magical. Weiss said that Gebser paid particular attention to how humans started to identify their inner souls with the night sky. As Plato put it, "the soul comes into being simultaneously with the sky" (Ever-Present Origin, p. 45). Thus, the seeds for astronomy and astrology were planted during the mythic period. Gebser described this structure as two dimensional and thus oriented toward polarity. For example, the polar relationship between heaven and earth became more pronounced at this time. People related events in a polarity that was inscribed within the full cycle of a circle. For example, the full diurnal cycle of the sun provides the polarity of day and night, sunrise and sunset. Overall, there was a growing awareness of the sun and sky, whereas in the magic the focus was exclusively on the earth and nature. The advent of the mythic structure also involved a growing capacity for self-reflection and awareness of the interior soul. Gebser said that the awareness of time, the soul, and myth all arose together. This involved a transition out of the vital, instinctual, and impulsive emotions of the magical and into the growing imagination of the mythic period. Through externalizing and telling stories and myths, humanity pressed toward greater awareness. Gebser thought that frequent water imagery in ancient myths was expressive of humanity's attempt to come to conscious awareness of our own souls. The most notable example was the narcissus myth, in which man sees his own reflection in a lake, thus symbolizing the awakening to his own soul. In response to a clarifying question, Weiss said that he is still pondering whether to consider ancient Egypt as mythic or early mental. Although Gebser considered Egypt mythic, Weiss said that Lewis Mumford's essay "Technics and Human Civilization" convinced him that it's worth thinking more carefully about this issue for a number of reasons. First, the worlds' first large bureaucracy arose in ancient Egypt to help build the pyramids. Second, a great deal of Egyptian life took place in the dense urban setting characteristic of the mental structure. Third, ancient Egypt forced many of its citizens to do abstract mental work as they carried out the will of the mega-machine of bureaucratic life. And fourth, supporting all of this activity was a clear division of labor including slavery. The Mental Structure Weiss turned next to the mental structure, which arose in conjunction with the beginning of dense urban life that was removed from the ongoing natural cycles of the mythic. With the rise of cities someone could live without growing his own food and with the aid of artificial light sources (torches, oil lamps, and later light bulbs) could be liberated from daily cycles of light. Furthermore, the specialization of labor enabled someone like a shoe-maker to make shoes all year round, thus enabling him to forget the mythic attunement to the cycles of nature. In the world of cities, human artifice started to dominate everyone's immediate environment and the once omnipresence of nature started to recede from immediate awareness. Gebser suggested that the mental structure emerged decisively in ancient Athens. It was with the seminal Greek philosophers like Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle that a dawning interest non-personified, mathematical, and eternal principles grew. Beginning with the Greeks, the abstract Forms or Archetypes started to replace the personified gods and goddesses of the mythic. Thus, the mental can be seen as a transition toward abstract principles and away from the relatively more full and concrete realm of myth and imagination. The mutation—or sudden leap—into this more conscious and abstract mental world was heralded in the Greek myth of Athena leaping from Zeus's forehead. Weiss reiterated that Gebser described the transition between structures not as an evolution but as a mutation—a rather abrupt, sudden, and discontinuous change in the perception and experience of reality. So, what happened to the experience of time with the dawning mental structure? Weiss said that the great cycles of the mythic were broken open by the mental perception of time, which was linear, purposeful, and always marching forward. This can be seen most clearly in the Hebraic covenant with Yahweh, which unfolds over the course of linear historical time. Weiss contrasted this with the state of le-an from Freya Mathews's presentation, in which there is a sense of moving with the Tao or flow of nature. As humanity moved into the mental structure of time, human purpose itself increasingly became the flow of time. Today, for example, we have daylight savings time so that modern civilization can maximize the productive day light hours. And what of space? Weiss said that in the mental structure the experience of space became spherical with the earth at the center of it all. Dante's medieval cosmology in which the Divine is at the outer edge of a series of spheres is a great depiction of mental space. In this view the imaginal and the Divine are cosmologically accessible as they are projected above us in the spheres, an intrinsic part of space itself. Weiss pointed out that the subtle worlds of angelic intelligences and forces were not expunged from reality in the efficient phase of the mental. This happened only during the deficient phase, which followed after 1500 AD. One of the key events heralding this change was the mastering of spatiality by the Renaissance artists like Giotto and Leonardo da Vinci. It was only after the full articulation of perspective that the mental closed in on itself, so to speak, and started to take its own structure of consciousness as the exclusive truth, thus shutting out other realms, beings, and forces. A key feature of the mental structure was the emergence of the autonomous ego. Weiss likened the ego to the lining up our memories in a serial order. The rise of the mental-ego went hand-in-hand with an increasingly dualistic form of thinking that split mind from matter. The infamous mind-body problem of Western philosophy arose from the mental structure of consciousness, because by its very nature it sees the knowing subject in opposition to a radically external world out there. During the deficient phase of the mental structure Immanuel Kant's philosophy absolutized the split between inner and outer. Kant's philosophy based this split on another split, which was the rigid separation of time and space, yet another characteristic of the mental structure, according to Gebser. The Deficient Phase of the Mental Structure At this point in his presentation Weiss mentioned that Gebser described both an efficient and deficient phase for each structure. Due to time constraints, Weiss was unable to describe the deficient mode of the magical and mythic structures. But because it characterizes so many of the features of our contemporary life and worldview, Weiss characterized briefly some of the key features of the deficient mental. Instead of viewing the European perspectival-rational worldview as the apex of humanity attainment, Gebser considered it the deficient phase of the mental, primarily due to its exclusive focus on calculating rationality. In this phase the principled thought of the mental structure degenerated into a focus on mere calculation. Weiss pointed out that there might be an etymological relationship between the goddesses Kali and the word in Sanskrit that means "to calculate." Both may share the root "cul." If this is true, then the infamous Kali Yuga is really the dark age of endless calculation. Weiss said that whereas space in the efficient mental had been spherical, in the deficient phase it became cubical. Thus, Newtonian space of endless tessellated cubes is the dark iron cage of the Kali Yuga. Similarly, during the deficient phase the linearity of mental time has degenerated into the anxiety-provoking quality of clock time. Today, we habitually check our watches to orient ourselves not to ourselves and nature but to the precise calculations of machines. Weiss suggested that industrial technology is a perfect expression of this phase. When humans are ensconced completely within the industrial world of urban life, we are challenged to experience the better qualities of the mental structure, and most of us have lost touch completely with the lingering features of the mythic and magical. To regain a glimmer of these lost structures, industrial humans go hiking on the weekends. Before concluding, Weiss commented that one key point about our current moment is that the new mutation on the horizon, which has been struggling to express itself since the Renaissance, is reaching the point at which it is ready to break through and to supplant the deficient mental. Conclusion: Re-Imagining Civilization Weiss concluded with a few short comments about how he thinks Gebser's integral-aperspectival structure might manifest in the near future. The key, he said, is to challenge the techno-economic basis of modern civilization. Because industrial technology is so thoroughly rooted in the deficient mental and because of its inherently destructive impact on the biosphere, Weiss conjectured that it would need to be completely let go of in the coming age. But in its place humanity has the opportunity to re-imagine a new civilization, one that would embody a fruitful balance between the magical, mythic, and mental structures. Weiss said that in his personal imagination of the future, humans will live in rich intimacy with a revitalized natural world as they re-integrate some of the lost features of the magic, mythic, and mental structures. For example, Weiss said that there might be a revival of telepathic and clairvoyant powers that would largely, if not completely, replace the need for cell phones, laptop computers, and blackberries. The transition to such a new world will certainly be dramatic, and the ecological conditions that are driving humanity toward deep changes was touched upon by the Elisabet Sahtouris, who presented that evening. Bill Barnard
On Wednesday afternoon Bill Barnard gave a presentation on Henri Bergson. He drew on themes from his essay "Pulsating with Life" and his own forthcoming book-length biography of Bergson. As it turned out, by luck or grace, Barnard's presentation was immediately preceded by a spontaneous rendition of a spirited hip-hop rap poem given by Esalen staff member Mark Fabionar for the enjoyment of the Esalen conference participants. Mark's rap juiced up the room and was a synchronistic segue to Barnard's presentation, because Bergson's own life and thought were all about the musical poetry of evolution. Bergson's Life in a Nutshell But before turning to Barnard's unique angle on Bergson, here is a little about his life. Bergson was born to Jewish parents in Paris in 1859, the same year that Darwin published the Origin of Species. In college Bergson studied mathematics before discovering Herbert Spencer's multi-disciplinary evolutionary ideas. He soon became fascinated by states of consciousness, memory, and hypnosis, publishing his first paper on these subjects in 1886. Bergson's doctoral thesis appeared in 1889 and was on the phenomenology of consciousness, a topic soon to be popularized by Edmund Husserl. Then in 1896 he published a major philosophical and psychological work titled Matter and Memory, which Barnard said is his dense and not well appreciated masterpiece. By the dawn of the 20th century, Bergson was living and teaching in Paris and very much a participant in the mammoth changes taking place in philosophy, psychology, physics, art, music, and literature within the intellectual circles of Europe. This was the era of Picasso, Matisse, Joyce, Mann, Stravinsky, Einstein, Planck, Freud, Husserl, the James brothers, Steiner, Aurobindo, and many more. It was at this seminal time that Bergson's works first started to be translated into other languages and his influence started to spread. Most notably, William James started to read Bergson and found in him a kindred spirit. Then in 1907, Bergson's publicly recognized masterpiece was published, L'Evolution Créatrice (Creative Evolution), which launched him to international fame and eventually a Nobel Prize for literature in 1928. Before the outbreak of World War I, Bergson was traveling and lecturing in England and the United States to large audiences. During the war, he turned to politics and became active in helping to form the League of Nations. After the Great War ended, Bergson continued as a prominent intellectual, which included events such as debating Einstein and serving as the head of the International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation. Then, as he was getting older, Bergson issued his final major work, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, which included his ideas on mysticism and the future evolution of humanity. As World War II was looking imminent, his life was coming to a close. Germany occupied France in 1940, and in the midst of that menacing climate there arose an anecdotal story that Bergson caught the cold that eventually killed him in early 1941 while he was waiting in line to register as a Jew with the pro-Nazi Vichy government of France—a heartbreaking end to an otherwise ebullient life. Matter and Memory: Bergson's Unheralded Masterpiece As Barnard unveiled his thoughts about Bergson, he started with his most philosophically rigorous book, Matter and Memory. Published in 1896, this groundbreaking work sought to overcome the ancient dualism between materialism and idealism by pioneering a fresh theoretical orientation to some of the most intractable problems in philosophy and epistemology. The key to Bergson's revolutionary new conception was his willingness to see past the conceptual straight-jacket of an external material world and a corresponding epistemology that represents it in the mind. Most Western philosophers had always couched this great epistemological quandary of how to reconcile the subject/object divide in terms of an external world of matter and an inner world of mind that represents the world "out there." But by drawing from his extensive and careful work in the budding field of psychology and the yet to be proclaimed field of phenomenology, Bergson tossed out this old and hackneyed formulation and proposed something radically different. At the core of Bergson's ambitious project were a few key ideas: first, that "pure perception" transcends the familiar representational trap; second, that our inner experience or "mind" is really fluid, continuous, fleeting, and ever-changing; third, that memory involves the continuation or duration (durée) from the past to the present and that understanding this process was crucial to the reconciliation of inner experience and the outer world; and fourth, that the autonomous chunks of reality we perceive like people, stones, and trees, ultimately dissolve into vibrations of luminous energy that constitute the fabric of the universe. As Barnard described these vast proposals by Bergson, he said that the core term around which all of it rotates is Bergson's notion of durée. Durée, which when translated literally means "duration," is a multi-faceted and paradoxical term for Bergson that needs to be described from many angles. To begin to understand it is to begin to understand that reality is fleeting, effervescent, pulsating, alive, continuous, free, creative, and ever-flowing. But how did Bergson arrive at this conclusion? Like his contemporary William James, Bergson carefully analyzed his own interior consciousness and experience. What he found was that ultimately interior experience reveals a constant flow of thoughts and images, and a constant creative freedom that is always fresh and new. Thus, a good deal of Matter and Memory reads like a proto-psychology that explains how and why humans do not more often perceive this flowing pulsation of durée. The primary reason Bergson offered is that most people are stuck in perceptual habits based on deeply ingrained memories. Barnard said that Bergson realized that the deepest grooves in our memories are akin to "psychic cysts" that seem solid as a rock, but are really just dense conglomerations of habit and pattern. Thus, to access the flowing freedom of durée, we need to forge below the crust of our selfhood to an inner realm of creativity. In Bergson's view, within both the universe and the human psyche there is always a tension between the creative evolutionary life force (the "élan vital," as he will call it in Creative Evolution) and the counter-force of our encrusted habits and memory-patterns from the past. An interesting feature Bergson realized about the deepest aspect of human experience, which he called "pure perception," is that it always involves a complex fusion of manyness and oneness. If we look carefully enough, we will see that these two sides of one larger coin are always present in whatever we experience. Thus, for Bergson there are no radical breaks in consciousness. The flow of our experience cannot be broken into isolated and measurable chunks. Instead, it is always multi-textured and constantly changing. And beneath this, there is the paradoxical intuition that reality is both One and Many. Equally paradoxical, Bergson also claimed that our experience is an ever-changing flow that often results in continuous and stable patterns. In this sense, Bergson's penetrating ideas can be seen as anticipations of the phrase "dynamic stability," which has been popularized more recently by complexity theorists like Ilya Prigogine, Per Bak, and Stuart Kauffman. Furthermore, Bergson's intuitions also have similarities to Duane Elgin's toroidal model of human evolution, in which the toroidal donut-shape is both dynamically open (so that energy can flow through it) but also structurally stable as well (so that humanity's evolving perceptual gestalts, or worldviews, can build one upon the other through history). When Bergson analyzed earlier philosophical attempts to understand experience and consciousness, such as Kant's, he realized that most of these descriptions were biased toward a spatial interpretation. In Matter and Memory he sought to overcome a strictly spatialized view in favor of describing the temporal flow of experience. This feature of his work is notable for its similarity to some of the ideas raised in Fred Amrine's presentation on Goethe's epistemology of holistic-dynamic seeing. Like Bergson, Goethe apprehended the temporal and dynamic flow of living forms, particularly in the plants that he observed. Goethe's unique epistemology of the dynamic time-based unfolding of plant morphology has many resonances with Bergson's nuanced appreciation for the temporal flow of all experience in the universe. For Bergson came to the radical conclusion that time is ultimately what reality is comprised of. What we really experience are different pulsations of time, and each pulsation is fresh and new. Thus, the accent in Bergson's key term, durée, is on freedom and indeterminacy. In contrast to the La Placian determinism popular earlier in the 19th century, Bergson was a philosopher of freedom. And his durée was a concept that described the free creative pulse at the heart of consciousness and the universe. The only reason that we perceive reality so often to be dense, solid, and repetitive is that durée becomes hidebound by our deeply ingrained perceptual habits—that is, by memory. Given its title, Matter and Memory obviously had much to say about the nature of memory. For Bergson, it is not to be found in chunks of matter, as if stored in the brain, for example. Instead, memory is ultimately dynamic. But what we experience as memory in our daily lives is a narrow and practical condensation of this larger, dynamic flow. In Bergson's view our everyday experience is a complex fusion of a more primal type of pure perception and our own memories. Our habits and memories thus shape our more primal and rudimentary capacity for pure perception into our everyday experiences. Thus, we each are capable of pure perceptions that transcend the subject/object divide, but due to habit and memory we usually do not experience this spontaneously but only in "peak experiences," as Abraham Maslow would call them. During the late 19th century when Matter and Memory was written, the electromagnetic revolution was taking off. Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, Samuel Morse, Guglielmo Marconi, and others, had shown the world that telegraphs, telephones, and radio waves could send signals back-and-forth across the earth. Light had been shown to be an electromagnetic wave, and the world was making good use of this insight. But Bergson went further. Barnard said that in Matter and Memory, Bergson looked at the world and human consciousness as participants in vast overlapping fields of energy. In response to the materialism popular at the time, Bergson countered that mind or consciousness was constitutive of reality and could not be reduced to measurable chunks of matter. Instead, he sought to show that the human brain did not produce consciousness but was more like a filter that selectively shielded out the vast energies of the universe. Bergson attempted to diagram memory, consciousness, and perception as parts of multiple layers or planes of existence. As Barnard put it:
Thus, for Bergson, durée takes on a more vast meaning and purpose, one capable of connecting individual phenomenological experience with the workings of the universe as it pulsates into existence moment by moment. Building upon the radio transmission image, Bergson saw the universe and human consciousness as vast arrays of energy and information that vibrate in complex patterns. Even though his own ideas would grow and change during his lifetime, Bergson never left behind this core idea about the vibratory nature of reality. Bergson and Subtle Worlds After describing some of the richness of Matter and Memory, Barnard turned his attention to some of the discussion issues for this conference. He started by highlighting how Bergson's metaphysical orientation is deeply compatible with the fourth discussion issue about subtle worlds. In fact, during his life Bergson took subtle worlds, subtle beings, and non-physical modes of communication, quite seriously. In 1913 he even gave the Presidential address to the Society of Psychical Research. Barnard said that Bergson drew out a natural inference from the increasing prevalence of radio stations: there are multiple levels, planes, or channels of existence. Barnard quoted from Bergson on this:
Bergson thus concluded that the constant activity of durée was taking place on many levels of existence in an electromagnetic spectrum from the more dense and habitual all the way up to the very subtle and refined. These realms would simply vibrate at higher frequencies of durée. Furthermore, given that for Bergson memory was not discrete and physical, but overlapping and inter-penetrating, there was no reason for him to rule out telepathy, clairvoyance, and other parapsychological phenomena that transcend localized and material forms of communication. Bergson's more temporalized view of consciousness and memory thus took him beyond the limiting assumptions of the spatialized views that preceded him. The Best Metaphor for Bergson is Music At this point in his presentation Barnard mentioned the key metaphor for understanding Bergson's metaphysics, that of music. If durée is ultimately fields of vibration and energy, then one way to conceptualize the universe is as a gigantically vibrating symphony or even a jazz ensemble. The universe of durée is constantly playing different tunes and scores of music in a polyphonous display of creativity. Each individual within the larger Song is like an instrument in a symphony or a melody in a tune. Each of us is a uniquely vibrating melody that can mix and combine with others to form larger songs and scores of music. But Barnard emphasized that for Bergson there was no Platonic musical sheet that had all the music already written out and ready to be played by the band. Instead, Bergson's vision for the ever-creative nature of durée would best be described as akin to a jazz show of infinite riffs and improvisations. Each instrument, whether sax, trumpet, or bass, can play its own tune as an individualized expression of the universe, but also combine with other instruments and musicians to form larger songs and ensembles, and ever-richer music. Every note in the universe is individual and unique but also capable of harmonizing with others. The rich melodies of the universe are part of the temporal unfolding of durée. Bergson's Literary Masterpiece: Creative Evolution Although he focused most of his presentation on the notion of durée, Barnard did make a few comments on Bergson's more popular concepts of élan vital and intuition. These two were discussed at length in Bergson's Nobel prize winning book Creative Evolution, originally published in 1907. In this brilliant and synthetic piece of scholarship, Bergson argued that mechanism and teleological finalism were really two sides of the same coin of determinism. Both the mechanical view of a universe that ratchets up one notch at a time and the more traditionally theistic view of a universe with a Divine goal to fulfill left no room for true freedom and creativity. Thus, Bergson attempted to explain evolution from the bottom up with his core concept of élan vital, the vital force within all life in the universe. The idea that life is driven by some living force was not unique to Bergson. One of Bergson's favorite philosophers was Plotinus, who himself was influenced by the Greek concept of Eros, the erotic life energy of the cosmos. And more recently, the idea that the universe has a fundamental Eros has been developed by Ken Wilber in his book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality. For Bergson, who was countering the growing materialism and mechanism popular in the evolutionary sciences throughout the 20th century, the élan vital was the only way he could account for the inherently creative and life-enhancing impulse he saw at work in all living creatures. This included the creativity of the human mind and spirit as well. The other key idea Bergson brought forth in Creative Evolution was the notion of intuition, which borders on what we might call "mystical experience." But intuition for Bergson was really about an individual's alignment with the élan vital within. Intuition is a deeper capacity in humans than the more familiar ones of intellect and instinct, which drive so much of our behavior. For Bergson, intuition is a higher synthesis of these lesser two drives, which are often in conflict with one another. Intuition, instead, can combine the freedom of the intellect with the deep connection to the life-force that is present in our instinctual nature. In Creative Evolution, Bergson hinted at different levels of intuition, suggesting that mystics were the vanguards of this latent capacity to be developed in us all. A Nod to the Mystics: Two Sources of Morality and Religion Barnard said that a few decades later in his life Bergson re-visited the evolving capacities of the mystics in his last book Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Published in 1932 when Bergson was in his early seventies, Two Sources critiqued contemporary religious dogmas and concepts. Bergson saw the spiritual impulse in religions express in either a static form or a dynamic one. The static form was the religion of institutionalized settings, like the Catholic church. But the dynamic form was more apparent in the claims of the world's great mystics, who were those who had aligned themselves most completely with the élan vital. They were the ones who had learned to embody the utter freedom of the universe. In Two Sources, Bergson claimed that élan vital at first appears as a biological force driving the evolution of life, but at more refined levels, élan vital becomes a form of pure love. In the second half of this book Bergson uses poetic language to describe a universe for whom the purpose of evolution is to create Gods in human form. Teleology and Cash-Value in Bergson As he concluded his presentation, Barnard shared Bergson's views on two more of the conference discussion issues: teleology and cash-value. Barnard said that Bergson was quite different from the Jesuit paleontologist he inspired, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, regarding the purpose and goal of evolution. Whereas in Teilhard there is a prominent role for the Omega Point and Christ-consciousness, in Bergson a similar prominence is given to creativity itself. In Creative Evolution Bergson critiqued deterministic views of evolution, which he called "finalism." The driving force of evolution for Bergson, the élan vital, did not have the pre-determined goal that Teilhard was so fond of. It was always an unpredictable drive for Bergson. And since humans are expressions of it, we have the potential to be creative, fluid, dynamic, free, and loving. But there is no clear end point toward which we are all destined. Barnard commented that if there is a telos for Bergson, then it appears in the cash-value of his work, which is his notion of personal intuition. The more intuitive one becomes, the more freedom and creativity one can display. Bergson emphasized the inherent human capacity for alignment with the élan vital. As people increasingly align with it, this will naturally result in richer and fuller lives. For Bergson, one's individual freedom to lead a rewarding life is ultimately an expression of the universe's own freedom. When aligned with the universe, we are maximizing its creative flow in the unfolding of our lives. Elisabet Sahtouris
On Wednesday night the conference participants left the Big House for the Huxley meeting room, where Elisabet Sahtouris gave a lively presentation open to the entire Esalen community. With the aid of a colorful power point slide show, Sahtouris discussed an emerging view of living systems, in which the fields of biology, physics and consciousness studies are seen as mutually compatible and consistent with one another. She added that this emerging model sees life forms not as accidental biological entities that have evolved from a non-living universe according to the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection. Instead, this view sees life as a multi-leveled, holarchic, evolving, and intelligent process intrinsic to the cosmos. Thus, life is the natural process of a cosmos, which is understood to be alive as well. On Thursday morning, the conference participants asked some questions about Sahtouris's presentation from the night before, particularly her views on global warming. Sahtouris is actively working with scholars from around the globe to build a living systems model of evolution and cosmology, so please see her extensive and colorful websites on this and other topics: Duane Elgin
After patiently taking in the numerous informative talks during the course of the week, on Thursday morning Duane Elgin gave a presentation that summarized some of the key elements of his "life project." The summary below is necessarily a condensed version of these elements, which are further elaborated upon in papers, books, and Elgin's informative website. So, the reader is encouraged to see www.awakeningearth.org for more information. Elgin's Background: Learning to Co-Arise with the Universe Elgin started by describing some of his background in parapsychology, archetypal studies, and Buddhist meditation. For nearly three years, from 1973 to 1975 Elgin was a parapsychology research subject at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) in Menlo Park, California. At the same time he was working with the great mythologist Joseph Campbell and a small team of scholars to co-author a book on the great, mythic archetypes of human evolution. Also during this fertile time in his life, he was engaged in intensive Buddhist meditation practice, which included his participation in several extended retreats. Elgin remarked that these three components of his life in the early to mid-seventies served as the backbone for insights that would come to him later in the decade. Elgin said that the initial parapsychology experiments were sponsored by NASA. Two types of experiments were involved: receiving information and sending information (or energy). The "receiving" experiment involved primarily "remote viewing" and was of stark simplicity. Elgin said that he would be placed in a bare room with a pad of paper, a pencil, and a tape recorder and then asked, after waiting for half an hour for travel time, to describe where in the Bay Area the outbound experimenter might be. This target person was someone that he knew well and, after his door was locked, the target person's destination was selected from a list of more than a hundred possible locations by drawing an envelope at random from a locked safe. Elgin's task was to describe in words and drawings the location of this outbound person. Was he in a boat on the bay? In a car on the freeway? In a grove of redwood trees? In a movie theater? In the room next door? His only instructions were, "Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and tell us what you see." Although the impressions were subtle and fleeting, Elgin gradually learned that we all have an intuitive ability to "see" at a distance. The "sending" experiments were mostly informal in comparison to the highly controlled, double-blind remote-viewing experiments. To explore the sending or expressive aspect of consciousness, researchers were able to draw upon instruments from one of the world's finest engineering and research laboratories. Among the various instruments that were set up for Elgin to interact with were: a rotating pendulum, sitting at rest, that he was asked to turn, with any motion registered by a laser beam and recorded on a strip-chart recorder; a magnetometer (an electrical sensor placed inside a canister of extremely cold, liquid helium) that he was asked to somehow interact with and to have it register on a strip-chart recorder with interactions far outside the "noise level" or random variation of the system; and a highly sensitive weighing scale connected to a strip-chart recorder to register any motion that he was asked to push on while it was locked in another room. Although these were exploratory experiments, the feedback for Elgin was powerful and convincing. He reported that again and again he received striking evidence that we participate in a subtle though powerful ecology of consciousness. A core insight that he took away from these experiments is that everyone has an intuitive faculty and that psi functioning is entirely normal. He said that an intuitive connection with the larger universe is nothing special; it is built into the ecology of our living universe. With the "remote viewing" experiments, he realized that we all can "see at a distance" and receive meaningful information through intuitive, non-local connections. With the "psychokinesis" experiments, he discovered that we all "touch at a distance" and can extend our experience of conscious connection and meaningfully interact with scientific instruments over a distance ranging from a few yards to several miles and more. Another core insight that Elgin took away from this work is the skillful and effective action in the universe. In doing the PK (or psychokinesis) experiments, his initial assumption was that one's mind was being used to influence matter. To Elgin, this meant that he was starting from a place of separation: himself in one place, the instrument in another, and he was to somehow project mental energy from himself to the instruments. After repeated failures with the mind over matter approach, he started to realize what the Buddha said long ago: namely that the entire universe is co-arising at each moment and, in the arising process, there is a way to participate in the world beyond our physical body. Called by the Buddha pattica samupadda or dependent co-arising, it means that the entire universe is arising as a singular whole at each moment in a flow of continuous creation. As Elgin shifted into field consciousness where he felt himself co-arising with the instrument, significant interactions would occur that were far outside the noise level of the system. Ever since these experiments in the seventies, Elgin has been trying to explain those powerful results from a spiritual and cosmological point of view. The Experiential Discovery of a Self-Evident Dimensional Geometry After these exciting years of work, study, and spiritual awakening, Elgin decided in 1978 to take a half-year retreat (described in detail in Appendix II of his book Awakening Earth). As he spoke about the retreat, he described it as less of a time of pure meditation and more like a fully engaged inquiry into the nature of reality and our evolutionary journey. He wanted to know if there were a fundamental telos to the cosmos. As he approach the end of this half-year retreat, he felt even further away from clarifying insight—and so he resolved, based upon his years of work with psi, to hold the felt meaning of this inquiry in his consciousness and to sit in continuous meditation until liberating insight emerged. After three days of sustained meditation, a powerful awakening experience occurred. Here is a summary paragraph from his book, Awakening Earth:
Elgin said the experience was trans-verbal, totally transparent, and vividly clear. Of course, translating Elgin's experience into words fails to capture much of the richness and beauty involved in it, but there were a few key points to be conveyed. The first self-evident insight concerned the geometry of the universe. Elgin said that an invisible geometry permeates the universe and provides a structural foundation for all existence, both physical and perceptual. In other words, the same geometry that structures physical space also structures psychological or perceptual space. An invisible geometry provides not only a supportive architecture for our physical cosmos, but also a nested series of learning environments within which and through which evolution throughout the universe unfolds. Elgin illustrated his point by saying that a dimensional explanation for humanity's transition from a hunter-gatherer society to a farming society would be to say that people shifted from seeing reality as a flat world of two dimensions to seeing reality as a depth world of three dimensions. In other words, by experiencing and then acting from out of a three-dimensional view of reality, we created the agricultural revolution. In a similar way, by experiencing and acting from a four-dimensional context we moved from static, farming societies to dynamic, industrial societies. Each new dimension is exquisitely designed, he said, to call forth new potentials from us by providing a unique "opportunity space" or learning context for people and societies to fill out with their actions. The dimensional nature of reality is like a nested set of Chinese boxes: Each new dimension embodies an enlarged frame of reference within which are nested all previous dimensions. When we first enter a new perceptual paradigm (such as the agrarian era or the industrial era), we experience great freedom and creative opportunity. However, as we fulfill the potentials of a given paradigm, it eventually becomes a constricting framework whose partial nature leads to a crisis in human affairs. This crisis, in turn, leads to a breakthrough into the next, more spacious perceptual context, and a new level of learning and creative expression is drawn out. Our future is not predetermined. Within broad limits of human psychology and planetary ecology, we can fill out these stages of development in whatever way and with whatever timing we choose. Although the dimensional pattern does not determine how we will respond, it does create a series of powerful and resilient contexts within which—and through which—evolution unfolds. It is up to us consciously choose how we will fill out the sequence of evolutionary environments. Continuous Creation Cosmology: The Dynamic Foundations of Evolution A second core insight that was informed by the years of psi research and confirmed by Elgin's meditative inquiry in 1978 was that our universe arises in a process of continuous creation. Elgin saw that the entire cosmos co-arises along with everything else, moment-by-moment, in a never-ending flow. In turn, all flows comprise one grand symphony in which we are all players, a single creative expression—a uni-verse. In other words, the entire matter-energy complex of the universe as a whole flashes into existence at each moment. Elgin has come to call this view "continuous creation cosmology," and he has subsequently studied the physics of light in order to understand it better. One of Elgin's unique claims is that there is a deeper reason for the constancy of the speed of light. He hypothesizes that the constancy of the speed of light is a result of the precise consistency with which the overall fabric of the universe is dynamically woven together. In other words, the constancy of the speed of light is produced by, and is a result of, the pervasive evenness with which the overall cosmos is being regenerated as a unified system. In turn, the precise consistency of continuous creation at the cosmic scale has been interpreted as the constancy of the speed of light at the local scale. Please consult Elgin's paper "Continuous Creation and the Constancy of the Speed of Light" from his website for more on this. To get a feel for the ability of the larger universe to continually regenerate itself, Elgin asked participants to reflect on the fact that mainstream physics has revealed that 96% of the universe is invisible and the planets and stars that we see constitute only 4% of the known universe. Furthermore, there is a phenomenal amount of background energy in the universe—sometimes called zero point energy—that we are just beginning to recognize. Elgin speculated that what PK experiments are really showing us is the ability of consciousness to alter the moment-by-moment flows of manifestation of the universe. Elgin said that before doing these experiments, he thought he was a biological being in a material universe but now he sees himself as a cosmic being participating in a living universe. Telos is Torus: The Universe Builds Self-Referencing Systems The third core insight that arose from Elgin's meditative inquiry was about the torus. As he put it succinctly: telos is torus. This means that the dimensional geometry Elgin encountered is much more than a field to support the physical structures of the universe. In addition, it has the fundamental purpose of supporting the evolution of self-referencing and self-organizing systems. Elgin noted that at every level and everywhere we look, the universe is busy with one, overriding project: creating and sustaining, dynamically stable, self-organizing systems. He explained that the basic physical structure of that pattern is called a "torus," which has the shape of a donut. At every level of the cosmos, he said we find the characteristic structure and geometry of "torus-like" or toroidal forms. The torus is significant because it is the simplest geometry of a dynamic, self-referencing, and self-organizing system that has the capacity to keep pulling itself together and to sustain itself. It's very shape curves back on itself, thus making it "self-knowing" or "self-referencing." By virtue of its self-referencing capacity, the torus "knows" its own dynamics in a rudimentary way. Elgin said the basic torus-shape is the simplest shape possible that allows for two things: structure (closed-ness) and dynamism (openness). All toroids have a degree of basic structural stability, but simultaneously they remain energetically open to the flow-through of Life energy. In seeing this simple structure throughout the universe (see Figure 1), he recognized that the universe has a central telos or purpose: to create self-organizing, self-referencing systems at every level of the cosmos. To cite one example: Technically speaking, humans are called Homo sapiens sapiens; we are the creature that "knows that it knows." In our reflexive knowing, we are the species that can fulfill the toroidal function of the earth itself. Put in slightly different terms, the earth as a living system knows itself through the self-reflexive activity of humans. The earth bends back on itself when humans cross the "threshold of reflection" (as Teilhard put it) and start to think, ponder, and cogitate on the nature of the universe itself. Figure 1:
 Dimensional Geometry Reveals Symmetry in the Evolution of Consciousness Elgin said that if we start to look for the toroidal shape, we can find its signature throughout the universe and at every scale. We can also find in the evolutionary arc of the human journey: Evolution follows a bending curve that reaches back upon itself. Starting from the early dawn of awakening in our hunter-gatherer ancestors and stretching up to the modern era, we can see a toroidal or reflexive consciousness being developed for the earth. Through the evolution of human consciousness (the "noosphere" as Teilhard called it), the earth is, in effect, bending back on itself to know itself in full conscious self-awareness. Further, this process can be understood as a step-by-step progression through a series of dimensions of consciousness. Elgin explained that a "dimension" is far more than a dry mathematical concept, it is the invisible structure within which we exist. Dimensions are akin to the deep genetic code of the cosmos. As he likes to put it, there can be no reality without dimensionality. The miracle that anything exists at all depends, he said, upon dimensions to provide the transparent framework of geometry within which things can become manifest. Central to Elgin's image for this evolutionary process is how reflection turns back upon itself. This is in contrast to Ken Wilber's linear view for the evolution of consciousness, in which each stage subsumes the former in a ladder-like ascent up a mountain. Elgin's toroidal model does have a stepwise ascent pattern, but crucially, the entire process bends back on itself. And it is in this reflexive movement that a series of symmetries between the dimensions becomes apparent, as seen in Figures 2 and 3. Figure 2:
 Importantly, in Figure 2 each stage represents a geometrical dimension of consciousness. Thus, the Archaic stage of human evolution is the first dimension, or 1-D. The Hunter-Gatherer stage is the second dimension, or 2-D. The Agrarian is 3-D, and so on up to the stage of integral awareness and a Wisdom Civilization in 8-D. The first five stages Elgin described in Figure 2 turned out to be quite similar to those of Jean Gebser's model, which had been described the day before by Eric Weiss. (Elgin also noted parallels with insights from many other of the world's wisdom traditions.) To read Weiss's presentation on Gebser please click here. There are two crucial differences between Elgin's model and Gebser's. First, Elgin's model is cosmologically-based rather than human-based. Elgin explained that using human experience to describe awakening is both logical and limiting. It is logical because we are the subjects with which we are concerned. It is limiting because it produces insights that are unique to human experience and difficult to generalize to other life forms throughout the universe. In other words, an anthropocentric approach does not inform us about the nature of a larger evolutionary dynamic that is relevant to the universe as a whole. In contrast, the theory of dimensional evolution declares that the geometry of our universe provides an evolutionary matrix for all life and thereby transforms the journey of awakening from a strictly human endeavor to a project that concerns life throughout the cosmos. Elgin's insights, then, have a resonance and relevance (a type of core Pythagorean patterning) at all levels in the universe. Gebser, in contrast, has extremely rich descriptions of the individual dimensions or stages, but he lacks any type of cosmological background for them. Gebser studied very carefully the evolution of human consciousness and clearly recognized the structures of magic, mythic, mental, and integral. Elgin hypothesizes that a "dimension" holds all and everyone impartially and so provides the basis for a theory of evolutionary awakening at the cosmic scale. All life forms, whatever their biochemistry, exist within and grow through the same dimensional geometry that structures the universe, so he assumes that all life shares in a common journey of awakening. Second, in its most basic patterning, Elgin's model is symmetrical. This is apparent in the figure on the following page, which shows more clearly how the material and consciousness dimensions mirror one another as they form a self-organizing and self-reflexive toroidal system. This summary page is taken from his book, Awakening Earth (pp. 222-223). Symmetry Between Levels of Matter and Consciousness Evolution When diagrammed as shown below here, one can see how the dimensions form two tiers that are symmetrical to one another. The three levels of material evolution are reflected at a higher level by the three levels of consciousness evolution:  Elgin explained that this geometry contains a highly purposeful pattern of learning that leads to our awakening as integral beings and societies. Each new dimension seems exquisitely designed to call forth new potentials from us. Said another way, each new dimension provides a unique "opportunity space" or learning context for people and societies to fill out with their actions. Thus:
As he described this process of perceptual and dimensional evolution, Elgin emphasized that, although human history has many unique twists and turns, dimensions of learning come to us as perceptual wholes or "chunks." Therefore, in the agrarian era, for example, we open in our experience to the entire vista of three dimensional reality and not some fraction thereof. Each new dimension often comes first as an epiphany to someone like Leonardo da Vinci or Albert Einstein, bringing forth the insights necessary for the next stage of perceptual awareness. Dimensional evolution proceeds much like Gebser's notion of "mutation." Each new dimension comes into awareness with a sudden burst or leap into a new perceptual universe. Overall, the three stages of material evolution have revealed to humanity the fact, depth, and dynamism of the material world. This long process of growing in personal empowerment, individuation, and separation from nature has been the central drama of our evolution up to this point in time. We are now making a great turn toward another phase in our evolution where we take up the learning on the consciousness side of the overall symmetrical pattern. Our challenge now is to progressively awaken to the fact, depth, and dynamism of consciousness as a co-equal partner in evolution. Conclusion: Our Moment of Planetary Reflection and Reconciliation As he concluded his presentation, Elgin noted that our current moment in history can be characterized as a critical point of evolutionary inflection. This is particularly true because evolution is now being called upon to inflect or bend back on itself and realize the symmetry between the 3 stages of material development and the next 3 stages of consciousness development. At this point in our evolution, humanity is being called to recognize the bare fact of consciousness itself. It makes sense that so many scientists are now gripped by the need to understand just what consciousness is. Furthermore, another key theme in the fifth dimension of evolution (5-D) is reconciliation. Now that humanity has separated itself from nature and come to master it, the time has arrived for us to turn back with maturity and compassionately reconcile ourselves to nature—and to each other. Elgin said that reconciliation is vital in many forms and on many levels—the reconciliation between the masculine and feminine, the rich and poor, racial groups, religious groups, and many more. Finally, one important point of contact recognized by Sean Kelly in response to Elgin's presentation should be noted here. After hearing Elgin's talk, Kelly pointed out a striking resemblance to his own model for consciousness evolution that he first described in his essay "Revisioning the Mandala of Consciousness: A Critical Appraisal of Ken Wilber's Holarchical Paradigm," which was published in Ken Wilber in Dialogue (Quest, 1998). Kelly said that his own understanding of the evolution of consciousness was influenced by David Bohm's notion of the explicate and implicate orders. Thus, Kelly said he views the three material dimensions (2-D, 3-D, 4-D) as explicate articulations of the three implicate consciousness dimensions (5-D, 6-D, 7-D). If this symmetry between explicate and implicate holds, then we should expect a certain resonance, similarity, and even mutual interpenetration between the corresponding dimensions. For example, it should be no surprise that we find some of the early shamanic pioneers of consciousness displaying some of the capacities of 5-D while they lived during the evolution of 2-D. There is a natural resonance between the emerging recognition of the fact of material existence during the hunter-gatherer phase that corresponds to the shamanic exploration of the fact of consciousness itself as a terrain to be experienced as fundamentally different, although connected, to the material realm. In response, Elgin concurred with Kelly's primary point about the mirroring qualities or resonance between the material (explicate) dimensions and the consciousness (implicate) dimensions, and he added that he would be glad to explore the details of how those similarities function during a subsequent discussion. Jeff Kripal
On Thursday afternoon Jeff Kripal gave the concluding presentation of the week. He focused his comments on his latest book titled The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion and how some of the ideas he has developed in it relate to the conference's topics. Kripal started by saying that the book is addressed to a particular profession, scholars of religion, and that this field is dominated by two primary camps, the rationalists and the religionists, which he characterized as follows: The rationalists: This camp argues that religious studies should be essentially a social science, and therefore, the topic of religion should be reduced to power, politics, libido, or whatever social theory is preferred. This leaves no room for gnosis, or the mystical/esoteric core of the world's religions. The religionists (aka, representationalists): This camp argues that scholars of religion should be representing the faith traditions in a way that they would recognize and approve of. So, scholars should, in effect, represent belief. Kripal said there is a deep imbalance in this polarized situation and that these two camps have been fighting each other for prominence for several decades. But quietly, in the midst of this struggle, Kripal believes that most scholars of religion have moved outside of these two camps. Instead, they have become part of a growing and more radical middle position, which Kripal calls the "gnostic" position. In the Serpent's Gift the dialectic between the first two positions is described as well as the possibility for a synthesis in the gnosis position. To accomplish this, Kripal employs the myth of Adam and Eve and, in particular, the view of the snake. In the ancient gnostic traditions the snake turns out to be the true hero who bestows real gnosis upon those who listen, while God turns out to be a petty tyrant who tries to prevent this from happening. Kripal said his book's core thesis is that the modern study of religion unwittingly participates in gnostic and esoteric currents that have been running through Western culture for centuries, currents that are at once deeply religious and heretical. Today, religious scholars can renew their field by looking at themselves as postmodern gnostics. Kripal quipped that a few months ago one of his graduate students prepared the index for the book. When the galleys came back for editing, Kripal saw that the index began with the "AAR" (American Academy of Religion) and ended with "The Zohar" (an esoteric Kabbalistic text from the medieval period). In short, the book synthesizes these two broad poles into a novel third way. Next, Kripal related some of the key points from The Serpent's Gift to the conference themes discussed this week at Esalen. He started with the observation that even though several different languages or preferred vocabularies have been favored during the week (such as the preference for Hegelian thought, or Aurobindo, or what not), all of the scholars in the room are discussing a similar core structure. He explained what he meant by this comment with the following chart: Three Epistemologies or Approaches in Religious Studies  Kripal noted that in Paul Ricouer's work there is a third stage beyond faith and reason that he called "second naïveté." This is encountered only after a scholar has moved through the desert of Enlightenment rationality and begins to re-engage the revelatory dimension of religious symbols once again. Echoing Robert McDermott's presentation on Owen Barfield, Kripal said that Barfield's term "final participation" is resonant with Ricouer's term. Overall, the tri-partite movement through the stages diagrammed above is what The Serpent's Gift is about. Next, Kripal described the book chapters briefly to reveal a bit of his method. He said that much of the book follows the method of "inversion" originally pioneered by Ludwig Feuerbach in the mid-19th century. For example, when in the Bible it reads "God is Love," Feuerbach cleverly inverted this to reveal its deeper psychologically projected meaning, which is that "Love is God." Kripal also mentioned that his book chapters were not written as scholarly or rational arguments so much as long poems intended to evoke something of the gnostic state in the reader. In the first chapter on the topic eroticism Kripal said he looks at the sexuality of Jesus, particularly as it was described in the Gnostic gospels. Whereas Freud once famously reduced the mystical to the sexual (and infantile), Kripal inverts Freud's view and argues that the sexual is really a dimension or potential expression of the mystical. In the second chapter on humanism, Kripal looks closely at Feuerbach's spiritual life and seminal method for studying Christianity, which has proved to be truly influential for the subsequent field of religious studies. As Kirpal argues, Feuerbach's own spiritual life can be read as akin to a gnostic exemplar for his own three-phased structure of faith, reason, and gnosis. Not as well known to history as the man he influenced, Karl Marx, Feuerbach became (in)famous as a controversial student of Hegel's, after he published a radical and psychologically sophisticated critique of Christian symbols titled The Essence of Christianity in 1841. Kripal said that Feuerbach inverted many of Hegel's insights about the historical development of Absolute Spirit in order to emphasize the role of human projection of our inner dignity and divinity onto Divine images. In his response to Hegel's focus on the dry and abstract Absolute, Feuerbach argued for a more sensuous anthropology or humanism. Taking cue from this human-centric approach, Kripal as well develops his own "mystical humanism" in The Serpent's Gift, in which all mysticism is shown to be rooted in the human. But Kripal emphasizes that his version of humanism is far richer and broader than the normal use of that term. For Kripal, the human is cosmic. This type of humanism can find friendly roots in Kabbalistic and Neoplatonist texts, which speak of an intimate human-cosmic connection. Kripal said he wants to affirm the human referent used in the religious language, but also redefine the human at the same time. Relating this to Bill Barnard's presentation on Henri Bergson, Kripal commented that Bergson saw humans as potential gods, or gods-in-the-making. In the third chapter on comparativism, Kripal said he tackles the world renowned Indian saint Ramakrishna, who was the subject of Kripal's first book, Kali's Child. In this chapter Kripal focuses on the truly radical nature of the comparative project itself. The attempt to compare and contrast the world's religions is much more than a simple ecumenism. Instead, its deeper effect is to relativize all the faith claims of the exoteric religions, which simply don't agree. Kripal thinks that in this process a common mystical basis to the religions has been emerging during the 20th century, and although scholars of religion have deconstructed their own topic, they simultaneously have opened the door for the third way of gnosis. In the fourth chapter on esotericism Kripal addresses the fact that what scholars do is deeply offensive to religious believers. In the last couple decades, in particular, several scholars have been verbally attacked and threatened by traditional and fundamentalist groups. Kripal himself has been the target of these attacks, and his experience, and that of many others, was the spark plug for launching Esalen's multi-conference series on fundamentalism (see weblink here: www.esalenctr.org/display/fundamentalism.cfm). Kripal said this problem goes back to the driving motif of his book, the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve take of the fruit, God is enraged at them. Psychoanalytically speaking, this is the projected superego, which kicks them out of their blissful leisure. Thus, Kripal thinks there is something deeply transgressive about the serpent's gift of gnosis that needs to be acknowledged. This issue of exile needs to be owned up to, and Kripal discusses it via an imaginary comic book allegory. In this part of his book Kripal describes Professor X who starts a wonderful school called Westchester Academy. This is a refuge for pubescent teens, who can't "come out" with their latent spiritual powers. At the Academy Professor X teaches the struggling and exiled teens two things: First, that the youth are not strange, and that they can accept their gifts. And second, that they can channel their budding sexual-spiritual energies for the good. Kripal said that this brief allegory is aimed at college students who also feel alienated. College, after all, is the closest thing we have today where initiation rituals are still taking place in American culture. As he concluded his presentation, Kripal made one more important point. He said the book breaks down the false divide between theory and practice or experience. For Kripal, theories are really altered states of consciousness (ASC). As we study a theory, we enter into a theory-specific universe that changes our consciousness. In this vision, academic work is thus seen as what Michael Murphy calls a "transformative practice." Importantly, Kripal said that theories code for these altered states, but only potentially. In the engagement with theories, we have the chance to awaken and actualize the ASC. Thus, Kripal is explicitly noting the spiritual dimension to methodology and theory-making. Each method we employ to arrive at a theory is really a transformative practice that changes our consciousness. Conclusion The conference concluded on Thursday afternoon with a group discussion of potential areas for focus at the next gathering in 2008. From this conversation a number of themes emerged: Lineage Recognition and Development: Given that this inaugural conference served as a broad introduction to the lineage of foundational figures of evolutionary panentheism, the group decided it is important to continue identifying this lineage and expand the public's awareness of it. This goal is comparable to that of another CTR conference series, which has focused on the dimly recognized lineage of Western esotericism. (See the "Esoteric Renaissance" series on the CTR website for more information on this.) A number of participants expressed particular interest in identifying the core elements or "seeds" that were planted for the panentheistic vision during the Romantic-Idealistic period from 1780 to 1830. This was a particularly seminal period in history for the lineage of evolutionary panentheism, and scholars are still grappling with how to interpret its overall significance. The Parameters of Evolutionary Panentheism: Some participants said that if the group wants to create a recognizable school of thought, it needs to become clearer about what the specific parameters of evolutionary panentheism are. What criteria should be established to demarcate the field? What thinkers and scholars should be included in or excluded from this lineage? What sets evolutionary panentheism apart from other thought movements in the current age? Participation of Subtle Realms and Beings: The topic of how the group can most creatively function also was discussed on Thursday. Several participants expressed the desire to incorporate subtle realms and beings more intentionally into the conference proceedings by means of various invocational practices. A number of ideas were offered, and all of them centered on how to maintain the scholarly integrity of the conference while at the same time invoking and involving the spirit realm in the group's creative process. The Evolution of Individuated Souls: A number of people expressed interest in integrating this conference with the ongoing research happening in CTR's Survival conference series, which will meet for the 10th time in 2008 at Esalen. Some wanted to look more closely at the evolutionary purpose of individuated souls by addressing questions like: Do such souls play a specific role within an evolutionary cosmos? What degree of embodiment accompanies a soul's journey through various realms and incarnations? How have human souls influenced the evolutionary process of the universe? Do they bring more freedom to way evolution itself works, etc.? Conclusion: The conference ended on an upbeat and energetic note with a strong desire by the facilitators to build upon what was laid out during this inaugural gathering. The next meeting was set for December 9 to 14, 2007 at Esalen, where a number of old and new faces will come together to continue this exploration.
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