Introduction

This annual conference series began in December 2006 with a gathering of scholars who are interested in contributing to an emerging world vision that we are provisionally calling “evolutionary panentheism.”

The presentations at this first meeting were rich with details about the major scholars who have contributed to the growth of this vision—which has been emerging gradually for nearly two hundred years. Some of the prominent names here include: the German Idealists Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; the French synthesizers of evolution and mysticism Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Henri Bergson; the British Romantic literary scholar Owen Barfield; the vast Bengali mystic Sri Aurobindo; and the integral historian of consciousness Jean Gebser. The ideas of these scholars, and others as well, were entertained at our first meeting, providing a rich background for this annual series to build upon. If the reader would like a more detailed description of the several ideas and names discussed at this inaugural event, please see this web link: http://www.esalenctr.org/display/evo_meta.cfm.

For the second gathering in this annual series, we hosted an essay contest, the winner of which was judged democratically by all of the conference participants as the one who best described the essential features of the next “Big Book” in a short essay. Eight such essays were submitted for the event, and the conference proceedings centered around the ideas in them.

But before I turn to the description of what unfolded during the week at Esalen, let me first address a couple important issues that bear on the conference topic:

• What is evolutionary panentheism?
• What is a Big Book?

What is Evolutionary Panentheism?

During the past two centuries the sciences of biology, anthropology, archeology, genetics, paleontology, geology, and cosmology have all revealed to us that we live in an evolving universe. But while this has happened, these same scientific disciplines have been mired in the unwarranted assumption that evolution is largely a meaningless and directionless process; for them, the universe is an evolution of matter alone. Although scientists have discovered the stupendous news revealing our place in an evolutionary cosmos, they have been reluctant to see any larger meaning and purpose to this grand tale of tales. In response to the overriding “disenchantment” that characterizes the scientifically-based narrative of evolution, the Creationists have persisted and even expanded, particularly in their new form of Intelligent Design. These camps tend to dismiss the scientific evidence for evolution—seemingly motivated by religious (and perhaps aesthetic) reasons more than anything else. It is as if these movements are saying: “science has discovered the evolution of the universe only to tell us it’s meaningless and radically contingent. We reject their unwarranted atheism and meaninglessness, because we know deep down that there is a Divine role in the process.” Of course, the scientists lash back at that kind of position, and so our cultural understanding of evolution stays stuck in the back-and-forth between these polarized groups and their rigid worldviews of mutual rejection. These Esalen conferences were started to ask the question: Is there another way? Is there another vision that can hold the partial truths clung to so dogmatically by these antagonistic worldviews?

Evolutionary panentheism is a philosophical term, but what it points to is a world vision that affirms the evidence of the scientists (evolution is factual and real) but rejects its materialism and atheism. Likewise, evolutionary panetheism affirms the spiritual intuition that our universe is indeed Divine but rejects the dogmatism and cultural hostility that accompanies religiously motivated views. Evolutionary panentheism thus draws on the best of these worldviews, but it is not a mere synthesis of them. Instead, it also goes beyond them by adding new elements, in particular the testament of the world’s mystics and sages, who claim direct experiential insight into the mystical nature of Reality. As Jeff Kripal has put it in numerous Esalen conferences and in his book The Serpent’s Gift, evolutionary panentheism is deeply informed by gnosis—direct experiential insight into Reality—rather than faith or reason alone.

To be even more specific, “panentheism” means that Spirit (the Divine, the Absolute, Emptiness, etc.) is both transcendent and immanent to our evolving universe. The word “transcendent” suggests that in some very real sense the Divine is outside of and Eternal to the world of changing and developing forms. Timelessness is not impacted by the events of time. But the word “immanent” suggests that this is not all. The Divine is also engaged in the world in a real and tangible way, suffering the pangs and blows of incarnate existence and celebrating the unique joys of life in the flesh. With the advent of the evolutionary sciences, our understanding of Divinity Itself has begun to change. Mystics and sages, like Teilhard and Aurobindo, have described the Divine as seeking to incarnate in the world of form. The process of evolution thus brings forth new forms of Divine embodiment in ever greater complexity and richness. From atoms to plants to humans and beyond, we can see an evolutionary progression of the Divine’s own self-exploration in embodied form. Or, as Michael Murphy likes to quip, if we look at the universe as an evolutionary panentheist, we might say that it is involved in the “body-building business.” It is building embodied structures that can know and experience its own wonder and majesty. Thus, evolutionary panentheism is a spiritual and philosophical view, but more broadly, it is an emerging world vision that affirms life on earth because it regards the evolutionary adventure of this universe as an exploration of transcendent Spirit in the realm of incarnate life.

For the second conference in December 2007 the facilitators proposed a minimum set of eight parameters that might act as a platform for this emerging vision. While this is not a rigid or dogmatic proposal, it can act as a guiding statement to demarcate and distinguish what evolutionary panentheism is from what it is not:

1. Nondual: That the metaphysical structure of Reality is “nondual” in the sense that the Divine is both transcendent to and immanent in our evolving universe. That this is not simply a dogmatic claim but also a possibility for direct human experience, and thus confirmation.
2. Telos: That there is both an overarching purpose as well as a significant degree of contingency in the evolutionary unfolding. Thus, despite unexpected catastrophes, evolution is inherently meaningful, directional, and even artistic (or beautiful). That tragedy and pain are somehow constitutive of the unfolding of this universe but do not mitigate its meaning.
3. Divine Action: That the Divine acts in the course of evolution and history, but precisely how “action” is defined will always be open for interpretation. For example, “action” could be defined as “eros” (a basic drive toward greater life), as “gentle persuasion,” or in some cases as “direct intervention.”
4. Subtle Worlds: That subtle worlds and beings (e.g., angels, devas, archetypes) have a real, though gentle, influence on our material world in a manner that cannot be discounted. That our relationship to these worlds and forces needs to be critically evaluated, thus implying that we can have a more (or less) consciously co-creative relationship with them.
5. Embodiment: That consciousness and embodiment have complexified in a hierarchical manner during the course of the universe’s evolution, including human history, and they harbor the latent potential to continue this trend into the future.
6. Souls: That individualized “souls” are a fundamental part of evolution, such that the reincarnation of souls might be envisioned as an emergent process that is essential to the complexifying action of evolution at the human and superhuman levels.
7. Traditions: That the world’s wisdom traditions have a window into this worldview but have for various reasons either rejected the testament of modern science concerning evolution or have not fully reconciled to it in a way that produces a viable and attractive vision for the coming age.
8. Cash-value: That a worldview based on evolutionary panentheism would have immense “cash-value” if broadly publicized in our contemporary age, which has foundered on meaningless postmodernism, atheistic scientism, and dogmatic fundamentalism.

Many of these parameters are open to empirical investigation. In the true spirit of science, this conference series is investigating evolutionary panentheism in a manner that is open to confirmation or rejection by ongoing inquiry and research coming from all the great disciplines. For example, Esalen’s Center for Theory and Research has hosted a 10-year conference series examining the evidence in support of the hypothesis that “something” survives bodily death. The participants in this conference series have assessed a variety of data points that suggest something like a human soul really exists, even if the details of how it operates are still a mystery. Rather than reject this controversial evidence, the view of evolutionary panentheism attempts to broaden its own vision to see if such evidence can be understood as part of a larger evolutionary advance. For more information on this research, please click here.

Overall, it is important to emphasize that the budding world vision of evolutionary panentheism will stand or fall according to its ability to illuminate the data of human experience, world history, and our evolutionary cosmos. In this sense, it is deeply scientific, non-dogmatic, and open-minded to evidence suggestive of untapped spiritual potentials in the human species.

What is a Big Book? And what are some examples?

The 2007 conference was centered on an essay contest. Eight proposals were submitted to describe what the next Big Book would be like. But what is a Big Book? Throughout human history revolutionary books have rocked the reigning intellectual consensus and brought forth radical new ideas and visions, which eventually were incorporated into the broader culture. When historians look back in time, they can see pivotal moments when bold new ideas created a ripple effect that eventually changed the course of history. To give the reader a feel for some Big Books in human history, here are five examples:

Perhaps the most classic example of a Big Book is Nicholas Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, which was not published until Copernicus was on his death bed in 1543. Although this work did not create dramatic changes overnight, it did eventuate in a tectonic shift of cultural vision in the West. The modern scientific enterprise is often dated to Copernicus’ epochal shift toward seeing the sun as the center of our solar system, rather than the earth. Historians point out that it took the work of Copernicus’ heirs—Kepler, Galileo, and Newton—to complete the so-called Copernican Revolution.

More specific to the field of evolutionary panentheism, Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Mind (published in 1807) is considered a Big Book, because it seeded so many ideas that evolutionary panentheists are still unpacking and interpreting today. Written amidst the fervor and revolutionary excitement of the Napoleonic era, The Phenomenology captured many of the great elements of the panentheistic vision: Spirit’s unfolding in and through history; the dialectical rhythm of progress; the characteristic alienation of each historical epoch, which can only be resolved by progress into the next worldview; the description of each worldview as a necessary but inadequate step toward the realization of Spirit in the world. That The Phenomenology is often considered the ur-source for the intellectual lineage of evolutionary panentheism is warranted because so many subsequent thinkers have wrestled with its implications, regardless of whether they agree with Hegel or not.

Around the time Hegel’s epoch making book was stimulating philosophers across Europe, Charles Darwin embarked on his 5-year voyage to the Galapagos islands, which eventually (many years later) resulted in another one of the most famous Big Books, the Origin of Species. Within a few years after its publication, intellectual opinion elites were convinced of the factual evidence and theoretical argument in favor of natural selection and biological evolution. In a manner similar to Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus, Darwin’s Origin resulted in an immense revolution in human understanding, the implications of which society is still wrestling with today.

A fourth Big Book that is not as well known to Western audiences as those mentioned above is Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine. Published in segments at first in the years following World War I, this immensely learned compilation and world vision drew upon Hegel’s work and synthesized it with the mystical attainments and insights of a great Indian sage. The Life Divine can rightly be considered a Big Book because its vision is so comprehensive and inclusive and its impact is still rippling out today. For example, Michael Murphy’s inspiration for the Esalen Institute as a center for the exploration of the human potential was seeded by his own reading of Aurobindo. A number of contemporary evolutionary panentheistic thinkers, like Ken Wilber, have drawn heavily from Aurobindo’s vast intellect, particularly his descriptions of the higher realms of consciousness and embodiment.

The last Big Book worth mentioning is Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Coincidentally, Kuhn’s book was published in the same year that Esalen was founded, 1962. Kuhn’s argument that all scientific inquiry takes place within the intellectual context of paradigms led to the popularization (and some would say, misunderstanding) of the word “paradigm” and the phrase “paradigm shift.” The sudden advent of a new vision, new context, new mode of thought or set of assumptions, is often considered a “paradigm shift.” Soon after its publication, Kuhn’s book was being cited by feminists, philosophers, political activists, sociologists, and anyone seeking to substantiate the world’s readiness for bold change.

With these five examples in mind, let me turn to the eight essays that were submitted for the December 2007 conference. One of the best ways to influence the emergence of the next world vision is to clearly imagine what it would be like first. If we can become clear about what elements will be essential to the next paradigm, then we can expedite their arrival in full form.

Eight Proposals for the Next Big Book

Phil Clayton

Phil Clayton got the conference rolling on Monday morning with the first proposal for the next Big Book. Clayton began by stating that the only way to reach the reigning opinion elites is with science, but the key is what kind of science? Like most everyone in this conference, Clayton said he is not impressed with the reductionism and materialism that prevails in the mainstream sciences. This out-moded approach dominates the field of cognitive science, for example, which has been trying for decades to reductively explain the human mind as a bio-chemical product of the brain.

Clayton shared his background with a very different approach that is gaining ground in a number of scientific fields called the “sciences of emergence.” In recent years, a number of prominent names have been taking a fresh look at the concept of emergence, which was somewhat popular for a time in the early twentieth century. Clayton has summarized the history of thinking about emergence and some contemporary approaches to it in his book Mind and Emergence. For example, Clayton mentioned the work of biologist Stuart Kauffman, whose research has looked at emergent properties as applied to the riddle of the origin of life. Clayton said that scientists like Kauffman are discovering that we need a new way of thinking—and a new way of doing science—that is adequate to the holistic causation of emergent systems. Such systems bring forth new properties, which are de novo wholes non-reducible to their constituent parts and the laws operative at lower levels of organization. Clayton thinks that emergence as a broad concept or explanatory approach could have application to a number of areas, including cognitive science, group creativity, and social change.

In his essay Clayton also described some of the features of the various schools of evolutionary panentheism from both the West as well as the East. For example, Clayton said that the philosophical lineage for panentheism stretches back to at least Spinoza, who so strongly influenced the dialectical thought of German Idealism. Clayton noted that it was Schelling’s particular genius to artfully preserve the real freedom of the part (the individual agent) in dialectical tension with the surging advance of the whole (although Hegel’s thought may have been superior to Schelling’s in its comprehensive scope and logical rigor).

Overall, Clayton emphasized the need to integrate the rich lineage of panentheism with the new sciences of emergence. It is this crucial integrative work, which may take many conferences over several years, that will be a cornerstone of the next world vision that this conference is attempting to foster. On this note, Clayton concluded his essay with this paragraph:

Only since Darwin have the outlines of the broader scientific picture of evolutionary reality become clear. And only since the death of reductionism and the ascendancy of the emergentist paradigm in the last decades has an integration of science and metaphysics for the first time become a possibility. Thus we now stand before a paradigm shift that has been imagined in the past but has only now has become fully visible. It may be, as I think, that the dawn of this new age is inevitable. Yet history is contingent enough that the pace of that dawning may have much to do with what we (and our allies around the world) think, do, and say. So let us speak and write with boldness. It is indeed a moment of world-historical importance.

Glenn Magee

On Monday afternoon Glenn Magee went next. Magee is a Hegel scholar who found his way to Esalen by virtue of his fascinating book Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, in which he argues convincingly that Hegel was influenced by the grand lineage of Western esotericism that dates back to the legendary figure Hermes Trismegistus.

Magee suggested that the next Big Book must be a new Phenomenology of Spirit—but it must account for the modern (or post-modern) condition of alienation and despair that has come upon us since Hegel’s time. During his presentation Magee gave a sketch of what this new Phenomenology of Spirit might look like, arguing for a tripartite theory of history. Borrowing terminology from Vico, Magee argued that in the first stage of history, human beings thought in terms of imaginative universals. These are the products of “archetypal wisdom,” which has its source in the subconscious mind. In the second stage of history the imaginative universal is subplanted by the intelligible universal: mythos and poiesis are subplanted by logos. With the ascendancy of logos comes the development of philosophy and science—as well as the progressive disconnection of thought from the body and from nature and the cycles of life. This has persisted until the present day, and has given rise, among other things, to totalitarianism and environmental destruction.

Philosophy has attempted to address this problem in its own way. We have the sense that something has been lost, that we are cast adrift, rudderless, and we are striving to recover it through reconstructing the final and fully adequate conceptual system. But the philosophers made a crucial error: they believed that logic was a tool of discovery. In fact, Magee argued, they owed their insights to the recollection of bits and pieces of primordial poetic wisdom that had guided the lives of their ancestors. Philosophy in the West culminates in Hegel, who provides us with the ultimate, all-encompassing conceptual system—yet, to say the least, it has not healed our sense of loss and disconnection.

Magee argued that we are now entering into a third stage of history, which is marked by the self-critique and voluntary self-limitation of the logos. This is a further and higher achievement of self-consciousness—and a step beyond Hegel. In the third stage of history Magee argued that we will turn toward the non-rational sources that have, in a subterranean fashion, inspired philosophy and mysticism all along. We will, in short, return to poetic wisdom. And to aid in this journey we will need the mystical practices of East and West to guide us.

Magee emphasized that the third stage will be marked by an abandonment of grand idealistic schemes for remaking society or changing human nature. Instead, in the third stage certain individuals will withdraw as much as possible from entanglement with the world built by logos and attempt to come back to poetic wisdom in their own way. In the third stage we have come to conscious possession of poetic wisdom. This is an advance upon our naïve position in the first stage of history, made possible, in fact, through the tragic loss we have endured in stage two. Overall, Magee said that what is needed now is not evolutionary panentheism as a philosophical system, but a truly lived panentheism that is directly felt in the body and is coursed through with imagination and poetic grace.

Robert McDermott

On Monday night, Robert McDermott discussed his very clever and imaginative essay proposal for the next Big Book. This brief summary cannot capture all the wit and mirth in McDermott’s essay, so the reader is welcome to read it in full at the following weblink: http://www.esalenctr.org/display/papers.cfm.

Here I will attempt to characterize his essay only in brief. McDermott envisioned a numinous and hugely consequential event that took place at Esalen in the early dawn of the 21st century. Drawing on the ancient neo-Platonic philosopher Plotinus, McDermott envisioned nine wise elders (following Plotinus’ nine Enneads), who by virtue of divine guidance and revelation, were called to meet to discuss the future of the planet Earth, or more appropriately, Gaia. These nine elders were: Goethe, Hegel, William James, A.N. Whitehead, Rudolf Steiner, Sri Aurobindo, Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Dalai Lama. Because they are all dead except for the Dalai Lama, the meeting took place in a somewhat ethereal state that was both inside time, yet outside of it as well. And despite the fact that all the participants were men, they were considered to be the best source of wisdom to guide humanity’s perilous journey into the future.

A number of themes arose from their deliberations. First, that no monolithic worldview, cosmic storyline, or heroically authored philosophical system was adequate to this moment in history. The age of the lone cowboy philosopher is over. Instead, a radically new (even to these semi-Enlightened masters) wisdom that can hold the simultaneous truth of the individual and the collective was what emerged through them. The purpose and message of the gathering became clear in this sense: The actual process shared among the sacred nine was as important, or more important, than the resulting content. Actual participation with one another turned out to be the most effective message, or really new mode of revelation appropriate to our age.

Despite this striking emphasis on process, there were a few themes that they all agreed were crucial as the Earth Community moves into the future. Most prominent is the dawning emergence of what McDermott called “Gaiasophia”—or Earth Wisdom. After years of separation from Mother Earth, humanity is now re-integrating and re-learning to draw upon Her Sophia, as it is expressed in nature, in body, and in feminine ways of knowing and being. Lovelock’s Gaia theory is only the beginning of a much larger historical re-awakening to the eternal feminine as embodied in and through the Earth. Gaiasophia is a phrase that captures the return of this uniquely feminine and earthy wisdom. If the reader is enticed by this short description, please follow up by reading the full version of McDermott’s fun and illuminating essay by clicking on the link above here.

Loriliai Biernacki

On Tuesday morning the religious scholar Loriliai Biernacki shifted the topic of conversation to the East, as she presented the panentheistic vision of the 11th century Indian sage, Abhinavagupta (henceforth “Abinava”). Biernacki contrasted Abhinava with the better known (to Western audiences, anyway) figure of Sankara, whose Advaita Vedanta was popularized in the early 20th century by Vivekanada and others who came to the West. Biernakcki said that for Abhinava, ananda (meaning “bliss”) becomes a key term, whereas Sankara’s Vendantic mysticism tended to avoid the element of bliss. Instead, Sankara had a more chaste view of the spiritual journey. But Abhinava’s system offers a more bodily-centered view, not only of bliss, but of ritual theory, spiritual practice, and aesthetic theory as well.

Biernacki described how Abhinava fuses knowledge and action into a larger continuum of human experience of the Divine. This fusion facilitates a resolution to the problem of the body-mind split, a philosophical problem that not only plagues the West’s Cartesian philosophy, but is also found early on, from at least the 2nd century CE in India, as a product of Samkhya philosophy. In his teachings that join knowledge and action, Abhinava is thus able to reinvest the world with Divine immanence. Or, put in other words, Abhinava’s philosophical system is thoroughly panentheistic. Biernacki said she has been drawn to this way of viewing things because it allows space for the body and immanence within a theological conception of the world. She added that although Abhinava lived centuries before Darwin, one can read an evolutionary component in his worldview. This is apparent in the various grades or levels of consciousness that he discriminated in his writings. These levels include ones that go beyond human beings, so humans are not privileged in his system. In fact, Abhinava describes beings, such as the lords of Mantras, as beings who have attained states of consciousness and existence higher than humans experience.

To tie in Abhinava’s thought to some of the other prominent thinkers that have been explored in this conference series, Biernacki mentioned that Abhinava’s influence can be seen in Sri Aurobindo (and his thought also has similarities to Henri Bergson’s work). The rich Tantric heritage that Aurobindo integrated into his evolutionary vision has the look and feel of much of Abhinava’s own ideas, particularly the more positive orientation toward the human body. With respect to Bergson’s thought, Biernacki brought attention to some of the issues around teleology that are crucial to this conference series. Like Abhinava, Bergson eschewed a strongly finalistic telos (as in Hegel or Teilhard) in favor of a more robust and radical creative principle in the universe. The cosmic blueprint for evolution is not set in stone from this perspective. Instead, the accent is placed on radical novelty and genuine surprise in the adventure of evolution. This emphasis on the need to let go of a rigid clinging to a notion of teleology was in fact the main point of the paper Biernacki sent for the conference, while the presentation focused more precisely on Abhinava's thought. Biernacki thus closed by noting that for our contemporary world today, steeped as it is in new ideas put forward by thinkers such as Foucault and Derrida, the notion of teleology carries with it too many connotations of an old imperialist ideology. As such it appears outmoded and culturally biased to many younger scholars. Thus, she suggested, if this conference really wants to reach opinion elites with a new world vision of evolutionary panentheism, then it is important to build in an openness to creativity and plurality—and not just give lip service to these crucial ways of knowing and being so central to our globalized world.

Paul Marshall

Paul Marshall came to Esalen for the first time from England for this conference. He had been noticed by the facilitation team for his recently published book, Mystical Encounters with the Natural World: Experiences and Explanations. On Tuesday morning Marshall took his turn at describing the next Big Book. He started by distinguishing two sub-categories here: the Really Good Book and the Truly Revolutionary Book.

Marshall said the Really Good Book should be an academically oriented piece of scholarship that surveys the field of evolutionary panentheism and acts as a productive reference tool for anyone who wants to learn about the subject. Many in the room agreed with Marshall that such a book would be quite useful for furthering the recognition of this lineage. Marshall proposed a potential title: A Companion to Evolutionary Metaphysics. This volume would look at: the basic background or orientation to the topic; some of its well-known theories or metaphysical approaches; and some key themes or issues that arise in the field. For example, the book would address the issue of just how theistic evolutionary panentheism really needs to be. “Theism” tends to be associated with religions that have a personal God or Divine figure. But Marshall pointed out that the Buddhist teachings of Hua-yen, to take one example, contain some of the important features of the vision we are seeking to articulate (e.g., organicism, transcendence-immanence) but are not overtly theistic. Marshall also mentioned that the so-called “insider/outsider” issue would be addressed: evolutionary metaphysics can be studied from the outside, as a purely academic undertaking, but philosophies of transformation invite study from the inside too, which might involve a personal commitment to “see the world anew.” The variety of perspectives on these and other tricky issues would be covered in this volume. But as Marshall put it in his essay, this volume would end with a strong message about the potential for further human advance. It would resonate with the theme that all beings can be seen as “divine sparks on a journey through the vale of soul-making.”

The second type of book Marshall called the Truly Revolutionary Book. This is the ground-breaking and visionary book capable of inspiring followers and impacting on society at large. Marshall said something in this category could even be a novel or screenplay; it need not be limited to the genre of a scholarly text. Echoing some of the sentiment that Phil Clatyon expressed on Monday, Marshall said this Revolutionary Book will most likely integrate new advances in the sciences. But instead of looking to the new sciences of emergence (the place Clayton thinks the next “breakthrough” is coming from), Marshall said that the emerging vision will draw on or creatively synthesize the fractured world of contemporary physics, which (after 70 or so years of trying) has still yet to arrive at a truly unified theory that tells us what the universe is and where it is going. Marshall speculated that the reintroduction of mind might be the crucial deciding factor here. At present, scientists are only beginning to open up to non-materialistic and non-reductionistic views of physics and cosmology. But perhaps a fully panpsychic or panentheistic physics is on the near horizon? Marshall added that we should not discount the possibility that a new Einstein could appear, who accomplishes this mighty and epoch-making task through mathematics itself. The big vision may come about through a new set of equations just as easily as it could through a bold philosophical work. With a hint of caution about the human desire to discover the next Big Book or big idea, Marshall ended his essay with the following:

Sometimes, when I emerge from dusty libraries into the bright sunshine, after hours spent fraternizing with the great books, I wonder whether all this damned scribbling is really worth it. Before the vast transforming universe, full of unimaginable life and beauty, the torrent of words seems little more than a play of shadows, a poor imitation, a distraction from the things that really matter. But Plato, in The Republic, tells us to go back to the cave, and Huxley too, in The Doors of Perception, urges caution: Aquinas, at the end of an unusually productive life, had earned the right to silence, whereas we inferior scholars must keep on scribbling. The next Big Book of evolutionary metaphysics is waiting to be written.

Bill Barnard

On Tuesday afternoon Bill Barnard took the group in a fresh direction with a more experiential and invocational “presentation” of the essay he submitted for the contest. In true Esalen fashion Barnard pushed the envelope by inviting the group into a slightly altered format that involved some invocational movement, drumming, and chanting. While this was unfolding, Barnard peppered this numinous ambiance with some of the key points from his essay.

To begin with, echoing what Glenn Magee said about the need for a “lived panentheism,” Barnard brought emphasis to the experiential realization and direct embodiment of all the great ideas that had been discussed in the room so far during the week. Instead of pondering the conceptual content of the next Big Book, Barnard called upon everyone to be present in every act that contributes to the emerging panentheistic vision. In this way the accent is shifted from the content for the emerging vision to the actual process and practices that will ultimately help us embody it. Barnard believes that the more we can suffuse our lives with Presence, the more inspired our visions of the future will be. In this sense, Barnard was challenging himself and the group not to overlook how much the emerging word vision will need to be directly embodied every step of the way. In the past, a new world vision came about through the maverick genius, like the great Copernicus or Darwin, but what is needed now is not just another great idea but the constant vigilance to really “walk the talk” by directly living the vision. Barnard amplified a sentiment that many shared when he said that we can never underestimate the importance of accessing a deeper inner stillness to inform our writing—and really all our actions. As he put it in his essay:

It is only from this “place” of visceral connection to our own deepest nature that we have any hope of transmitting, as fully and purely as possible through the medium of our words, at least an echo, or a taste, or a glimpse, of the wondrous and sacred light and love and power that shines in-and-through even the most mundane experiences of ordinary daily life; it is only from these depths that a truly Big Book can hope to emerge, a book that has the possibility of igniting the hearts and minds of a new generation.

Next, Barnard drew on his deep admiration for the ideas of Henri Bergson, when he said we must hold the tension between guessing at the future when describing the next Big Book and letting inspiration come to us in an organic and moment-by-moment process of unfolding creativity. Thus, in the spirited ambiance of Esalen new visions and creative possibilities are likely to unfold in and through the group—but only if the group truly attends to the moment-by-moment unfolding of Divine Presence in the first place. In this manner, Barnard continually brought attention to a fuller integration of process and product, thus amplifying Robert McDermott’s presentation, which said that feminine process will be a major feature of the coming world vision.

Despite his desire to emphasize process as a counter-balance to some of the more theoretical presentations, Barnard did list what he considered to be some of the key features of the emerging vision, such as:

• A paradoxical tension between Manyness and Oneness
• An acknowledgement of evolutionary hierarchies or levels
• The embracing of human potential for greater life
• The omnipresence of Love as a lived force
• The need for openness to inner guidance
• The equal importance of effort and will to meet that guidance
• An embracing of the body, sex, and incarnate pleasure
• The integration of multiple ways of knowing
• An openness to deep Mystery and surprise

Freya Mathews

“If the world itself is a living thing, unfolding from a beginning through to a potential end, then it too will be internally structured by story.”

Wednesday morning started with a pleasant dialogue between Freya Mathews and Eric Weiss. Mathews took the lead in articulating some of the distinguishing features of a kissing cousin to panentheism, panpsychism, while Weiss acted as an elicitor of some of Mathews’ key ideas. The very mode of dialogue is congruent with one of the central themes in Mathews’ work, which is the epistemology of encounter—a more relational way of knowing the sacred. In her presentation at the first conference in this series Mathews drew out a number of the implications of this mode of knowing and being, particularly with respect to how humans can participate in a larger story evident in the living subjectivity of nature. If we engage nature with the attitude of encounter, we can be drawn into the larger story of nature’s unfolding, in which synchronicities abound and nature “speaks” to us with rich meaning. Mathews described this orientation in her book on panpsychism For Love of Matter.

Developing these themes further in her essay submission for this year’s contest, Mathews wrote a narrative account of a Daoist mentor, Sun Dew, and her curious chronicler, Rosmarin, who entered into an extended dialogue about the qualities of the next Big Book while sitting atop Birrabimurra, a granite mountain in Australia. At the heart of their conversation was the issue of what most books actually do. Books are, of course, wonderful. Who doesn’t like a good book? But most books are one step removed from the reality they discuss and describe. In short, books are about things. Sun Dew suggested, however, that we need a new voice or new communicative mode in books, one that is addressive rather than merely discursive. It is not enough for a book espousing a panpsychist metaphysics merely to describe the world as alive with a life of its own and imbued with meanings of its own. The book should also acknowledge the truth of this in its form, by actually addressing the world rather than merely speaking about it. The way to do this, Sun Dew explained, is through story - by situating books in larger narrative contexts, in the way that books were situated in the sacred, symbolic, storied contexts of temples and monasteries in ancient traditions. In this way, books became, and can become again, part of a complex poetic process of invocation, a process of bringing the world into poetic dialogue with the reader.

Sun Dew put it this way: Human societies have always been connected to the interiority of things through story, and this connection has been the context for all our knowing. All our knowing has traditionally been situated within the narrative framework of this direct conversation with reality itself. Without this framework there is no such conversation, and without this conversation, the world is always external to us, no matter how we might represent it in our theories. Or, to put this slightly differently, philosophy too often has spoken about the world but not to it. Thus, the call today is to restore an authentically ceremonial dimension to books and knowledge and world visions. This would bring the truth of panpsychism into the act of both reading and writing a book, rather than panpsychism being subtly negated by these acts.

As Mathews presented this view to the participants, Eric Weiss helped her to draw out some of the key issues at stake. For example, in the panpsychist approach Mathews was describing there arises the need to be much more attuned to a language of particulars. The world cannot communicate with us through abstract concepts; it can only do so via the poetic resonance of actual things - the chirping of a bird, the blowing of the wind, the crashing of the ocean - and thus we need to cultivate our capacity to notice these communicative overtures. So, in this sense, the world is experienced in its communicative mode, not only its unitive mode, as the mystics experience it. The emphasis on the former is the province of panpsychism, while the emphasis on the latter is the province of panentheism. Furthermore, Mathews suggested that each approach has a different ideal or trajectory. Panentheism idealizes the saint and has a moral trajectory toward that realization, while panspsychism idealizes the artist and thus has an aesthetic and erotic orientation. When we are in a communicative mode with Reality, we enter into a poetic dialogue with nature. In contrast, unitive mysticism tends to transcend nature altogether. But the panpsychist approach seeks to invoke the communicative capacity of the world around us. This may seem strange to many Westerners, but to those who are receptive to Shamanism, Aboriginal and indigenous thought, or are even just well-attuned nature lovers, the communicative capacity of nature is, shall we say, natural!

Mathews concluded her presentation by emphasizing that the panpsychist approach is conducive to rapport with nature and hence to environmentalism, and this gives it immense cash-value. We can hardly deny that this is the age of ecology, and so the more we can weave this message into the next Big Book the better. But Mathews said that we would be missing the point if we simply focused on the science of ecology, which rarely cultivates the storied, aesthetic, and poetic sensibility. Mathews’ version of ecology is a much more profound ecologiz-ing of Reailty. It is more akin to a full re-story-ing of the very basis of our civilization.

Sean Kelly

Of the eight presentations and essay submissions for this conference Sean Kelly’s was certainly the most visual. Kelly started his presentation by showing the audience a series of cosmological images. These ranged from “the Woman Who Fell from the Sky” in Iroquois cosmology to the Garden of Earthly Delights by Heronimus Bosch. These stunning images brought home to the conference participants the need for a visual and mythic component in the emerging world vision. The left-brained logic of the next Big Book will certainly be central, but this must be coordinated with equally compelling appeals to our right-brained side.

As he continued to show these images, Kelly described some antecedents to evolutionary panentheism that dated back to the medieval period; for example, the vièrge ouvrante, which is a statue of Mary with Jesus on her lap. This statue happens to open up to reveal a picture of the Christian Death-Rebirth Mystery as it is simultaneously contained within the cosmic womb of Mary. In this vivid piece of Goddess art, the Divine is portrayed as embedded in the world while the world is simultaneously embedded within the Divine. Thus, though it dates from the medieval period, it can be seen as a symbolic intuition of the intermixing of transcendence and immanence at the heart of contemporary evolutionary panentheism.

When Kelly turned to some of the features of the emerging world vision, he described a very integrative type of panentheism. In Kelly’s view, this integrative vision must creatively synthesize these elements:

• The wisdom of the world’s great Axial religions
• The sensibility of the pre-Axial indigenous or earth-based spiritualities
• The great awakening of the Romantic/Idealistic era (c. 1790 to 1830)
• New paradigm thought of the 20th cen. (Gebser, Aurobindo, Wilber, etc.)
• An openness to cutting edge science (complexity theory, for example)

But most critically, Kelly emphasized that however we integrate these various threads into a larger panentheistic tapestry, the next Big Book must speak to a new context for human experience—what Kelly calls the planetary era. This phrase orients us at the level of organizing principle or root metaphor to the entire planet as the all-pervading context for humanity. Ever since humans walked on the moon and sent pictures of the whole earth back to society, the image of the planet has been increasingly working its way into our daily lives as an intuition of our common oneness and solidarity. As Kelly likes to say (following Edgar Morin), humanity is presently in the Iron Age of the planetary era, but we have the potential for bringing forth a fuller planetary wisdom.

Next, Kelly highlighted the importance of weaving contemporary cosmology and Gaia theory into the panentheistic vision. Kelly showed a slide of a cosmic ouroboros by the physicist Joel Primack. This image looks like a gigantic snake eating its own tail, but arrayed along the snake are quasars, galaxies, stars, planets, strands of DNA, ants, and humans. The point of the image is to convey the recognition that humans live in the middle realm between the great expanses of the cosmos and the vanishingly small. While in one direction there are the immensities of the macrocosm (the immense super clusters of galaxies far, far away), in the other direction is the world of the microcosm, where DNA shades into quantum events and even smaller dimensions than that. The cosmic ouroboros thus reveals humanity to be right in the middle of this vast stretch outward to either side. Kelly said that this intuition about the central role of the human has been discovered by other religious traditions (like the lokapurusha of Jainism or the cosmic Adamon of Kabbalah) throughout history, and thus contemporary cosmology is really re-confirming a deep intuition about the role of the human in the cosmos. To see this image on the web, click here.

Kelly concluded by updating the conference participants on some of the recent news about the state of our biosphere. Global warming, species extinction, and the degradation of ecosystems and social systems, are just some of the planetary scale challenges humanity is facing now. Relating these comments to the apocalyptic dimension apparent in Heronimus Bosch’s art work, Kelly concluded on this note:

If our future is not to realize the apocalyptic vision of Bosch’s third panel, we must heed the assessment of the world’s leading ecologists and environmental scientists. To do so, however, will require fundamental shifts in our material, economic, social, and political modes of being in the world. If we succeed, we will be ushering in the next evolutionary phase of the Planetary Era, one guided not by the myopic and destructive ways of industrial growth society, but by a nascent planetary wisdom culture.

Phil Clayton and Synoptic Theorizing

On Thursday morning Phil Clayton took a turn facilitating the group in a challenging but quite rewarding exercise. Unlike most of the participants in this conference series, Clayton attended a number of the meetings from Esalen’s previous conference series on evolution, which featured many more scientists who were not particularly open to the panentheist vision—or the evidence in support of it. The goal of that series was to weave (or plait) together a spectrum of views on the evolution of the universe into a larger braid of collective understanding. In fact, at one point the group was seeking to publish a book titled, The Braid of Discovery: Plaiting Emergence, Consciousness, Epistemology, and Evolution. As a participant in this conference series, Clayton saw upfront the challenges of bringing together a diverse group of scholars with the hope that they could recognize their own metaphysical positions (or assumptions) as part of a larger tapestry.

With this experience in the back of his mind, Clayton facilitated this group of conference participants (who were invited specifically because they share a greater degree of overlap in their metaphysical assumptions as well as an overall openness to mystical experience) through an exercise of metaphysical self-location or self-recognition within a larger spectrum of views. Put in other words, Clayton asked each member to theorize synoptically—to rise up to a broader or more “meta” position that can hold several views at once. To accomplish this, Clayton asked each member to self-locate in response to the following questions:

1. What is your view of the relationship between the One and the Many?
2. Is the One (or Ultimate) impersonal or personal in your experience? How theistic is your view? Where do you stand on the difference between panpsychism (non-theistic) vs. panentheism (theistic)?
3. What is the role of evolution in your view? Does the transcendent suffer in the course of time’s unfolding? How immanent is the Divine in the evolving world?
4. What balance is there between joy (ananda) and suffering in your metaphysical vision?
5. What is included in the transcendent movement toward the Divine? Is anything left behind in this ascent? For example, what happens to matter in the evolutionary ascent?
6. How much is the unknown and mysterious incorporated into your view?
7. Is there an inherent telos to the universe? For example, is there an inherent drive toward greater complexity?

As Clayton laid out these questions, he suggested that each member try to see his or her position within a spectrum of tensions:

• Some views emphasize Oneness more
• Some views emphasize Plurality more
• Some views lean toward more transcendence
• Some views lean toward more immanence
• Some views lean toward a more impersonal Divine
• Some views lean toward a more personal Divine
• Some views prefer more certainty and direction
• Some views prefer more mystery and contingency

There was a lively discussion of these points by the group. Each member had a unique angle on all of the questions. A few highlights of the discussion are worth noting. First, some participants emphasized the need to radically temporalize any view. Thus, how we view evolutionary panentheism right now—in December 2007—is a specific moment in history. Our own views of it are within the temporal unfolding that evolutionary panentheism seeks to characterize, so we must hold our views in that context. Second, some participants emphasized a similar point, which was that the Divine as well is evolving. The Divine discloses Itself to humanity in different degrees at different stages of our development, which we might need to understand as different stages in its own development or becoming as well. Thus, it is important to regard the Divine as dynamic and evolutionary in its own right. Lastly, other participants brought attention to human personality and temperament. If we are ever to make progress in such conversations about our deeply held metaphysical commitments, it is crucial to be self-transparent about our own personalities and emotional investments in our views. Without some type of psychological self-awareness of why we are invested in our views, we will most likely only end up arguing defensively with one another. To those who emphasized this perspective, the need to couple metaphysical discussion with emotional and psychological disclosure is crucial.

Conclusion

As the conference drew to a close, Jeff Kripal provided some informative context to the participants so that they might hold the ongoing quest to understand a broader evolutionary vision as part of a longer historical continuum of human inquiry. Kripal drew on some of the points he made in his recently published history of Esalen, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion. Kripal said there are a series of historical roots and lineages that stretch back to India that inform the goals of this conference series. Many schools of Eastern tantra view life similarly to the way evolutionary panentheism does. They both share a broad embrace of the body, sexuality, and incarnation in general. They are all an integral part of the adventure of life and consciousness on this planet. Kripal added that the spiritual traditions that emphasize gnosis over reason and faith are also informing these Esalen conferences. Overall, Kripal’s point was that the quest of this series has roots in the past that go very deep. To read more about Kripal’s view, please see the summary of his presentation from the first conference in this series in December 2006 by clicking here.

The conference came to a close on Thursday night with a celebration dinner and the announcement of the essay winner. Sean Kelly’s essay “Evolutionary Panetheism for the Planetary Era” won the democratic group vote as the best essay. Kelly gave a rousing toast to the group in response to his victory. Earlier in the day, the group had enjoyed a spirited ritual down on the rocky shore by the ocean. Chanting in unison an invocational prayer amidst all the natural elements of sand, surf, tide, river, and trees, the participants sung out a Spanish chant “Viva! Viva!” to all the wonderful mysteries of life they were grateful for. So, to close this summary, I will say “Viva to evolutionary panentheism!”