THE IMPLICATIONS OF MATTER AS METAPHOR
Consistently applying the new-paradigm perspective
on matter and consciousness (as is attempted in this book) — that is, of
matter as an epiphenomenon of consciousness and the primacy-of-the-psychic-world
postulate — requires a rethinking of theoretical constructions even in
the fields of consciousness and psychology, which one would think at first
hand to be amenable to this sort of view. However, our cultural context
is such, our Western viewpoint so engrained, that even in these fields
there seems a huge temptation to bow to the prevailing winds and a consequently
understandable reluctance to go out on a limb against those.
Thus, we have many hybrids — theorists who
it appears are trying to please too many people, too many former mentors,
or whatever; and who find themselves, consequently, unable to go steadfastly
forward, following through consistently on the implications of the transpersonal
perspective. For example, from a consistent new-paradigm vantage
point, Ken Wilber (1980, 1981, 1982, 1983) — the "consciousness" guru of
the more intellectual, less experiential wing of the transpersonal movement
— appears as inconsistent as pre-Copernican astronomers in devolving his
theories.
Therefore, much of this next part, as well
as of Part Five, will entail addressing the way the perspective presented
in Part One, "Matter As Metaphor," affects, expands, changes, and reverses
the tenets put forth in transpersonal psychology and philosophy — especially
those aspects associated with Ken Wilber.
The Revolutionary Import, in Science,
of the New-Paradigm Perspective
But let us set aside transpersonal thinking for
the moment to focus on the larger picture. It may also be argued
that in the larger context of normal science, in general, the new-paradigm
primacy of consciousness is simply irrelevant.
However, I take strong exception to that.
It is not simply innocuous that scientists refuse to acknowledge the implications
of their findings. For in fact the implications of them would require
a revolution and an overturning, and in many cases, a throwing out as obsolete
of much of what scientists have paid highly for and struggled long and
hard to learn.
The Lengths To Which They Go
So it should not be too surprising to observe
the lengths to which scientists will go in avoiding the implications of
their findings. Their actions and behaviors have all the earmarks
of what, in therapeutic circles, is called denial.
For example, Roger Jones (1982), a physicist,
in his remarkable book titled Physics As Metaphor, points out how
physicists in their day-to-day activities hardly consider the implications
of twentieth-century findings in their field. He begins by noting
that, "Quantum mechanics, then, may just possibly imply an essential role
for consciousness in the scheme of things. . . ." (1982, pp. 6-7). Nevertheless,
he adds that
[T]he real issue is whether or not
such ideas figure significantly in scientific research. It is, in
fact, the rare scientist who is concerned with such matters. The
Copenhagen interpretation may be the prevailing philosophy of quantum mechanics
today . . . but it is hardly a hot topic over lunch at the research lab.
Most scientists take a rather pragmatic and condescending view of philosophy,
and its niceties have no direct bearing on their day-to-day research, thinking,
and discussion. . . . Fifty years after the Copenhagen interpretation
forced consciousness on an unwilling scientific community, there is precious
little to be found in the research literature of physics to suggest any
bridging of the mind-body gap.
In fact, in the last fifty years, the trend
in mainstream physical science has been away from consciousness and holism
and toward the mechanistic and divisible world of the nineteenth century.
Fritjof Capra argues that despite the much touted promises of an ultimate
unification in physics, modern elementary particle and quark theory is
basically a throwback to the atomistic, thing-oriented notions of premodern
physics and is contrary to the holistic, process-oriented currents in modern
thought. (Jones, 1982, p. 7)
In fact, Jones (1982) goes so far as to say that
in teaching physics and in publicly maintaining its precepts he often felt
as if he were living a lie:
I found myself thinking hard about
why and how to interest children in science, and this in turn awakened
several philosophical issues that had troubled me over the years.
As a practicing physicist, I had always been vaguely embarrassed by a kind
of illusory quality in science and had often felt somehow part of a swindle
on the human race. It was not a conspiracy but more like the hoax
in The Emperor's New Clothes. I had come to suspect, and now
felt compelled to acknowledge, that science and the physical world were
products of human imagining — that we were not the cool observers of the
world, but its passionate creators. (p. 3)
His implication is that physicists are aware of
the subjective and arbitrary nature of the pronouncements and assertions
they make about physical reality. It follows that they assert, with
such authority and with the certitude of fact, things which they know to
be only conjecture, or at the most, conjuring. Jones (1982) concurs,
I . . . suggest that scientists (and
indeed all who possess creative consciousness) conjure like the poet and
the shaman, that their theories are metaphors which ultimately are inseparable
from physical reality, and that consciousness is so integral to the cosmos
that the creative idea and the thing are one and the same.
What else are we to think when the theory of
relativity teaches us that space and time are the same as matter and energy,
that geometry is gravity? Is this not an equating, an integration,
of mind and matter? Is this not an act of poetic, perhaps of divine,
creation? And what of the astronomer's black hole, the perfect metaphor
for a bottomless well in space from which not even light may escape?
Which is the reality and which the metaphor? And what of quarks,
the claimed ultimate constituents of matter, locked permanently within
the elementary particles they compose, never able to appear in the literal,
physical world? Are they not constructs, figments of the mind, symbols
for a collection of unobservable properties? How is the quark more
real than figurative? . . . Indeed, as Sir Arthur Eddington said
in 1920, the footprint we have discovered on the shores of the unknown
is our own. (p. 5)
Finally, he goes so far as to equate with idolatry
the elevation of such man-made scientific constructs to objective status.
And he suggests that such deceptiveness and failure to be completely candid
is linked to some of our major modern crises:
For the full elaboration of the idea
of science and the physical world as a construct of the mind or a collective
representation, I owe a great debt to Owen Barfield and his writings, especially
his book Saving the Appearances — A Study in Idolatry. It
was Barfield who helped me most to fathom the deceptiveness of science
by seeing that when metaphors become crystallized and abstract, cut off
from their roots in consciousness, and forgotten by their creators, they
become idols. For an idolator is not so much one who creates idols,
but one who worships them. This failure to recognize the central
role of consciousness in reality and thus to treat the physical world as
an independent, external, and alien object has been a chronic problem throughout
the modern era of scientific discovery, since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment,
and has reached a critical stage in the twentieth century with its unconscionable,
and largely unconscious, ravaging of the environment. (Jones, 1982,
p. 5)
The Elders' "New Clothes"
This overall pattern of behavior has remarkable
parallels to something that happened in recent history (the last few decades)
among a particular culture in Papua, New Guinea. As the story goes
— according to a well-known anthropologist who was studying there at the
time and observed the entire sequence of events — this particular tribe,
from time immemorial, had perpetuated a sequence of male rites of passage
beginning with adolescents of a certain age. The rites were especially
brutal.
But in the course of them, the initiates were
led to believe that great value would come from their endurance of the
rites. For they would be given certain aspects of "secret" knowledge.
Furthermore, they were informed of the various other stages in the rite
that they would need to go through in the course of their life — each of
which would be excruciatingly painful; but each of which would be rewarded
with a little more of the secret knowledge until, near the end of one's
life, one would be instructed into the highest knowledge of all:
This was the knowledge that was the possession of only the most elderly
males in the culture.
These secrets were never shared with women.
The women were never let in on any aspect, at any level, of the ceremonies
that the males performed and underwent, nor any of the secrets they were
told. Indeed, there was such a taboo against women finding out or
males sharing secrets with females that death was used as a penalty for
either infraction.
It follows that the whole truth was only known
by the elders of the tribe.
Now, this anthropologist observed these ceremonies,
studied them, and was let in on certain aspects of them. He could
not be told "the whole truth" of course; for that was reserved for the
elite, the elders — only those who had successfully completed all the stages
of the ordeal, only those who had sufficiently suffered. And this
anthropologist studied other aspects of the culture and returned again
and again over the course of several decades.
But one time when he returned after a several
year absence, he was to find everything changed. The elders no longer
ruled with an iron hand, in fact they were despised and openly rebuked,
especially by women. And the initiation ceremonies were no longer
carried out.
The anthropologist, to his amazement, found
out that what had happened is that a group of the elders had announced
to one and all, in a large community-wide meeting, that there were no
secrets they held, that there never were. The elders revealed
that the entire deception of "the secrets" had been maintained for the
purpose of getting younger men to go through the ceremonies — with the
inducement of greater and greater rewards — and in order to insure their
power and status in the community. Essentially, these elder men "fessed
up" that the only last secret to be told was that there was no last secret;
that it was all a sham; that the entire foundation had nothing beneath
it — like a house of cards built in the middle of the air; that the center
of the onion, after peeling back layer after layer, was in fact nothing.
Now, how do we know the elders were telling
the truth this time? We know this because they confessed in a state
of great distress and guilt. They expressed again and again their
shame at perpetuating the system. In fact, they let it be known that
a big inducement they had for coming forth with the truth was the guilt
they felt, in the rites, at having to follow through on inflicting suffering
and torturing the younger men, all the time knowing the truth and the fact
that there was no reason to be doing it. They said they simply couldn't
bear the guilt, or the burden of lying anymore.
When I first heard this story, I could not
help but think about its striking parallel to my situation in graduate
school, where I happened to be at the time as a first-year student.
The rest of the story is that what had been
happening is that the culture had been increasing its contacts and ties
with the outside world; the villagers were becoming aware of other beliefs
— a cargo cult in particular. And there were other signs to them
of another world out there beyond that of their tribe.
In this light, it was speculated by anthropologists
that this awareness of other realities other than that of one's own culture
— the one that one was indoctrinated and tortured into accepting — may
have had something to do with their losing faith in their way of doing
things. It was suggested by such observers of the phenomenon that
this had led to the elders finding themselves having remorse about such
things as hurting other people — for they would now know that there are
other ways of living and being; that everyone does not believe and live
as one's own culture does; hence that the torture and suffering were not
absolutely necessary (as they had once been convinced, and then continued
to convince themselves). It might be said that losing divine, or
ultimate, justification for their actions caused them to view them in the
human context of the here-and-now relation. With their sights no
longer in the heavens, they could finally observe the tribesman before
them.
This is a true story. Still, it can be
seen as a parable or metaphor for many things currently arising.
In addition to what it tells us about knowledge and epistemologies, the
last part especially might be telling us a lot about the effects, one might
say benefits, to be wrought, in terms of truth, by this century's increasing
mixing of cultures and races and by the worldwide emergence of a multiculturalism
as a common basis of global belief. We might also relate its message
to what was said in Chapter Three about the inauthentic nature of ritual
and of initiation . . . and about how when belief and ritual are removed,
real feelings, authentic feelings are possible.
(This might be considered a directly opposite
interpretation of the normal explanation of ritual/religion/beliefs and
their relation to feeling, by the way. The traditional explanation
is that without such ritual/religion/belief people are left at the mercy
of their aggressive and incestuous inner natures. Thus, when religion
breaks down, all hell breaks loose — and then the situation in urban America
is usually pointed to, to bear this out.
However my interpretation is that belief/religion/ritual
keep real feeling from happening. They also keep truth
from happening. They keep spontaneity and authenticity from happening.
Therefore, when religion breaks down, all truth is liable to break loose.
And this is bound to be a bit disruptive at first — as it is true that
any dam that holds a river in check is going to see that river explode
across the countryside at first until it finally comes to rest in its normal
stable peaceful courseway!)
But most of all this story reminds me of what
Jones wrote about his fellow physicists — those scientists who through
the suffering of years of tortuous graduate study and the equally challenging
hoops of research, research grants, and university tenure tracks are led
to face the foundations of their beliefs as being as equally insubstantial
as those tribal elders knew theirs to be. In this respect, Jones's
book, Physics As Metaphor, is practically the Western equivalent
of such a confession as those tribal elders put before their people.
Indeed, his feelings at carrying around the lie, the "deception" or "swindle,"
are remarkably akin to those of the guilt-ridden tribal elders, so many
thousands of miles and so many millions of cultural beliefs distant.
So we can be thankful to Jones for coming forth.
And we find, further, that he is not alone in doing so.
Dire Consequences of Scientists' Closed-Mindedness
Biologist, natural scientist, and philosopher
Rupert Sheldrake (1991) also describes this radical disassociation between
the day-to-day approach and workings of the common scientist and their
best understandings of the nature of the phenomena they study. And
he explains why this dissociation might occur:
Although science is now superseding
the mechanistic world view, the mechanistic theory of nature has shaped
the modern world, underlies the ideology of technological progress, and
is still the official orthodoxy of science. (p. 17)
And furthermore about this reluctance to change:
"It has had many consequences, not the least of which is the environmental
crisis" (p. 17).
Robert Lawlor (1991), from his cross-cultural
perspective, echoes this perception of scientists and their innate conservatism
in the face of their own contrary findings:
Despite the advances in relativity
and quantum theory, scientists still expect to view a world in which things
are exactly as they appear to be, discrete and unperturbed by the subjective
depths of the mind from which our very perceptions and rational intellect
emerge. (p. 33)
And further on:
Meanwhile, the old thought patterns
and linguistic practices, along with the social, political, military, economic,
and medical institutions based on Aristotle, Descartes, and Newton go rolling
along. Furthermore, the same scientific priesthood, for a price,
continues to supply those institutions with the knowledge and technological
equipment by which they sustain their power. (p. 34)
The Revolutionary Import
And yet, the implications of these empirically-rooted,
experimentally reproducible discoveries about the Reality which we share
are profoundly important and influential in that they affect the very foundations
upon which the rest of science's other findings, discoveries, and theories
are built.
Rupert Sheldrake (1991) points out that the
findings of science have overturned all of science's original premises.
First he lists nine "essential features of the mechanistic world view":
-
Nature is inanimate
-
Inert atoms of matter
-
Determinate, predictable
-
Knowable
-
Universe a machine
-
Earth dead
-
No internal purposes
-
No creativity
-
Eternal laws (p. 17)
You will notice how many of these aspects of the
mechanistic worldview overlap with what is normally called "materialism."
At any rate, Sheldrake (1991) then states, and goes on to demonstrate,
that "every one of those essential claims has been refuted by advances
of science. In effect, science itself has now superseded the mechanistic
world view." (p. 17)
Despite scientists' reluctance to face the
implications of their discoveries and instead to cling to the familiar,
it is our duty to shed popular or convenient positions when they are contradicted
by the evidence (or else give up our scientific endeavor's claim to be
a truthful one). In so doing, Sheldrake's (1991) conclusion is that
[T]he modern changes in science have
effectively transcended each of these features. These changes in
science have not happened as part of a coordinated research programme designed
to overthrow the mechanistic paradigm. They have happened in specialized
areas, seemingly unconnected with each other, and often without any consciousness
that this was leading to a change in the overall world view of science.
What I am going to suggest is that we can now see that this has effectively
refuted the mechanistic world view within the very heart of science itself.
(p. 18)
But let us just now take one specific example.
Let us consider the example of Darwinian evolution. This theory of
evolution and natural selection is so widely accepted that it is hard to
find an alternative explanation of these processes even presented, let
alone discussed, in the textbooks of natural science. And yet there
have been those in the past. The Lamarckian explanation is one of
them. Emanationism is another.
Ostracizing Emanationism In Our Intellectually
"Open" Society
Emanationism is a view of our changes over time
that suggests that we devolve from an original pure state to increasingly
diffracted, diffused, and more impure states of being. It asserts
that, rather than evolving to higher forms, we descend from a highest form
to lower and lower forms as we get farther from an original source.
Such an idea may sound strange these days (thus
reinforcing my argument for the overweening success of the theory of evolution),
yet it was one that was common among ancient philosophers. It was
and is a common "primitive" (a better word is primal) depiction
of the way things work. It is a cornerstone of ancient Gnostic teachings.
A good deal of ancient Greek philosophy is presented this way — for example,
the writings or Plotinus and Proclus. It is the perception of Hindu
cosmology, even up to this day, with the belief in a system of yugas
or ages — each one being a decline from the previous one. Strangest
of all, it appears in a physical form (almost as if it had to come out
somewhere, even if only "reflected") in the theory of cosmic origins put
forth by the scientific community called the "big bang" theory.
However, generally speaking, in this philosophical
conception, the Universe is seen as "running down" over time — that is,
in a spiritual or moral sense, not a physical one like the scientists'
refracted formulation. (Consequently, the current age, which we think
of as the height of evolution is, in Hindu cosmology, the Kali yuga,
the lowest level of decline, of degenerate morals, habit, and custom that
is possible before the starting up of the cycle all over again from the
"top.")
And this viewpoint is expressed magnificently
as recently as the early nineteenth century by philosopher Karl Friedrich
Christian Krause with such import and power that it led to an entire movement
outside of Krause's Germany in the country of Spain during the mid-nineteenth
century and after his death.
Yet this viewpoint is decried and suppressed
these days. Sure of our beliefs in evolution which, conveniently
enough, puts us at the top of the ladder of creation, we relegate the idea
of Emanationism and the philosophy of Krause, for example, to the trash
heap of history. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy has this to
say about Emanationism as regards its contrast with the theory of evolution:
"In modern times, evolutionism has obliterated the emanationist philosophy"
(Merlan, 1966, p. 473).
And sure enough, in my computer search of the
seven million titles in the entire University of California library system
I found not one title at all related to the topic of Emanationism.
Similarly, of the forty-six titles listed on Krause, only two were in English
and both of those were concerned, not at all with Krause's philosophy,
but rather with his other major interest — his political views on world
peace, and the other title an analysis of the sociological movement that
followed from his ideas in Spain. Therefore there wasn't one title
in English on this philosophy, this viewpoint!
We may congratulate ourselves on having an
open intellectual society, a freedom of expression and viewpoint.
However, inquiry like the one above forces us to acknowledge the existence
of certain forces in our world — be they psychological, political, economic,
sociological, or all of these — that severely circumscribe the range of
ideas available for consideration by our supposedly "open" minds in this
supposedly "open" society.
But I do not wish to make the case for Emanationism
just yet. That will be the task of the chapters to come. For
Parts Two and Three present exactly that proposition: that in the
process of coming into the world, in an individual's life, the individual's
consciousness proceeds from a state of high awareness and spiritual expansion
to lower and more constricted levels of such awareness (ontogenetic emanationism
or devolution — Part Two) and that in the process of eons of time
our species has gone from a state of such grand awareness and spiritual
fullness to increasingly lesser states of such (phylogenetic or cultural
emanationism or devolution — Part Three).
Debunking Neo-Darwinism and the Reemergence of
Lamarck
For our purposes now, I wish to simply demonstrate
how it is that science's current discoveries can be said to overthrow so
much of what is considered established. Rupert Sheldrake gives us
a good example of that in his explaining that, in his opinion, based on
the evidence for morphic resonance and morphogenetic fields, genes are
actually a small part, perhaps even an inessential part of the process
of evolution. He writes,
At each of these levels there is an
organizing field containing an inherent memory, called a morphic field.
And the basis of this memory is a process I call morphic resonance, the
influence of like upon like. So each baby giraffe, as it grows, tunes
in to the experience of all previous giraffes, through morphic resonance.
It taps into a kind of collective pooled memory of the species, and in
turn contributes to it. This applies, according to this hypothesis,
to all animals and plants and people and also to crystals and molecules
and planetary systems. It operates at all levels of nature.
(Sheldrake, 1991, p. 33)
And further on:
This leads to a new interpretation
of heredity and evolution. Heredity depends both on genetic inheritance
(chemical genes made up of DNA) and also on morphic resonance from past
members of the species. In relation to form and behavior, I think
that morphic resonance is much the most important component. I am
suggesting, in other words, that genes are grossly overrated. (p.
35)
Furthermore: "morphic resonance permits a more
rapid evolution than the standard neo-Darwinian theory, based on random
mutation and natural selection. . . ." (p. 35).
Thus, all of our elaborate theorizing about
genetic factors in evolution are, by the evidence of morphogenetic fields,
put in a questionable category. The implications of Sheldrake's theory
are no less than that what scientists normally consider to be the causative
factors in both heredity and evolution are in fact either only a small,
but not very influential (however measurable) aspect of such factors (like
the veritable observable tip of a much more expansive iceberg) or that
they are totally unrelated to the actual causative factors of such
processes. In either case, scientists are understandably threatened
by such an assault on the foundations of their beliefs, work, and dearly
bought academic indoctrination. To paraphrase a joke, it is a morphogenetic
night out, and the scientists are nervous.
Furthermore, Sheldrake's theory gives rise
to a conception of evolution — one that scientists have been taught to
discredit, one which scientists have learned to smugly position themselves
above, to pooh-pooh and snicker at. This alternative theory is the
Lamarckian view of evolution.
Briefly stated, the Lamarckian view is that
repetitive actions made by individual members of a species, leading to
certain changes in themselves, will also cause certain changes in the genes,
which will then lead to those changes being observed in the offspring.
Essentially the theory states that to some extent, however small, acquired
characteristics of the parents can be passed on to offspring. And
that it is the buildup of such minute changes in the generations that we
observe as the process of evolution. This view attempts to explain,
for example, how giraffes can come to have long necks by saying that it
is the result of untold generations of giraffe progenitors straining to
reach the leaves of high trees.
Supposedly this idea is discredited because
it is not seen how either mental events or their resulting repetitive actions
(that is, either the desires of the giraffes for the higher leaves or the
behavior of reaching and stretching) could actually change or affect the
physical composition of genes and the basic units of DNA of which they
are comprised. DNA and genes are only known by scientists to be changed
by mutations in their structure through radiation or other actual physical
alterations.
All things considered, then, a Lamarckian theory
is discredited because of a physicalist perspective (can we at least at
this point begin to use the word bias) that says that mental or
behavioral events can not be transferred from one generation to the next
unless they somehow do this through the physical matter (defined as that
which is externally perceptible to us) that is actually given to the next
generation (from the sperm and egg cells of the parents, and at base, the
genetic material contained in them). And since that genetic material
is not in any way altered by such mental or behavioral events, the reasoning
goes, there can be no connection between these events in these different
generations.
Then it is only after accepting this
physicalist bias, and its resulting negation of an alternative hypothesis,
that the neo-Darwinian's theory of natural selection becomes viable, indeed,
becomes at all necessary. It is only after discrediting the preceding,
more organically plausible Lamarckian hypothesis, that the theory of occasional
genetic mutations by radiation or other extreme factor leading to higher
survivability among slightly different offspring begins to look like anything
but a strained explanation.
Granted that some changes between generations
of offspring do change in this way. That has been proven beyond a
doubt in the laboratories. But it has yet to be demonstrated that
these seemingly rare occurrences can account for the immense variation
of life or the incredible rate of evolutional change relative to such a
mechanism working alone. Consequently, cutting edge scientists, in
biology and elsewhere, are going against this theory on this last point
alone. Lawlor (1991) says of them:
There is no evidence that random mutations
can produce new species or that complex organs can develop as a result
of mutation and selection. The eye, for example, could emerge only
as a result of thousands of simultaneous mutations — a mathematical impossibility.
Nor has it been explained how organisms could develop new behavior patterns
to adjust positively to genetic changes. Mathematicians have protested
that only one in 20 million mutations can be expected to be positive.
Generating new species through natural selection by means of mutated genes
seems about as probable, in the words of astronomer Fred Hoyle, "as a tornado
sweeping through a junkyard assembling a Boeing 707." (p. 24)
Still, there is the evidence for morphogenetic
fields, which not only overturns the need for the Darwinian mechanism of
natural selection, but also highly supports the previously discredited
Lamarckian view. (And I might add restores to humans a view of natural
process much more complimentary to inner-directed behavior and much more
supportive of good efforts made in honorable directions than is the Darwinian
theory which, in its appearance of support for the physically strongest,
and its seeming rationalization of a "dog eat dog" and "kill or be killed"
world, has been used to justify all kinds of brutal uses of force — through
war and forceful domination and suppression by powerful individuals and
groups in governments and other social bodies).
Sheldrake's "morphic resonance" theory supports
the Lamarckian view and makes the theory of genetic evolution in general
obsolete in this way: Basically, the theory of morphogenetic fields
is supported by evidence that indicates that information is passed between
individuals according to their degree of similarity. Therefore, if
knowledge from one generation changes a particular field which can then
be picked up by succeeding generations, it means that the whole idea of
genetic mutations, and so on, is completely unnecessary; that the whole
idea of genetic mutations and evolution, natural selection, and survival
of the fittest is simply an explanation that is based upon the assumption
of the primacy of the physical universe or the primacy of our concepts
of the physical universe.
However if we consider the primacy of consciousness
"fields," then we see that if consciousness is considered to be primary,
and consciousness is considered to be fields which are affected simply
by consciousness, then the whole idea of finding how a physical, biological
organism is changed in order to affect evolution, is unnecessary.
Furthermore, if consciousness is changed through learning, and consciousness
is the basis on which later generations are changed, then we have a complete
revolution, a total revolution, a total new-paradigm revolution in theories
of evolution and natural selection.
Thus, Rupert Sheldrake's morphic resonance
theory relates to a new-paradigm vision of evolution. The essence of this
new-paradigm view — as opposed to the old-paradigm stance which holds that
the world is basically matter and that consciousness is an epiphenomenon
of matter — is that the world is basically consciousness or subjectivity
and that the material universe is an epiphenomenon of consciousness.
Affirming this, we have Sai Baba's statement
that all there is, is the "I" or the Atma and that this is the foundation
for everything else; everything else is illusion. All that really
exists is the "I." This is the same as saying in Western philosophy
that subjectivity is the only true reality. This is in line with
the viewpoint — a common Idealist, Eastern, Gnostic, and Jungian one —
that the so-called "objective" reality is indirect perception and is dependent
upon subjective reality; and so subjective reality is the only true reality
that can be known.
Considering this traditional Idealist view
together with Sheldrake's ideas and their Lamarckian consequences, one
realizes that the predominant view of evolution — that it is based upon
natural selection caused by mutations of chromosomes and genes, and so
on — is actually a rationalization based upon an a priori
presumption of the prior existence of the material universe. That
is, that since the Lamarckian version — which is that changes are made
in the biology of an organism based upon psychological strivings — cannot
be demonstrated within a Newtonian-Cartesian world view, a materialistic
worldview, then and only then we must postulate a mechanism for accounting
for biological changes over generations, as in the theory of natural selection.
This theory of natural selection basically
states that random changes occur in the chromosomes — mutations; "billiard
balls" from the universe come in, so to speak, and rearrange the molecules
of DNA, changing the chromosomes — which then have effects on the psychology
and the biology of the organism. According to the theory, this may
have positive benefits in terms of natural selection. And if they
are positive for the species overall, then the species that gets those
particular physical characteristics will tend to reproduce more and will
therefore reproduce those offspring with those physical characteristics.
But all of this is a justification based upon
the idea that there needs to be some kind of physical substrate to explain
the changes. Whereas, in fact we see that evolution happens much
more frequently than would be possible to be explained by natural selection,
as just described. Indeed, it happens much more frequently and much
faster.
A Lamarckian view comes necessarily to mind
because of this, and the only thing that keeps one from immediately suspecting
the Lamarckian view is the old bugaboo of the prior assumption of a materialistic
universe.
However, if we consider that all is subjectivity,
that subjectivity is the prior reality, then the Lamarckian view stands
supreme. Restated in terms of Rupert Sheldrake's theory, it is that
certain things that are learned through striving or effort or by a particular
organism change the energetic field for the entire universe in that respect.
So that not only offspring of that species, but also contemporaries of
that species will be more likely to learn that.
What we are saying is that psychological changes
— you might say changes in subjectivity — affect all the rest of reality,
all the rest of consciousness . . . and this can be demonstrated.
It can be demonstrated, for example in experiments dating back seventy
years that demonstrate that successive generations of rats learn specific
tasks more quickly than their parents and that a phony Morse code is more
difficult to learn than the real one. More recently, studies have
supported the theory. For example, it was determined that people
will more easily solve a crossword puzzle after it has appeared in print
than before, in both cases without any prior exposure to it. In such
a situation, the only change is that a great many minds have undoubtedly
been working the puzzle after its publication, and this must have some
effect, albeit nonphysical, on the performance of the later group.1
In another experiment specifically involving
Rupert Sheldrake's theory, a group learned a particular random sample of
items, memorizing them. It was discovered that just having that group
memorize that series of items brought about the situation that in future
learnings other groups were more easily able to learn that series of random
groupings than other randomly created series.1
So what I am saying is this gives us a view
of reality which is both deterministic and yet includes free will.
This is true in that each and every thing that happens in the Universe
has a tendency to happen, a probability to happen, based on particular
fields that have to do with the way they've happened in the past or what's
been done in the past. But these fields are chosen and built up by
free choice. Indeed, they were originally created by free choice.
So it is as if all of our actions or the greater
percentage of our actions are determined by these fields or are pushed
or pulled by these fields; that we have tendencies to act in particular
ways; that every thought we have tends a particular way because of these
fields of things happening the way they happened before. But the
full story includes the fact that we have the possibility to change those
patterns; that we have the free will to create new patterns which are then
more likely to happen.
This possibility, this view of the way things
work, also helps explain the observed increasing likelihood or possibility
for people to deal with their feelings — specifically, even, to re-experience
birth feelings — to have increasing access to other unfamiliar (in Western
culture) experiences such as cellular memory, ancestral memory, past-lives
memory, and so on, when increasing numbers of other people have had those
experiences. This is a new-paradigm view in that it links all events
or says that each and every thing that we do is part of a consciousness
that we all partake of, and so each and every thing that we do affects
the whole in at least a small way. In fact it affirms that what we
do individually affects the whole in a great way if what we do is truly
a creative act. The new-paradigm essence of it is summed up in that
— regardless of whether or not the thing was shared or expressed — simply
the thinking of new thoughts or the acting out of new behaviors affects
Consciousness in its entirety.
FURTHER NEW-PARADIGM IMPLICATIONS:
CHILD "DEVELOPMENT" AS SPIRITUAL
DEVOLUTION
Whatever the weight of the preceding assault on
the scientific bias, it must at least be acknowledged concerning scientific
theories that theoretical positions that ignore the very foundations upon
which they are based — that is, the subjectivity of the observer — are
going to be the weaker for that.
Yet, acknowledging even that, one could argue
that there is no clear idea of how to go about applying these new perspectives.
How could they be used? How could they be relevant? What implications
might they have?
It is in answer to these questions that I offer
the following analysis, in Part Two of this book, of how these new-paradigm
perspectives could be used in the understanding of child "development."
I propose a devolutional model — one that is rooted in Wilber's (1977)
"spectrum of consciousness" theory. It is based also on the findings
of new-paradigm experiential psychotherapies — that is, those that place
primacy upon experience over concept, "territory" over "map," and percept
over object.
The implications of this approach, I hope to
show, are for no less than the validity of the current direction of child-caring,
the effectiveness of mainstream psychiatric approaches, and the direction
of psychological and spiritual growth. It is my belief that such
implications will not be considered to be irrelevant or unimportant.
CHAPTER FOUR NOTE
1. Experiments testing
the theory of morphogenetic fields have been reported in a number of places,
including New Sense Bulletin, Noetic Sciences Bulletin, and of course
Sheldrake's own works and presentations. [return to
text]
CHAPTER FOUR REFERENCES
Jones, Roger S. (1982). Physics as Metaphor.
Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota.
Lawlor, Robert. (1991). Voices of the First
Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions
International.
Merlan, Philip. (1967). Emanationism. In Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, 473-474.
New Sense Bulletin. (1991). Contest-winning
studies support Sheldrake theory. New Sense Bulletin, 17(1) [October
1991], 8.
Institute for Noetic Sciences. (1991). Noetic
Sciences Bulletin.
Sheldrake, Rupert. (1981). A New Science
of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation. Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher.
Sheldrake, Rupert. (1991). The Rebirth of
Nature: The Greening of Science and God. New York: Bantam.
Sheldrake, Rupert. (1991). Is nature alive?
Human Potential, 16-21, 33-39.
Sheldrake, Rupert. (1995). Nature as alive:
Morphic resonance and collective memory. Primal Renaissance: The Journal
of Primal Psychology, 1(1), 65-78.
Wilber, Ken. (1980). The Atman Project.
Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House.
Wilber, Ken. (1981). Up from Eden. New
York: Anchor Books.
Wilber, Ken. (1982). The pre/trans fallacy.
Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 22(2), 5-43.
Wilber, Ken. (1983). A Sociable God. Boulder,
CO: Shambhala Publishing.
Copyright © 1999 by Michael Derzak Adzema
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Mickel Adzema