*
BIOLOGY AS METAPHOR
At any rate, the knowable premise of the new science
is that our physical world is a construction (of consciousness); that it
can be metaphor, only, of the unknowable That Which Is; that, therefore,
matter is metaphor. It follows that the sciences, which study this
reflection of the unknowable Real, provide metaphors about metaphors.
Moving in the Air Without Support
Schopenhauer saw it much the same way. His
understanding of "ideas" is very close to what I am saying about science
being composed of metaphors about metaphors. Gardiner (1966) explains
this viewpoint of Schopenhauer:
Schopenhauer distinguished a further
class of ideas, namely, what he termed "ideas of Reflection," or sometimes
"ideas of ideas" (Vorstellungen von Vorstellungen). It is
in terms of these that we think about and communicate the contents of our
phenomenal experience. In other words, they are the general concepts
by virtue of which we can classify phenomena according to common features
that are of interest or importance to us, forming thereby a conceptual
structure or system which may be said to mirror or copy the empirical world.
The function of this system is essentially a practical one; it provides
a means of memorizing, and generalizing from, our observations of how things
behave under varying conditions, and hence of putting to use what we learn
from experience. Schopenhauer insisted, moreover, that this system
cannot legitimately be separated from the foundation of empirical reality
upon which it is based, and he claimed that concepts and abstract notions
that cannot be traced back to experience are comparable to bank notes "issued
by a firm which has nothing but other paper obligations to back it with."
Consequently, metaphysical theories that pretend to offer an account of
the world purely a priori, and that in doing so employ terms or propositions
not susceptible to empirical interpretation, are empty of cognitive content;
they "move in the air without support." (p. 327)
In modern terms, "the map is not the territory"
— the scientific construct is not the same as the experiential/ empirical
reality of existence; and the farther they are removed from each other,
the more unsubstantial becomes the construct — ultimately collapsing of
its own weight.
Analyzing Scientific Dream-Weaving
Nonetheless, these metaphors — despite the threat
of their moving "in the air without support" and cognizant of their practical
value; these metaphors — because of the fact of their being for the empirical
world a reflection or "mirror," which we then call "physical facts," "objective
reality," or "scientific truths"; these metaphors can be analyzed in the
same way that dream symbols are analyzed, that is, to uncover their deeper
meanings.
Furthermore, this uncovering means essentially
that we can discern their meanings for ourselves; "deeper meaning" being
that understanding that relates the symbol to ourselves and that gives
us understanding of our inner and outer actions and guidance for such behavior.
In this way we can relate these "ideas about ideas," these scientific truths,
back to our empirical, experiential, subjective reality . . . back to the
base that they were originally the reflections and mirrors of. Thus
we can come full circle, looking at ourselves from both inside as well
as outside of ourselves and approaching, to the degree that a person can,
a fuller understanding of ourselves and the world with which we are inseparable.
Specifically, then, for our purposes here,
in looking at the biological sciences' metaphors of the human body — especially
as concerns its structure, function, and ontogenetic and phylogenetic developments
— we can discern and analyze an "underlying" meaning — a reflection of
the Real, or of what Wilber (1977) calls Mind.1
Biological Phases As Levels of Consciousness
My attempt here is to skeletonize a portion of
such an overall endeavor to show how it can be done and what kinds of meanings
can arise. I will relate stages in the ontogenetic development of
the human body to the dualities (splittings) of consciousness that, according
to Wilber (1977), create the spectrum of consciousness.
Specifically, I will correlate the patterns
of change in both form and experience (feeling) that a human undergoes
with levels of consciousness. I will do this beginning with the sperm
and egg; through the fetal, newborn, child, and adolescent forms; to the
adult. What I am saying is that the forms that characterize the biological
history of each individual (as delineated by the science of biology) and
the processes that characterize the psychological history of each individual
(as reported to us in the psychological sciences of the new experiential
growth modalities) reflect, and correlate with, the changes in consciousness
that Wilber describes as creating the spectrum of consciousness.
The Charge of Reductionism
Is this reductionistic? Am I saying that
our ontogenetic development creates or causes the spectrum of consciousness?
No. I no more mean that ontogeny creates the spectrum than that ontogeny
creates phylogeny (in that, as they say, "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny").
One might deduce, however, that since this
ontogenetic development is prior (in time) to the spectrum that
we observe and study in the Now, a cause-and-effect relationship is the
most likely connection. But I must respond that this assumes the
primacy of the physical form (in its ontogenetic development) over consciousness.
This presupposition is a cornerstone of the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm.
Nevertheless, the very existence of consciousness or experience at the
earliest levels I will be discussing (viz., sperm, egg, zygote,
and fetal) disputes the primacy-of-the-physical-universe postulate.
To put it bluntly, consciousness can hardly be an epiphenomenon of brain
activity if it exists when the brain does not.
This fact points inevitably to the primary
reality/existence of something like Consciousness, Spirit, or Mind (or
at least Energy) (see Adzema, 1985). Therefore, this type of impossible-to-have-existed-as-experience-or-to-be-existing-as-memory-according-to-the-N-C-paradigm
experience can hardly be called the cause of the spectrum of consciousness.
Indeed, something that cannot possibly exist within a paradigm can hardly
be marshaled in to explain something within that paradigm.
However, if we accept the paradigm in which
Consciousness, not form, is fundamentally real (which is exactly what we
must do if we are going to look at evidence which supports, if not confirms,
such a paradigm), and if we still want to accept the controversial concept
of cause and effect, then the most we can really say is that prior experience
of consciousness contributes to its later modifications. This perspective
is certainly worthy of consideration.
The Legitimacy of Heuristic Inquiry Into Form
But were it true that prior experience causes
the later modifications of Consciousness (or as Wilber terms it, "Mind"),
that truth is congruent with an analysis such as this one that considers
form as to its metaphorical heuristic value in understanding experience
and existence (or Mind, Consciousness) as it is immediately apperceived
in the only Reality of Now. As Wilber (1977) makes adequately clear,
from the only Real perspective of Here and Nowness, Absolute Subjectivity,
or Mind, all "past" events are nonreal (i.e., illusory) reflections of
the Reality that is Now; they have no existence outside of this Now, so
can hardly be called "causes" of Now.
From the perspective of Now, of Mind, of Absolute
Subjectivity — which is the essence of the new paradigm — there is no cause
and effect; there are only patterns of relationship existing Now.
Hence these "prior" events are reflections of the immediate Reality, existing
simultaneously in the Now as reflections, as metaphors. It
is in this sense that they can be analyzed hermeneutically for their heuristic
value in understanding the spectrum of consciousness as it arises this
instant in the sole Eternal Moment.
THE LEGITIMACY OF CELLULAR MEMORY
Despite what I have just said concerning the importance
of an analysis of the biological metaphors of form — especially as they
exist on the cellular level surrounding conception — as reflecting something
of importance to us in a hermeneutic or heuristic sense, I want to at least
put out a case for the legitimacy of cellular memory as something in its
own right. That is, the rest of Part Two will be based on a comparison
of Wilber's spectrum of consciousness with the observable events and forms
(the behaviors of the specific biological forms) as they are known to occur
through the observational aspects of the science of biology. Still,
the interpretation between the philosophical system and the biological
form will be aided, supported, and fed by, among other things, the direct
experience of memories of these states and forms, down even to the earliest,
by myself and by the reports of such experiences by others.
So while this analysis does not stand on the
absolute veracity of those experiences by myself or by others, still the
analysis is certainly aided and helped by a belief in their
legitimacy. I will say a few words about how memory can occur of
such events, and more importantly, how that memory can be related to the
foundations of our consciousness. A complete explanation (as I see
it) of exactly this — e.g., of how sperm and egg and zygote experience
can lead to fundamental mythological, philosophical, and basic assumptions
on the world, the self, and reality — can be found in two other recent
works of mine (1993c, 1993d).
The "Prior Conditions" Theory
For our purposes here, let me just say that there
are two possibilities that immediately come to mind: (1) what one might
call the "prior conditions" theory and (2) Rupert Sheldrake's theory of
morphic resonance and morphogenetic fields. Let us take them in turn.
What I am calling the "prior conditions" theory
is simply that the end result of any learning process, at any point, contains
within it, if somehow broken down, all the prior conditions that produced
it. It is based on the simple idea that the upper stories of everything
will be in some way related to its foundation, and, more exactly, that
the actual and specific foundation of anything can be exactly determined
by reversing or tracing back in turn each step of its progression or building
up.
Thus, this proposition states that all the
experience, all the learning that occurs, is based upon prior learning
and that all that comes about is in some way founded or based on stages
that preceded that stage. The way this is understood to occur is
in somewhat the same way that in a computer program a later stage necessitates
a prior stage or as in any formal operation or in any learning at all later
learning builds necessarily on particular prior understandings.
For example, in the case of learning a language:
The speaking of a language requires at one point that the various sounds
were learned, which requires that further back pronunciation of the various
letters that make up the sounds were learned. Therefore, even though
one may not retain a memory of learning the sounds and the individual letters,
those events are encapsulated within the end result. Those prior
stages had to have been there, and in some way are part of the construction
of the end development; so much so that breaking down the end result leads
necessarily to the factors of which it is composed.
This can be demonstrated in the case of computer
programs and of codes of various kinds. Either of them, given sufficient
analytical power (as we can now harness with the help of computers) and
sufficient time can be broken down into their original constituents and
into their necessary pattern of development. This being true — and
allowing, this one time only, the dispensation of leaning on a physicalist
presumption — since brains are seen as comparable in many ways to remarkably
powerful computers, would it be so bold to assert that it might be possible
for them to come up with its exact original conditions out of the current
resulting conditions?
The prior-conditions theory is at least one
possibility, then, and it is consistent with current psychological understandings
of learning, development, and related processes.
Furthermore, this sort of process is also demonstrated
in the phenomenon in psychology called regression. In these
instances people will revert to earlier and earlier states of being, exactly
as they were originally built up. They will often wear the same sorts
of clothes, get the same illnesses, have the same intonations in their
speech, and so on.
We see thus that each later stage contains
within it all earlier forms, in some way. And that this is not dependent
simply on some psychological memory mechanism is demonstrated by the fact
that we observe the same phenomenon at work in the physical world in the
form of the building up of multistory skyscrapers as well as that of multistep
computer programs.
So in understanding cellular memory in this
sense it is simply a matter of extrapolating our understanding of psychological
regression much farther back than we are used to and adding the notion
that from each successive stage can be accurately deduced its prior stages
in turn, that the later stages could not be exactly as they are
save for that the earlier stages happened to be exactly as they
are. So this is one way of understanding how this memory could be
contained in the adult range of experiential possibilities and how it could
be legitimate.
Morphogenetic Fields and Morphic
Resonance
The other possible explanation, as I mentioned,
is consistent with Rupert Sheldrake's theory. It can be stated this
way: That concerning Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields, if things
are done a particular way, they tend to be done that particular way in
the future. He gives the example of ritual. A ritual is performed
in the same way it has been for thousands of years, and there is a perceived
potency in doing it that way in that there is somehow an accumulated power
in each subsequent repetition of that act. He contends that somehow
the field, the field of form, the morphogenetic field, is strengthened;
the pattern is strengthened. Therefore when one re-enacts that pattern
one is tapping into the field, via morphic resonance, that
has been established.
Let us turn our attention now to thinking in
terms of certain patterns that happen, for example, on the cellular level,
to certain patterns that have been enacted for millennia. Keep in
mind that Rupert Sheldrake's theory is not just concerning human beings
and their thoughts and actions but applies also to all of Nature and the
entire Universe. So there are morphogenetic fields acting on plants,
e.g., in the way that they produce the leaves of each individual plant.
There is morphic resonance in all the patterns of Nature, even in the ways
crystals develop. Thinking now in terms of the cellular level, human
beings have been sperm and egg, have been fertilizing eggs for many millennia,
have been sperm and eggs uniting the exact same way in conception for untold
millennia.
In fact many mammals reproduce exactly this
way also. So, all told, there is a rather strong habit built up,
a rather strong pattern that is a field that is of this pattern that exists
in the Universe because of the repetition of this pattern over and over
again in the Universe. So all of the aspects of sperm and egg experience
— for example the experience of the sperm, that is, the struggle of the
sperm — has been enacted practically an infinite number of times, more
than can be imagined. For this is a strong morphogenetic field in
the Universe, a strong morphic pattern. The point of all this is
that since we resonate with things that are similar to us, and since a
sperm is of a human being, then we would resonate with this pattern as
we would resonate with this pattern of the egg and its experience or pattern.
Likewise we would resonate with the pattern of conception itself and all
that is subsumed under that, and afterwards also.
And of course all of the development of the
fertilized egg and the blastocyst — the embryo and the fetus and all that
— is part of a morphic pattern that is very well established. For
our species it has been continuing practically an infinite number of times,
having been enacted and being currently enacted, so that our species would
find that this pattern would form part of our makeup, resonating with those
patterns, and would form our thinking processes and feeling processes,
and would help to structure our way of viewing the world and all else.
Finally the theory of morphic resonance states
that we resonate with things with which we are more alike than not alike.
Since we are more like ourselves than anything else, it follows that we
would resonate more with our particular experience as a sperm and egg,
for example, with its unique events, than with the experiences of other
humans, or of other mammals or other species for that matter (though those
possibilities are not ruled out and in fact those kinds of events — trans-species
sharing of experience of morphogenetic field — is actually reputed to occur
at times [Grof 1976, 1980, 1985]). At any rate, it is most likely
we would resonate with and pick up on the field laid down by our own experience
as such by our selves as an entity, as well as to a lesser extent resonating
with and contacting the way it is done "in general," or "traditionally,"
by the species one belongs to. This also explains what in species
other than our own is called instinct. It also makes understandable
such remarkable patterns of behavior shared across generations, while genetic
explanations, by contrast, appear rather preposterous.
Anyway, this is another way of looking at how
these events at such an early level can actually influence the way we think,
feel, and see the world, and how they can determine our basic assumptions
about all of this.
MYTHO-EMPIRICISM AND BIOLOGY AS MYTHOLOGY
Finally, mythology provides clues as to the events
of these times. Shoham (1990) is one in particular who has made this
case. Putting forth an approach at meaning which he calls "mytho-empiricism,"
he writes, "Mytho-empiricism is the utilization of myths not as illustrations
of our theoretical premises but as their actual empirical anchors" (p.
34). He goes on to point out that scholars of myths have always regarded
myths as reliable and faithful revelations of patterns of events that occurred
prior to recorded history. Acknowledging that they can reflect patterns
of events that are not otherwise accessible, he makes his case that the
events that these myths are most actually reflecting are those of the earliest
times in one's individual (as opposed to cultural or collective) life.
Thus, he writes,
[O]ur methodological anchor . . .
is the conception of myths as projections of personal history. Individuals
are aware of their personalities as the sole existential entity in their
cognition. Therefore, myths cannot be divorced from the human personality.
This awareness of existence is the only epistemological reality.
Whatever happened to us in the amnestic years and even later is projected
toward cosmogony, magic and other human beings. The events that happened
in the highly receptive amnestic years have been recorded by the human
brain. Events that happened after the amnestic years may be recalled
cognitively, but whatever happened within these first years of life would
be played back, inter alia, by myths of cosmogony. Myths as
personal history may therefore be regarded as the account of some crucial
developmental stages in the formative years. (1979, p. 21)
Correlation Between the Ontogenetic
and the Phylogenetic
He notes that there is a correlation, however,
between the early individual and the early historical events:
Moreover, human development in the
early formative years covers, in an accelerated manner, all the evolutionary
phases of the species. Consequently, myths are also a projection
of the development of the species as inherent in the development of the
human individual. . . . That is, every human being experienced the
Original Sin in his own development, so that the myth of the Fall is indeed
a projection of an individual, yet universal, human developmental experience.
(1990, p. 35)
I point this out because while in this part —
Part Two — I will be using myths to indicate patterns of early individual
events, in Part Three I will bring them to bear as additional perspective
on some of the early events of our species.
Relative Universality of Myths Correlated
With Importance in Ontogeny
At any rate, Shoham (1990) goes on to qualify
his claims for the reliability of mythic projections by noting the obvious
deduction that myths can vary in the degree to which they accurately project
the common early experiences of the individual and that a good indicator
of their reliability as regards universal patterns of early experience
is the relative universality of the particular myth's appearance:
Myths, however, become archetypal
projections of human experience only when they are widespread. The
more common a human developmental experience, the greater its chances of
becoming a mythical projection. The inverse is also valid:
the more widespread a myth, the greater the chances that it is a projection
of a widespread or even universal phase of human development. The
universality of the Fall myth, for instance, points to the fact that its
corresponding developmental phase, the expulsion of the separate self from
the pantheistic togetherness of early orality, is indeed experienced by
every human being. (1990, p. 35)
Separant-Fusion Personality Dialectic
The personality theory derived from such a mytho-empirical
base constructs the person as embodying two radically opposed tendencies
— one the desire for fusion and the other for separation:
Our personality theory envisages two
core vectors, participation and separation. By participation,
we mean the identification of ego with a person(s), an object, or a symbolic
construct outside itself and the striving of the ego to lose its separate
identity by fusion with this other, object or symbol. Separation
is the opposite vector. These two vectors of unification-fusion and
separation-isolation form the main axis of our personality theory.
(Shoham, 1990, p. 33)
Stagelike "Degression"
It also puts forth a stagelike progression (or
"degression), created by these various earliest instances of separation
or splitting off. The creation of these phases through splitting
is remarkably like the creation of the spectrum of consciousness by the
various splittings, creating the various dualities, that Wilber (1977)
describes. The major difference is that Wilber's contention is the
building up of these in the Sole Eternal Moment and Shoham's in the course
of one's earliest existence, Wilber's as creating the consciousness in
the Moment and Shoham's as creating the personality. Shoham (1990)
describes the progression:
The first phase is the process of
birth. The second phase is the crystallization of an individual ego
by the molding of the "ego boundary." The third phase of separation
is a corollary of socialization, during which, according to Erikson, one's
"ego identity" is reached. (1990, p. 33)
And to these Shoham later adds a fourth.
Stages Beginning at Conception,
Not Birth
In the chapters to follow, I will be presenting
just such a progression, rather devolution, following the phases
of early biological experience and correlating it both with the psychological
development of the ego and personality development in general in a manner
akin to Shoham's as well as to the building up of the spectrum of consciousness
according to Wilber.
However, the major difference between my progression
and Shoham's is that I start at conception as the first phase of separation,
and he starts at birth. In fact, I take Shoham's phases and place
them one step back, so to speak. His birth scenario becomes what
I see to be conception; his early orality phase, my phase of birth.
At the third phase we begin to coincide in that both of our third phases
coincide with the phase of socionormative indoctrination that reaches its
peak at around the age of four. And finally our fourth stages are
also identical in depicting the puberty or identity phase.
I make these differences from Shoham for compelling
reasons. For one thing, what Shoham gives as an example of birth
in mythology is actually much more like conception. It is so much
more like conception that I feel he would also have placed it there if
he had not, in following mainstream ego psychologists and outdated Freudian
notions, been led to believe that neither consciousness or memory can exist
from that far back. Therefore, I feel he makes this mistake only
because he is operating on the basis of mainstream psychology and an outdated
psychoanalysis that sees the beginnings of psychic life only at birth.
It is not surprising he makes this mistake
as it is only in the more recent field of pre- and perinatal psychology
that we see the beginnings of psychic life going back into the womb and,
in some understandings (including my own), to before conception.
But with this understanding of where the beginning truly lies, his framework,
his mythically expressed ontology, becomes strikingly fitted with the biological
events. In altering his framework in this way, then, the following
chapters will incorporate, for additional elucidation and perspective,
the mytho-empirical light he sheds.
CHAPTER FIVE NOTE
1. It is especially heuristic
to analyze body for, as it has been said, body is concretized mind. This
is not to mean concretized Mind — in Wilber's sense — but concretized ego
(in the sense of the separate self, in the sense of mind as used by Sathya
Sai Baba and other teachers who say that, ultimately, mind must be destroyed).
Therefore, in contemplating the metaphors of the biological understanding
of body, we can discern patterns and derive meanings concerning the separate
self — its evolution, relationship to the whole, patterns of activity,
stages of development, essence, and its experience of itself. [return
to text]
CHAPTER FIVE REFERENCES
Adzema, Michael. (1985). A primal perspective
on spirituality. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 25(3), 83-116.
Adzema, Michael. (1993c). Womb With a View:
Spiritual Aspects of Prenatal Experience. Unpublished manuscript. P.O.
Box 1348, Guerneville, CA 95446.
Adzema, Michael. (1993d). Cells With a View:
Spiritual and Philosophical Aspects of Sperm and Egg Experience. Unpublished
manuscript. P.O. Box 1348, Guerneville, CA 95446.
Gardiner, Patrick. (1967). Arthur Schopenhauer
(1788-1860). In Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Grof, Stanislav. (1976). Realms of the Human
Unconscious. New York: Dutton.
Grof, Stanislav. (1980). LSD Psychotherapy.
Pomana, CA: Hunter House.
Grof, Stanislav. (1985). Beyond the Brain:
Birth, Death and Transcendence in Psychotherapy. Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press.
Shoham, S. Giora. (1979). Salvation Through
the Gutters. New York: Hemisphere Publications.
Shoham, S. Giora. (1990). The bridge to nothingness:
Gnosis, Kabbala, Existentialism, and the transcendental predicament of
man. ReVision, 13(1) [Summer 1990], 33-45.
Wilber, Ken. (1977). The Spectrum of Consciousness.
Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House.
Copyright © 1999 by Michael Derzak Adzema
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Mickel Adzema