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The Noosphere (Part I): Teilhard de Chardin’s Vision
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Monthly Archives: December 2013
The Power of Will
Faith moves mountains. Positive thinking really works. The thought is father of the deed. I believe this. It has been my experience. Positive intent, creates the desired result. (Though willing is different from wishing). It almost appears as if the universe conspires with sudden co-incidences that arrange for the willed event to materialise.
Will is potent.
Indeed we should take great care with our thinking – because what is willed out of hatred or fear also comes to pass. Be careful what you wish for, not just what appears on the surface – but the undercurrents that motivate.
We should live pretentiously. That is, to pretend already to have achieved one’s aspiration – and simply let reality catch up. Someone once told me that the Lord’s Prayer is a supreme act of pretension. Our Father….
And of course, the mechanics of this are mapped out by quantum physicists as well as by those in touch with the reality behind this dream that is life – Buddha, Christ…
Observation creates reality, and that materialised reality bounds us; the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that we, as observers, crystallise out one particular reality from infinite – unbounded – potential. (Quantum physics also points up an explanation, I believe of the mechanics of free will, evil and evolution.)
So of course it is our observation, our witness, our intention – our will – that materialises the world – physically. This is in addition to the attractive effect of intention, where others are pulled toward the story that your will weaves.
Will is potent.
You don’t have to be Christian to want that will to be a good one. A will that fosters love, community, connection. For me though, since Christ lights my path (though Christ is Christ by whatever name) I would call that God’s Will. Let it be done.
Momentum and Reality
Reality is bound up with the present. This, according to Zen and as re-expressed by Eckhart Tolle – the Power of Now..
The present, now, is the door to reality and focus on the past and future distracts from the intensity of experience.
But…
How does that square with Alfred North Whitehead’s theory of relativity – where reality is a process and certainly not an instant?
It seems to me that the integration of these two concepts through the interpretation of the present – Now – as momentary rather than instantaneous. By this I mean to include the immediate past and the immediate future into a lengthened and extended instant. I think (though I’m never certain when trying to understand Process and Reality) that this is what Whitehead refers to as prehension.
It seems then that consciousness requires some element of time, that which immediately surrounds the instant in which we exist. It is observation that crystallises out the particular reality which we choose. (Bohr, Born, Schrodinger – the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics). The experience of reality requires the flow of time – to allow the immediate past and future to give context to the instant that is now.
Consciousness can then be described as observation surfing on time, and the fragment of time that surrounds the instant creates the moment in which we exist. Hence – reality as momentum.
Momentum and Reality
Reality is bound up with the present. This, according to Zen and as re-expressed by Eckhart Tolle – the Power of Now..
The present, now, is the door to reality and focus on the past and future distracts from the intensity of experience.
But…
How does that square with Alfred North Whitehead’s theory of relativity – where reality is a process and certainly not an instant?
It seems to me that the integration of these two concepts through the interpretation of the present – Now – as momentary rather than instantaneous. By this I mean to include the immediate past and the immediate future into a lengthened and extended instant. I think (though I’m never certain when trying to understand Process and Reality) that this is what Whitehead refers to as prehension.
It seems then that consciousness requires some element of time, that which immediately surrounds the instant in which we exist. It is observation that crystallises out the particular reality which we choose. (Bohr, Born, Schrodinger – the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics). The experience of reality requires the flow of time – to allow the immediate past and future to give context to the instant that is now.
Consciousness can then be described as observation surfing on time, and the fragment of time that surrounds the instant creates the moment in which we exist. Hence – reality as momentum.
I and Thou
There is a brilliant introduction to Buber’s I and Thou in the English translation by Ronald Gregor Smith. I have extracted some excerpts below..
“There is, Buber shows, a radical difference between man’s attitude to other men and his attitude to things. The attitude to other men is a relation between persons, to things it is a connexion with objects. In the personal relation one subject – I – confronts andother subject – Thou; in the connexion with things the subject contemplates and experiences and object. These two attitudes represent the basic twofold situation of human life, the former constitutes the world of THOU and the latter the world of IT.
The other person, the THOU, is shown to be a reality – that is, it is given to me, but is not bounded by me: “Thou has no bounds”; the Thou cannot be appropriated, but I am brought up short against it. The characteristic situation is here one of meeting: I meet the Other. In the reality of this meeting no reduction of the I or of the Thou, to experiencing subject and experienced object, is possible.
The world of objects or things, on the other hand, presupposes a single centre of consciousness, one subject, an I which experiences, arranges, and appropriates. This is the characteristic world of modern activity…
Put in another way, this primary distinction between the two orders in which men live concerns on the one hand the meaning of community, and on the other hand the meaning of organisation.
The relation of the one observing subject to the other observing subjects within the same closed system was not seriously considered. Buber has given intellectual status to the problem of the relation between persons (..and God) and has thus called in doubt the massive monistic system within which idealist philosophy has worked.
In dogmatic theology, too, the same new tendencies are at work. Objects are in the past, but the relation of the I to the Thou is in the present.
What Buber has done is to state in classic form the nature of the claim made upon us by the “transcendent”… faith is a meeting: it is not a trust in the world of It, of creeds or other forms, which are objects, and have their life in the past; nor is it, on the other hand, a reliance on the “wholly other” God; but it is the meeting with the eternal Thou Who is both the Other and the Present One.
.. the influence of Buber is thus manifest in every fundamental sphere of human activity, it is possible to perceive both anticipatory and parallel influences at work. Already in the middle of the nineteenth century Soren Kierkegaard, in his attack on the reigning Hegelian philosophy, had shown the limits of thought along the old lines.
To the reader who finds the meaning obscure at a first reading we may only say that I and Thou is indeed a poem. Hence it must be read more than once, and its total effect allowed to work on the mind…”
I and Thou, even in its English translation is a moving and nourishing work of philosophical poetry. It is a flowering of Jewish mystical thought.
Reality as Momentum
Reality is bound up with the present. This, according to Zen and as re-expressed by Eckhart Tolle – the Power of Now..
The present, now, is the door to reality and focus on the past and future distracts from the intensity of experience.
But…
How does that square with Alfred North Whitehead’s theory of relativity – where reality is a process and certainly not an instant?
It seems to me that the integration of these two concepts through the interpretation of the present – Now – as momentary rather than instantaneous. By this I mean to include the immediate past and the immediate future into a lengthened and extended instant. I think (though I’m never certain when trying to understand Process and Reality) that this is what Whitehead refers to as prehension.
It seems then that consciousness requires some element of time, that which immediately surrounds the instant in which we exist. It is observation that crystallises out the particular reality which we choose. (Bohr, Born, Schrodinger – the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics). The experience of reality requires the flow of time – to allow the immediate past and future to give context to the instant that is now.
Consciousness can then be described as observation surfing on time, and the fragment of time that surrounds the instant creates the moment in which we exist. Hence – reality as momentum.
John Bell, the Iona Community and Synchronicity
John Bell of the Iona Community in his thought for the day this morning on BBC Radio 4 referred to the mythical tree of knowledge as “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. It is my contention, and I think supported by quantum mechanics, that we are observers weaving existence from the stuff of potential. (Schroedinger’s cat..). The thought in the blog “evil, a problem of boundary” was only 6 hours old. It was attempting to address the theological issue of the “problem of evil”. The thought is simple. In this world we are born into boundary. Nothing can be experienced except in relation to it’s opposite or converse – thus experience is dependent on boundaries. It is we – who create both evil and good through our observations. (Niels Bohr..). Both evil and good are products of human kind and not of a creator. As a pointer toward the underlying love in the universe – Teilhard de Chardin’s underlying driver of evolution – could we get better than the example of Nelson Mandela. He integrated good and evil and spun them into something larger…
And then John Bell was on air – and put it charmingly, simply. As ever.
Evil, a consequence of boundary
The problem of evil is often cited as an argument against a loving creator. But surely…
Boundary is necessary for our experience. We understand “loud” by contrast to “soft” and so on. Some of the greatest writers and thinkers express existence itself in this context. Jung sets up contrasts and enjoins us to struggle toward their integration. Buber’s existentialist view is expressed as a “two-fold entity” Ich-Du (or the alternative Ich-Es which allows evil). I read an article recently (teilharddechardin) which eloquently stated religious insight as “relational”. Experience is relative and depends on “the other”. Martin Buber as a catholic? (Indeed he writes that Jesus Christ is the epitome of the jewish ideal).
And surely experience is what creates existence. That is at the core of quantum mechanics – it is observation that crystallises out this particular reality from the infinity of potential. I think of our role here as “observation engine” creating reality. At the heart of observation, again there is separation – a boundary between the observer and that which is observed.
It seems to me that evil is something we create, tolerate and live with. It is the particular reality we choose. It is we who crystallised out the holocaust, not the loving creator. As a result we experience good, by contrast and in relation. We know something is good by reference to all of the evil in the world.
But what is this evil and good that we create? Jung would enjoin us to attempt their integration. What then? Perhaps – joy?
The world is right now saluting the passing of that great spirit – Nelson Mandela. He was, apparently angry and violent as a young man. Yet he transcended this and became something else entirely. His will almost alone seems to have delivered reconciliation and integration out of an almost certain bloodbath.
Perhaps, a thought only, the charity of the loving creator is of a wholly different order from what we think of as the good and evil which we create. In that case, is the path back to our spiritual home (the loving creator) – the integration to which Jung refers? The living in the duality Ich-Du rather than the chimera of Ich-Es?
Laura Keynes and Why New Atheists are Good for Christianity
Do atheists own rationality?
I was told yesterday that someone follows my blog (thank you, we all have some narcissism!). I was told that he was amazed that anyone with intelligence could believe in God. He apparently describes himself as an atheist.
I’ve been pondering this.
It seems to me that at the heart of this view is the sense of superiority that atheists can have, that they “own” intelligence. Allied to that is their view that somehow intelligence “disproves God”. I assume here that they mean rationality, as opposed to emotional intelligence.
This argument is close to me because as an evolutionary biologist at Cambridge I had this argument flow past me in waves. Indeed I spent a large part of life summoning up the courage to confront the possibility of there being nothing, no purpose, no God. I concluded after several years of living in this space that in fact it is atheism that is illogical. Having got that out of the way – but not until my 40’s – I have finally been able to relax into the rich world of the living purposeful connection that is meaningful life.
Here’s why I don’t believe in no-God.
First, let us remove rationality from the frame. Nothing can be proved. There is no external premise or starting point from which a logic chain can reach any kind of “proof”. It seems rather (read “Godel Escher Bach” or “The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake) that the universe and time comprise an infinity of nested loops. Don’t believe me, rather refer to Heisenberg (Uncertainty Principle) and Godel (Incompleteness Theorum).
Ok. So in any case logic and rationality takes you nowhere certain. You can’t either prove or disprove God or no-God. If you find a Richard Dawkins or anyone else try to convince you otherwise – simply refer to Heisenberg and Godel – and tell them they are acting as evangelists not scientists, so they should preface all their statements with “I believe”.
So, then my personal beliefs. Well, firstly I get as far, logically, as saying there is “being”, or rather there is “something”. I wouldn’t go as far as “my” being – ie cogito ergo sum, because I think that presumes what “I” am. It does seem axiomatic to me that existence exists though. I used to run the argument that time is also axiomatic and that therefore you could define God as that which began being – one of those beautiful iterative proofs you get in mathematics (inductive reasoning). On that basis I used to “prove” God. This then turned the argument about God – into one of semantics. On that basis I would say that atheism is less logical that theism – because a theist “believes” in his/her version of God, whereas for atheism to work they would have to disprove every version of God.
Anyway, I’m not so convinced about time anymore – except as an illusion that frames what we perceive as reality. I do think, though, that God and existence tie together logically. Believe in existence and God is there. Our disagreements should be fought on definitions – “God sitting on a cloud”, “God as personalised”, “God as the numbers like speed of light that define existence”, “God as relatedness, connection”.
For me then, personally, which is the richer way to live? Surely enriched and joyful reality lies in our connectedness, in the shared smile, in the sharing of sorrow. That’s certainly becoming my deepening experience.
In any event – I can state definitely that I do NOT believe that atheism has rationality or intelligence on it’s side…