Tag: evolution

STORIES R US

Hildegard of Bingen’s famous visions

made her sick until she wrote them down

and communicated them to others.

God will not let us bury our talents/visions/stories

– they are given to us for the common good.

 

Carl Jung’s story about humans is that

we are all interdependent and interrelated

not just interpersonally but cosmically –

from this came his idea of the Collective Unconscious –

whereas Sigmund Freud atomized humans

seeing each one as an independent individual

Jung fits much better than Freud

in the quantum interconnected story of the universe.

 

A basic quantum theology principle:

ultimate meaning is embedded in stories not facts –

ideologies/mythologies/worldviews/religions

create our world more than facts.

 

The main components of the new story

of the emerging Interspiritual Age:

the evolutionary consciousness movement

the developmentalist movement

Spiral Dynamics/Integral Theory/Einsteinian physics

all these together create a new metaphysical story.

 

In the other major story –

the materialistic/scientific/rationalistic one –

Meister Eckhart’s spiritual concepts are hard to grasp –

the “God-beyond-God” and “praying to God

to rid him of the concept of ‘God’” –

since all our concepts of God are false idols.

 

Even simple Bible stories written for the common good

need interpretation: the meaning of John 3:16

changes radically depending on how you interpret

“everyone who believes in Jesus will not perish” –

does “believes” mean “intellectual assent 

that Jesus is the Third person of the Trinity”

or “everyone who trusts in Jesus” will be saved?”

Biblical interpretation is the story about the stories

that created western civilization.

 

TEILHARD VS AUGUSTINE AND MARX

In Teilhard’s view, eros, the longing for wholeness

is integral to the whole evolutionary direction towards

wholeness/complexity/consciousness/personalization/love –

the universe is personal not impersonal.

 

Ever since Augustine, western Christendom

has separated grace from nature

and so we treated nature with contempt and plundered it

and each time a piece of God died –

ironically, because of Augustine we have killed God

all over again.

 

Because of the theory of evolution, we know

everything is interconnected –

therefore salvation is communal more than individual

and we all can be involved in transforming

the whole cosmos.

 

Contrary to Marxism’s propaganda

alienation and conflict do not come from religion

but from the inevitable moral collapse

of the materialist worldview.

 

There is scientific/empirical research

that shows there are stages of religious development

from pre-rational/pre-conventional/narcissistic/childish

fantasy all the way to post-rational/post-conventional/

ego-aware/transpersonal awareness.

 

The contemplative non-dual mind

is like the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden –

it provides continual nourishment

to the soul and world.

 

WHAT CONTEMPLATIVES KNOW

God is real, unlike the mythical gods

who have no existence at all.

But God is no body and no soul

God is the life of the soul

which is the life of the body –

God is the Life of lives.

 

Until the 1960s, people were taught meditation

as an exercise of the rational mind

drawing upon the three powers of the soul:

memory/understanding (reason)/will.

There was no training in contemplation –

the experience of the living God in silence.

 

The contemplative person eventually realizes

s/he no longer knows what God is

because God is not a thing but a Thou

who constantly says “I AM”

which allows me to constantly say “I am, too!”

God makes me real.

 

All the contemplative knows is: God is Love –

the core energy of evolution and its goal.

Love-energy is the most universal/tremendous/

mysterious of all cosmic forces –

“The physical structure of the universe is love” –

Teilhard de Chardin

 

But what gets in the way of love is anxiety –

“Anxiety is the greatest evil that can befall a soul, except sin” –

Saint Francis de Sales

 

To combat anxiety we need to stay focused on God

particularly the Incarnate God, the Christ

who shows us “Perfect love casts out fear” (I John 4:18).

Indeed, the hymn in Colossians 1: 15-20 makes Christ’s divinity

as great or greater than the prologue of John’s Gospel

(John 1: 1-18) which declares that

Jesus is not only God

as the Cosmic Christ

He created the whole cosmos

and is its goal: The Beginning and the End –

the Alpha and the Omega.

 

 

SOLVING THE HUMAN DILEMMA

Henri Nouwen holds the mystical path

devotion to God

to be central to the life of the heart.

When morality gets too much attention

it subverts the priority of the mystical.

 

In any case, true morality flows out of oneness

the Law of Karma rules:

“You cannot do good or evil to your self

without doing the same for your neighbors”

– Catherine of Siena

 

To the extent we can look at our self

clearly/compassionately, we can confidently/fearlessly

look into someone else’s eyes – and into their soul

since eyes are the mirrors of the soul.

 

For Teilhard de Chardin love is not

an epi-phenomenon – something humans can acquire

rather it is what we constantly bathe in

something closer to us than our breath

which includes agape/eros/philia (brotherly/sisterly love)

and undergirds/supports the rise of consciousness –

deepening love and rising consciousness go together.

 

Similar to Teilhard, theologian John Macquarrie

illumines the human condition

by his main theme of self-transcendence

which simultaneously opens us to God the Infinite

while recognizing our essential finitude.

 

We humans are always a problem to ourselves

because we are finite yet longing for infinity –

longing for the Godhead, for Infinite Love

the living God beyond our images/idols of God.

 

This is where we need faith –

because according to Simone Weil

“Faith is the ability to hold creative tension

between paradoxes that are irresolvable

such as being finite but longing for infinity.”

 

Faith in God is the solution

to the otherwise unsolvable human dilemma.

MYSTICISM AND POLITICS

Mysticism is direct experience of God

but most mainline pastors are sceptical about experience

because they believe faith must have intellectual content –

and it must involve social justice –

true faith is not simply pentecostal or mystical.

 

Johann Metz’s theology of politics was influenced by

Catholic theologian Karl Rahner

existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger

marxist philosopher of hope Ernst Bloch

Jurgen Habermas’s critique of modern consciousness

liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez

and the base communities who

practically and politically implemented

the ideas of all these thinkers.

 

If Metz were alive today he would include scientists and mystics

since mysticism explores consciousness

and understanding consciousness is

the next big frontier for science.

 

What most pastors miss or forget

is that Divine Co-creativity works

within the evolutionary process

and within us –

the Spirit works primarily through

our mind/heart/gut’s consciousness and experience

rather than as an external agent of cause-and-effect.

 

“The universe is the primary Sacred Reality

and we become sacred by participating in it” –

Thomas Berry

 

This is how we get wholeness/salvation –

salvation by participation in the universe

since the whole cosmos was designed and created

with a view to the Cosmic Christ

the noble goal/perfection/center of the universe.

 

This is the starting point for Johann Metz

in his theology of politics.

 

 

KNOCKING ON THE PEARLY GATES

On all the key issues in spirituality:

the equality of men and women/

the harmony of body and soul/

the holiness of being/the goodness of humans/

the compatibility of mysticism and prophecy

Meister Eckhart exceeded the Aristotelian Thomas Aquinas

and so Eckhart was definitely not a Neo-Platonist

as he is often portrayed – he sought the unity of opposites –

the unity of Heaven and Earth.

 

But Newtonian physics separated all things –

and thinking of matter composed of     hard     separate     atoms

impacted our view of self – the individual against community

and our view of Spirit – as somehow opposed to material science

and our view of nature – as a product to be exploited for gain –

the result has been massive alienation

from self/God/nature.

 

The Jewish world of Jesus thought of all things

as created/hierarchical/anthropocentric/

governed by fixed laws with a fixed beginning and fixed end.

But modern evolutionary physics sees reality

as a dynamic interplay of chance/law/interconnection –

Aristotle’s fixed reality of matter and form

has been deconstructed by relativity and quantum mechanics

into a never-ending/interconnected/flow

of energy and information.

 

The creative union of God and matter

is not a metaphysical doctrine as much as a

pragmatic explanation of the universe –

the religious paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

had an innate tendency/power to see God

not apart from the physical world

but in it/through it/as it.

 

The Kingdom/Queendom/Kindom/Presence of God

is within us and all around us

so we do not have to die

to get to the Pearly Gates

(owned, conspirists claim, by Bill Gates –

therefore the “Gates of Heaven”)

we only have to be fully alive with God

in this present spiritual/material world.

CAST YOUR NETS INTO THE DEEP

The growing gap between theology and science

for five centuries meant religion got relegated

to the backburner of fixed abstract concepts

which couldn’t cope with a universe of dynamic change –

Isaac Newton believed God’s living commands

would be replaced by mathematical laws

and Darwin’s theory of universal evolution

destroyed the immutable world of religion.

 

We either accept our fixed views/beliefs/assumptions

about reality, or we challenge them –

to remain open and curious, according to Buddha

is the best use of our lives.

 

 Evolution entails a continuous revolution

in consciousness that eventually expresses itself

in deeper religious understanding –

most Christians today are rethinking Augustine

who gave way too much weight to one verse:

“I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin

did my mother conceive me” Psalm 51:5.

The idea we all are sinners

right from the moment of conception

gave birth to the prevailing paradigm of Original Sin

and convenient communal amnesia about the verse

that God originally created everything

including us humans “very good” (Psalm 1:31).

Religious ideas in western Christianity

are now in flux/diverse/non-dogmatic

even in religious America only .05% believe

they or their neighbours will go to hell

and 70% believe many religions lead to eternal life –

contemporary atheists now seem to know more

about traditional Christian beliefs

than most Catholics and Protestants!

 

The request of Peter by Jesus

to cast his nets into the deep

was a symbolic invitation to us to go deep into our souls

and haul up a treasure of self-knowledge –

that, and communal remembering

and becoming mystics as Karl Rahner advocated

are the only ways we will make Christianity work again.

THE EROTIC UNIVERSE

In early Christianity, theology and prayer

were never divorced. Evagrius of Pontus (345-399 CE):

“The theologian is the one who prays

and the one who prays is a theologian.”

 

Later on, Thomas à Kempis wrote in The Imitation of Christ

“If you look at Creation, the Creator

withdraws his gaze from you.”

So, Christians have had an anti-Creation/

anti-body/anti-sexuality spirituality

which is ironically contrary to the Creation-centered

spirituality of the Bible.

 

But the theory of evolution changed all that –

evolution does not degrade humans

it shows us we are an integral part

of a vast web of earthly relationships.

But science only tells us ‘how’ we got here –

we need religion to tell us ‘why’ we are here – our purpose.

 

The idea of Christian cosmology

is in the Greek Fathers of the Church

particularly Irenaeus, who wrote that, in Christ,

the universe finds its meaning and goal.

 

The Uni-Verse, the One Verse, the One Poem

is thoroughly relational/communal/erotic –

wanting union even at the molecular level –

‘gravity’ is ‘mutual attraction between bodies’ – ‘eroticism’ –

its all part of the love that makes the Universe go round –

to ‘be’ is to ‘be with’ – the ‘we’ always precedes the ‘I’

just as the sexual union of a man and woman precedes children –

no one can say “I did it all on my own”

or “I did it my way – alone.”

 

Mantras are not words that mediate rational meaning –

they are vehicles that carry the spirit to one’s depths

and give us solitude to make us ‘uselessly present’ to God

which connects us to love in our depths

which connects us to others –

solitude is thus the erotic foundation

upon which community is built –

the purpose of life is the same as the purpose

of the Universe – to make love.

BUTTERFLIES AND DEATH

Convergent evolution comes from and heads towards

maximum consciousness/Alpha and Omega/the Cosmic Christ.

The human soul that was always there becomes conscious

when human consciousness emerges

from the general groping of Nature towards self-reflection.

We are unique in that we reflect on things.

We are the universe becoming conscious of itself/

reflecting on itself/learning to direct itself

and its unconscious groping processes.

 

The original Greek word for “soul,” “psyche”

literally means “butterfly” because the soul/true self

is elusive/hard to pin down in an exotic butterfly case.

 

Fundamentalists need humility to understand

the Absolute Truth they think they have

only exists in the Mind of God –

humans are always groping/searching for their soul.

 

And arguments for the immortality of the soul

do not alleviate the universal/inescapable/

existential anxiety about death

which cannot be argued away –

fear of death drives humans toward evil

and so “Reasonable people, devoted to rationalism

fail to perceive either the depths of evil

or the depths of the holy.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

Not overthinking about death

and living in the Now with the Divine Present

alleviates the death-grip of evil:

Breathing in I relax my body

(reduces stress)

Breathing out I smile

(relaxes hundreds of facial muscles)

Dwelling in the Present Moment

(brings happiness here and now)

I know it is a Wonderful Moment

(brings pleasure/peace of mind/spirit/soul).

THE EXPANDED UNIVERSE AND THE COSMIC CHRIST

Meister Eckhart’s Creation Spirituality likely came from the Celts

who spread across Europe and may have come from India

where Hindus saw the divine in all of nature –

in trees/rocks/rivers/animals.

 

From the Patristics, the Church Fathers, to the Middle Ages

cosmology and theology were one

but then the heliocentrism (Sun-centerism) of Copernicus

gave a different cosmology than the Earth-centrism of the Church

so that cosmology and theology divorced

and God was separated from the universe

but this is “deism” not Christianity.

 

Contemporary theologians cannot ignore the new physics

which is the relativistic and revelatory context in our time –

and the sacred story of the universe is being told by astronomy

with an unimaginable cosmology of billions of galaxies.

 

And evolution is the process by which Trinity becomes cosmos

and cosmos is Christified –

Unconditional Love (the Father) is poured into the Word (the Son)

forever breathed anew in the Holy Spirit.

 

Since love is the basis of all created orders

and the Cosmic Christ is first in God’s intention to love

“exoChristology” (the theology of Christ on exoplanets)

claims that planets outside our solar system will be related

to the Cosmic Christ and completed by an Incarnation –

Christ after all is the Alpha and the Omega

the Origin and End of all.

 

If Christians are to survive in this expanded universe

we need a bigger Jesus – there needs to be a shift

from a focus on the human Jesus of Nazareth

to a focus on Jesus as the incarnation of the Cosmic Christ –

for there might be incarnations of the Cosmic Christ

on exoplanets, incarnations not with the name of Jesus

but with other names

but they would still be the Cosmic Christ Incarnate.

 

I know this is mind-boggling but so is the new universe.

However, faith allows us to live in confident patience

that God will eventually fulfill all God’s promises

and we will one day understand it all.