Psychology's theological quantum jump
Toolan, David
congenital, it is worth addingthat my own musical notes ended the afternoon my three-year-old son glued middle-F to E and G while repairing some damage done the piano while playing it with a...
...Like Hinduism and Buddhism (at least in popular versions), the new physics seems to dissolve the substantial world of solid, separate bodies, and in addition, the whole idea of nature as I FATHER DAVID S. TOOLAN,S J., is assistanteditor of Commonweal.independent of the human mind...
...As he expressed it, There is the germ of a new order here...
...Where the film is concerned, however, the opportunism pays off for us as well as the distributor...
...What is holography...
...In early November of last year, a week before the annual meeting of the very straight American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature, the Fifth International Conference of Transpersonal Psychology convened at a suburban Boston hotel underthe theme of "The Nature ofReality: Dawning of a New Paradigm...
...No doubt in acknowledgment of the growing sobriety of the movement here, the American Psychological Association last yeardesignated transpersonal psychology an official area of inquiry alongside social, industrial, and behavioral psychology, and alsodecidedto recognize itas a legitimateand distinct modeof therapy...
...In short, consciousness and phenomena are correlative, and hence the study of differentiated appearances (nature) is simply the other correlative side of studying the emergence of self-consciousness...
...Noelf- ealiza ion (mo e ego game ), belfan cendence . Ban pe onal p ychology iaemp ingo mo e beyond Becke .To bee, gi enhe m l ipleheo e ical di ec ioni d aw f om-J ng, Rank, A agioli, Teilha d de Cha din, and o ien al p ychologie , o men ion a few-a con i enheo e - ical con eninoo be had ye . A fa a I can ell, howe e , he e io gh ag eemen on Becke 'he ihaa oo all fo m of o l-di o de , and, pe hapm ch phy ical illne ,em f om eligioaliena ion, ande ing of concioela ion o wha R dolph O o de c ibed in hi cla ic The e neo- heo ophido no ca e foo l-expe ience locked in ide Kan ian p yche . They wan o l b ea hing o-of-doo Commonweal:564The Idea of he Holy - heemendoand fa cina ing my - e y of he ac ed...
...Our scientific imagination has succeeded in transfiguring environing nature, once teeming with divine voices, into a literal idol, a dumb, dead thing which does not speak to us...
...Theheo y ief om hieffoondeandhe non-local diib ion of memo y h o ghob ain ie, and iep eenan applica ion of a omic phy ic ' whole-in-paheo em to neurophysiology...
...i e apaf omheef lneof holog aphyo explica e i , iicleahahe dawning holonomic pa adigm ofeali y can beead o, aano hele el, in bo h Eae n and Wee n eligiodi ec ion...
...What's "out there~' would not appear at all as it does were it not for the participation of the peculiar constitution of the "in here" and its measuring devices...
...For the iconoclastic Hebrew subversion of our primitive symbiosis with the sacred via nature led to an inward turn, a "centrifugal deepening" of soul-space and time wherein the Divine Name was to be discovered behind our basic imaginative figuring of an external world...
...This, any deeply religious man may feel, whatever terminology he may have learnt to employ...
...and closes with Deo gratias...
...without it, there would be no 'things' at all...
...II Screen ARS GRATIAARTIS TRIP TO PICASSOLAND IIN TAGEDanielsson's TheAdventures ofPicasso, the great artist (Gosta Ekman) ultimately lives in a place called I"Picassoland," on the model of Disneyland...
...Iconoclastic modern physics is in the process of discrediting this viewpoint, and replacing it with an uncommon sense that, for the first time in three hundred years, renders Barfieid's Commonweal: 562 prophecy fulfdlable...
...The mind's task is to awaken and decipher that code--in the large sense, what science is about, the very science that until recently had banished God to his heaven and faced us with incommunicative atoms "blindly running...
...This was the phase of greed for transitory "altered states" of consciousness, and the time when, as one-time Transpersonai president James Fadiman put it, "we made all the mistakes as soon as possible...
...If transpersonalists decide to honor the implications of Western history, then it would seem they must honor the Western religious romance with earth...
...I ' a if, o e e e Pla o' pa able, we hado en eo l'ca e mo e deeply befo e hen will i e . Thimayo ndange coming f om lo-land l na ic . Ba ichi ma ic o igin e ifie ,an pe onal p ychology g ew oof he pe cei ed inadeq acy of h mani ic p ychology' apo heo iofheelf- ealizing ego ha F e d canonized and which he new ego- and h mani ic p ychologie (of S lli an, Ho ney, E ik on, Pe l and middle-Ma low) do no en i ely e cape . Maing heo e ically,an pe onal p ychology in effecemb aceNo man O . B own'ein e p ea ion of p ychoanaly iin Life AgainDea h, and E ne Becke ' Rankian and Kie kegaa diane eading in The Denial of Dea h.S ip away heccei e layeof glibalk and ocialole-playing,he cha ac e defen e againnconcioanxie y, and expo e he fea of dea h lying ahe cen e of he ego-p ojec . Whado yoha e? Nohe libe a ed "a hen icelf," bmo e likely aeo -icken animal . A Becke pi , o all he magiche apiehap omi e libe a ion bych me hod , nexo he doo of each ho ld be placed a ign: "Dange : eal p obabili y of he awakening of e o and d ead, f om whichhe e i noning back ." Tha , a I ead i , ian pe onal p ychology'an weo h maniic p ychology...
...To write history, it has been said, is so difficult that most historians must make concessions to the technique of legend...
...The boundless One, holonomists are likely to claim, is tacitly in the many, secretly coded in our blood and tissue...
...Described mathematically by Dennis Gabor in the 1940s (Nobel Prize winner in 1964), holography is a method of lensless photography realized in hardware in the 1960s...
...But equally, not to strive to realize the sameness--to renege from the Supreme Identity--is to deny the Holy Spirit...
...It demands we save history...
...The point is that it is out of this energetic maze that we have defined ourselves, a definition that proceeds from the very act of mapping the historically altering forms of ourexperience which we call the "objective world...
...must add: In no way to relate the former with the past, and the latter with the future of the world, is to seek to deprive history, and perhaps time itself, of all religious significance...
...But what stronger proof can there ever be of "your blood and mine...
...For we fabricate ourselves by fabricating a world...
...The streets surrounding the museum have been clogged with peddlers selling T-shirts and cheap reproductions...
...Yeats, "if...
...A dozen new coffee-table books on Picasso have appeared in all the bookstore windows, and galleries have scrounged up any Picasso ephemera they could with the hope of luring in some of the overflow crowds from the museum...
...At the least, what happens...
...Human possibility, they say, involves more than the expression of one's little skin-enclosed personality...
...I have nothing but a book...
...No stock...
...Perhaps the detour East of speculative physicists and psychologists will turn out the fitting nonEuclidian line by which God writes straight...
...For memory is distributed throughout brain tissue...
...New York itself has looked like Picassoland this summer during the definitive exhibition of Picasso's work at the Museum of Modern Art...
...For between the primitive fusion with a world "full of gods" at our origins and any final destiny of re-identification with cosmic Spirit lies interposed the task of redeeming the fissuring, bloody sweep of the times and spaces holonomists now tell us we have co-authored...
...In either case, for psychology the movement represents a quantum jump...
...There is even a section on Dentistry ("I had five or six teeth out as a boy...
...Among other things in the late sixties, the "high states" of psychedelics were disclosing possibilities beyond humanism's ken, amazing connections with the physical cosmos, foreign cultures and histories, and visions that elicited a religious reading even from dyed-inwool atheists...
...He advises we remember our Hebrew roots, and the Hebrew strategy of dealing with nature that no longer represented the Presence hiding outside us, behind phenomena...
...Scatter-brained as it is, TheAdventures ofPicasso is also a richly black little comedy...
...Unlike the Greeks, for whom the disgodding of nature served the study of outward phenomena, the Jews disgodded with equal vehemence, but for the purpose of finding the nameless Divine Name hidden in the human heart and soul...
...But what a lovely concession legend can be, for in the final analysis it matters less who begat whom than how happily they lived ever after...
...The analogy: mind is like the laser, interpreting, not images across space, but the unextended frequency store implanted subatomically in brain neurons...
...Consciousness represents the inside of nature, claims their new vision--and says St...
...Inspired by the symbolics of quantum physics, he answers that brain neurons must image the entire universe...
...Will Wee n egoomach ha ing hei namehfinally effaced...
...under certain conditions, we may become microcosms mirroring the universe, a face and voicerepresenting the cosmos-- tat tvam asi, as Hindus say, "thou art that...
...congenital, it is worth addingthat my own musical notes ended the afternoon my three-year-old son glued middle-F to E and G while repairing some damage done the piano while playing it with a hammer...
...They wano l b ea hing o-of-doo, and o l'lang gepeaking noimply f omhe hea, bf om he heaof he phy ical co mo . In o he wo d ,hey wan inwa dneefeingohe wo ld ofhe ha deofhecience . En ehe holonomic (law ofhe whole)heo y . THE BIG E CITEMENTalaNo embe 'confe ence wa he holonomic model of mind and mae , a concep ion de ignedo con incecep ical ea-coaehahey oo ho ld be in e eed in higheib a ion . Holog aphy iof coe jone of e e al con endefohe i le of he "new pa adigm" which mighelie ehe concepal c i iafflic ingall hecience . Some of ip oponenwe e he alding i ahe ba e fo an epi emological heo y ha wo ld gi e anified acco nofhe di ee phenomena of q anm phy ic , o dina y pe cep ion, pa ap ychological e en , andan cenden al expe ience...
...SO WHATdoes one "insider" like Pribram make of the appearance of nonlocal memory in the brain...
...Not to realize to the uttermost the otherness of GOd from ourselves is to deny the Father...
...Nothing but that to prove your blood and mine...
...There is another possibility, however, one that Barfield recommends...
...But of what...
...F om annexpec ed q a e , i 'likeeec ing Aq ina : he mind a po en ially all hing . Now pan hei ican peonaliehe emana ioni a pec of allhi , and oole in conc ing he phenomenal wo ld.The inca na ional wingeewhamighbe knocking a odooo le i elf in o ime- pace, and oe pon ibili y o lehao nd in o op blic wo k . The la edimly en i ionhe poli icalamifica ion . of "ning oandning in" ; he fo me do no...
...The mind transforms this code (or aspects of it), expressed mathematically in Fourier Transformations, into three-dimensional images which are then projected much the way stereophonic speakers project sound...
...Until lately, Eastern religions have scarcely been touched by the split between mind and heart engendered by the Western scientific revolution, much less touched by historical criticism and the subtle acrobatics of reinterpretation called for when a scientifically oriented Westerner sets out to appropriate the meanings of an ancient religious tradition...
...That the Esalen Institute, that den of California lotus-eaters, was one of the sponsors will be enough for some: Madame Blavatsky warmed over...
...Not the least of the attempts to exploit the situation has been the release of The Adventures of Picasso itself...
...The crazies were being brought into the establishment...
...In terms of orthodox psychoanalytic theory~they are immensely expanding the possible boundaries of "self...
...we are her big chance at second birth...
...transcendence of self, spirit and species-wide synergy . . . and related concepts, experiences, and activities...
...It does not require professional charms to attract one's children, so the singers of family tales need not worry about "their style...
...The Newtonian-Cartesian notion of nature "out there" independent of mind "in here" is shattered...
...I highlighhe ma e nal co mic maix oof which we o igina e,he wo dlebmeaningf l plen m- oidhacea elely feedhe dep hofo l-e en in dea h. Fodo-i -yoelf We e n ego who find hei way he e,hiiaeal meal...
...The movie follows the story of Picasso's life about as I0 October 1980:567...
...Having largely created Western common sense, and the dispiriting logic of cog-psyches caught in the cosmic machine, physicists are now busy undermining that entire edifice...
...And ahe heo y i de eloped and applied, an pe onaliexpec an eq ally ich body of amifica ion fo ed ca ion and lea ning heo y, app oacheo heal h and p ycho he apy, and hendeanding of mic and aehe ic j dgmenin he agene ally . Ahe ame ime, he heo y a g ably makeome en e of phenomenach aelepa hy, clai oyance, p ychokine i , and p ychic healing.Tha i , Commonweal: 566Somean pe ona fiwo ld adi eheemedy ofeningo he wi dom of p imi i e . The e i ano hepoibili y acceo a holonomic domain wo ld p o ide a nece a y, if noalwayfficien , condi ion foinan aneocomm nicaion be ween di c e e peon . Finally, he heo y migh explain whyhepen ion of analy icho ghand a fixed imagina ion in ce ain medi a i e di cipline enhance ene gy and ind ce, aa minim m, expe ienceofnion wi hhe phy ical wo ld .S ch nae-my ici m wo ld of coe be a fa c y f om o hekindof bo h Eae n and Wee n myici m, and Bohm, if noall hihe ald , iclea ly awa e of diinc ion he e. To ay ha we a e implica ed in aic lypi i al o de demand , Bohmhink , ano hekind ofe ea chhan q an m phy ic . Idemand , a medi a i e me hod...
...So we may be led to explore the notion that in some sense each region contains a total structure "enfolded" within it...
...Pribram extends the ancient maxim: not only is soul a mirroring microcosm, but so is the brain--and the mind's language is the potential print-out of that fact...
...The brain, says Pribram, is a hologram...
...Somean peonaliexhibia dea h wi h in expia ion fo ' he e il of capi ali ic ego . The Wee neligioeading of holonomic implica ion demandwea e, on anyl ima eeckoning, bo hhe el e and he phy ical wo ld ha God ha c ea ed h o gh o senses...
...To be sure, the leading theorists of ttanspersonal psychology (with exceptions like James Hillman) have been descend10 October 1980:563 ing in o he mine- hafof o ien aleligion . Incipien ly, howe e , he dig i in p incipleedi co e inghe b oken link be ween he We ' con empla i eandi ion and academic knowledge . The ea ch i fo awa eneof ha dep h ofo l which c ea epace fo an ing eof " pi i . " Inead of c a ching fo a hin " eligiodimen ion" o ina dible " mo of angel " in commonec laexpe ience, aihe com wi h con empo a y libe alheologian ,hean pe - onal con cione- ai ea ep i inglyadi ional . They end o foconhe p edi po i i e o l-wo k nece a y befo e any hing likehe in en i y of Hind , B ddhi , o J daecCh i ian " eali y" will dawn...
...There are other "chapters" of a page or more devoted to Sports, the Red Schoolhouse, Transportation, the Newspapers...
...But if something like this is possible, Barfield goes on, then in retrospect the objectivizing scientific revolution begins to look as if it were part of that process whereby we liberated ourselvesfrom an unwitting and unfree participation in the sacred cosmos and prepared for a willing, consciousparticipation--and thus a material world deliberatelyhallowed by imagination reborn in God's great Darkness...
...A la , ome hoped, hiheo y wo ld healhe We'in ellecalchi m be ween mind and hea, cience andeligion . A big o de . Noe e yone ahe confe ence ag eed holog aphy co ld dohe job . The holonomic heo y ihe wo k of Ka l P ib am of S anfo d Uni ei y(Lang age of he B ain, P en ice-Hall...
...Sounds like, after all, the imago dei is here...
...No land...
...Bbo h wingha eddenlyefo nd he p imacy of poe ic imagina ion inhe wo k of mindpa ic la ly when icomeo he wo k of di co e y ielf . (Admi eof Elizabe h Sewell'The O phic oice plea e ake no e.)Wha i happening he eep e enheh e hold of a new con e a ion be ween o dina ily eanged inq i e , ha d cien i, and p ychologi...
...Perhaps...
...From almost the start, however, the "lunatics" took it for granted that for the meaning and truth of religious visions to become accessible and public, one could not approach them with the mind of the "drowsy Englishman after lunch...
...The one i in he many, he many one -wi homal di olion . The whole diach onic o dep ingf om an o dewhich i ynch onic.Again, Bohm : "All implica e all," e enohe ex enha"we oel e " a e implica ed oge hewi hhe "allhaweee and hink abo...
...No reputation for making love or war...
...For not otherwise than through us will nature become spirited...
...Well, maybe...
...I Cor...
...Parents who share such memories with their children share the spirit of an age, as well as of two lifetimes, and bequeath an inheritance to successive generations that will only grow more valuable with age...
...Before ruling out that possibility, it wouldbe well to consider some of the background behind the current intersection of soul- and subatomic-world searching...
...Time need not be the play of "eternal return...
...This order is not to be understood solely in terms of a regular arrangement of objects (e.g., in rows) or as a regular arrangement of events (e.g., in a series...
...The so-called particles act as if they knew instantaneously what was going on in the whole cosmic system, as if cansality as we think of it in the discrete world of space-time did not apply to their n-dimensional order...
...In ways the East does not, Western religion ambiguously blesses the differentiating "fall into consciousness" and choice which gradually "disgodded" natureand expelled us from that innocent symbiotic garden wherein God walked with our ancestors "in the cool of the evening breeze...
...History is religiously significant, claims the Western reading of ultimate implication, because history's fissuring of cosmic harmony alters the ontological relationship between creature and Creator...
...More than their professional theological counterparts at the AAR and SBL conventions, the seemingly secular transpersonalists honored those meditative contexts within which the experiential data for theological reflection typically arise...
...All 'otherness' and appearance in our'familiarworld thus hinges on this magic act of mind...
...15:28) According to this reformed Pharisee, it is this visionary act that heals the cosmic schism, that reconciles penultimate mother nature, through us, with her Creator...
...Last November, it was Gabrielle Roth's dancing, t'ai chi with AI Huang, Cecil Burney's symbolic sand play, shamanistic rites with Prem Dass or Michael Harrier, or a sermon from Swami Muktananda...
...Paul, sounding the depths of nature's soul in him, she groans to be replenished with Spirit--"that God may be all in all...
...Just a tale of character, a legacy that cannot be spent by heirs apparent...
...As a child, I knew one of my grandparents...
...That greed andjazz-styleis visible in Sutich's rambling definitionof tnmspersonal psychology in the premier issue of the Association's journal...
...touches upon a mother's "pragmatic article of faith in the form of a long, resilient wide belt always hung prominently on a nail in the kitchen...
...Does this make our troublesome sensible world an "illusion" ? Not so...
...The Association of Transperonal Psychology was founded in 1969 by Anthony Sutich, a bedridden arthritic cripple and almost legendary therapist, who had been instrumental in inventing group therapy and had previously organized the Association of Humanistic Psychology...
...Without us, or something akin to us, enabling the reduction of this buzzing whirlwind to events and forms, there would be no appearances, and conversely, without "objects," no us, or "I...
...To get a sense of this historical rite of passage, now with holonomic eyes, I found it useful to return to Bruno Snell's essay on the Greek gift of objectivity and soul language, The Discovery of Mind, to Erich Neumann's The Origins and History of Consciousness, to Julian Jaynes's The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, and finally, my own favorite, to Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances...
...How is it possible for Western scientists to assimilate an oriental religious outlook with seeming ease when the absorption of the native religious tradition seems so difficult...
...This gag feels very true to life...
...Those who are not shocked when they f'n'st come across quantum theory," said Niels Bohr at the dawn of nuclear physics, "cannot possibly have understood it...
...This is not as far-fetched as it sounds...
...Called together to discuss the conceptual crisis in the social and physical sciences, that is, the failure of standard scientific models to provide solutions to urgent individual and social problems or accommodate challenging observations from a variety of sources, the conference also marked the tenth birthday of the Association of Transpersonal Psychology9 It brought together a diverse group of psychologists, neurophysiologists, physicists, parapsychologists, comparative religionists, and assorted gurus and American Indian shamans, about five hundred strong, whom manyreaders of this magazine and probably most of the people at the AAR and SBL conventions would label the "lunatic fringe...
...The shocking thing is, not only is the world of quality an interactional "construction," but as Einstein, Heisenberg and Bohr have shown, so is the world of quantity...
...So fa , moan pe onaliha e p efeedhe Eae n mode...
...No one need be wholly unclear who is wholly honest...
...fillings were for the wealthy...
...To this broth, add Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty (the more we determine position, the less we know of an entity's .momentum, and vice versa) and Bohr's rule of Complementarity (the "objectivity" of wave or particle phenomena depends on the observer) and salt well with Einstein's General Relativity...
...It begins with an altar boy's lntroibo ad altare Dei...
...9 mysticalexperience...
...The exhibition may even be better in light of the film, which has a surprisingly astute comment to make on Picasso's life...
...For some time, Bohm had been proposing holography as an example of how to understand quantum paradoxes like the EPR effect--where a subatomic particle separated from its mate somehow knows "telepathically" (as Einstein incredulously put it) what spin that mate will take as a result of an experimenter's change of current...
...Is such a vision finally so different from the Upanishadic vision of the identification of atman, or soul, with Brahman, the Nameless One...
...Among their number, there exists what might be called a pantheistic wing, and others who, on the other wing, exhibit an incarnational orientation...
...something ontologically new is at stake in our wrestling ourselves and nature independent of the Creator...
...This "new order" is not visible...
...To this a true Christian...
...It should come as no surprise, then, if holonomic epistemology is right, that the emptiness of nature is reflected in the hollowness of men's souls...
...The q eion ihe bill fohameal : a pan hei ic o panp ychic di ol ion of indi id al iden i y in he ocean of being...
...Bohm calls it implicate (or "enfolded," like an ink spot spun in viscous glycerine, which invisibly spreads everywhere without dissolving into the solution...
...Recently, there have been theoretical developments in this direction, but more along the line of the incarnate word (Vishnu) in Hindu cosmology...
...Item: Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics (Shambala, 1975) and Gary Zukav's immensely popular The Dancing Wu Li Masters (Morrow, 1979...
...Says Bohm: our 10 October 1980:565 en ible wo ld i like a " iny ipple" exi ing in an immen e ocean of ene gy.i e independenof whe heholog aphy i he beexample, q anm phy icggehe wholepaceime wo ld and ieq en ial logic iapecial ca e conc ed by ha "in ide" of nae we call mind . The mo e f ndamenal p inciple ihe law of immedia e in e connec ion andhe dependence of e e y paon hea e of he whole y em...
...And there is a more substantial report on The Spiritual Life...
...The idea is to retrieve the image of the universe that God used in creating it, to name it as he does, and to speak in his tongue...
...In brief, the idea is that our minds mathematically construct three-dimensional reality by interpreting wave frequencies from another order of non-Euclidian n-dimension, a realm of meaningful, patterned reality transcending time and space...
...When any single piece of the blur is placed within a coherent light beam like a laser, the total original pattern is regenerated to produce a three-dimensional image...
...WITH SUFFICIENT AMPLIFICATION,holonomic epi emology doeeem o acco nfoo dina y pe cep ion, e pecially oich blof meaningf l whole , of peon , ci ie , c le , nae...
...Transpersonal psychology is interested in those ultimate human capacities and potentialities that have no place in positivistic or behavioristic theory, classical psychoanalytic theory, or humanistic psychology9 The emerging Transpersonal Psychology is concerned specifically with the empirical scientific study of . . . becoming, individual and species-wide meta-needs, ultimatevalues, unitive consciousness, peak experiences...
...Rather, a total order is contained in some implicit sense, in each region of space and time...
...The schismatics found themselves impelled,with new eyes, to reread Emerson, Whitman and William James, and plunged into Eastern mysticism--encouraging,in the process, that spate of publishing of primary Eastern texts and popularizations that so marked the last decade...
...The conjunction of practice with intellect distinguishes a transpersonal psychology convention from a convention of academic theologians--like the AAR and the SBL--for the former lace their intellectual scrutiny with ritual and meditative spaces...
...At the subatomic level as well, there are no properties of things, but only properties of interactions that are unthinkable without us...
...To understand this, he was led to physicist David Bohm of London University (Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980...
...Thicon ea ion al eady inol ehe c lal c i ic of he con cio nemo emen , people like Ch i ophe La ch (The C le of Na cii m)and Richa d Senne(The Fall of P blic Man) . Blogically i o gho incl de li e a yheo iofhe imagina ion and heologian who, in addi iono piggybacking on c i ical ociology and li e a y in e p e a ion heo y, migh en ehe con e a ion by ecognizingheinaal and hio ical affini iewi han peonal con cio ne - ai e. S ch a m l i-di ciplina y con ea ion wo ld be well woh following...
...The shocker here was (John S.) Bell's Theorem (1964) which showed that if the basic statistical predictions of quantum theory were approximately correct (they were) it followed that not only on the microscopic, but also on the macroscopic level, no theory could validly claim that "'the spatially separated parts of reality [are] independent...
...G. Glob, Plen m,6...
...So we a e p e ene e ywhe e and a all ime ,ho gh only implica ely ( ha i , implici ly) . Shocking ahi may beo commonen ehaped by idolizing en ible expe ience, imigh beangeill if h man being , compo ed a we a e ofch q anmff, did noeflec a oown le el he co micefe ence of a om . Thi i wha of coe haan peonaliexci ed...
...In the process of understanding that, we may also see that part of the difficulty in appropriating the Western religious tradition may consist in the fact that the "scientifically oriented" Western student tacitly presumes a no longer valid Cartesian-Newtonian epistemology and world-view...
...We shall see, I think...
...It is based on the curiosity that light waves scattered by an object can be recorded on a photographic plate as a swirling interference pattern, the "hologram," so named because the information from the object is distributed over the whole plate...
...Transpersonal" is the neologism ofpsychologists who are reincorporating a religious understanding of "soul" and "spirit" into their theoretical and therapeutic frameworks...
...As anyone familiar with recent physics knows, our everyday world of solid objects is built on a world of insubstantial "blooming, buzzing confusion" where boundary and particularity, not interdiffusion, seem the miracle to be explained...
...In contrast, the sensible order ("unfolded," as in stopping the revolving glycerine to allow the ink spot to reappear) is that realm into which certain aspects of the more fundamental implicate order (not buzzing confusion after all) are mapped by that aspect of implicate order we call mind...
...It took some time before fascination with transient "states" began to give way to concern for stable, character-informing conditions of being, and some time before instant-nirvana was replaced by a recognition of the need for serious long-term spiritual discipline ifany ofthis mind-bending experience was to make a difference in the everyday world...
...There was more to human life than the ultimate concern of human closeness...
...Now at this point some transpersonalists would advise the remedy of returning to the wisdom of primitives...
...We ha e been he e befo e-in nine een h ceny Roman ic fa cina ion wi h Hind and B ddhibli...
...A if i ne e happened befo e,an pe onalia e edi co - e inghe hie a chieofo l'many diffe enmodeof being, o l'ichymbolic lang age and "fofoldi ion ." In ome en e, Bona ene'i ine a y ofo l iagain "in ." Bhiiwhe ehe Califo niani m ofhimo emen comein, andhe new phy ic . Unlike hei Roman ic nine een h ceny ance owho d ew back f om echnology' mindlenae and inwa d o "c ea i e geni" o pan hei m,he new a ce ica e conce ned wi hhe body . In la ge meaehey p od cedhe "innepo" lib a y,enni , golf, andnning afo mof yoga...
...I can only conclude with one of Barfield's more haunting paragraphs...
...The courtship between the new physics and the egodissolving oceanic-bliss orientation of oriental religions is odd and fascinating...
...The film really is better in light of the exhibition...
...This was Owen Barfield's point in Saving the Appearances...
...LETUSBEGINwith a birthday party...
...Psychology's theologicalquantumjump DAVID TOOLAN BBB~HERE WILLbe a revival of Christianity," Owen l-Barfield has written, "when it becomes impossible to write a popular manual of science without referring to the incarnation of the Word...
...It is, furthermore, unnecessary to be a professional historian in order to record one's memories...
...P oblemConce ninghe Sce of Con cione ," Con cio neand he B ain, ed...
...NON.EUCLIDEAN LINES BY WHICH GOD WRITES STRAIGHT...
...With the blessing of Abraham Maslow, Sutich and others broke from humanistic psychologybecause they found its ceiling on human potential too low...
...It means consciousness is the inside of the world, studying itself...
...Pardon, old fathers," asks the poet W.B...
...The so-called "building-blocks" of nature are no-thing, but rather enormously energized, but from our standpoint, amorphous, "tendencies to happen"--rather like Aristotle's pure "potency...
...In both these interim reports of conversations between "far out" psychologists and physicists, recent developments in quantum mechanics are construed as showing more affinity with Hindu and Buddhist cosmologies and psychologies than with the Western idiom of Wisdom becoming incarnate...
...Such phenomena illustrate the key question in recent quantum theory: how does information get around so quick, seemingly in defiance of the speed of light...
...In 1973 Bohm suggested the situation might best be understood as a hologram, for in a hologram each part contains information contained in the whole...
...The puzzle is that subatomic wave-particles do not appear to be governed by the laws of objects separate in space-time...
...The e neoheo ophido noca e foo l-expe ience locked in ide Kan ian p yche...
...The precondition for appropriation was somekindofpsychic tramformation, a metanoia, and hence the importance of those ritual and contemplative arts without which, the great traditions unanimously claim, we remain, deaf and blind to the founder's path...
...Rare memories are, therefore, rich ones, like the exotic treasures borne from a IPharaoh's tomb...
...Beckewanoop imiic abooee abli hing ha connec ion . T an peonal p ychology i . Emboldened by iea ly p ychedelic binge, bbeq en lyobe ed and heaened by expe ience de i ed f om a hoof non-dg clinical con ex-J ngian analy i , enco n e , en o y i ola ion and o e load, neo-Reichian app oache , Gealp ac ice, p ycho yn he i , ma a hon e - ion , g ided image y anda ioechniq eofebi hingnoo men ionhe g owinge ioneof Eae n pi i al di cipline -an peonaliha e been impelledoeach fo new ca ego ieondeand modeof con cioneha imply do nofihe New onian-Cae ian f amewo kof "no malcience ." The e new ca ego ie of en o nd old, my hic, like he one No man O . B own adop ed in Lo e' Body ( ini y, ni y, head, bo nda y, fi e, f ac ion,eec ion, f lfillmen , e c...
...Aheic ly h man le el, in o he wo d , medi a ion wo ld con iehe expe imen al me hod foning in o implica e e onance of a highe o dehan ho e de ec able by he phy ici ' me hod . Con cione, Bohm belie e(he iadenof K i hnami), may ha e acceo aic ly pi i al o de , bonly if de eloped and in ofaaan o deofan cenden in elligence, compa ion, and lo e ma e ially al ehe o ganiza ion of mind and b ain . We e libe al heologiano pay mo e aen ionoch ahe i , which wo ldeq i e aending yema icallyo oneglec ed con empla i eadi ion, I hink hey migh find hem el e clo eo an in elligen accommoda ion wi hheicon ea i e pee...
...my wife, none of hers -- indeed, her own parents (one of them an immigrant herself from "that most distressful nation") did not live long enough to consider the possibility of doing more than inscribing a few names in the family Testament...
Vol. 107 • October 1980 • No. 18
