CHAPTER SIX
THE NATURE OF REALITY
1. INTRODUCTION: ATTITUDES TO EXPERIENTIAL REALITY
In this chapter we will look at general New Age theories and speculations about
the nature of reality. This is a convenient starting point, because most of the
beliefs discussed in later chapters presuppose certain ideas about what kind of
universe we are living in. Arguably, such ideas will only carry conviction for
specific individuals to the extent that they resonate with how they feel about
living in the world of daily experience. Therefore I will begin this chapter with
some remarks about the attitudes New Age adherents take to experiential real-
ity.
These attitudes vary along a scale from this-worldliness, on the one hand,
to otherworldliness, on the other. I use the distinction between these two poles
in the sense of A.O. Lovejoy's classic study The Great Chain of Being1
. Lovejoy
explains that otherworldliness does not refer to 'a belief in and a preoccupation
of the mind with a future life'. On the contrary, such a preoccupation
betrays a strong mis-worldly focus, hoping for 'a prolongation of the mode of
being which we know in the world of change and sense and plurality and social
fellowship, with merely the omission of the trivial or painful features of terrestrial
existence, the heightening of its finer pleasures, the compensation of
some of earth's frustrations'2
. Otherworldliness, rather, refers to
the belief that both the genuinely 'real' and the truly good are radically antithetic
in their essential characteristicsto anything to be found in man's natural life,
in the ordinary course of humanexperience, however normal, howeverintelligent,
however fortunate. ... the human will, as conceivedby the otherworldly philosophers,
not only seeks but is capableof finding somefinal, fixed, immutable, intrinsic,
perfectly satisfying good .... Not,however,in this world is eitherto be found,
but only in a 'higher' realmof being differing in its essentialnature,and not merely
in degree and detail, from the lower3
.
Of the temporal, sensible, essentially divided world, an otherworldly view of
reality may give any one of three accounts. This world may be regarded as no
1
Lovejoy, Great Chain. I will repeatedly refer to Lovejoy's work, because his discussions
prove surprisingly relevantto New Age thought. Lovejoy provides us with a number of systematic
tools for analyzing the essential structure of New Age views of reality. The backgrounds to
this phenomenonwill become clear from Part Three of this study.
2
Lovejoy, Great Chain, 24.
3
Lovejoy, Great Chain, 25-26.
114 CHAPTER SIX
more than an illusion, as is the case in monistic Vedanta philosophy4
. Or it
may be stated that, although this world is real, it ought never to have come into
existence. This is the position of the dualistic gnosticism of late antiquity, which
sees the creation of the world as a disaster.5
Finally, the otherworldly-minded
may simply refuse to discuss the nature of the world because this is deemed
irrelevant to the sole aim of salvation from that world. Such is the case in early
Buddhism6
.
The alternative, this-worldly attitude can be found even in societies which officially
espouse otherworldliness. According to Lovejoy, this is simply because
people living in such societies
have never quite believed it, since they have never been able to deny to the things
disclosed by the senses a genuine and imposing and highly important kind of realness,
and have never truly desired for themselves the end which otherworldliness
held out to them. The great metaphysicians might seek to demonstrate its truth,
the saints might in some measure fashion their lives in accordance with it, the
mystics might return from their ecstasies and stammeringly report a direct experience
of that contact with the absolute reality and the sole satisfying good which
it proclaimed; but Nature in the main has been too potent for it. ... the plain man
... has manifestly continued to find something very solid and engrossing in the
world in which his own constitution was so deeply rooted and with which it was
so intimately interwoven; and even if experience defeated his hopes and in age
the savor of life grew somewhat flat and insipid, he has sought comfort in some
vision of a better 'mis-world' to come, in which no desire should lack fulfilment
and his own zest for things should be permanently revitalized.7
I have quoted Lovejoy's ornate descriptions at some length, because we will
find again and again that a correct view of this distinction is crucial for understanding
the nature of New Age religion.
Implicit in Lovejoy's description of this-worldliness is a distinction between
a focus on our world of experience as such, or on a better "mis-world" to come
which is modeled on the present world, but better. I propose to refer to the first
variety as "strong this-worldliness" and to the other as "weak this-worldliness".
Within this weak variety, again, the better "this-world" may be envisaged either
as located on this earth (which amounts to some form of millenarianism) or
in another reality beyond death.
On the strong this-worldly pole we find, first of all, many neopagans, particularly
those of a strongly Goddess-centered perspective. Neopagans generally
emphasize the beauty and splendour of the natural world, and show relatively
little interest in non-empirical realities other than the "inner worlds" of the
4
Lovejoy, Great Chain, 96-97; cf. 30-31, 92.
5
Lovejoy, Great Chain, 97.
6
Lovejoy, Great Chain, 97.
7
Lovejoy, Great Chain, 26-27.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 115
mind. They often explicitly attack New Age tendencies to escape from this
world either spatially (into "higher spiritual spheres") or temporally (into pastlife
experiences or expectations of future bliss), emphasizing that our business
is the here and now. The primary neopagan symbol of this-worldly spirituality
is the Goddess, the essence of which is poetically evoked by Z Budapest:
This is God, children, listen up well. The beautiful blue planet, our mother, our
sister. She moves with 200 miles per second, yet imperceptible; she offers the
quiet of the lakes and the rushing of her rivers, the vast expanse of her oceans,
the echoes of her mountains. This is God, children... listen up well. Lift your eyes
to the heavens, and you behold her sisters the stars, and her cousins the suns and
nebulas, and fill your senses with her infinite beauty. This is God, children... and
she has made no other heaven but the heavens where you already reside, and she
has made no hell except the one you insist to create for yourself. Here is paradise.
Here is destiny. Here is infinite grace. This is God. When you seek her she is
beneath your feet. When you seek her she is food in your mouth. When you seek
her she is love in your heart, pleasure in your body. You share her heartbeat.8
Essentially similar sentiments can be found outside the neopagan community,
very prominently in Matthew Fox's Creation Spirituality9
but also, less expectedly,
in the teachings of the channeled entity Ramtha10
.
Before discussing the varieties of "weak this-worldliness", I first focus on the
radical opposite to strong this-worldliness. Although repeated allusions in New
Age sources to the importance of the unitive experience of ultimate reality
might make one expect otherwise, true other-worldliness is very rare in the
New Age movement. The only unambiguous example in our corpus is A Course
in Miracles. According to this text—which has correctly been characterized as
a Christianized version of non-dualistic Vedanta11
—our world is just an illusory
chimaera, which has nothing to offer but violence, sorrow and pain12
. We
must awaken from the bad dream of separation, and reunite with God. Then
the world will cease to exist13
. Although many other New Age sources routinely
use the Oriental concept of "maya" and refer to the world of space-time
as ultimately illusory, they seldom come close to the uncompromising worldrejection
found in the Course. The more usual view is that, in the final analysis,
the world may well be an illusion, but that it is a meaningful illusion: one
which should be used and worked with constructively rather than simply
escaped from or dispelled. Thus, the "illusionism"-view is accomodated to an
8
HBWM 298. It is no doubt for poetic reasons that the Goddess, who is obviously female, is
here referred to as "God".
9
For instance OB 59-61
10
RI ch. 9 'If this isn't Heaven'.
11
Skutch, Journey, 72.
12
Cf. Wapnick, Meaning of Forgiveness, 20-24.
13
CiM:MfT 35-36.
116 CHAPTER SIX
attitude of weak this-worldliness (to be discussed below). The second otherworldly
position distinguished by Lovejoy, i.e., "gnostic" world-rejection, is
remarkably absent from New Age thought. Although many New Age sources
regard ancient gnosticism in a favourable light, this never includes its worldrejecting
dualism, which is sometimes explicitly refuted14
. Finally, Lovejoy's
"Buddhist" variety is of marginal importance in New Age sources, although
traces of it can be found, again, in A Course in Miracles15
.
Although New Age thinking is on the whole more congenial to strong thisworldliness
than to otherworldliness, most typical of the movement is a weak
this-worldliness. Both varieties distinguished above may be found: either a better
"this-world" located on our earth, or such an existence located in "higher"
realms. Most typical for the last variety is the view that, although this world
is not perfect, it is to be valued positively as a means for reaching the higher
realities beyond. Although in New Age sources we find various degrees of
"earth plane" devaluation, these are seldom of a radical kind. According to the
most common view, physical reality is characterized by a relatively "dense"
and limited level of consciousness. This implies a hierarchical universe consisting
of levels of spirituality, in which pure spirit on the one hand and dense
matter on the other are two poles of a continuum rather than radically separate
and opposed principles. Our own level of existence is generally regarded
as among the lowest and most material. Incarnation on earth, then, is not exactly
a pleasant experience: 'Imagine that one day you put on many layers of
shirts, trousers, and socks, then added to those several heavy sweaters and overcoats.
How would you feel? This is what it feels like for your Higher Self to
come into a physical body. You wonder why you feel so heavy at times!'16
.
In spite of such unpleasantness, life on earth is not on that account seen as
negative. The world is essentially regarded as a domainfor learning and growth
(often referred to quite literally as a "school"17
), and the troubles associated
with it must be approached as tasks. The school-analogy is actually very close
14
OB 76-77,112, 307; SS 479-480. Seth, among others, is very concerned with refuting worldrejecting
attitudes, emphasizing repeatedly that 'spirituality is a thing of joy and of the earth'.
This does not prevent him from developing a theory of multidimensional reality which is thisworldly
only in a weak sense.
15
See for instance its refusal to discuss subjects like reincarnation, because 'theoretical issues
but waste time' (CiM:Mft 57-58).
16
SG 149. Cf. Shakti Gawain: 'Being a very evolved spirit in a relatively unevolved form is
quite uncomfortable. It accounts for most of the problems we are having. It's as if we are gods
and goddesses living in little mud hovels and driving around in clunky, funky, old jalopies. It
can be frustrating and demeaning—especially when nobody even realizes who we are!' (LL 39)
17
For instance IAP 337; RBNA 102; RU 180. Cf. related formulations like "learning environment"
(SoS 28), "learning lessons" (RR 15-21), doing a "course" or "curriculum" (CiM Intro-
duction).
THE NATURE OF REALITY 117
and illuminating.As indicated by the quotation above, entering the school of
earth does mean that limits are imposed on an individual's freedom of movement
and expression. But these are meaningful restrictions which serve a purpose,
as indeed they do in any other school. New Age authors tell us that we
are here to learn lessons which cannot be learned otherwise, and once we have
learned them we will be free to leave the school and pass on to a higher level
of development. As long as we have not absorbed the lessons, we are stuck
with earth existence and have to make the best of it. Accordingly, the attitude
of many New Age sources to life on earth is characterized by a certain ambiguity,
not dissimilar to common feelings about attending school. Some love it
because there is so much to learn. Some hate it, because they feel constricted
by it. Mostly, however, one finds a mixture of both emotions. The essential
point is that New Age authors—whether they hate it or love it or just take it
as it comes—see it within a larger perspective. Just as school is only a preparation—but
a necessary one—for "real life", life on earth is also just one stage
in a much larger evolutionary process. Earth life must be seen as a stepping
stone to larger realities, which is why we will not be able to leave it before
having experienced it to the fullest. Strong world-affirming or world-denying
elements may occasionally be accomodated within this "school"-view, with
varying degrees of success18
. Mostly, however, one finds an attitude in which
everyday reality is simply accepted as something to be dealt with in a positive
spirit, against the background of a larger, cosmic life which gives meaning to
the relatively limited existence on earth.
Both the representatives of the New Paradigm, on the one hand, and those
authors who focus on the coming of the Age of Aquarius, on the other, look
for a better "this-world" on our earth. Nevertheless, from our present perspective
these two groups must be rather sharply distinguished. The believers
in an Age of Aquarius tend to combine their expectation of an imminent earthly
millennium of Love and Light with an equally strong belief in higher realities
and intelligences beyond this world. There is an element of contradiction
is this: if heaven were to descend on earth then presumably humans would no
longer need to ascend to heaven, and the reverse. It also is difficult to see how
a world of pure bliss and harmony could continue to be effective as a "learning
environment". We will return to these problems in due course. At this point
I just call attention to the characteristics of this form of weak this-worldliness.
The essential point is the expectation of an imminent transformation of both
humanity and the world. Both will be transferred to a new, higher state of being
and a "higher level of vibration". It is not just that humanity will change its
18
For instance Ramtha, who exalts the beauties of nature but whose spiritual authority derives
from his attainment of enlightenment during his only life on earth, after which he no longer needed
to be incarnated in that world he praises in such glowing terms.
118 CHAPTER SIX
ways and restore the world to its former state of harmony and beauty, although
this is also involved. The transformation will be more radical and unprecedented,
even involvingchanges in the atomic structure of the world which result
in a spiritualization of matter as such. The whole world, together with humanity,
will be transported "into a higher octave".19
In these expectations we recognize
a form of this-worldliness which may be called even "weaker" than the
preceding view of the world as a "learning environment". Although prophets
of the Age of Aquarius may exalt the beauties of nature unspoilt by man20
, in
the final analysis even this natural world appears to be in need of redemption21
.
Such is not the case with the typical "New Paradigm" literature. Although
representatives of this category seldom celebrate the beauties of the natural
world as poetically as Z Budapest, they are equally concerned with its preservation;
they tend to talk of "spirituality" in terms of living in harmony with
nature and its laws rather than in terms of other spiritual realities beyond this
world. Defenders of the New Paradigm share with those who expect the Age
of Aquarius a strong dissatisfaction with the present state of the world. This
dissatisfaction, however, is not with the world as such, but only with our present
culture. The ecological crisis has been created by a society based on fundamentally
flawed presuppositions. Humanity has to change its way of thinking,
perceiving and acting, and then it will hopefully still be possible to heal
the world. It is on such a positive transformation of humanity that representatives
of this category focus their attention. A transformation of the world, however,
is not necessary: the earth mustjust be restored to its former natural beauty
and balance. We have to conclude that in this New Paradigm variety the
boundary between strong and weak this-worldliness is blurred. New Paradigm
and Neopagan views about nature, although expressed in different literary
styles and terminologies, are fundamentally compatible. The question whether
the balance tilts slightly in favour of either strong or weak this-worldliness in
specific cases is of minor importance here.
It can be concluded that otherworldly thinking and world-rejection, at least in
its stronger forms, is not typical of New Age thinking. On the whole, New
Age-adherents are mis-worldly oriented, either completely or somewhat ambivalently.
Weak forms of this-worldliness dominate, but strong forms can count
on widespread approval even by weak this-worldy New Agers. It will be seen
19
For instance RBNA 99-109; VAA 111, 114-116, 118.
20
See Trevelyan's frequent quotations of Romantic nature poetry, in particular his favourite
poem 'God's Grandeur' by Gerald Manley Hopkins (EiG 191).
21
Cf. George Trevelyan, Operation Redemption (OR). See for instance OR 181-182, which
illustrates that, in spite of his exaltation of natural beauty, he is almost exclusively concerned
with the destiny of humanity. Sorrow and indignation about the destruction of nature, so prominent
in Matthew Fox's Creation Spirituality, is strikingly absent in Trevelyan's work.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 1 19
later that these conclusions have important consequences for various aspects
of New Age religion, such as the view of reincarnation. First, however, we will
look at general New Age ideas about the nature of reality and its relation to
the world of experience.
2. THE MEANINGS OF HOLISM
There is no doubt that the quest for "wholeness" at all levels of existence is
among the most central concerns of the New Age movement. "Holism", a term
originally invented by the South-African statesman J.C. Smuts22
, has been
adopted as a universal catchword for this orientation. However, it is important
to emphasize from the outset that the term "holism", in a New Age context,
does not refer to any particular, clearly circumscribed theory or worldview. The
only thing which demonstrably unites the many expressions of "holism" is their
common opposition to what are perceived as wow-holistic views, associated
with the old culture which the New Age movement seeks to replace or transform.
Such non-holistic orientations boil down to two categories which can be
referred to as dualism and reductionism23
. The main forms of dualism for which
the New Age movement tries to develop holistic alternatives are: 1. The fundamental
distinction between Creator and creation, i.e. between God and nature
and between God and man; 2. The distinction between man and nature, which
has traditionally been conceived as a relation based on domination of the latter
by the former; 3. The dualism between spirit and matter in its various derivations,
from Christian asceticism to Cartesian dualism. It is generally assumed
in the New Age movement that such dualistic tendencies are ultimately based
on the Judaeo-Christian roots of western civilization. Reductionism is a more
recent development, associated with the scientific revolution and the spirit of
modern rationalism. Its main forms are: 1. The tendency to fragmentation,
which treats organic wholes as mechanisms that can be reduced to their smallest
components and then explained in terms of the latter; 2. The tendency to
reduce spirit to matter, so that spirit becomes merely a contingent "epiphenomenon"
of essentially material processes. In all these five domains, the New
Age alternatives are called "holistic". The only common characteristic of these
alternatives is that they systematically attempt—with varying degrees of success—to
avoid and replace dualism and reductionism.
Holism, in this sense, pervades the New Age movement: from its concern
with Holistic Health to its quest for unitive consciousness, and from ecological
awareness to the idea of global "networking". In this chapter, we are con-
22
Smuts, Holism and Evolution (cf. Steyn, Worldviews in Transition, 123-124) Contrary to
what one might expect, Smuts's book has been almost completely ignored by New Age authors.
23
Cf. Hanegraaff, 'New Age en cultuurkritiek'; id., 'Verschijnsel New Age'.
120 CHAPTER SIX
cerned with holistic views of reality as such. While discussing the most important
theories and speculations which have been developed, I will attempt to
make a rough distinction between the main structural types of holism which
underlie these theories. I will argue that holism can be conceived in abstract
terms as: 1.based on the possibility of reducing all manifestations to one "ultimate
source"; 2. based on the universal interrelatedness of everything in the
universe; 3. based on a universal dialectic between complementary polarities;
4. based on the analogy of the whole of reality, or of significant subsystems,
with organisms. I will not address the philosophical question to what extent
these types can be combined with each other in principle; it suffices that, in
the work of specific New Age thinkers, they are sometimes combined, although
one type usually dominates quite strongly. The first two types, finally, are
undoubtedly the most important in a New Age context. They will be treated in
separate sections, while the others will be discussed more briefly.
A. The Ultimate Source of Manifestation
One of the most pervasive assumptions to be found in the New Age movement
is that all reality is ultimately derived from one Ultimate Source. The great
diversity of phenomena found in the world of manifestation must, at some deep
level, be linked together by virtue of a common Origin. This One Source of
all being thus guarantees the ultimate wholeness of reality. The capitals are
appropriate, because the Source is inevitably regarded as, or immediately associated
with, God. A typical New Age statement of "Ultimate Source Holism"
is the following passage from George Trevelyan:
Behind all outwardly manifested form is a timeless realm of absolute consciousness.
It is the great Oneness underlying all the diversity, all the myriad forms of
nature. It may be called God, or may be deemed beyond all naming—and therefore,
as in the East, be called THAT. If one is of agnostic turn of mind, one can
refer to it as 'creative intelligence'. But from it derive all archetypal ideas which
manifest in the phenomenalworld. For that world issues ultimately from spirit,
and its forms might be conceived as frozen spirit. The quality of Being permeates
everything,suffuses everything.Divinity is therefore inherent everywhere.24
Rupert Sheldrake, in his first book, cautiously presents the idea of an ultimate
source as an hypothesis:
If this transcendentconscious being were the source of the universeand of everything
within it, all created things would in some sense participate in its nature.
The more or less limited 'wholeness' of organisms at all levels of complexity
could then be seen as a reflection of the transcendentunity on which theydepended,
and from which they were ultimately derived.25
24
VAA 5.
25
NSL 210. Some other examples of the same idea: ToP 233; CV 39; S 188-189; RBNA 29-
30.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 121
Although it may not be immediately apparent, such statements contain an inner
ambivalence which considerably complicates the character of "Ultimate Source
Holism". We note that Trevelyan's quotation, with its clear pantheistictendencies,
also states that the Source resides in a "timeless" sphere. Sheldrake
speaks of creation "participating in" and "reflecting" a source which is, nevertheless,
transcendent. In other words, both transcendence and immanence are
affirmed to varying degrees. As a guideline for analyzing their relation in New
Age holism of the present type, I again refer to Lovejoy. The central argument
of his Great Chain of Being is summed up as follows:
The most noteworthy consequence of the persistent influence of Platonism was
... that throughout the greater part of its history Western religion, in its more philosophic
forms, has had two Gods ... The two were, indeed, identified as one being
with two aspects. But the ideas corresponding to the 'aspects' were ideas of two
antithetic kinds of being. The one was the Absolute of otherworldliness—selfsufficient,
out of time, alien to the categories of ordinary human thought and experience,
needing no world of lesser beings to supplement or enhance his own eternal
self-contained perfection. The other was a God who emphaticallywas not selfsufficient
nor, in any philosophical sense, 'absolute': one whose essential nature
required the existence of other beings, and not of one kind of these only, but of
all kinds which could find a place in the descending scale of the possibilities of
reality—a God whose prime attribute was generativeness, whose manifestation
was to be found in the diversity of creatures and therefore in the temporal order
and the manifold spectacle of nature's processes.26
This paradox of God as the self-sufficient Absolute and as the generative source
of Being, combined in one and the same tradition, led to a pervasive ambiguity
about ultimate values.
If the good for man was the contemplation or the imitation of God, this required,
on the one hand, a transcendence and suppression of the merely 'natural' interests
and desires, a withdrawal of the soul from 'the world' the better to prepare
it for the beatific vision of the divineperfection; and it required, on the other hand,
a piety towards the God of things as they are, an adoring delight in the sensible
universe in all its variety, an endeavor on man's part to know and understand it
ever more fully, and a conscious participation in the divine activity of creation.27
In other words, the pervasive duality between otherworldliness and this-worldliness
is parallelled by a duality between two conceptions of Ultimate Reality/God
as either radically transcendent or immanent in creation. Lovejoy's study
documents the uneasy marriage of these two contradictory strains in Western
intellectual and religious history. From our perspective, it is extremely interesting
to note that substantial and essential parts of Lovejoy's book (first published
in 1936) read as if he had the New Age movement specifically in mind.
26
Lovejoy, Great Chain, 315.
27
Lovejoy, Great Chain, 316.
122 CHAPTER SIX
The similarities are so close and numerous that we can only conclude that Platonism,
with its attendant problems, apparently extends its influence into the
heart of the New Age movement. In Part Three of this study we will explore
the historical background of this phenomenon. At this point we are interested
in the ambivalent coexistence of otherworldly and this-worldly elements, epitomized
by the concentration on a Transcendent Absolute or a Generative
Source.
Given the this-worldly rather than otherworldy orientation of New Age thinking,
it is to be expected that the conception of God as a "generative source"
will be more common than its self-contained alternative. And this expectation
is indeed confirmed by the sources. Particularly clear examples are the "creation
myths" found in various New Age sources, all of which are actually myths
of emanation from one Original Source28
. They describe how an original
absolute Oneness gave birth to the richness and diversity of creation. This
process is generally presented as a positive event, not as a fall from perfection.
Although these mythical stories differ in detail, they usually follow a similar
basic pattern29
. A comparatively sophisticated, but representative and
extremely influential version, is given by the channeled entity Seth, who refers
to God as "All That Is" and explains his purpose in creating the world:
The purpose is, quite simply, being as opposed to nonbeing. I am telling you what
I know, and there is much I do not know. ... Now—and this will seem like a contradiction
in terms—there is nonbeing. It is a state, not of nothingness, but a state
in which probabilities and possibilities are known and anticipated but blocked
from expression. Dimly, throughwhat you would call history, hardly remembered,
there was such a state. It was a state of agony in which the powers of creativity
and existence were known, but the ways to produce them were not known. This
is the lesson All That Is had to learn, and that could not be taught. This is the
agony from which creativity originally was drawn, and its reflection is still seen.
... All That Is retains memory of that state, and it serves as a constant impetus—
in your terms—toward renewed creativity. ... the agony itself served as an impetus,
strong enough so that All That Is initiated within Itself the means to be. ...
The first state of agonized search for expression may have represented the birth
throes of All That Is as we know It.... Desire, wish, and expectation rule all actions
and are the basis for all realities. Within All That Is, therefore, the wish, desire,
and expectation of creativity existed before all other actuality. The strength and
vitality of these desires and expectations then became in your terms so insup-
28
TiR 306-308; RG 3ff; OL 145; S 206-209; R 79; SD 31-32. See also chapter eleven, section
2, under "Cosmogonic Myths".
29
Usually, God is posited as the primary unitive reality, and manifestation starts with the
emergence of a duality in the original oneness (RG 3; S 190-191: cf. R 79; SD 31-32); sometimes,
alternatively, God himself must first be "born" out of a primary Ground (TiR 306-307;
SM 266: 'birth throes of All That Is as we know It'). In all cases, once the original unity has
become a duality, the basis for further pluralization is given and creation unfolds in a kind of
self-generating process.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 123
portable that All That Is was driven to find the means to produce them.... At first,
in your terms, all of probable reality existed as nebulous dreams within the consciousness
of All That Is. Later, the unspecific nature of these 'dreams' grew more
particular and vivid. The dreams became recognizable one from the other until
they drew the conscious notice of All That Is. And with curiosity and yearning,
All That Is paid more attention to Its own dreams. It then purposely gave them
more and more detail, and yearned toward this diversity and grew to love that
which was not yet separate from itself. It gave consciousness and imagination to
personalities while they still were but within Its dreams. They also yearned to be
actual.... All That Is saw, then, an infinity of probable, conscious individuals, and
foresaw all possible developments, but they were locked within It until It found
the means. This was in your terms a primary cosmic dilemma ...
The means, then, came to It. It must release the creatures and probabilities from
Its dream. To do so would give them actuality. However, it also meant 'losing' a
portion of Its own consciousness, for it was in that portion that they were held in
bondage. All That Is had to let go. ... With love and longing It let go that portion
of Itself, and they were free. The psychic energy exploded in a flash of creation.
... It, of Itself and from that state, has given life to infinities of possibilities. From
its agony, It found the way to burst forth in freedom, through expression, and in
so doing gave existence to individualized consciousness. Therefore is It rightfully
jubilant. Yet all individualsremember their source, and now dream of All That
Is as All That Is once dreamed of them. And they yearn toward that immense
source ... and yearn to set It free and give It actualitythrough their own creations.30
The extremely ambivalent character of this last sentence once more reflects
the inner paradoxality of Lovejoy's "two Gods". It is difficult to imagine a
more explicit example of God as the "generative source" of reality than the
theology/cosmology of The Seth Material. Still, the intuitive longing to "return
to the source" is also given its due, even though such a return would obviously
mean the reversal and frustration of the creative process, in the name of an
otherworldly rejection of the world of manifestation. This illustrates how difficult
it is to dispel otherworldly sentiments even from a strongly and consistently
this-worldly doctrine like Seth's, which celebrates reality as an ongoing
feast of cosmic creativity.
The principle of a Generative Source generally leads to the conception of
a hierarchical cosmos constituted by levels of spirituality, inhabited by intelligent
beings on corresponding levels of spiritual development. Such a view of
the cosmos is indeed extremely common in New Age thought31
. All intelligent
entities—discussed in detail in the next chapter—are engaged in a process of
spiritual evolution which will, presumably, ultimately lead them back to the
Ultimate Source. Again we encounter the ambivalence analyzed by Lovejoy:
individual intelligences emanate from the Ultimate Source in a "downward"
(or "outward") process of creative generation, so that these intelligences can
30
SM 264-268.
31
ECSU 60; WW 216-217; WWD 124; ENF 82; PR 73; RR 201-208; R 54-67; OtC 35ff;
RBNA 29-30; VAA 6-7; SoS 97.
124 CHAPTER SIX
start on the "upward" (or "inward") journey back to the source which transcends
creation. Many New Age authors, especially the representatives of thisworldliness
in its weakest—and therefore most ambivalent—varieties, such as
George Trevelyan, do not appear to perceive any problem, and are able to affirm
the splendour of creation and the need to transcend it in the same breath. Others,
especially those of a stronger this-worldly orientation, appear to have
noticed the ambiguity. Their favoured solution is to affirm that the possibilities
for future evolution are infinite. Seth, again, is a clear example of such a
consistently this-worldly view. If the purpose is "being as opposed to nonbeing",
then there can be no question of an ultimate re-absorption of individuality
into the One Source: 'There is nothing more deadly than nirvana. ... it
offers you the annihilation of your personality, in a bliss that destroys the
integrity of your being. Run from such bliss!'32
and 'You are not fated to dissolve
into All That Is. ... All That Is is the creator of individuality, not the
means of its destruction'33
. Instead, Seth offers the prospect of an infinite
process of creative expansion: 'I offer no hope for the lazy, for they will not
find eternal rest... Youwill discover the multidimensionallove and energy that
gives consciousness to all things. This will not lead you to want to rest upon
the proverbial blessed bosom. It will instead inspire you to take a better hand
in the job of creation'34
. The great goal of existence is for human beings to
become fully conscious "co-creators with God". This is a theme found throughout
our New Age corpus, and it is linked immediately to what may well be
regarded as the second pervasive theme of New Age thinking in addition to
the theme of holism, i.e. the idea of "creating our own reality" (see chapter
eight, section 3B).
As we will see, the conviction that we are, somehow, the creators of our
own reality is no less pervasive in the New Age literature than the theme of
holism. Like the latter, it takes different forms in different contexts and cannot
be considered as denoting any single, clearly circumscribed theory. Both
"holism" and "creating our own reality" are catchwords or -sentences referring
to very deep convictions or longings which are far more basic than any
explicit formulation. Below (chapter seven), much more will be said about this
second great New Age theme. At this point, however, we are more interested
in its relevance to "Ultimate Source Holism". It is clear that Seth sees human
beings as active participants in the creative energy which gave birth to the universe,
and this same conviction is reflected throughout the New Age litera-
ture35
. While All That Is is also referred to as "Primary Energy Gestalt", indi-
32
NPR 163 (footnote).
33
SS 412. This view is rather commonly shared in the New Age corpus (see for instance TiR
308-309; EiG 12), although the tendency rejected by Seth is not completely absent.
34
SS 460.
35
For instance ENF 168; GW 100.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 125
vidual beings are referred to as "Energy Essence Personalities". Our very being
therefore consists of creative energy. It is, in effect, only through us that All
That Is is able to create manifested realities. Seth tells us that although we may
be unaware of it, we are constantly creating our reality as naturallyas we breath.
The nature of our reality is a direct reflection of our conscious and unconscious
beliefs. Because most of us hold limiting and restricting beliefs about
the world, the universe confirms these convictions. If we nevertheless change
our beliefs, we will find that reality changes with it. Actually, there are no limits
to the realities we can imagine and "make real" if only we believe they are
possible. Thus the many-leveled cosmos emanating from the generative source
of All That Is is actually constituted of realities created by individual "entities"
participating in the universal creative energy. The levels of reality reflect the
extent to which they have become aware of their own creative potential. Human
beings live in their own self-created dreams, and the apparent stability of "physical
reality" is conditioned only by the intersubjective consensus of many individuals
believing in a similar reality36
. Seth's worldview is thus a perfect example
of the way in which, as noted above, ideas about the ultimately illusionary
character of reality are accomodated to a basically this-worldly perspective.
The traditional Oriental view of "maya" implies that the illusion of this world
must be dispelled in order to reach the ultimate"Real" beyond. In Seth's strongly
contrasting views, the recognition that reality is a self-created illusion serves
as an impetus to create ever better realities: not to flee from illusion altogether.
God's creation exists as an incredibly rich and dazzling kaleidoscope of
"imaginary worlds". These worlds are there to be enjoyed to the fullest, and to
be made ever more beautiful and diverse; they are not to be dispelled in the
name of some bleak otherworldly Absolute. This central message of the Seth
material has been of enormous influence in the New Age movement. We find
his worldview mirrored in many later authors37
, although seldom developed
with the intellectual rigor which characterizes Seth's formulations. Evidence
of Seth's consistency is his insistence on the infinity of God's creative expansion.
Not only is such infiniteness necessary, as we saw, in order to avoid the
image of God as an other-worldly final term of individual evolution; it is also
a necessary implication of the very nature of creativity: 'Ultimately a completed
or finished God, or All That Is, would end up smothering His creation.
For perfection presupposes that point beyond which development is impossi-
36
On a higher level not accessible to normal consciousness, individuals participating in the
"same" reality are believed to be in permanent telepathic contact. They reach a consensus about
their shared reality by emphasizing all the similarities between their respective realities while
ignoring the differences. Intersubjective reality is thus to be seen as a telepathically mediated
compromise (SM 202; SS 457-459).
37
His influence is particularly strong in the work of Shakti Gawain, Chris Griscom, Louise
L. Hay, Shirley MacLaine, Sanaya Roman and probably Michael Talbot.
126 CHAPTER SIX
ble, and creativity at an end.'38
In Seth's Romantic cosmology, which is based
on the supremacy of the Creative Imagination, there is no room for a perfect,
self-sufficient, and therefore otherworldly Absolute.
Special attention has been given to Seth's view of reality because it is paradigmatic
of Generative Source-holism in its most highly-developed New Age
form. We find here the essential picture of a hierarchical cosmos emanating
from a generative source (a traditional Platonic concept) combined with a quite
modern emphasis (reminiscent of Science Fiction) on the infinity of multidimensional,
creatively expanding worlds which are, furthermore, created by the
imagination of their inhabitants (participating in the divine creativity) on the
basis of their conscious and unconscious beliefs. These are absolutely basic
tenets for large and fundamental sectors of the New Age movement. Seth's pivotal
role in the development of New Age thinking has not yet been sufficiently
recognized by scholarship. However, in the context of "revelations" as discussed
in chapter one, the Seth messages must be regarded as a fundamental
revelatory source for the New Age movement. It is hardly an exaggeration to
regard Jane Roberts as the Muhammad of New Age religion, and Seth as its
angel Gabriel. Without their metaphysical teamwork, the face of the New Age
movement of the 1980s would not have developed as it did.
While the "Generative Source" variety of "Ultimate Source Holism" is far more
typical of New Age thinking than the "Self-sufficient Absolute" variety, the
role of the latter should not be underestimated. However, it is seldom presented
explicitly in the sources. The most important exception is, again, A Course in
Miracles, which was singled out above as the only example of strong otherworldliness
in our New Age corpus. The importance of the idea of a "self-sufficient
Absolute" in a New Age context lies primarily in the way it tends to
recur as loose references in very different, sometimes surprising and even logically
incompatible contexts. In order to better understand this phenomenon, I
refer again to A.O. Lovejoy's work. Lovejoy introduces the concept of "metaphysical
pathos", prominent examples of which are the "eternalistic" and
"monistic or pantheistic" pathos. Both are exemplified in Shelley's lines quoted
by Lovejoy:
The One remains, the many change and pass,
Heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadows fly ....
Commenting on the peculiar 'aesthetic pleasure which the bare abstract idea
of immutability gives us', Lovejoy comments dryly:
It is not self-evident that remaining forever unchanged should be regarded as an
38
SS 340.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 127
excellence; yet through the associations and the half-formed images which the
mere conception of changelessness arouses ... a philosophy which tells us that at
the heart of things there is a reality wherein is no variableness nor shadow that is
cast by turning, is sure to find its response in our emotional natures, at all events
in certain phases of individual or group experience.39
The same is true of the varieties of monistic or pantheistic pathos, with an
obvious relevance for New Age holism:
That it should afford so many people a peculiar satisfaction to say that All is One
is, as William James once remarked, a rather puzzling thing. What is there more
beautiful or more venerable about the numeral one than about any other number?
But psychologically the force of the monistic pathos is in some degree intelligible
when one considers the nature of the implicitresponses which talk about oneness
produces. ... again, when a monistic philosophy declares, or suggests, that
one is oneself a part of the universal Oneness, a whole complex of obscure emotional
responses is released.40
If we accept the frequent allusions to "self-sufficient Absolutes" in New Age
sources as examples of the instinctive emotional appeal of metaphysical pathos,
this has important implications for our analysis. The point is that there is a difference
in conceptual status between an explicitly formulated worldview on
the one hand, and expressions of metaphysical pathos on the other41
. The former
generates more or less consciously-held convictions about the nature of
reality, expressed as propositions; the latter signals the existence of deep-seated
and essentially pre-reflective wishes and longings. Although holistic worldviews
in general are usually defended by people susceptible to a corresponding
kind of metaphysical pathos, the two categories should not be confused.
If, in many New Age sources, we find examples of eternalistic or monistic
pathos expressed in the terminology of self-sufficient Absolutes, then the prereflective
and emotional character of these utterances precludes the automatic
inference that the authors therefore believe in a worldview based on such an
Absolute. On the contrary, the susceptibility of authors to eternalistic or monistic
pathos may equally well lead them, in the process of reflection, to develop
a "generative", or indeed any other kind of holistic worldview. And this, as we
have seen, is precisely what we find in the great majority of New Age sources.
Eternalistic and monistic pathos is prominently present; but it surprisingly seldom
gives rise to otherworldly-oriented worldviews according to which peace
will be found only in the pure One. Real otherworldliness remains very much
restricted to the emotional sphere, and almost never survives the transition to
theoretical speculation.
39
Lovejoy, Great Chain, 12.
40
Lovejoy, Great Chain, 13.
41
I have elsewhere defined this same distinctionin terms of "latent mental dispositions" versus
"explicit views of life", in a study of the nature of gnostic views of life (Hanegraaff, 'Dynamic
Typological Approach').
128 CHAPTER SIX
B. Universal Interrelatedness
First of all, the difference between this second category of holism and the former
must be precisely defined. It is not the case, of course, that universal interrelatedness
is absent from "Ultimate Source Holism". On the contrary: everything
in the universe is related to everything else by virtue of the fact that
everything participates in, or emerges from, the same Source. This situation
can be envisaged as a pyramid hierarchy with the Source at the top and the
increasing diversity of manifestation "fanning out" from that One Center or,
alternatively, with the Source at the center and manifestation radiating to all
sides 4ike the rays of the sun. Universal Interrelatedness as understood in this
chapter is characterized, however, by the absence of a Source or other ontologically
privileged Center. The appropriate picture is one of a network in
which every point is connected to every other point but in which no point has
a privileged status. A traditional parallel, which brings out the religious appeal
of Universal Interrelatedness, is the image of God conceived as a sphere whose
center is everywhere and circumference nowhere42
. An important result of the
absence of a Source with privileged ontological status is that Universal Interrelatedness
tends to be of an unambiguously monistic character43
. In this kind
of holism, questions about the ultimate origin of the universe usually receive
less attention than questions focused on its present nature and constitution. It
is perhaps not surprising, given this more practical interest, that the foundations
of holism in the sense of "universal interrelatedness" are almost exclusively
found in the domain of New Age Science. However, it must be emphasized
that the ideas developed in this domain, in various degrees of popularization
or simplification, are widely influential throughout the New Age movement
as a whole. Furthermore, the idea of holism in the sense of "universal
interrelatedness" also recurs in contexts other than the "nature of reality", for
instance in ecological or social theories of a New Age orientation.
Parallellism and Bootstrap Philosophy
In the first of his two influential books, The Taoof Physics, Fritjof Capra argues
that there are significant parallels between modern physics—especially quantum
mechanics—and Oriental mysticism. Capra's central thesis is that 'a consistent
view of the world is beginning to emerge from modern physics which
42
This formulation, associated with thinkers like N. Cusanus, among others, originated in a
Hermeticist tract of the late 12th century called the Liber viginti quatuor philosophorum (Faivre,
'Ancient and Medieval Sources', 31).
43
This kind of monism is, of course, different from the otherworldly monism encountered in
the previous chapter, according to which only the transcendent Source is real and the rest is illusion.
In the case of Universal Interrelatedness, which is generally this-worldly, the monistic character
derives from the tendency to accept only one ontological substance in the universe.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 129
is harmonious with ancient Eastern wisdom'44
. A similar concern underlies
several other books which enjoy some popularity in the New Age45
, but there
is no doubt that Capra is the recognized champion of popular New Age "par-
allelism"46
. It is not my intention to enter into the debate about the validity of
this genre as such, or the merits (or lack of them) of Capra's particular con-
tribution47
. The important point for us is that Capra's type of physics-mysticism
parallellism, whether valid or not, has unquestionably become one of the
cherished beliefs of the New Age movement.48
This adaptation of parallellism
tends to produce "pop" versions of what is in itself already an example of "popular
science", exemplified most typically by assertions to the effect that "modern
science proves mysticism". It can be demonstrated that Capra himself, at
least in the Tao of Physics, is more cautious. His claim is that Oriental mysticism
provides a consistent and relevant philosophical background to the theories
of contemporary science49
; and he emphasizes that the parallels strictly
apply only to the level of verbal formulations50
. Therefore the ultimate reality
experienced by mystics cannot simply be identified with the quantum field
of modern physics51
; although, of course, the similarity is quite suggestive.
Rather than in adducing "proof" for mysticism, the importance of the parallels
lies in their implicit criticism of current non-holistic (dualistic and reductionistic)
assumptions about the nature of reality. The suggestion of the Tao of
Physics is that Oriental philosophical worldviews are able to make sense of the
data of quantum physics, by assimilating them within a consistently holistic
framework. The reigning western scientific paradigm is not able to do so,
because its very presuppositions are directly refuted by the evidence of
advanced physics.
Here, we are less interested in the credentials of parallellism than in the
intrinsic nature of the worldview defended by Capra. His version of holism has
44
ToP 12.
45
For instance MNP which, other than Capra's book, favours the so-called "many-worlds
hypothesis" in quantum mechanics. Zukav's Dancing Wu-Li Masters, as I argued, is not really
a parallellist book at all. LeShan's Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist is concerned with the
paranormal rather than with mysticism.
46
As pointed out by Sal Restivo in his important study of the subject, parallelism as such is
by no means restricted to the New Age context. Rather, it is 'a recurring strategy in intellectual
conflict' to be found already in the Renaissance and in Weimar Germany (Restivo, Social Relations,
9Iff).
47
See Restivo, Social Relations; Chowdhury, 'Holisme en Parallellisme'; Clifton & Regehr,
'Toward a Sound Perspective'; Wilber, 'Introduction: Of Shadows and Symbols', in: QQ; and
Capra's response to his critics in 'Tao of Physics Revisited: A Conversation with Renee Weber'
(in: HP).
48
See for instance DL 323-329; AE 128.
49
ToP 30, 54.
50
ToP 52.
51
ToP 233. It seems that Capra later changed his mind and came to believe in the actual identity
of the realities disclosed by mystical experience and by physical research (ToPR 218-220).
130 CHAPTER SIX
two significant features. The first of these is the unity and universal interrelation
of all phenomena, which leads to the view of the universe as an interconnected
web of relations. The second is the intrinsically dynamic nature of
this universe52
. The argumentation of the Taoof Physics culminates in a defense
of the so-called Bootstrap theory in physics, which is presented as a perfect
exemplification of this kind of holism. Bootstrap theory was created by the
physicist Geoffrey Chew as a philosophical framework to account for the
research results of quantum mechanics. Interestingly, a close similarity has
been demonstrated to Leibniz' Monadology; Chew's quarrel with the corpuscularian
metaphysics of classical physics may well be regarded as a re-enactment
of the historical dispute between Leibniz and Newton53
. Capra describes
the essence of the bootstrap philosophy as follows:
According to this bootstrapphilosophy, nature cannot be reduced to fundamental
entities, like fundamental building blocks of matter, but has to be understood
entirely through self-consistency. All of physics has to follow uniquely from the
requirement that its components be consistent with one another and with themselves.
This idea constitutes a radical departure from the traditional spirit of basic
research in physics which had always been bent on finding the fundamentalconstituents
of matter. At the same time it is the culminationof the conception of the
material world as an interconnected web of relations that emerged from quantum
theory. The bootstrap philosophy not only abandons the idea of fundamental building
blocks of matter, but accepts no fundamental entities whatsoever—no fundamental
constants, laws, or equations. The universe is seen as a dynamic web of
interrelated events. None of the properties of any part of this web is fundamental;
they all follow from the properties of the other parts, and the overall consistency
of their interrelations determines the structure of the entire web.54
There should be no mistake about the radical implications of this view. Even
more clearly than in Capra's description, the full meaning of "overall consistency"
is brought out in the following observations, from an academic study
of Chew's philosophy, about the nature of hadrons (i.e., strongly interacting
particles constituting the atomic nucleus):
...the model of the hadrons is very peculiar. Hadron x is composite. Its constituents
are y and z. But both y and z are also composite. Among their constituents is x.
Thus each hadron is constituted by other hadrons, which it in turn constitutes.
This network is possibly infinite in extent. Moreover, on this view, each single
hadron can be, and probably is, individual,with its individuation being given by
its precise mirroring of the total situation of all other hadrons, particularly those
which immediately determine it. ... In other words, each particle helps to generate
other particles, which in turn generate it. In this circular and violentlynonlinear
situation, it is possible to imagine that no free, or arbitrary, variables appear
and that the only self-consistent set of particles is the one found in nature.55
52
ToP 30; cf. TP 87.
53
Cf. Gale, 'Chew's Monadology', 339-348.
54
TP 92-93. Cf. ToP 316-317.
55
Gale, 'Chew's Monadology', 345-346.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 131
This is exactly the conclusion drawn by Capra:
the whole set of hadrons generates itself in this way or pulls itself up, so to say,
by its 'bootstraps'. The idea, then, is that this extremely complex bootstrap mechanism
is self-determining, that is, that there is only one way in which it can be
achieved. In other words, there is only one possible self-consistent set of hadrons—
the one found in nature.56
What we have, then, is a view of physical reality based on universal interrelatedness
in its most radical sense. At the subatomic level, everything in the
universe quite literally participates in everything else. Of course, such a view
raises many questions. A problem not adressed by Capra is how one should
deal with the seemingly unavoidable conclusion of an absolute determinism.
Another problem is the fact that bootstrap holism deals exclusively with physical
realities, and would appear to leave no room for the spiritual. It is not clear,
moreover, how interrelatedness at the ultimate subatomic level—however
total—could be relevant to the macroscopic level of human life in the phenomenal
world. These problems did occur to Capra, and have resulted in an
interesting change of direction between the Tooof Physics and his second fundamental
contribution to New Age literature, The Turning Point.
Capra has described this change in his autobiographical volume Uncommon
Wisdom. In The Tao of Physics he saw the new physics as 'the ideal model for
new concepts and approaches in other disciplines'57
. A casual remark from the
systems theorist Gregory Bateson, communicated to Capra by a common friend,
made him realize that this thinking contained a 'major flaw'. Bateson had said
jokingly: 'Capra? The man is crazy! He thinks we are all electrons'. Reflecting
on this remark, Capra came to realize that 'by presenting the new physics
as a model for a new medicine, new psychology, or new social science, I had
fallen into the very Cartesian trap that I wanted scientists to avoid'58
. Presenting
physics as a model for other domains implied that physical phenomena
were the primary reality and the basis of everything else. In other words:
the bootstrap holism of the Taoof Physics, taken by itself, amounted to a species
of materialist reductionism. This shocking realization led Capra to develop,
over the course of several years, a new approach which 'no longer presented
the new physics as a model for other sciences but rather as an important special
case of a much more general framework, the framework of systems theo-
ry'59
.
Capra appears to be confident about the success of this reorientation, the final
result of which is The Turning Point. Before discussing the systems view devel-
56
ToP 327-328.
57
UW 73.
58
UW 74.
59
UW 74.
132 CHAPTER SIX
oped in that book, however, it seems relevant to call attention to another chapter
of Uncommon Wisdom, which sheds additional light on the problem of
reductionism. In the context of his research for the chapter about economics
in The TurningPoint, Capra visited the economist E.F. Schumacher, well-known
for his book Small is Beautiful. After explaining his new systems approach,
which he believed to be in fundamental accord with Schumacher's views, Capra
expected a positive response. However, Schumacher strongly disagreed. The
core of his argument was that science cannot solve the problems of our time
because it cannot entertain the qualitative notion of higher and lower levels of
being. Both bootstrap physics and the systems view accept only one fundamental
level of reality and are therefore ultimately reductionist.
In the long discussionthat followed Schumacher expressed his belief in a fundamental
hierarchical order consisting of four characteristic elements—mineral,
plant, animal, and human—with four characteristicelements—matter, life, consciousness,
and self-awareness—which are manifest in such a way that each level
possesses not only its own characteristicelement but also those of all lower
levels. This, of course, was the ancient idea of the Great Chain of Being, which
Schumacher presented in modern language and with considerablesubtlety. However,
he maintained that the four elementsare irreducible mysteries that cannot
be explained,and that the differences betweenthem representfundamental jumps
in the vertical dimension, 'ontologicaldiscontinuities', as he put it. 'This is why
physics cannot have any philosophical impact', he repeated. 'It cannot deal with
the whole; it deals only with the lowest level'.
This was indeed a fundamental difference in our views of reality. Although I
agreed that physicswas limited to a particular level of phenomena, I did not see
the differences between various levels as absolute. I argued that these levels are
essentially levels of complexity which are not separate but are all interconnected
andinterdependent.60
The Capra-Schumacher discussion exemplifies a fundamentalrift in New Age
thinking between two contradictory views of reality: a monistic and a hierarchical
one. The dividingissue is whether the former can manage to avoid reductionism.
It is significant, in this context, that Capra explicitly rejects Schumacher's
view of the different levels as "irreducible" mysteries, apparently not
realizing that this literally implies a belief in reductionism. It will be useful to
keep this problematic in mind in the following discussions of systems thinking
and the holographic paradigm. We will return to this issue at the end of
this chapter, in discussing the debate initiated by Ken Wilber.
Systems Thinking
General Systems Theory emerged from Cybernetics as an attempt to correct
the failings of positivism. Making no fundamental distinction between such
apparently different domains as nature, social reality or the products of engi-
60
UW 228-229.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 133
neering, its basic analytical concept in all these areas is the "system", defined
as a whole that is more than the sum of its constituent parts. Instead of explaining
systems in terms of mechanical interactions between discrete units it
emphasizes overall patterns of relationship. Of particular importance is the fact
that "mechanical" descriptions of systems in terms of matter and energy
exchange are replaced by descriptions based on the fundamental concept of
information. Leading proponents of systems theory61
have claimed that the
shift to a system-oriented society constitutes a revolution which actually brings
in a "New Age": the "postindustrial" System Age which is based on the interlocking
global networks of information technology62
. Nevertheless, our first
observation must be that what might technically be called the "holism" of General
Systems Theory has no specific relation to the New Age movement. As a
result of the information revolution of the 1980s, the holistic idea of a global
information network has actually become a reality. Some New Age proponents,
notably Marilyn Ferguson, have interpreted this as a sign of the emergence of
a planetary New Age. Those more specific systems approaches which have
achieved popularity in the New Age movement are, however, by no means fully
representative of the phenomenon of systems thinking as such. It is significant
in this respect that Capra, in the crucial chapter of the TurningPoint about
"The Systems View of Life", mentions the founding fathers of General Systems
Theory only casually. Although he sometimes refers to Laszlo in a footnote,
none of the founders is even mentioned in the text. Capra's Systems theory
turns out to be a personal blend of the ideas of only two thinkers: Gregory
Bateson and Ilya Prigogine63
.
Bateson (1904-1980), sometime husband of Margaret Mead, is an extremely
original but enigmatic thinker. During the last years of his life, which he spent
at the Human Potential center Esalen, he seems to have become a sort of cult
guru of the alternative movement64
. It is perhaps regrettable that he allowed
this to happen. Bateson has been labeled a New Age thinker because of his
association with Esalen, but there is little doubt that few of his admirers understood
his ideas65
. Bateson's daughter recalls her father's irritation:
A great many people, recognizing that Gregory was critical of certain kinds of
61
See in particular Von Bertalanffy, General Systems Theory; Laszlo, Introduction to Systems
Philosophy; id., Systems View of the World; Ackoff, Redesigning the Future.
62
Schuurman, Technische overmacht, 24.
"UW215.
64
UW 75.
65
Cf. UW 79: 'Even the few people who thought they understood him, he did not think understood
him. Very, very few people, he thought, understood him' (quotation of R.D. Laing).
Bochinger ("New Age", 417-418) provides an incorrect presentation of Bateson's position vis a
vis New Age on the basis of superficial analogies between Bateson's interdisciplinary interests
and the various domains of New Age speculation.
134 CHAPTER SIX
materialism, wished him to be a spokesman for an opposite faction, a faction advocating
the kind of attention they found comfortable to things excluded by atomistic
materialism:God, spirits, ESP, "the ghosts of old forgotten creeds". Gregory
was always in the difficult position of saying to his scientific colleagues that
they were failing to attend to critically important matters, because of methodological
and epistemological premises central to Western science for centuries,
and then turning around and saying to his most devoted followers, when they
believed they were speaking about these same critically important matters, that
the way they were talking was nonsense66
.
Whether Capra belonged to this last group is difficult to decide with certainty.
Capra's own memories of his encounters with Bateson, in spite of his own
assertions to the contrary, hardly convey the impression of substantial intellectual
discussions in which Bateson accepted Capra as a serious partner67
. To
ascertain whether Capra fully and correctly understood Bateson's thinking
would require a detailed comparative analysis beyond the scope of this study.
My impression is that the differences between the two outweigh their points
of agreement. Capra remains very much the physicist who tries to overcome
the Cartesian split by finding a way to include the dimension of consciousness
in an essentially material universe. Bateson, as an anthropologist and biologist,
was primarily interested, as he put it, in "living things". He actually mistrusted
physicists68
. Capra seems to have been fascinated by Bateson primarily
for two reasons. First, the overall monistic and holistic quality of Bateson's
systems thinking seemed congenial to his own bootstrap philosophy. Second,
and more importantly, Bateson appeared to have found a way out of the Cartesian
dilemma. His definition of Mind permitted a completely new perspective
on the problem of "Mind and Nature", demonstrating that they formed "a necessary
unity"69
. However, it seems that Capra disregarded at least two other
important aspects of Bateson's thinking. First, while the concept of Mind is
central to his work, Bateson consistently refused to discuss consciousness. This,
he said, was 'the great untouched question, the next big challenge'70
. Compared
to Bateson himself, who shrank from "rushing in"71
to this domain, Capra
often appears over-confident in proposing solutions on the basis of Bateson's
own premises. Secondly, Capra all but ignores Bateson's fundamental distinc-
66
Bateson & Bateson, Angels Fear, 6. Compare the attack on a whole range of New Age concerns
in Angels Fear, chapter 5. Nevertheless, both Bateson himself and his daughter appear to
have permitted the publication of their work in the series "Bantam New Age Books".
67
See UW 75ff.
68
UW 76.
69
See subtitle of Bateson, Mind and Nature.
70
UW 88. Cf. Bateson, Mind and Nature, 137. Bateson would finally adress the problem of
consciousness in Angels Fear which, however, appeared posthumously in 1987, i.e., five years
after the publication of The Turning Point.
71
Cf. Bateson & Bateson, Angels Fear, 1.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 135
tion between the two "worlds" of creatura and pleroma (terms Bateson borrowed
from C.G. Jung) which may be described as corresponding roughly to
"mind" and "substance"72
. Capra himself quotes a passage from Mind and
Nature in which Bateson, in his characteristic style, emphasizes that his work
is restricted to the former realm: 'In my life I have put the descriptions of sticks
and stones and billiard balls and galaxies in one box ... and have left them
alone. In the other box, I put living things: crabs, people, problems of beau-
ty...'73
. Bateson's theories applied to the creatura: the realm of "living things"
which is the realm of mind. This would suggest that Bateson's systems view
of Mind does not adress the realm of physics qua physics. Capra, however,
does not seem to have accepted that message.
This much about Bateson's contribution. Biochemist Ilya Prigogine (the winner
of a 1977 Nobel prize for his work on the thermodynamics of nonequilibrium
systems) will be discussed in section three of this chapter, on evolutionary
perspectives. In making use of Prigogine's ideas (mediated to him through
Erich Jantsch) Capra found himself on far more familiar ground, and there is
no reason to doubt that his presentation is basically correct.
In the Turning Point, Capra points out that the new systems view covers all
domains of reality (not just physics and mysticism) and that its implementation
will therefore lead to a new kind of society.
The new vision of reality ... is based on awareness of the essential interrelatedness
and interdependence of all phenomena—physical, biological, psychological,
social, and cultural. It transcends current disciplinary and conceptual boundaries
and will be pursued in new institutions. At present there is no well-established
framework, either conceptual or institutional, that would accomodate the formulation
of the new paradigm, but the outlines of such a framework are already being
shaped by many individuals, communities, and networks that are developing new
ways of thinking and organizing themselves according to new principles.
In this situation it would seem that a bootstrap approach, similar to the one that
contemporary physics has developed, may be most fruitful. This will mean gradually
formulating a network of interlocking concepts and models and, at the same
time, developing the corresponding social organizations. None of the theories and
models will be any more fundamental than the others, and all of them will have
to be mutually consistent. They will go beyond the conventional disciplinary distinctions,
using whatever language becomes appropriate to describe different
aspects of the multileveled, interrelated fabric of reality. Similarly, none of the
new social institutions will be superior to or more important than any of the others,
and all of them will have to be aware of one another and communicate and
cooperate with one another.74
72
See Bateson's fundamental article 'Form, Substance, and Difference', in: Steps, 456. Note
that it is a simplification to conclude that the "hard sciences" deal with the pleroma and the "sciences
of the mind" with the creatura.
73
UW 76.
74
TP 265.
136 CHAPTERSIX
Although this account is obviously closely modeled on Chew's bootstrap
physics, the latter is now seen as just a special case of the general systems
view of life, which is described by Capra as follows:
The systems view looks at the world in terms of relationships and integration.
Systems are integrated wholes whose properties cannot be reduced to those of
smaller units. Instead of concentrating on basic building blocks or basic substances,
the systems approach emphasizes basic principles of organization.75
Although natural systems are the most obvious examples (Capra mentions
organisms in general, cells, and the human brain), the same aspects of wholeness
are exhibited by social systems (such as anthills, beehives or human families)
and by ecosystems. The two basic characteristics of wholeness which
were already emphasized in the Tao of Physics—interrelatedness and dynamic
quality—are equally fundamental to the systems approach:
All these natural systems are wholes whose specific structures arise from the interactions
and interdependence of their parts. ... Systemic properties are destroyed
when a system is dissected, either physically or theoretically, into isolated elements.
Although we can discern individual parts in any system, the nature of the
whole is always different from the mere sum of its parts.
Another important aspect of systems is their intrinsically dynamic nature. Their
forms are not rigid structures but are flexible yet stable manifestationsof underlying
processes. ... Systems thinking is process thinking; form becomes associated
with process, interrelation with interaction, and opposites are unified through
oscillation.76
Capra relies heavily on the concept of "self-organization" as used by the school
of Prigogine and advocated by Erich Jantsch. Although living systems are most
clearly exemplified by organisms, some modern cybernetic machines also display
organismic properties so that the distinction between machine and organism
becomes 'quite subtle'77
. The real distinction is not between natural organisms
and human constructions, but between those systems that display the characteristics
of "self-organization" and those that do not. The former, whether
organic or not, can be regarded as "living systems"78
. This is a crucial move
which has wide-ranging implications, as we will see. Whether something is
living or not now depends on whether it satisfies a set of formal criteria for
self-organization. The most important of these are the following. 1. While a
machine (for instance a clockwork) is an essentially closed system which does
not need to interact with the environment in order to function, living systems
75
TP 266.76
TP 266-267.
77
TP 268.
78
See for instance TP 271 about Prigogine's favorite experiment with certain chemical systems
displaying the characteristics of self-organization (the so-called "chemical clocks"). Capra
notes that whether or not one regards these chemical reactions as living organisms is 'ultimately,
a matter of convention'.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 137
are open systems. In order to stay alive they need to maintain a continuous
exchange of matter and energy with the environment. 2. This exchange process
(metabolism) keeps the system in a permanent state of nonequilibriwn. Systems
in equilibrium, in contrast, are dead systems. 3. Nevertheless, living systems
display a high degree of stability. This is not the static kind of stability
displayed by systems in equilibrium but, rather, a dynamic stability. 4. Living
systems are capable of self-renewal: they can repair damage, adapt to changing
circumstances, and many have even developed a method of "super-repair"
in order to deal with death. This, of course, is what we refer to as sexual reproduction
in the organic world.
The radical implications of these criteria for the definition of "living systems"
become apparent as soon as we realize that, for instance, social organizations
such as cities, or abstract systems such as "the economy"79
, must now be regarded
as "living". This appears to be quite acceptable to Prigogine, Jantsch, Capra
and others thinking along similar lines80
. Following Capra's association of Prigogine
with Bateson, we have to draw an even more radical conclusion: cities,
economies etc. are not only living, they also possess "mind".
The crucial step in Capra's development of a systems view of life came when
he realized that the Prigoginian criteria for self-organization (life) were
extremely similar to Bateson's criteria for Mind, as described in the latter's
book Mind and Nature81
. Bateson himself confirmed to Capra that 'Mind is
the essence of being alive'82
. By combining the systems approaches of Prigogine
and Bateson, Capra tells us, 'everything fell into place'83
. Whether or
not Capra is right in his conclusion that these two sets of criteria are structurally
similar need not concern us here: we are interested in Capra's interpretation
of Bateson rather than in Bateson's philosophy as such. Bateson's criteria
are extremely formal and abstract and cannot be understood without a
comprehensive discussion of his complete philosophy. Significantly, Capra
himself makes no attempt to compare both sets of criteria, or to furnish proof
for his statement that they are similar or identical84
. He does not even reproduce
or summarize Bateson's criteria, but jumps directly to his conclusion:
Gregory Bateson proposed to define mind as a systems phenomenon characteris-
79 TP 392: 'According to the systems view, an economy, like any living system, will be healthy
if it is in a state of dynamic balance ...'.
80
Cf. OC 196-203; SOU 71-72; BQ 112-115.
81
Bateson, Mind and Nature, ch. 4 'Criteria of Mental Process'. For Capra's description of
his discovery, see UW 87-89, 215.
82
UW 88.
83
UW 216. Erich Jantsch, who is mentioned by Capra in this connection, is most probably
the one who originally proposed this connection. In The Self-Organizing Universe he explicitly
connects the Prigoginian principle of self-organization with Bateson's concept of Mind(SOU
162-165).
84
Neither does Jantsch (SOU 162).
138 CHAPTER SIX
tic of living organisms, societies, and ecosystems, and he listed a set of criteria
which systems have to satisfy for mind to occur. Any system that satisfies those
criteria will be able to process informationand develop the phenomena we associate
with mind—thinking, learning, memory, for example. In Bateson's view,
mind is a necessary and inevitable consequence of a certain complexity which
begins long before organisms develop a brain and a higher nervous system.
Bateson's criteria for mind turn out to be closely related to those characteristics
of self-organizing systems which I have listed above as the critical differences
between machines and living organisms. Indeed, mind is an essential property of
living systems85
. As Bateson said, "Mind is the essence of being alive". From the
systems point of view, life is not a substance or a force, and mind is not an entity
interacting with matter. Both life and mind are manifestations of the same set
of systemic properties, a set of processes that represent the dynamics of self-organization.
This new concept will be of tremendous value in our attempts to overcome
the Cartesian division. The description of mind as a pattern of organization,
or a set of dynamic relationships, is related to the description of matter in modern
physics. Mind and matter no longer appear to belong to two fundamentally
separate categories, as Descartes believed, but can be seen to represent merely
different aspects of the same universal process.86
Having included the dimension of Mind in a general systems view of life, Capra
has now laid the foundation for a holistic worldview based on "universal interrelatedness",
which covers a much wider spectrum of phenomena than the earlier
model based on the bootstrap philosophy in physics87
. The connection
between "living" systems, on the one hand, and the whole of reality, on the
other, is made with reference to the concept of "stratified order":
The tendency of living systems to form multileveled structures whose levels differ
in their complexity is all-pervasive throughout nature and has to be seen as a
basic principle of self-organization. At each level of complexitywe encounter systems
that are integrated, self-organizing wholes consisting of smaller parts and,
at the same time, acting as parts of larger wholes88
.
This notion of "systems within systems" can be extended at libitum in the
direction of the infinitely small and the infinitely large89
. Capra emphasizes
85
Note that Capra covers up the essential move from organisms in the normal sense of the
word to "living systems" in the Prigoginian sense. In fact, he has discussed the difference between
organisms and "classical" (i.e., non-cybernetic) machineson TP 268-269, after which he moves
on to a separate discussion of the differences between self-organizingand other systems.
86 TP 290. Compare these last sentences with my observations about Bateson's distinction
between pleroma and creatura. Capra appears to use Bateson's systems view as a means to unite
both domains, which had been kept carefully separated by Bateson himself. Accordingly, Bateson
talked about the unification of Mind and Nature, which both belong to the order of "living
things". Capra, in contrast, speaks of a unification of Mind and Matter, which is something completely
different.
87
One is left with the question of whether Capra believes it covers all phenomena. Where do
non-living systems (for instance, clocks) fit in?
88
TP 280.
89
It is interesting to compare this with very similar ideas found in the Ramala messages (RR
28-29, 147-148).
THE NATURE OF REALITY 139
especially Lovelock's "Gaia-hypothesis" according to which the earth itself is
to be seen as a living organism, i.e. as a living system containing smaller living
systems. But, of course, there is no reason to stop at that level, and Capra
indeed takes the systems holism of universal interrelatedness to its logical con-
clusion:
In the stratified order of nature, individual human minds are embedded in the larger
minds of social and ecological systems, and these are integrated into the planetary
mental system—themind of Gaia— which in turn must participatein some
kind of universal or cosmic mind. The conceptualframework of the new systems
approach is in no way restricted by associating this cosmic mind with the traditional
idea of God. In the words of Jantsch, "God is not the creator, but the mind
of the universe". In this view the deity is, of course, neithermale nor female, nor
manifest in any personal form, but represents nothing less than theself-organizing
dynamicsof the entire cosmos90
.
There is no compelling reason to object to the labeling of this theology as "pantheistic"
in the full monistic sense of the word, as long as it is fully realized
that Mind (God) is not seen as a "substance" but as an abstract pattern of relationship.
This, at least, was Bateson's view91
. Whether Capra does full justice
to the latter remains doubtful. Notice that, in any case, there is no suggestion
that God is conceived as an "ultimate source" of reality. God is completely
immanent in the universe: he is its very dynamics of self-organization or, in
Bateson's terms, "the pattern that connects".
The Holographic Paradigm
Perhaps the most widespread New Age vision of the nature of reality is inspired
by a technique called holography. The hologram is regarded as a perfect model
for understanding the nature of reality and the role of consciousness in perceiving
that reality. Holography is originally a technique for making threedimensional
representations of objects. Laserlight is reflected onto a photographic
plate from two sources: one source consists of light reflected directly
by the object itself, the other consists of light reflected from the object to the
plate by way of a mirror. The interference of these two beams on the photographic
plate produces a pattern of apparently meaningless swirls, the so-called
"holographic blur". This blur has no similarity whatsoever to the object. However,
when a laser beam is shined through this photographic film, a three-
90 TP 292. Bateson himself similarly associates the universal Mind with "God" ('Form, Substance,
and Difference', 461).
91
There is reason to suspect that Capra blurs the distinction between traditionalpanpsychism
and Bateson's system view. At the end of the chapter, Teilhard de Chardin is presented as in
essential accord with Capra's systems view (TP 304). Bateson, however, expressly objected to
an interpretationof his philosophy as a Teilhardian panpsychismwhich even ascribes a mental
character or potentiality to atoms. Bateson, in contrast, saw the mental as 'a function only of
complex relationship'' ('Comment on part V, 465 footnote).
140 CHAPTER SIX
dimensional image of the original object appears behind it. This technique has
two characteristics which have fired the imagination of New Age scientists and
New Age believers generally. Firstly, holography suggests that it is possible to
convert objects into frequency patterns, and frequency patterns back into
objects92
. The object is implicitly present in the seemingly chaotic frequency
pattern. The latter apparently possesses a hidden order which can be regarded
as the "deep structure" underlying the object in its manifested form. Secondly,
there is not a simple one-to-one relationship between the object and the
blur, so that each part of the blur would contain the information needed to
reconstitute the corresponding part of the object. Instead, if the film is cut into
pieces each fragment appears to contain all the information needed to reconstitute
the complete object (although the smaller the fragment, the vaguer the
image). In other words: the whole is present in each of the parts. This property
of the hologram is difficult to reconcile with commonsense assumptions
about the continuum of absolute space associated with the Cartesian/Newtonian
worldview. It does, however, evoke associations with ancient prescientific
and/or mystical worldviews93
. The most famous example in New Age circles,
which is quoted or referred to throughout its literature, is the Buddhist Avatamsaka
Sutra:
In the heaven of Indra, there is said to be a network of pearls, so arranged that if
you look at one you see all the others reflected in it. In the same way each object
in the world is not merely itself but involves every other object and in fact is
everything else. 'In every particle of dust, there are present Buddhas without num-
ber'94
.
The parallellist implication is clear: modern science has apparently rediscovered
a truth which was already known to the ancient mystics95
.
According to defenders of the so-called holographic paradigm, reality is structured
on holographic principles (or at least according to principles for which
92
Of course, it is only an illusionary image of a real object that is reconstituted. This aspect,
as we will see, tends to be ignored by adherents of the holographic paradigm.
93
The traditional view of the macrocosmos reflected in the microcosmos is mentioned remarkably
seldom in connection with the holographic paradigm. Leibniz's monadology, in contrast, is
mentioned several times (WIO 207; HP:euu 91; HP:npr 13; PH 188; ToP 329-330). The last passage
recalls a suggestion by Joseph Needham that Leibnizmay actually have been influenced by
the Avatamsaka Sutra (see text).
94
This is the fragment as rendered by Capra in ToP 328, from C. Eliot, Japanese Buddhism,
109-110. Ferguson (AC 202) leaves out the last sentence and misquotes the end of the preceding
one ('everything else') as 'in every other object'. Jean Houston (PH 188) gives a wildly imaginative
version which she presents as her own translation. Other sources in which the same fragment
is referred to or quoted include HU 290-291, RW 137, HPrcr 25.
95
Reading the fascinating introductory essays to the German translation of the Avatamsaka
Sutra, Doi, Kegon Sutra, which emphasize the "philosophy of interpenetration" as the central
theme of the Sutra, it is almost impossible not to be impressed by the force of the similarities.
The quotation about Indra's heaven is certainly representative of its context.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 141
the hologram furnishesa striking model). The paradigm is formulated with reference
to the theories developed in their respective fields by the neuroscientist
Karl Pribram and the theoretical physicist David Bohm.
Karl Pribram is regarded as one of the leading authorities in his field. Although
most of his work is highly technical and deals with localized brain functions,
his popularity in New Age circles rests on his theory that the brain stores memory
according to holographic principles. This means that each memory fragment
is distributed over the whole of the brain so that each part of the brain,
reversely, contains the information of the whole. Moreover, a similar principle
is said to be at work in the way the visual centers process information. Pribram's
conviction that the brain works by holographic principles is not just
based upon superficial analogies. The inventor of holography, Dennis Gabor,
used a type of mathematical calculus known as Fourier transforms, and the
brain seems to be using these same Fourier transforms to analyze frequencies
and convert them into visual images96
. To Pribram, this similarity suggested
that perceived reality might be of an order similar to the holographic image:
an ultimately illusionary spectre created by the brain out of a domain of pure
frequency. This is how Marilyn Ferguson presents Pribram's "holographic
supertheory" in her influential Aquarian Conspiracy: '...our brains mathematically
construct 'hard' reality by interpreting frequencies from a dimension
transcending time and space. The brain is a hologram, interpreting a holographic
universe'97
. Michael Talbot formulates the same idea even more
provocatively:
The question that began to bother [Pribram] was, if the picture of reality in our
brains is not a picture at all but a hologram, what is it a hologram of? ... Which
is the true reality, the seemingly objective world experienced by the observer/photographer
or the blur of interference patterns recorded by the camera/brain?
Pribram realized that if the holographic brain model was taken to its logical conclusions,
it opened the door on the possibility that objective reality—the world of
coffee cups, mountain vistas, elm trees, and table lamps—might not even exist,
or at least not exist in the way we believe it exists. Was it possible, he wondered,
that what the mystics had been saying for centuries was true, reality was maya,
an illusion, and what was out there was really a vast, resonating symphony of
wave forms, a "frequency domain" that was transformed into the world as we
know it only after it entered our senses?98
96
HU 27-28.
97
AC 198.
98
HU 31. Nobody seems to notice, rather surprisingly, that the holographic model "if taken
to its logical conclusions" does not imply that the holographic blur is the "true" reality. The true
reality in actual holography is the original object. This object is transformed into frequencies,
and these frequencies are then re-converted into an illusionary image. Surely the model taken to
its logical conclusion would imply that our reality is an image of another, essentially similar
although more "true" reality. The frequency domain would then function only as a medium of
142 CHAPTER SIX
For the New Age audience, to pose the question is to answer it. Again we
encounter the picture of the world as an illusion, but again without the traditional
corollary of ascetic otherworldliness. The frequency domain is often
associated directly with unitive reality as experienced in mystical states (an
association which again evokes the suspicion of reductionism"). However, the
typical conclusion drawn by New Age thinkers is that as human beings our
goal is not to take permanent residence in that amorphous realm, but that the
"wholeness" of that realm should be the guiding model and inspiration for living
our lives in everyday reality. Our world is described as fragmented and
broken, and therefore "out of phase" with the wholeness in which it is ultimately
grounded. Our goal must be to restore the world to wholeness. This
recurring theme evokes the obvious question how one is to picture a world that
exhibits the complete "wholeness" reigning in the frequency domain, and yet
can be distinguished from the latter. One person fully convinced of the possibility
of such a world is the other major thinker associated with the holographic
paradigm, David Bohm.
Bohm has been elaborating his theory of the implicate order for several
decades100
, and at his death in 1993 his philosophy of nature still remained
very much a "work in progress". It must be said from the outset that, in the
present context, it will be impossible to do justice to the subtleties of Bohm's
work and the development of his views over the years. While his colleagues
in physics have largely reacted to his philosophical and spiritual excursions
with suspicion and ridicule, Bohm has been recognized as an important and
original thinker by philosophers and theologians interested in science and society.
This has provoked a flood of commentaries and discussions, only a part
of which can be associated with the New Age movement101
. In this study, I
have to restrict myself to a quite general characterization of Bohm's main ideas.
Bohm's philosophical work can be characterized as a result of the convergence
of two very different systems of thought. Firstly, there is Bohm's work
in theoretical physics which, from the very beginning, appears to have been
inspired by an underlying intuition of the wholeness of the universe102
. Since
his youth, Bohm never accepted the distinction between natural science and
translation between both realities. If the New Age interpretation were correct we wouldbe forced,
in the case of actual holograms, to regard both the image and its original as equallyillusionary.
This demonstrates that the holographic worldview is not actually derived from holography; rather,
the latter is used as a convenient argument to defend an already existingintuition.
99
Pribram himself, making no distinction between the paranormal and mysticism, seems to
endorse the view that the implicate order (see below) 'has ... apparently been explored experientially
by mystics, psychics and others delving into paranormal phenomena' (HP:f 34).
100ForBohm's development, see Temple, 'David Bohm'; Bohm, 'Hidden Variables'.
101
See the literature quoted in chapter three, under Bohm.
102
SOC 3.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 143
philosophy of nature, and it seems that his early physical theories already anticipated
what was later to become the philosophy of the implicate order103
. Secondly,
there is his fascination with the Indian thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti. Bohm
discovered Krishnamurti's work in 1959, and met him in person in 1961104
.
Their discussions, which have been recorded on videotape and published in
book-form, give important sidelights on Bohm's philosophical work105
. The
acquaintance with Krishnamurti seems to have stimulated Bohm to explore
connections between his physical theories and larger question of human nature
and culture106
. Ever since, his governing theme has been the problem of "Fragmentation
and wholeness", as formulated in his most important book:
The title of this chapter is 'Fragmentation and wholeness'. It is especially important
to consider this question today, for fragmentation is now very widespread,
not only throughout society, but also in each individual; and this is leading to a
kind of general confusion of the mind, which creates an endless series of problems
and interferes with our clarity of perception so seriously as to prevent us
from being able to solve most of them107
.
What I am proposing here is that man's general way of thinking of the totality,
i.e. his general world view, is crucial for overall order of the human mind itself.
If he thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is
how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and
harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border
(for every border is a division or break) then his mind will tend to move in a
similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole.108
Bohm believes that fragmentation in society results from an incorrect way of
thinking, which is out of touch with the wholeness of existence. In order to
restore wholeness to the world, humanity must learn to think in a completely
new way. This need for a radical restructuring of the mind is the central theme
of Krishnamurti. As a physicist, Bohm's special interest is in developing a
philosophical view of reality—a Naturphilosophie—which both legitimates
and reflects radical holistic thinking. A comprehensive worldview which legitimates
holistic thinking by providing it with a solid conceptual framework is
necessary as an alternative to the mechanistic worldview based on classical
physics. Bohm repeatedly expresses his amazement at the fact that his colleagues
are able to continue thinking in terms of a mechanistic and reduc-
103
Bohm, 'Hidden Variables', 113; SOC 3: 'I was never able to see any inherent separation
between science and philosophy. Indeed, in earlier times, science was called natural philosophy
and this corresponded perfectly with the way I saw the whole field'.
104
Temple, 'David Bohm', 363.
105
Krishnamurti & Bohm, Ending of Time; id., Future of Humanity.
106
Bohm's ventures beyond physics started with two essays written in 1968 (Temple, 'David
Bohm', 363-364) which deal, interestingly, with creativity and art.
107
WIO 1. Readers familiar with Krishnamurti's work will immediately recognize the influence
of the latter's characteristic style.
108
WIO xi.
143
144 CHAPTER SIX
tionistic worldview, even though this worldview is explicitly falsified by the
very theories they professionally know to be correct109
. A new holistic "paradigm"
or worldview is needed to replace the outdated fragmentary one. In contrast
to some other holistic thinkers, however, Bohm is acutely aware that the
world will not be restored to wholeness if we simply replace one theory for
another. A theory can only succesfully legitimate holistic thinking, and promote
wholeness in society, if its very nature reflects a consistently holistic outlook
and if that nature is correctly understood by those who use it. Now, even
the most holistic theory necessarily introduces distinctions (conceptual, terminological,
etc.). If we see these as reflecting reality as it "really" is, then we
are in fact affirming that fragmentation is real. Therefore, the only consistently
holistic way of looking at theories is to consider them not as descriptions of
reality but as transitory "forms of insight" into a reality which transcends any
explicit theory.
... a theory is primarily a form of insight, i.e. a way of looking at the world, and
not a form of knowledge of how the world is. ... all theories are insights, which
are neither true nor false but, rather, clear in certain domains, and unclear when
extended beyond those domains. ... So, instead of supposing that older theories
are falsified at a certain point in time, we merely say that man is continually developing
new forms of insight, which are clear up to a point and then tend to become
unclear. In this activity, there is evidently no reason to suppose that there is or
will be a final form of insight (corresponding to absolute truth) or even a steady
series of approximations to this. Rather, in the nature of the case, one may expect
the unending development of new forms of insight (which will, however, assimilate
certain key features of the older forms as simplifications, in the way that relativity
theory does with Newtonian theory).110
If theories are merely forms of insight, the validity of which rests on the extent
to which they "clarify" reality, then we cannot simply point to the "facts" for
confirmation of how reality is. Rather, 'the factual knowledge that we obtain
will evidently be shaped and formed by our theories'111
. Bohm regards it as a
crucial mistake to 'confuse the forms and shapes induced in our perceptions
by theoretical insight with a reality independent of our thought and our way
of looking'112
. Pointing to the "fact" of fragmentation in the world, therefore,
does not disprove the axiom of the wholeness of reality:
...some might say: 'Fragmentation of cities, religions, political systems, conflict
in the form of wars, general violence, fratricide, etc., are the reality. Wholeness
is an ideal, toward which we should perhaps strive.' But this is not what is being
said here. Rather, what should be said is that wholeness is what is real, and that
fragmentation is the response of this whole to man's action, guided by illusory
109
For instance HP:euu 53-54.
110 WIO 4-5.
111
WIO 5.
112
WI0 6.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 145
perception, which is shaped by fragmentary thought. In other words, it is just
because reality is whole that man, with his fragmentary approach, will inevitably
be answered with a corresponding fragmentary response. So what is needed is for
man to give attention to his habit of fragmentary thought, to be aware of it, and
thus bring it to an end. Man's approach to reality may then be whole, and so the
response will be whole. For this to happen, however, it is crucial that man be
aware of the activity of his thought as such; i.e. as a form of insight, a way of
looking, rather than as a 'true copy of reality as it is'.113
This is important for a correct understanding of Bohm's theory of the implicate
order. The theory is based on the a priori assumption of the wholeness of
reality. This assumption is regarded as justified for at least two reasons. Firstly,
the two competing "big theories" in modern physics (relativity and quantum
mechanics), are said to share, each in their own manner, a rejection of the
"fragmenting" tendencies implicit in Newtonian physics and a corresponding
tendency toward wholeness114
. Secondly, the assumption that reality is fragmented
and that therefore fragmentation is "natural" is perceived as having
negative consequences in society, while the assumption that reality is whole is
expected to have a healthy influence. Bohm's theory is, moreover, to be understood
not as a fixed doctrine but as a form of "insight" that tries to attain a
clearer perspective on the relation between the "nonmanifest" realm of subatomic
reality, on the one hand, and the "manifest" realm of our macroscopic
world, on the other. Bohm's constant revisions and refinements of the theory
should therefore be seen as attempts to attain progressively clearer levels of
"insight". Bohm evidently did not foresee an end to this process. He did claim,
however, that his theories were at least a great deal more adequate than those
still based on Newtonian presuppositions, and that their general acceptance
would stimulate a movement towards wholeness in society. Finally, it may be
added that Bohm's philosophy of nature has its direct counterpart in his strictly
physical theory known as the "causal interpretation of quantum theory"
which includes a theory of so-called "hidden variables"115
.
According to Bohm, the key feature of holography, which makes it a useful
analogy to his theory of the implicate order, is the remarkable fact that the
form and structure of the orginal object are enfolded within each region of the
photographic record, and can in turn be unfolded from each region. Bohm's
proposal is that a new kind of order is involved here: one which is strongly
different from the mechanical order. This is the implicate order:
113
WIO 7. The statement that man can be "aware" of the fragmentary nature of his thought
and thus "bring it to an end" is again typical Krishnamurtian jargon.
114
WIO 172-176.
115
See WIO chapter 4, which is technical and, because of the frequent use of formulae, inaccessible
to the lay reader. Cf mmc 140-141 about the different reactions of scientists to the philosophical
exposition of the implicate order theory, on the one hand, and the scientific one, on the
other.
146 CHAPTER SIX
In terms of the implicate order one may say that everything is enfolded into everything.
This contrasts with the explicate order now dominant in physics in which
things are unfolded in the sense that each thing lies only in its own particular
region of space (and time) and outside the regions belonging to other things.116
The limitation of the holographic analogy lies in the fact that a hologram is
static. Reality is dynamic, and Bohm therefore refers to his concept of "ultimate
reality" as the holomovement (or, sometimes, as the "flux"):
Our basic proposal [is] that what is is the holomovement, and that everything is
to be explained in terms of forms derived from this holomovement. Though the
full set of laws governing its totality is unknown (and, indeed, probably unknowable)
nevertheless these laws are assumed to be such that from them may be
abstracted relatively autonomous or independent sub-totalities of movement (e.g.,
fields, particles, etc.) having a certain recurrence and stability of their basic patterns
of order and measure. Such sub-totalities may then be investigated, each in
its own right, without our having first to know the full laws of the holomovement.
This implies, of course, that we are not to regard what we find in such investigations
as having an absolute and final validity, but rather we have always to be
ready to discover the limits of independence of any relatively autonomous structure
of law, and from this to go on to look for new laws that may refer to yet larger
relatively autonomous domains of this kind.117
It appears contradictory to speak of the holomovement as containing "parts".
If each part contains the whole, a distinctionbetween parts and whole becomes
logically impossible. This holomovement, which is obviously of a dimensionality
inconceivable to us (at least at present, and probably in principle118
), contains
the whole of our reality in "enfolded" (implicit) form. The domain of
experience investigated by classical (mechanistic) physics is a particular subtotality
"unfolded" (explicated) from this whole. Thus, we get the fundamental
picture of an implicate order (a frequency domain in the holomovement)
from which is unfolded an explicate order (our world119
). The mechanistic fallacy
consists in the assumption that this explicate order, which consists of separate
and independently existing interacting entities, is the basic reality. Mechanistic
science starts with the parts and tries to explain wholes in terms of these
parts and their interactions. Scientific research in terms of the implicate order,
in contrast, begins with the undivided wholeness of the universe and defines
its task as deriving parts through abstraction from the whole120
. Newtonian
116
WIO 177.
117
WIO 178.
118
Cf. WIO 189: the dimensionalityof the holomovement is 'effectively infinite'.
119
Our world may be no more than a comparatively insignificant pattern of excitation within
an immense sea of energy. Bohm repeatedly refers to the Big Bang as no more than a 'little
ripple' (cf. WIO 192).
120
WIO 179. An electron, for instance, must be understood through 'a total set of enfolded
ensembles, which are generally not localized in space. At any given moment one of these may
be unfolded and therefore localized, but in the next moment, this one enfolds to be replaced by
THE NATURE OF REALITY 147
physics remains roughly appropriate for dealing with the explicate order, but
its limitations are now clearly defined. The laws of the holomovement (referred
to as holonomy) which, among other things, provide for the relative stability
of the explicate order, are not mechanical. Rather, they 'will be in a first approximation
those of the quantum theory, while more accurately they will go beyond
even these, in ways that are at present only vaguely discernible'121
. The process
of unfoldment of our world from the implicate order apparently takes place
not in a random or chaotic but in an orderly fashion, resulting as it does in the
relative stability and permanence of explicate reality. There must be a force of
necessity behind this process, but the laws defining this necessity are unknown
to us.
An understanding of its origin would take us to a deeper, more comprehensive
and more inward level of relative autonomy which, however, would also have its
implicate and explicate orders and a correspondingly deeper and more inward
force of necessity that would bring about their transformation into each other122
.
However, following the publication of Wholeness and the Implicate Order,
Bohm has not been able to resist the temptation to explore the logical possibility
that the implicate order is itself organized by a deeper order which, in
turn, is organized by an even deeper one, and so on ad infinitum. In Bohm's
later work, the comparative simplicity and elegance of the original implicate/explicate
scheme is progressively obscured by a proliferation of additional
orders: the super-implicate, super super-implicate and so on123
. The situation
becomes even more complicated by the introduction, in Science, Order, and
Creativity, of the not very clear concept of a "generative order", which appears
to have resulted from the attempt to account for the domains of art and cre-
ativity124
. The details of these later developments are of minor concern here.
The New Age audience has retained not much more from it than the general
picture of "infinite dimensions".
More important are Bohm's views about the possibility of an ultimate order or
ground of being which might be associated with "God". Bohm repeatedly
alludes to an ultimate "ground" beyond the holomovement, from which spring
both matter and mind, and which he associates with absolute "intelligence".
This notion of intelligence is derived from Krishnamurti and, like the latter,
Bohm is extremely cautious about associating it with God. An example of this
is the following fragment from an interview with Renee Weber:
the one that follows. The notion of continuity of existence is approximated by that of very rapid
recurrence of similar forms, changing in a simple and regular way ... Of course, more fundamentally,
the particle is only an abstraction that is manifest to our senses' (WIO 183).
121
WIO 181.
122
WIO 195-196.
123
Cf. isio 33; SOC 182-184.
124
SOC 15Iff.
148 CHAPTER SIX
We're not saying that any of this is another word for God. 1would put it another
way: people had insight in the past about a form of intelligence that had organized
the universe and they personalized it and called it God. A similar insight
can prevail today without personalizing it and without calling it a personal God.
WEBER: Still, it's a kind of super-intelligence and you've said elsewhere that
that is benevolent and compassionate, not neutral.
BOHM: Well, we can propose that.125
Although Bohm seems a bit embarrassed about Weber's reminder, it is true
that the description of the ultimate Ground as a compassionate intelligence
appears repeatedly in his later work, as for instance in this passage: 'When I
see the immense order of the universe (and especially the brain of man), I cannot
escape feeling that this ground enfolds a supreme intelligence.Although
it is not quite so evident, I would say also that this intelligence is permeated
with compassion and love'126
. Bohm is aware that this belief (which emerged
from his discussions with Krishnamurti)cannot bejustified on physical or even
philosophical grounds. However, as it became increasingly clear during the
1980s that the scientific community was not prepared to take his philosophy
of nature seriously anyway, one gets the impression that Bohm has come to
care less about justifying to the skeptics.
The combination of Pribram's and Bohm's holographic theories leads to the
picture of a universe in which the whole is "implicated" in each part, and which
is interpreted by a brain functionally modeled on that same universe. The basic
reality is pictured as a non-localized "frequency domain" characterized by
unbroken, dynamic wholeness. Reality as we perceive it is "read out" of this
domain by our brains (Pribram) or "unfolds" from it on the basis of unknown
holonomic laws. Beyond even the holomovement may be an ultimate "ground"
characterized by intelligence, compassion and love. It might be argued that the
picture of many "orders" unfolding from an ultimate "Ground" is closer to
"Ultimate Source Holism" than to "Universal Interrelatedness". However,
Bohm claims that his series of "orders" represents levels of abstractions instead
of a hierarchy with levels of graded ontological status127
. Bohm's orders are
not higher or lower, but merely different. The quality of the "Ground" permeates
all being, although most people are unaware of it. It is not an Ultimate
Reality beyond our world, but should rather be seen as a "state of mind" accessible
in this world. Bohm claims that such an awareness of the Ground is not
a privileged kind of "mystical" experience, but rather a state of being "open"
125
isio 39-40.
126
Bohm, 'Hidden Variables', 124. Cf. UM 148-149.
127
HP:pm 191-194. In spite of Bohm's rejection of hierarchical schemes, his introduction of
an ultimate Ground produces a sufficient amount of ambivalenceto permit his follower F. David
Peat to describe Bohm's Ground entirely as a "generative source" (see S 185-213: ch. 'The Creative
Source'). Peat speaks of a 'limitless series of levels' (S 187), but also accepts the idea of
an "order of orders", beyond which is the Ground (S 188).
THE NATURE OF REALITY 149
to the real depth of ordinary reality128
. In the context of Bohm's (and Krishnamurti's)
philosophy, such a state of "awareness" is not a merely subjective
experience, but a state in which one is receptive to the objective reality of the
Ground. A further problem is the relation between the brain's process of "constructing
reality" out of the frequency domain (Pribram) and the physical
process of "unfoldment" out of the holomovement (Bohm). Are these two ultimately
one? Pribram's view, as we saw, clearly implies that the world is "maya";
reading Bohm's work, however, one is not quite sure.
As is usual with the popular reception of philosophical worldviews, the conceptual
complications of the holographic paradigm hardly bother the larger
New Age audience. While intellectuals like Pribram, Bohm and others were
still grappling with the logical implications of their ideas, the New Age population
had already taken possession of them. To Marilyn Ferguson, the holographic
paradigm heralds the end of the alienation occasioned by the Cartesian
split: 'we are indeed participants in reality, observers who affect what we
observe'129
. Like Michael Talbot, she is particularly interested in the holographic
paradigm as legitimating the paranormal. Matthew Fox incorporates
the holographic theory into an enthusiastic vision of cosmic spirituality culminating
in the assertion that 'to explore the cosmos is to explore God'130
.
Jean Houston asserts that 'If the hologrammatic-Buddhist-monadic-Cabalistic
theory131
is true, then you are literally ubiquitous throughout the universe and
are being sent out as an interference pattern through the flow emulsion of the
ether... to all possible places in the matrix of space-time'132
. To Chris Griscom,
the holographic paradigm means the collapse of the three-dimensional spacetime
continuum, and of all the conventional distinctions associated with it (such
as subjective-objective, mind-matter, inner-outer, man-God, past-future).
Griscom's enthusiastic combination of the holographic perspective with Seth's
teachings about a multidimensional reality is typical for New Age perspec-
tives133
:
The major transformation of reality comes from the realization of our intrinsic
participation in all that is. When we experience the power of synergistic relationships
in which energy (thoughts, emotions, patterned pulsations) translates
128
HP:pm 196, 198. It is interestingto compare this with Capra's discussions with R.D. Laing.
Capra tends to put mystical experience in a class apart, while Laing defends a view more like
Krishnamurti (UW 142-143).
129
AC 198.
130
OB 69-70.
131
Note that the worldviews of the holographic paradigm, the Avatamsaka Sutra, Leibniz's
monadology, and also Jorge Luis Borges's story about the Cabalistic symbol of the "Aleph", are
all regarded as synonymous.
132
PH 190.
133
Some other examples: PR 193-194; DL 310; GW 311; ECMM 270-273; RW 118-119.
150 CHAPTER SIX
into matter—crystallizations that create the actual experience of form (health, disease,
catastrophe, ecstasy)—the true hologram begins to emerge.134
The reality of the multidimensional self is manifested through the hologram. We
do not "reach" the hologram; we are the hologram. What happens is that we
become fixated at different spots on the hologram, and we lose our understanding
that there's something across the circle. We have no idea that we're connected
to something across the circle, just as we have no idea that we can pull a string
and tap the unconscious. We don't realize that we are in a fluid medium. We
might call that the body, the universe; let us learn to call that the hologram.
In the hologram, we can recognize that we are here right now, and yet we have
also lived many lives. We can experience and access the energy of those lifetimes,
and that's the experiential aspect of the hologram. It is what the hologram really
represents to us. It is not something out there to be tamed; it is simply that the
more we become conscious of the hologram, the more we become God. ...
We can understand the connection to the God force, rather than having that perception,
that concept that God is separate out there, or that anything else out there
is separate. At the Institute [the Light Institute in Galisteo], we create a threshold
for people to begin accessing the hologram, to recognize that anything they see
or experience is part of themselves.135
Finally, it must be noted that the holographic model clearly has its own "metaphysical
pathos". This particular kind seems extremely similar to the metaphysical
pathos responsible for the appeal of science fiction literature, as may
be illustrated by the following burst of enthusiasm:
The self is a meeting place of eternity and time, the holographic mind in the evolutionary
body. Each nervous system tells the story of Bethlehem. The encoded
information of the cosmos is incarnate in every historical body. A human being
is a gateway to the beyond. When the question of self is placed in the context of
the mystical-scientific view of the cosmic-evolutionary self the vistas and possible
adventures of self-love are staggering. How much can we learn from ourselves?
How much of the encoded informationthat resides in our bodies and minds
can be recovered and brought into awareness? What can we know of happenings
in distant galaxies and of animal wisdom by tuning into our own nervous systems?
Can we slip out of the prison of time and space and travel into the beyond
which is the source from which all things flow? Can we travel backwards and forwards
in time? Once we see that the self is not merely a captive to the phenomenal
world, not a mere prisoner of this time and space, of this body, the possibilities
become endless. The adventure of self-knowledge takes us to the edges of
every unknown.
How far can we travel? Who knows. We are at the beginning of a new age of discovery.
The marriage of science and mysticism will open new possibilities and
release potentialities we can scarcely imagine.136
Having discussed the holographic paradigm, I briefly call attention to the
ambivalent position of Seth's worldview. Chris Griscom, as we saw, appears to
134 TI 211.
135
ENF 148-149.
136
HP:cht 117-118 (Sam Keen, 'Self-Love and the Cosmic Connection').
THE NATURE OF REALITY 151
have no difficulty combining Seth's metaphysics, discussed in the context of
"Ultimate Source Holism", with the holographic paradigm which is an example
of "Universal Interconnectedness". Indeed, it may be argued that Seth has
managed to accomplish a convergence of both types: although everything
springs from an ultimate creative Source, it is equally true that every single
consciousness is actually the creative source responsible for its own realities.
This view will be discussed in more detail below. At this point I only call attention
to the similarities between Seth's multidimensional holism and the holographic
paradigm. Reality "as it really is" exists, according to Seth, outside
time and space. It must therefore be pictured as a radical singularity containing
the potential for all creation. All realities in all dimensions are relatively
illusionary creations "read out" of this singularity, which seems similar to the
holographic frequency domain. Each single human mind is the central locus
or center of this process of reality-creation, and therefore its very own center
of the universe, so to speak. This image evokes the familiar catchphrase that
the human brain is "a hologram interpreting a holographic universe", and
indeed each mind must on these premises be pictured as containing all the
information of the whole. Taking Seth's vision to its logical conclusion, Chris
Griscom and many other "holographic" New Age thinkers ultimately go beyond
Seth in discarding the concept of an ultimate, creative "God" source altogether
and making each individual mind the center of the universe:
There is, within all that movement of the eternal pulsation with all the ever-changing,
ever-creating patterns that are going on, a center. Our multidimensional soul
has that center; it is enlightenment.What we mean by enlightenment is our capacity
to receive, to see the latticework. Just as everything about us is interwoven in
all of these interdimensional realities, the center of the latticework is multidimensional
and it's integral137
.
This center or source is often called "God" in Griscom's books; but, rather
than meaning that we all participate in or spring from one ultimate divine force,
she seems to mean that we are that source in a far more literal way. Wecreate
the universe. It is true that, if we fully realize that, we also see that "we" are
all one; but this "one source" (of divine energy, etc.) seems to have no independent
ontological reality, let alone authority. Although Griscom often uses
words like "God" or "divine", God in any traditional sense (as a reality which
is somehow greater than man, and transcends or precedes man) is strangely
absent in her writings. It is only man himself (and the world) that is greater
than he himself normally realizes. Seth's metaphysics was an example of a
multidimensional universe governed by "universal interconnectedness", but
which still sprang from an ultimate creative source. When that Source is discarded
by later writers, only radical holographic interconnectedness remains.
137
ENF 74.
152 CHAPTER SIX
C. Other Meanings of Holism
As noted earlier, "Ultimate Source Holism" and "Universal Interrelatedness"
are by far the most important types of New Age holism. Two other varieties
may be discussed more briefly.
There exists a rather pronounced tendency in New Age thinking to describe
the holistic nature of reality in terms of a dynamic harmony of opposites. Dualistic
conceptions based upon the opposition of separate, mutually exclusive
opposites are replaced by the concept of a creative tension between complementary
poles which together constitute a dynamic whole. The principle of
complementarity is asserted to be at work on all levels of reality. It provides
the foundation for both explaining the workings of nature and a nondualistic
ethics (to which more attention will be given in chapter ten). Janet and
Stewart Farrar express the idea very clearly:
The Theory of Polarity maintains that all activity, all manifestation, arises from
(and is inconceivable without) the interaction of pairs and complementary opposites—positive
and negative, light and dark, content and form, male and female,
and so on; and that this polarity is not a conflict between 'good' and 'evil', but a
creative tension like that between the positive and negative terminals of an electric
battery. Good and evil only arise with the constructive or destructive application
of that polarity's output (again,as with the uses to which a battery may be
put).138
Fritjof Capra maintains that his systems view of reality is in fundamental accord
with the yin-yang polarity expounded by the / Ching. Capra, like the Farrars,
sees the male-female distinction as a prominent example139
. However, he warns
against a "patriarchal" interpretation according to which yang/masculine is pictured
as active and yin/feminine as passive. According to Capra, ancient Chinese
thought did not entertain the idea of passivity as understood by us. Both
the masculine and the feminine pole are active, but yin corresponds to 'responsive,
consolidating, cooperative activity', and yang to 'aggressive, expanding,
competitive activity. Yin action is conscious of the environment, yang action
is conscious of the self.'140
Capra further associates these with two 'kinds of
knowledge, or two modes of consciousness'141
: the intuitive and the rational.
In all cases, the point is that a destructive imbalance occurs when we choose
138
WW 107. Cf. DL 246-247.
139
Cf. also Shakti Gawain: RG 3ff.
140 TP 38
141
TP 38. Cf. the table of opposites on this page: Yin: feminine, contractive, conservative,
responsive, cooperative, intuitive,synthesizing; Yang: masculine, expansive, demanding,aggressive,
competitive, rational, analytic. Later in his book (TP 293) Capra mentions the well-known
theory of the two brain hemispheres, which is extremely popular in the New Age movement and
will be discussed in chapter eight, section 2B.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 153
to concentrate on only one pole to the exclusion of the other. Healthy, natural
states of being are the result of a creative tension between both poles, which
hold each other in balance. Domination by only one pole produces static and
rigid results, while the interaction between both poles leads to systems characterized
by dynamic flexibility. The former constellation ultimately means
death, the latter life. It is held that this principle applies to all aspects of reality:
to the cosmos as a whole, as well as to ecology or individual health.
Like all other kinds of holism, this theory of polarity or complementarity is
proposed as an alternative to dualism. Although "polarity-holism" has many
dimensions, the association of the two poles with masculine and feminine
appears to be particularly strong in the minds of New Age adherents. In terms
of Jungian psychology (animus and anima), men are encouraged to discover
their feminine, and women their masculine side; the goal is to achieve a healthy
balance. It is a common New Age assumption that the dominant culture leads
both men and women to repress and alienate their nondominant sexual pole,
in order to conform to the sexual stereotypes of a dualistic society. The ideal
of the "whole" person, on this premise, implies the harmonious integration of
both poles. On the other hand, there also exists a rather different New Age tendency
of emphasizing the need for women to rediscover their authentic femininity,
and this has been followed somewhat later by a corresponding search
among men142
. Here, the premise is that the one-sided patriarchal orientation
of western society (which is built on dualistic assumptions itself) has had negative
effects on popular ideas of what is a "real" woman or a "real" man.Women
are expected to be either submissive and supportive of male expectations or,
more recently, to cultivate an attitude of aggressive assertiveness and independence
which is itself modeled on masculine models. They are not encouraged
to discover their authentically feminine "power" in their own terms. Men,
in turn, are expected to conform to onesided "macho" stereotypes of masculinity,
which are equally constricting. If the problem of dualism and patriarchy
is approached from this angle, men and women, rather than cultivating
their latent sexual polarity and striving for harmonious integration, should discover
the real meaning of their dominant sex. While the former perspective
logically tends towards the androgyne, the latter would produce "strong"
women who experience their femininity as power instead of weakness, and men
who do not need macho behavior to feel secure in their masculinity. We may
summarize the distinction by saying that the first type asserts that holistic complementarity
must be realized "within" each human being, while the second
tries to realize it in society. The first view is most characteristic for what might
be called "mainstream" New Age (i.e., the kind of approach exemplified most
142
Kelley, 'An Update', 149.
154 CHAPTER SIX
typically by Shirley MacLaine143
); the second is mainly found in the domain
of women's spirituality (and its complementary offspring, men's spirituality)
and neopaganism.
In the latter case, there is a direct connection with wider neopagan views of
reality. Wicca is basically a fertility religion based upon a worldview constituted
by sexual polarities. They are exemplified in particular by the female
Goddess and her male partner, the Horned God. Neopagans in general tend to
think of the universe as polarized between masculine and feminine energies,
as exemplified by the above quotation from Janet and Stewart Farrar or the
following from Starhawk:
The view of the All as an energy field polarized by two great forces, Female and
Male, Goddess and God, which in their ultimate being are aspects of each other,
is common to almost all traditions of the Craft. ... The Male and Female forces
represent difference, yet they are not different, in essence: They are the same force
flowing in opposite, but not opposed, directions. ... Each principle contains the
other: Life breeds on death, feeds on death; death sustains life, makes possible
evolution and new creation. They are part of a cycle, each dependent on the oth-
er.
Existence is sustained by the on-off pulse, the alternating current of the two forces
in perfect balance. Unchecked, the life force is cancer; unbridled, the death force
is war and genocide. Together, they hold each other in the harmony that sustains
life, in the perfect orbit that can be seen in the changing cycle of the seasons, in
the ecological balance of the natural world, and in the progression of human life
from birth through fulfillment to decline and death—and then to rebirth.144
This passage also exemplifies the neopagan emphasis on natural cycles of birth,
death and rebirth. Women are naturally linked to the Goddess and share in her
natural rhythms. The moon, with its three stages of waxing, fullness and waning
is a prominent symbol of the "triple Goddess" who grows from young to
mature to old, and then dies and is reborn again. Individual women may exemplify
these three phases of the Goddess as Maiden, Mother and Crone. The
same cyclical pattern can be seen in all of nature and is a reflection of the
rhythms of the cosmos. Symbolic associations of this kind are responsible for
the fact that neopaganism, in spite of all efforts towards inclusiveness, is and
remains oriented primarily towards the feminine polarity. Witches like Z
Budapest take this tendency towards its logical conclusion by claiming that
witchcraft is synonymous with "women's mysteries", and therefore not the business
of men. But, even in less extremist groups, the symbolism of the Horned
God is inevitably somewhat less developed and his role in the neopagan worldview
is less immediately obvious than that of the Goddess. The relation between
143 Very characteristically, when Chris Griscom brings MacLaine into conscious contact with
her "Higher Self, MacLaine perceives it as an 'almost androgynous' human being (DL 334-
335). Another clear example is Shakti Gawain, for instance RG 24.
144
SD 41. Starhawk later came to change her mind about polarity. See SD 8, 216-217.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 155
the masculine and feminine pole in modern witchcraft recalls the image of the
small sperm in relation to the large egg-cell: the masculine element is necessary
for creation, but its role is very much limited to the single task of fertilization.
Once it has fulfilled its role, the egg-cell can go on autonomously without
further masculine assistance. Similarly, in Wicca, the masculine element
represented by the God is necessary because of the polarized nature of reality;
for the rest, it is the feminine element which dominates that reality145
.
Another variety of holism takes its inspiration from organic models. In itself,
this connection is hardly surprising. We have seen that the New Age rejects
mechanistic models and sees organicistic models as the natural alternative. We
also saw that, in systems approaches, the notion of "organism" is subtly extended:
the distinction between organisms and machines is replaced by a distinction
between systems that do and systems that do not display the characteristics
of self-organization. This criterion of self-organization is also central to
the most prominent example of "organicistic holism" in the New Age movement,
i.e., the so-called "Gaia-hypothesis".
The Gaia-hypothesis is tied to the name of the biochemist James Lovelock146
.
It claims that 'Life defines the material conditions needed for its survival and
makes sure that they stay there'147
. The earth, taken as a whole, is a complex
system which functions according to the principles of self-organization. In that
sense, it is not essentially different from an organism. Like an organism, the
earth persists in a remarkably stable state of chemical and thermodynamic nonequilibrium,
and is able to regulate the planetary environment in such a way
that optimum conditions for life are maintained. The dynamic stability exhibited
by the earth over long periods of time is impossible to explain on the usual
premises of linear, mechanical causality. Lovelock et al. point out that 'If
the temperature or humidity or salinity or acidity or any one of a number of
other variables had strayed outside a narrow range of values for any length of
145
Cf. Janet & Stewart Farrar: 'Every woman, if she can free herself from the conditioning
imposed by the patriarchalstereotype, is a naturalwitch. Most men, unless they have a well-integrated
and fully functioning Anima, have to work harder at it. Witches work primarily with the
'gifts of the Goddess'—the intuitive, psychic functions, the direct awareness, by sensitivityat all
levels from bodily to spiritual, of the natural order of things. All this is a woman's immediate
inheritance; on the whole, a man approaches it best via the woman (...). ... That is why Wicca is
matriarchal, and the High Priestess is the leader of the coven—with the High Priest as her partner.
They are essential to each other, and ultimately equal (...), but in the context of Wiccan
workings and of their present incarnation,he is rather like the Prince Consort of a reigning Queen.'
(WW 169)
146
Lovelock first proposed the hypothesis together with Sidney Epton ('Quest for Gaia'). Later,
he has collaborated with the microbiologist Lynn Margulis.The best-known exposition of the
theory was, however, published under his name only (Lovelock, Gaia).
147
Lovelock & Epton, 'Quest for Gaia', 304.
156 CHAPTER SIX
time, life would have been annihilated'148
. The hypothesis that the earth functions
as a living organism (with obvious implications for a holistic ecology)
was named after the ancient Greek Goddess of the earth, Gaia.
In our New Age corpus, several interpretations of the Gaia hypothesis can be
found. At a very moderate level, which is probably closest to Lovelock's intention,
it is merely asserted that the functioning of the earth can be understood
along the analogy with an organism, because both meet the criteria for selforganization.
New Age sources almost never stay at this level, however; at the
very least they use the Jantsch/Capra strategy of equating self-organization
with Bateson's concept of mind to assert that earth therefore has "mind"149
.
More usual for New Age thinking is a silent acceptation of the premise that
each self-organizing system is an organism (which, as we saw, is misleading)
and to conclude that earth therefore not only functions as a living organism,
but actually is a living organism150
. Usually,an immediate further step is made,
i.e., that this living organism possesses notjust "mind" but consciousness, and
even that it is intelligent. Connections are often made (most explicitly by Peter
Russell) with Teilhard de Chardin's concept of the noosphere: the "thinking
layer" of the earth comprised by the unified consciousness of humanity151
.As
a result of the global networks of information technology, a "planetary consciousness"
is emerging: this signals a momentous evolutionary process in
which Gaia becomes conscious of herself. Global society unified by information
technology is described as a planetary nervous system, and the emerging
unified consciousness of humanity as a "Global Brain"152
. However, in view
of the ecological crisis, Peter Russell wonders whether humanity might now
be in the process of actually frustrating these goals of evolution, exhibiting the
characteristics of a "planetary cancer" rather than a global brain153
. It may well
be that we have become parasites on the body of Gaia, and we should not be
surprised if she finally takes steps to exterminate us. The present situation of
the earth constitutes a test for humanity: 'If we do pass, we may move into our
next evolutionary phase—our integration into a single being. If we fail, we will
probably be discarded as an evolutionary blind alley, an experiment which for
one reason or another did not quite work out. Humanity will be spontaneously
aborted ...'154
Towards the end of his book, however, Russell shows himself
optimistic about a good ending.
148
Lovelock & Epton, 'Quest for Gaia', 304.
149
SOU 164.
150
TP 285; WW 128.
151
AE 83-84. Although Marilyn Ferguson's The Aquarian Conspiracy does not yet mention
the Gaia hypothesis, she uses Teilhard de Chardin's work to convey essentially the same idea.
152
AE 77-79.
153
AE 18-19, and passim.
154
AE 207.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 157
The idea that the earth is a conscious, living organism naturally evokes the
question of whether the same applies to the other planets and heavenly bodies.
When this happens, Gaia-speculation moves close to certain theosophical
ideas which have profoundly influenced the New Age sensu strieto. David
Spangler, George Trevelyan, and the Ramala books all closely follow the
theosophist Alice Bailey in describing the sun and the planets as conscious,
divine or semi-divine beings155
. Our solar system is an actual Body governed
by the "Solar Logos", who lives in the sun and who is the entity we refer to
when we talk of "God". However, the Solar Logos and his body—the Solar
System—is in turnjust a part of a larger galactic body whichpossesses a greater
and more encompassing consciousness. This body is, again, part of yet another
body and so on: apparently ad infinitum. This "Chinese boxes" scheme
appears to be open-ended in both directions. The earth, while being a part of
the Solar Body, is itself the body of the "Earth Logos". Our own bodies, while
being parts of the Earth body, in turn contain even smaller beings who experience
our body as their "Solar Body". The very atoms of our body are quite
literally minute Solar Systems inhabited by conscious beings, and so on ad
infinitum again156
. As might be expected, the New Age sensustrictoto has gratefully
adopted Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis as scientificcorroboration of its theosophical
metaphysics157
. The theosophical Earth Logos is usually reinterpreted
as female and identified with "the Goddess", and "Gaia" is used as an appropriate
name to address her158
. Peter Russell, although apparently not directly
influenced by theosophy or by the New Age sensu stricto, develops his Gaiaspeculation
into a strikingly similar direction. Throughout his book the idea is
developed that in order for a new level of evolution to emerge in any system,
that system must have reached the threshold number of 10'"(ten billion) constituting
units. Russell calculates that our galaxy, which contains some 10"
stars, must therefore contain a sufficient number of 'potential Gaias' in order
to make possible the eventual 'emergence of some galactic super-organism
whose cells are awakened Gaias'159
and which would possess an appropriate
kind of super-consciousness160
. And, of course, having come that far, Russell
does not stop here. Ultimately, the emergence of more than 10"' such superconscious
Galactic Beings might result in the universe as a whole becoming a
single Universal Super-Organism161
, which Russell identifies with Brahman.
In sum, "Organicistic holism" of the above kind is based on either one of two
155
RBNA 94-97; RR 28-33. Cf. Hanegraaff, 'Channeling-literatuur', 24-25; OR 33-34.
156
RR 147-148.
157
RS ch. 5.; OR 178-179; EiG 94-95, 187.
158
We already noted the corresponding tendency towards divinization of the earth, and to
some extent of the planets, in neopaganism. Cf. for instance HBWM 298; W 155.
159
AE 214.
160
AE 215: 'The Galaxy would become her equivalent of conscious'.
161
AE218.
158 CHAPTER SIX
different systems of thought or their combination. One kind of argument is
based on the crucial move, discussed above, of describing organisms as selforganizing
systems. This is the basis of Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, which can
then be extended to larger and larger, and also to smaller and smaller systems.
The other argument derives itsjustification from the subjective persuasiveness,
to certain people, of theosophical speculation. Both systems of thought may
be combined in worldviews which attempt yet another marriage between metaphysics
and science and which result, not surprisingly perhaps, in cosmic
visions strongly reminiscent of Science Fiction162
.
3. THE EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE
All forms of New Age thinking share at least two general assumptions about
the nature of reality. The first of these, discussed in section 2 of this chapter,
is that reality is an unbroken, unified whole. On the basis of this Holistic
Assumption, as we saw, several types of worldviews can be developed. In the
context of these worldviews, the apparent evidence for fragmentation and dualism
of various kinds is explained as resulting essentially from the erroneous
assumption that the necessarily limited perceptions accessible to normal consciousness
and experience provide us with sufficient evidence to draw conclusions
about the whole. The whole as such, it is implied, must necessarily be
inaccessible to finite perceptions (although it can perhaps be experienced in
supra-normal kinds of consciousness and experience). From an encompassing
perspective which starts from the whole, apparent cases of fragmentation and
dualism lose their absolute character and can be seen as only partial manifestations
of an underlying wholeness. Although reality may appear as broken
and fragmented from a limited perspective, a deeper harmony is revealed from
a holistic point of view.
The second general New Age assumption is that reality is engaged in a process
of evolution. While the Holistic Assumption tends to emphasize the unity of
space, this Evolutionistic Assumption emphasizes processes in time. Below,
we will discuss the paradox that the almost universal New Age belief in evolution
goes hand in hand with an equally strong tendency to regard time as an
illusion, and belief in its reality as a major source of fragmentation. In this
section, I will concentrate on the various types of evolutionism present in New
Age literature, in sofar as they apply to the "nature of reality".
Like holism, New Age evolutionism must not be seen primarily as a theory
about reality. Just as specific holistic theories are developed in order to provide
the prior vision of wholeness with a theoretical underpinning, theories of
162
Significantly, Peter Russell ends his book with a quotation from Olaf Stapledon's novel
Starmaker.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 159
evolution are formulated to account for the prior feeling that present reality
cannot be finished, complete or perfect and that the future must hold the
promise of successive improvements (particularly in the sense of a progressive
movement towards greater and greater wholeness). Both holism and evolutionism
begin as visions which, eventually,give rise to a multitude of theories.
Several of them are formulated with specific reference to "the nature of reality",
but evolutionism as such pervades the New Age movement as a whole
and will therefore be encountered again and again in different parts of this
study.
Before discussing examples of evolutionism found in the New Age corpus, I
propose a general analytic framework. Notice that this is not a summary of
New Age forms of evolutionism, but an etic construct proposed as an ordering
principle with respect to the latter. Evolution may be pictured as taking
place either in a closed or in an open system. Possible examples of closed systems
are the earthly biosphere, the solar system or even our universe as a whole:
all can be pictured as self-sufficient units constituted in such a way as to permit
evolutionary processes to occur within their boundaries. A distinction can
be made between different levels of such processes: natural evolution, or evolution
from life to consciousness, or evolution of consciousness itself. In all
cases, the possible scope of evolution within a closed system is limited by the
intrinsic boundaries of the system concerned. As an alternative, it can be
assumed that systems—including the earth or the universe as a whole—are
open systems which are themselves evolving. In this case there is no prescribed
boundary and consequently no necessary limit or predestined outcome of their
evolution. In this case, it is almost impossible to avoid speculating about where
the evolutionary dynamics themselves come from. Postulating that the universe
itself is part of a more encompassing system provides no solution, because any
such super-system necessarily reintroduces the idea of an ultimate limit, and
so on ad infmitum. Paradoxes of space-time infinity seem to be unavoidable
once evolution is pictured as open.
While the distinction between closed and open systems concerns the possible
scope of evolution (either finite or infinite), we must also distinguish different
types of evolution. First, we may think of evolution as being part of a cyclical
process. The beginning of such a cycle is classically pictured as the appearance
of some kind of duality in a primeval singularity. The result is a "downward"
process of emanation (or "involution"). When emanation and manifestation
reaches a natural limit, the direction is reversed and a process of "evolution"
back to unity begins. If such a cycle would simply mean a regression
back to exactly the same state from which all has sprung, the process would
be devoid of meaning and the term "evolution" would seem to be inappropriate.
In spite of occasional references to the cosmic cycles of Hinduism as an
160 CHAPTER SIX
ultimately meaningless "divine play", the Nietzschean vision of an 'ewige
Wiederkehr des Gleichen' is atypical of New Age literature. In the context of
both closed and open systems, however, the cyclical process as a whole may
also be described in more genuinely evolutionary terms. In this case, the whole
achieves a "higher" level of integration at the completion of the cycle. This
higher level may be the end of the process or it may be the beginning of a new
cycle. The result can be pictured as an evolutionaryspiral, the number of cycles
of which may be anything between one and infinite (in open systems).
Other types of evolution are linear. The theoretical option of "blind" linear
evolution resulting from random causal processes (the Darwinian theory) is
generally rejected in the New Age movement. This is done not only because
random evolution forecloses ultimate meaning; radical contingency is also considered
as scientifically falsified on the basis of evidence such as provided by
Lovelock. Because of its wholesale rejection by New Age believers, it is superfluous
to discuss here the forms which blind linear evolution would assume
either in closed or in open systems. Teleologicalevolution, in contrast, assumes
that the linear process moves towards some goal which is implicitly present
from the beginning. The dynamics of evolution is based on the natural, builtin
tendency of systems or parts of systems to realize or attain their telos.
Because the telos defines the possible limit of evolution, the teleological option
presupposes a closed system. A third type of linear evolution, which may be
labeled open-ended or creative, differs from both former types. There is no
final telos, but neither is evolution random and blind. Evolution is governed
by a built-in tendency of self-organization. As a result of the dynamics of selforganization,
each system strives towards ever-increasing complexity and
expansion. This "purposiveness" of self-organization ensures that evolution is
not random: it naturally moves from chaos to ever-increasing order. This order,
however, may reach infinite levels of complexity and the precise results to
which evolution will lead are unpredictable. The goal is not some final, complete
state; rather, the meaning and end of evolution lies in the very creativity
of evolution itself. The essence of this type is caught in Seth's words: 'Ultimately
a completed or finished God, or All That Is, would end up smothering
His creation. For perfection presupposes that point beyond which development
is impossible, and creativity at an end.'163
.
This neat framework becomes slightly more complicated once we recognize
the additional possibility of a teleological spiral. A spiral is, after all, a line
which describes circles, and any line may be imagined to be either infinite or
finite. If the line has any end at all, and if it is not based on random processes,
then, after a finite number of "cycles", there must be some telos164. Allow-
163
SS 340.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 161
ing for this addition, and leaving out the possibilities which do not appear in
New Age sources, we get the following diagram:
Closed System Open System
Cyclical Ideological spiral Open-ended Spiral
Linear Teleological linearity Open-ended/Creative linearity
Having distinguished these categories of evolutionism, it is hard to miss their
significance in relation to the categories of holism discussed in section 2 of
this chapter. Evolutionism of the "teleological spiral" type is naturally linked
to "ultimate source holism": the source of all manifestation is also the telos of
evolution within the system generated by the source. We will see that the same
context is still presupposed (not entirely consistently) in the open-ended variety.
Evolutionism of the "open-ended/creative linearity" type, in contrast, has
found a very characteristic expression in the philosophy of self-organization
developed in the context of systems theory (i.e., a prominent kind of "universal
interrelatedness") which, however, also appears to have room for teleologic
varieties. But these general affinities lead us only to a certain point. The
holographic paradigm of Pribram/Bohm, influential though it may be, has
remarkably little to say about evolution165
. Seth, on the other hand, not only
manages—as we have seen—to combine elements of "ultimate source holism"
with its logical alternative "universal interrelatedness", he even succeeds in
giving an evolutionary turn to the otherwise static holographic paradigm. In
Seth's case, we again have to do with a variation of "open-ended/creative linearity",
but now combined with the belief in an Ultimate Source. So, a strict
analogy between types of holism, on the one hand, and types of evolutionism,
on the other, cannot be demonstrated; but general affinities certainly exist.
Examples of the teleological spiral—naturally bound up with the hierarchical
universe of "Ultimate Source Holism"—are easy to find in New Age literature.
In the discussion of the latter, notice was taken of the tendency to describe
the universe as a learning environment, in which separate units of consciousness
have emerged from the divine source and are now on their way to becoming
conscious co-creators with God (theoption of re-absorption into God being
rather seldom). A characteristic statement comes from George Trevelyan:
...man has been called 'the experiment of God'. The world of matter, ruled by
gravity, is the setting necessary for this experience of separation and exercise of
164
The presence of a telos in evolutiondoes not automaticallyimply that it will ever be realized.
The process may be frustrated and cut off for some reason. As we saw above, Peter Russell
for instance believes that such a thing might happen in the case of the evolution of Gaia.
165
Robert John Russell has criticized Bohm for neglecting time and evolution in 'Physics of
David Bohm', 147-148. In a response, Bohm accepts this criticism as valid, adding that he is
exploring a possible combination of his theory with Prigogine's work on irreversibility(Bohm,
'Response', 219).I would consider the possibility of such a combination highly implausible.
162 CHAPTER SIX
free will. Only by separation from the divine and from the realms of light can
man discover his freedom. And his spiritual guides must undoubtedly watch with
some anxiety what man does with his self-consciousness and the freedom that
attends it. He must prove himself worthy of the gift conferred upon him. The
divine purpose seems to be that man should have the opportunity of growing into
a companion and co-creator with God. To date, however, he has tragically abused
the trust reposed in him166
.
The universe itself—the learning environment—is mostly assumed to have
emerged in an analogous way. Edgar Cayce, for example, describes the emanation
of both the material universe and conscious souls; as soon as he has
sufficiently accounted for the former, however, he concentrates on the latter in
the rest of his discussion167
. This is rather characteristic of "Ultimate Source
Holism" in general, which is primarily interested in the spiritual dimension.
Extended discussions of natural evolution are mostly restricted to the domains
of New Age Science and the New Paradigm, where not the teleological spiral
but the paradigm of self-organization dominates. If authors representative of
"Ultimate Source Holism" do not simply take the material universe for granted,
they mostly describe it as the creation of its own inhabitants: individual
souls, as sparks of the great Creative Source, create realities as a mirror for
their own development. This view, largely derived from Seth, has been discussed
above and will be returned to again.
The status of the open-ended spiral variety is more difficult to assess. The
idea as such fits easily within the perimeters of New Age evolutionism, for the
simple reason that it combines two convictions that are popular in themselves:
the idea of "cycles of learning" and the idea of infinite possibilities for development.
It must also be noted that the very notion, encountered in the Trevelyan
passage quoted above, that completion of the evolutionaryspiral makes us into
"co-creators" with God, implies that the creative process does not stop at
reunion with the Source. Typically,no final end is mentioned at all. An openended
spiral of evolution seems to be implied by theosophically-oriented holism
of the New Age sensu stricto variety, such as the Ramala doctrine of infinite
universes within universes. David Spangler, representing the same tradition,
puts it like this:
The whole solar system, from the physical level on up to the cosmically oriented
levels of awareness of the Solar Logos, is like a womb in which seeds of consciousness
develop and unfold into a full flowering of that unobstructed awareness
and creativity that is the God-life and cosmic consciousness inherentwithin
all creation. At that point, these consciousnesses, full-fledged beings of radiant
creative Divinity, go forth as graduates of this solar system into the infinite universe
beyond to become, in turn, educators for the life-streams following after
166
VAA 34-35.
167
TiR 306-308.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 163
them and seeds for still greater manifestations of God-life yet to unfold from the
potentials within Divine Mind168
.
Anticipating the discussion in Part Three of this study, we can already conclude
that a large part of the New Age movement seeks to combine the "closed
world" of traditional cosmologies with the "infinite universe" revealed by the
Copernican revolution169
. Basic models of evolution are derived from the former,
but their scope is widened to the magnitude of the latter.
The linear types of evolutionism popular in the New Age corpus are more resolutely
modern, and tend to place the evolution of consciousness within the
wider context of natural evolution. Roughly speaking, the cyclical types discussed
above start with a spiritual worldview and give only a limited amount
of attention to the natural world within that context. The linear types, in contrast,
start from nature and describe consciousness as an "emergent property"
of nature. The main source of these views is the complex theory of self-organization
developed by Ilya Prigogine and popularized in particular by Erich
Jantsch and Marilyn Ferguson.
Ilya Prigogine is far more difficult to fit into a holistic framework than might
be expected. At the core of his scientific oeuvre is the conviction that classical
science, which emphasized "being", is now superseded by a new paradigm
which emphasizes "becoming"170
. Accordingly, he is extremely critical of the
belief in eternal laws and cosmic harmony. Instead, he emphasizes the primacy
of time, change, contingency, and the unpredictability of the future171
:
[The] feeling of confidence in the "reason" of nature has been shattered .... our
vision of nature is undergoing a radical change towards the multiple, the temporal,
and the complex. ... We were seeking general, all-embracing schemes that
could be expressed in terms of eternal laws, but we have found time, events, evolving
particles. We were also searching for symmetry, and here also we were surprised,
since we discovered symmetry-breakingprocesses on all levels, from elementary
particles up to biology and ecology172
.
The closing sentences of Order out of Chaos leave no doubt about the basic
orientation of his worldview:
The ideas to which we have devoted much space in this book—the ideas of instability,
of fluctuation—diffuse into the social sciences. We know now that societies
are immensely complex systems involving a potentially enormous number
of bifurcations exemplified by the variety of culturesthat have evolved in the relatively
short span of human history. We know that such systems are highly sen-
168
RBNA 95-96.
169
Cf. Koyre, From the Closed World.
170
Prigogine, From Being to Becoming.
171
Cf. also his rejection of "Grand Unified Theories" (rn 192; OC 21, 47).
172
OC 292.
164 CHAPTER SIX
sitive to fluctuations. This leads both to hope and a threat: hope, since even small
fluctuations may grow and change the overall structure. As a result, individual
activity is not doomed to insignificance. On the other hand, this is also a threat,
since in our universe the security of stable, permanent rules seems gone forever.
We are living in a dangerous and uncertain world that inspires no blind confidence,
but perhaps only the same feeling of qualified hope that some Talmudic
texts appear to have attributed to the God of Genesis: "Twenty-six attempts preceded
the present genesis, all of which were destined to fail. The world of man
has arisen out of the chaotic heart of the preceding debris; he too is exposed to
the risk of failure, and the return to nothing. "Let's hope it works" [Halway
Sheyaamod] exclaimed God as he created the World, and this hope, which has
accompanied all the subsequent history of the world and mankind, has emphasized
right from the outset that this history is branded with the mark of radical
uncertainty"173
.
This quotation illustrates not only why New Age thinkers are fascinated with
Prigogine, but also why they usually follow him only up to a certain point. The
fascination derives from the excitement that comes with the vision of an infinite
and open evolutionary future in which man may once more play a meaningful
role. The idea that small fluctuations, including those resulting from
human activity, may drive evolution as a whole over critical thresholds into
unforeseeable new evolutionary directions, appeals to deep-seated New Age
concerns. One of these is the hope for an Age of Aquarius. It will be seen later
that Prigogine's theories can be used to defend the possibility of a sudden
evolutionary transformation of society. In general, the theory is attractive
because it promotes man from the role of a passive object to that of an active
agent in the processes of nature, and suggests that even the smallest part—the
individual—can influence the whole. The disconcerting aspect of his thinking
is that the process of self-organization is neither causal nor Ideological. It
therefore includes the possibility of failure at any moment. The reaction of
Renee Weber, in an interview with Prigogine, is characteristic of New Age
thinking:
If the universe is something that is creating itself as it goes along, it is as if you
are pulling the rug out from under us. The picture generates a sense of insecurity
as well as excitement. We don't know what the universe is going to do until
it does it. There are no archetypes, no gods, no platonic ideas, no eternal laws,
no immanence in anything, no implicate order. That seems bleak and austere174
.
While the popularity of Prigogine in the New Age movement rests on the
"excitement" generated by his evolutionary vision, the "insecurity" that comes
with it has been played down and obscured by the interpretations of his fol-
173
OC 313. The quotation is from Neher, 'Vision du temps', 179.
174
rn 195. Prigogine gives a double answer. Firstly, it is not his business to describe the universe
as he would like it to be, but as it is. Secondly, the alternative of a closed and deterministic
world may be even more unattractive,because it leaves no room for human freedom.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 165
lowers. This is illustrated very clearly by the work of Erich Jantsch.
Jantsch explains how the Prigoginian paradigm differs both from Newtonian
dynamics and from thermodynamics175
. Newtonian dynamics is mechanical
and treats time as reversible (for example, in mathematical descriptions of the
movement of planets around the sun it makes no difference if the direction of
time is reversed). The second law of thermodynamics176
undermined Newtonian
reversibility by demonstrating the existence of an "arrow of time": the universe
moves towards increasing entropy (dissipation of usable energy) in a
process that is basically irreversible. Classical thermodynamics thus demonstrated
that historical (i.e., irreversible) time is a necessary part of physics, but
it also led to the pessimistic conclusion that the universe was inevitably "running
down". The progressive loss of available energy would ultimately result
in universal "heat death". Prigogine's theory of dissipative structures, while
based on thermodynamics, demonstrates an alternative possibility. In open systems
that are far from equilibrium—forinstance, organic systems—new and
higher levels of increased complexity may arise suddenly and spontaneously.
While classical thermodynamics implied that time inevitably moves in the
direction of increasing chaos, Prigogine's theory maintains that it is precisely
from chaos that new orders of higher complexity may emerge. It therefore
opens the possibility for an optimisticreformulationof thermodynamics, which
ascribes to the universe the ability to develop ever higher and more complex
orders. Prigogine calls such orders dissipative structures, i.e., dynamic (=far
from equilibrium) systems, which are not closed but open and therefore maintain
constaint energy exchange with the environment (=dissipation). The logical
contrast to a dissipative structure is a machine, for instance a clockwork
machine, which is closed and static. Such structures are subject to the Second
Law of Thermodynamics: they run down over time and cannot repair themselves,
let alone evolve to new levels of complexity. Dissipative structures can
do all these things. Living organisms are obvious examples; but dissipative
structures do not need to be organisms in the traditional sense. As noted in
section 2B of this chapter, the essential distinction in systems thinking of this
type is not between organisms and anorganic material structures, but between
systems that display the characteristics of self-organization and systems that
do not. Whether or not the former (including human artefacts) can be called
"living" is regarded as no more than a matter of convention. In this way, Prigogine,
Jantsch and others attempt to explain the evolution of both living organ-
175
SOU ch. 1.
176
The first law of thermodynamics states that the total energy in an isolated system is conserved.
The second law states that the amount of available energy decreases over time. This
implies, among other things, the impossibility of perpetual motion machines, and can be relabeled
as the "law of increasing disorder" (Murphy,'Time, Thermodynamics, and Theology', 360,
363-364).
166 CHAPTER SIX
isms and, for example, social systems in terms of the same basic mechanisms.
Erich Jantsch, in the bewildering mixture of scientific theory and visionary
enthusiasm that is The Self-Organizing Universe, goes far beyond Prigogine
by covertly reintroducing a range of teleological elements. An explicit defense
of teleological evolution would bring Jantsch into headlong collision with the
very core of Prigoginian theory. So it is not surprising that his apparent belief
in a higher evolutionary purpose is expressed by means of frequent suggestive
remarks rather than by explicit argument. Some examples of covert teleology
are his description of the evolution of the universe as a process of "unfold-
ment"177
; his mention of a "directedness" of evolution which might be recognized
post /zoc178
; or, especially, his speculations about the "meaning" of evolution.
At one level, evolution and "metaevolution" (i.e., the evolution of the
evolutionary mechanisms and principles themselves179
) generates its own
meaning, in the sense that the meaning of evolution lies in the intrinsic value
of creative expansion. On another level, meaning has to do with evolutionary
"self-transcendence" culminatingin the development of "Mind". Jantsch comes
very close to an explicit teleological statement towards the end of the book:
'In self-transcendence ... the chord of consciousness becomes richer. In the
infinite, it falls together with the divine. The divine, however, becomes manifest
neither in personal nor any other form, but in the total evolutionary dynamics
of a multilevel reality'180
. An explicit teleological statement (reminiscent
of Teilhard de Chardin's Omega Point) is avoided only by the words "in the
infinite" (which however have the effect of obscuring completely what may be
meant by the divine "becoming manifest"). The latent affinity with a linear
teleological evolutionism, like that of Teilhard181
, is further confirmed by
Jantsch' statement that primitive forms of "consciousness" must be attributed
even to simple chemical structures and single cells182
. This is another way of
saying that the tendency towards mind/consciousness is built into evolution
from the very beginning. It then becomes almost impossible to distinguish
Jantsch' views from an explicit linear-teleological evolutionism as expressed,
for example, by Willis Harman:
Consider [the] kind of explanation which speaks of some sort of teleological "pull"
in the evolutionary process, of evolution toward increased awareness, complexi-
177
SOU 75.
178
SOU 8.
179
SOU 8.
180
SOU 308.
181
Note that neither Prigogine nor Jantsch refer to Teilhard at all.
182
SOU 40: 'If consciousness is defined as the degree of autonomy a system gains in the
dynamic relations with its environment, even the simplest autopoietic systems such as chemical
dissipative structures have a primitive form of consciousness'. If that is done, Jantsch's conclusion
may well be correct. However, he does not explain why we should define consciousness in
that way to begin with.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 167
ty, freedom—in short, of evolution going somewhere (not in a predetermined
sense, but in the sense of preferred direction). In that kind of evolutionary explanation
the organism developed two eyes because at some deep level of inner understanding
it wanted to see better!183
In spite of the logical open-endedness of Prigoginian evolutionism, the attraction
of teleological models has, on the whole, been too strong for his New Age
followers. Prigogine's 'dangerous and uncertain world' has been transformed,
with reference to his own theories, into a world of inevitable progress towards
a superconsciousness of cosmic dimensions. In this connection, we may also
think of Marilyn Ferguson's Aquarian Conspiracy, which not only freely combines
such radically different theories as those of Prigogine and Bohm184
, but
also very frequently quotes Teilhard de Chardin. Although Teilhard is not discussed
in detail, a strong presumption is created that it is his evolutionary
vision which inspires more recent theories. Something similar is suggested also
by Fritjof Capra185
and Peter Russell186
. Teilhard's role in the New Age movement
is, however, ambivalent. His direct influence, in terms of specific theories,
is much less than has sometimes been suggested187
. Compared with
thinkers such as Bohm and Prigogine he must definitely be considered a minor
source. However, several central aspects of his thought (e.g., evolution towards
Omega Point; the idea of the noosphere; the "inwardness" of matter) have their
direct counterparts in New Age speculation. As a result, his name is often
evoked to lend added support to ideas to which he is linked only by analogy.
The peculiar combination of logical open-endedness and a suggestion of teleological
directedness is often found in New Age sources. Seth has already been
mentioned as an obvious example. Although there are no reasons to suppose
any direct connections, Seth's and Jantsch's views of evolution are surprisingly
similar. Central to both is the conviction that the meaning of evolution lies
in the inherent value of creativity. The universe exists in order to unfold into
ever more magnificent creations. Unlimited creativity is the beginning, the
means, and the "end" of evolution; human consciousness is destined to play a
crucial role in that process. It appears to be irresistible, even for a professional
scientist such as Jantsch, to associate the very dynamics of creativity with
183
GMC 55.
184
It is interesting to compare the attitude of both scientists to each other's work. Bohm is
interested in Prigogine and tries to incorporate his theory in his own work (SOC 137-141; David
Bohm, 'Response', 219). Prigogine, from his side, shows less interest: '...I have not understood
him exactly. My feeling when I hear or read him is that his is a rather conservative view, in the
sense that he very much emphasizes enfolding and unfolding. To my mind enfolding and unfolding
is exactly as conservative as his point of view on hidden variables. ... In spite of his great
originality, and of many things which I admire in Bohm's views, I still feel he is trying to come
back to a classical transparancy of nature'.
185
TP 304.
186
Esp. AE 83-84.
187
For example by Sudbrack, Neue Religiositdt.
168 CHAPTER SIX
"God". God (or All-That-Is) is pure creative energy; and human beings, as cocreators
with God, partake in that divinity. Evolution is the process of God's
infinite expansion.
4. SOME ADDITIONAL ISSUES
In this chapter, I have discussed the views about reality explicitly described or
implicitly presupposed in our New Age corpus. The chapter's comparative
lengthiness was predictable given the fact that it not only had to provide a sufficiently
comprehensive context for the next chapters to draw on, but also
because reflection on the "nature of reality" is a comparatively sophisticated
intellectual enterprise. Even so, the scope and purpose of this study does not
permit a really exhaustive treatment of the philosophical worldviews involved.
It was necessary to pass over many interesting aspects and details. Some of
these will be "filled in" in the course of the next chapters; others are marginal
to the understanding of New Age religion and will be ignored, although they
would be important for an in-depth interpretation of specific thinkers and their
work. An obvious example is David Bohm's philosophy of nature, which would
require a book-length critical monograph combining expertise in both philosophy
and physics. Of more immediate importance are a number of general
philosophical issues related to, or implicit in, the theories discussed above.
This chapter will be rounded off with a brief survey of the most important
ones.
The Transcendence of Space-Time
The "Quest for Eternity" has sometimes been highlighted as the central preoccupation
underlying a wide variety of modern "irrational" movements, from
Romanticism to the New Religions188
. The analysis of our corpus strongly confirms
that in the New Age movement "time"—or, more specifically, the belief
in time—is generally regarded as an unfortunate, limiting condition. Our textual
corpus is full of suggestions that time is something to be transcended189
.
Less prominently, but still with remarkable frequency, we find the belief that
188
Raschke, Interruption of Eternity. This study has many interestinginsights to offer. The
guiding definition of "gnosticism" is, however, extremely problematic: 'Over against the historicist
mentality ... can be posed the theme of revolt against history, a quest for metahistorical
meaning which can be classified generallyas "Gnosticism" (24). This definition of "gnosticism"
remains unsupported by any argumentsand must be regarded as yet anothersource of confusion
about this already seriously devaluated term'.
189
CiM:T 5, passim; WIO 210-212; SOC 108-109, 197-199; ToP 197; AS 38; PR 193-194;
PH 82-83; GW 199-220; S 227-237; RR 38; WR 13, 37, 226-227; ECMM 63; SM 163; SS 339-
340; OtC 115, 218; RBNA 99-100; MNP 97; BQ 172; HU 197-228; SoC 98, 123; UfE 60-62;
HP:cht 112;SoS 35.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 169
the transcendence of time is to be complemented by a transcendence of
space190
. In the context of "Ultimate Source Holism", the wish to transcend
the space-time continuum is directly connected to the longing for a "self-sufficient
Absolute", and many references to time/space-transcendence can be
attributed to the attendant "eternalistic pathos". In holographic theories, the
wish to transcend time and space is given a theoretical underpinning by presenting
the whole space-time continuumas "unfolding" from an implicate order
beyond time and space. In the context of Seth's holographic worldview, this
radical non-dimensionality is referred to as 'the spacious present'. It is important
to realize that the meaning of space-time transcendence is different in both
contexts just mentioned. In the first, otherworldly-oriented context, the wish
to leave space-time behind seems to reflect quite simply the wish to find eternal
peace and rest. In the holographic context, however, it is not eternal rest
but eternal creativity that is sought. The "spacious present" functions not as a
resting place, but as an archimedean point from which multidimensional realities
can be created: 'In one respect, the body and physical objects go flying
out in all directions from the inner core of the. whole self'191
. Starting from
the premise that all multidimensionalrealities are created by conscious souls,
it is indeed only logical to infer that those souls themselves must transcend the
dimensions of space and time (time being the fourth dimension, as the postEinstein
generation has duly learned, if not from popular science books then
from science fiction). Furthermore, if realities are created on the basis of our
beliefs, then we are not actually constricted by the limitations of space and
time, but only by the limitations of our beliefs. Expansion of consciousness
means transcending those limitations and envisioning the possibility of other
worlds, including higher worlds of more than four dimensions. The human
mind is pictured as having the ability, at least in principle, of travelling between
dimensions and realities at will, from the archimedean point of the "spacious
present" beyond all creation. For illustration, I refer once more to the quotations
about the popular reception of the holographic idea, at the end of chapter
six section 2B. Shirley MacLaine, a strong representative of these views,
emphasizes Seth's "spacious present" in her own words: 'I was learning to recognize
the invisible dimension where there are no measurements possible. In
fact, it is the dimension of no-height, no-width, no-breadth, and no-mass, and
as a matter of further fact, no-time. It is the dimension of the spirit'192
.
From this perspective of the spirit, time and space are regarded as meaningful
illusions. The soul makes use of these categories to demarcate the play-
190
CiM:T 361,passim; euu 49; ToP 197; TI 136; AS 38; OL 213; ECMM 63; SM 127, 136-
137; OtC 115; RBNA 99-100; MNP 80-82; HU 229ff; SoC ch. 4. In most cases, space is just
mentioned routinely in connection with time.
191
SM 136.
192
DL 309.
170 CHAPTER SIX
grounds it creates for furthering its own growth and expansion: 'The whole
construction is like an educational play in which you are the producers as well
as the actors. There is a play within a play within a play. There is no end to
the 'within' of things. The dreamer dreams, and the dreamer within the dream
dreams. But the dreams are not meaningless, and the actions within them are
significant'193
. Wewill return to this in the discussion of reincarnation. It seems
clear that, on these premises, "evolution", as a process in time, can only have
a limited significance: it exists to the extent that it is believed in. But, of course,
this raises the question of what is the point of this whole dazzling play with
illusions. If the soul is beyond time, then it seems contradictory to say that it
can "evolve" by playing out its dreams. Nevertheless, this seems to be implied.
Although the soul has literally "nowhere to go", it is still pictured as in a
dynamic process of becoming a conscious co-creator with All That Is. Seth is
very aware of this paradox, but attributes our failure to grasp it to our limited
understanding: 'Everything happens at once, and yet there is no beginning and
end to it in your terms, so it is not completed in your terms at any given point.
Your idea of development and growth ... implies a one-line march toward perfection,
so it would be difficult for you to imagine the kind of order that per-
vades'194
. The paradox, in other words, is a result of category confusion: the
order of multidimensional reality just cannot be grasped by a merely fourdimensional
logic. All attempts to solve the contradiction are therefore futile and
bound to fail. This seems to be a perfectly satisfying answer to New Age authors
and their readership, and we should therefore accept it on the level of emic
belief.
But, even if representatives of the holographic paradigm are able to give an
emically convincing account of evolution "out of time", we are still left with
the incompatibility of the holographic paradigm as such and the competing
paradigm of self-organization. For Prigogine historical time is primary, and
any sort of "illusionism" is alien to his thinking. In the process of adaptation
of Prigogine's views to general New Age concerns, however, what happens is
that the exciting vision of infinite evolutionary possibilities is emphasized at
the expense of Prigogine's historism. Tothe extent that the latter is played down
or ignored, the artificial impression can be created that Prigoginian self-organization,
on the one hand, and holographic evolutionism of a Sethian kind (both
of them being of the open-ended/creative variety), on the other, are in basic
agreement. This is a very significant fact. If historical realism cannot survive
even in theories of evolution, then we must conclude that the New Age aversion
to historical time is deep-seated indeed.
193
SM 302-303.
194
SS 339-340.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 171
Mind and Matter
The only thing, as was noted above (beginning of chapter six, section 2), which
unites the different expressions of New Age holism is a common opposition
to non-holistic views associated with the "old culture". This is particularly clear
in the case of views about the relation between mind and matter..All New Age
authors unanimously reject Cartesian dualism, but beyond that agreement confusion
reigns. Although the harmonizing and syncretistic, rather than polemic,
spirit of most New Age literature tends not to emphasize differences of opinion,
on the understanding that "basically we are all talking about the same
thing", in fact the alternatives to Cartesian dualism cover the whole gamut of
theoretical options. I will briefly characterize the main positions found in our
New Age corpus and comment on some problems related to them.
David Bohm attempts to transcend dualism by describing mind and matter
as explicate orders which seem separate from the perspective of manifest reality,
but are one at a deeper implicate level. The basic unification of matter and
mind takes place, therefore, at a level which cannot be reduced to either of
them. An "ultimate reality" which is neither matter nor mind but encompasses
both as enfolded potential is, of course, not easy to assimilate within a philosophy
based on the evidence of physics. However, in the course of his intellectual
development, Bohm has been increasingly concerned with securing a
place for "meaning" within the seemingly impersonal framework of his philosophy.
To describe meaning simply as something which is attributed by
human beings to (aspects of) reality seems to have been unacceptable to him
from the outset. Meaning, rather, must be inherent in the very structure of reality.
This realist rather than nominalist perspective has led him to extended speculations
on "matter as a meaning field" and the concept of "soma-signifi-
cance"195
: 'The notion of soma-significance implies that soma (or the physical)
and its significance (which is mental) are not in any sense separately existent,
but rather that they are two aspects of one over-all reality. By an aspect
we mean a view or a way of looking. ...there is only one flow, and a change
of meaning is a change in that flow. Therefore any change of meaning is a
change of soma, and any change of soma is a change of meaning'196
. Bohm's
speculations in this domain are a relatively obscure part of his philosophy. They
take him further beyond physics than ever, and many of his discussions are
characterized by a lack of specificity which relies heavily on "intuitive" understanding
on the part of his audience. Unlike his theory of the implicate order,
Bohm's ideas about meaning and soma-significance seem to have been adopt-
195
Cf. the double interview with Bohm and Sheldrake, mmf; the notion of "soma-significance"
dominates UM, and is discussed in a number of contributions in Pylkkanen, Search for
Meaning. The theme of "meaning" is also a central concern for Bohm's epigone Peat, in S. Cf.
further Jantsch' final chapter with the title "Meaning".
196
UM 73 & 76.
172 CHAPTER SIX
ed only by his immediate followers (such as Peat and Talbot) without significantly
influencing New Age thinking generally. They tend to be mentioned
from time to time, however, quite generally, as yet another confirmation from
a famous physicist that Cartesian dualism is bancrupt.
Only a thorough philosophical analysis of Bohm's complete oeuvre could determine
the question of whether his approach to the mind-matter problem succesfully
avoids materialist reductionism. Suspicions to the contrary have been
voiced even from within the New Age movement, and these will be examined
below. Here, it must be noted that materialist reductionism is indeed a strong
temptation for New Age holism. Any movement which combines the search
for a monistic alternative to mind-matter dualism with a high regard for modern
science will easily develop a form of materialistic monism. However, if
such a movement also explicitly rejects reductionistic materialism and exalts
spirit, then it obviously has a problem. To escape from the dilemma, it must
claim either that science as such must be transformed so as to encompass
aspects of reality normally associated with the spiritual, or it must demonstrate
that the existence of a spiritual dimension is confirmed by advanced science197
.
Critics will object that the former option leads to bad science, and the latter
to bad spirituality. Defenders will reply that traditional notions of both science
and spirituality have been too limited all along and that the convergence of
both domains will lift both to an entirely new level. From such a perspective,
mind and matter would turn out to be superseded and ultimately meaningless
notions. This suggestion is what we actually find, not only in the work of David
Bohm, but in many other representatives of New Age science as well198
. For
our purposes, the.main thing to note is their pervasive belief thai the mindmatter
problem can be solved in this way. If we look at the specific theoretical
defenses of the belief, however, it is quite possible to argue that, in several
central cases, what is presented as a solution to Cartesian dualism in fact
amounts to either materialist or spiritual reductionism199
. A definitive judg-
197
Cf. Shirley MacLaine: 'If and when science does get to establishing the Source, it will be
acknowledging spirituality as a physical reality' (OL 325).
198
An often-quoted example is the essential role of the observer in quantum physics, which
seems to imply that mental and physical processes are aspects of one process. Frequently, however,
this is—consciously or not—given an idealistic turn. This happens rather subtly in the case
of Fritjof Capra (TP 93: 'The fact that all the properties of particles are determined by principles
closely related to the methods of observation would mean that the basic structures of the
material world are determined, ultimately, by the way we look at this world; that the observed
patterns of matter are reflections of patterns of mind'), and quite unsubtly in the case of Henry
Reed (ECMM 114: 'Atomic physics discovered that it is just not possible to look at an atom
without the atom's feeling an impact of the scientist's observation'). Both authors have in common
that they describe a one-way movement from a mental agent to a material object and not
the reverse, which suggests that the mental aspect is primary. This seems difficult to reconcile
with the logic of Capra's theories.
199
I have already mentioned several examples, such as Capra's early bootstrap holism (crit-
THE NATURE OF REALITY 173
ment would require a detailed philosophical criticism, which is beyond the
scope and competence of this study. Given that, we are left with the problem
that it is extremely difficult to decide how to characterize the authors in question.
Should we characterize them according to their beliefs or according to
their actual philosophical and scientific achievements? Suppose that the suspicion
of materialist reductionism turns out to be justified: would it then be
right to say that such authors believe in a materialistic universe (but without
realizing that they do) or, rather, that they only describe such a universe (but
without realizing its implications)? Both could be plausibly defended. I do not
intend to take a final stand on this issue, but it is an important one to men-
tion.
A closely related position sees mind as an "emergent property" of material
processes. This view is connected to evolutionary perspectives of the self-organization
variety, either combined with (krypto)teleological elements or not200
.
Again, there is good reason to suspect covert or less covert reductionism; and
the above comments apply equally to this category. In this connection, it is not
superfluous to mention the popularity, in some quarters, of the "anthropic cosmological
principle"201
. This theory argues that there is a parallelism between
the form of the human psyche and the form of the cosmos, such that 'neither
could be supposed to be significantly different without supposing the other to
be significantly different as well'202
. On these premises, the answer to the question
"why does the universe exhibit the features it does exhibit?" would be:
"because we are here"203
. In other words, human consciousness is regarded not
as the explanandum but as the explanans of cosmic evolution. The so-called
"final version" of this anthropic principle, a science fiction-like argument
developed by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler204
under the inspiration of
Teilhard de Chardin, is fully congruent with the more extremist kinds of New
Age science205
.
If the mind-matter problem is approached from a primary interest not in matter
(as is the case in the former categories, which are generally the products
icized by E.F. Schumacher); his interpretation of Gregory Bateson; and the Prigoginian description
of "living systems". Below, the case of the holographic paradigm will be discussed in connection
with Ken Wilber's criticism.
200
Strictly speaking, the notion of "emergent property" belongs only to the theory of selforganization.
Elsewhere, "unfolding property" might be more appropriate. However, the actual
assimilation of teleological elements in Prigoginian self-organization renders such fine distinctions
rather pointless.
201
For an excellent discussion see Hallberg, 'Anthropic Cosmological Principle'.
202
Hallberg, 'Anthropic Cosmological Principle', 139.
203
Hallberg, 'Anthropic Cosmological Principle', 141.
204
Barrow & Tipler, Anthropic Cosmological Principle.
205
Cf. BQ 184-187.
173
174 CHAPTER SIX
of scientists or scientifically trained thinkers) but in mind, the result is usually
a version of "illusionism"206
. Only mind is real, and whatever seems essentially
different from mind is "maya". A perfect example is the following statement
by Stanislav Grof, related by Fritjof Capra:
[My metaphysical system] is bafsed on the concept of a Universal Mind, or Cosmic
Consciousness, which is the creative force behind the cosmic design. All the
phenomena we experience are understood as experiments in consciousness performed
by the Universal Mind in an infinitely ingenious creative play. The problems
and baffling paradoxes associated with human existence are seen as intricately
contrived deceptions invented by the Universal Mind and built into the cosmic
game; and the ultimate meaning of human existence is to experience fully all
the states of mind associated with this fascinating adventure in consciousness; to
be an intelligent actor and playmate in the cosmic game. In this framework, consciousness
is not something that can be derived from or explained in terms of
something else. It is a primal fact of existence out of which everything else arises.
This, very briefly, would be my credo207
.
We note in passing that the physicist Capra quotes this statement approvingly,
and apparently regards Grof's worldview as compatible with his own. In general,
this idealist solution to the mind-matter problem is less problematical than
the preceding one, for at least two reasons. First, it does not have to justify
itself to scientific research, because whatever science may find, still belongs
to the sphere of maya. And if science were to provide a physical description
of Universal Mind that would be inconsequential: the point is that the believer
simply does not need such support in order to believe in it. Secondly, while
the overt explanation of mind in material terms is rejected as reductionism, the
reverse explanation of matter in spiritual terms is not usually perceived as
reductionistic. While scientifically-based monism, in the New Age context, is
always in the difficult (if not impossible) position of having to avoid the scylla
and charybdis of dualism and reductionism, spiritual monism can be just
itself.
Finally, we must note the prominence in New Age literature of certain ambivalent
terms which are used to good effect in order to suggest the unity of mind
and matter. One example is Pribram/Bohm's "frequency domain": a domain of
universal "unbroken wholeness" or dynamic flux from which all realityunfolds,
but which is also described as the domain of the spirit. Mystical experience,
on this premise, results from "tuning in" to this frequency domain208
. While
206
Gregory Bateson's theory is an exception; but he defines "mind" completely differently.
Bateson (who was trained as a biologist and anthropologist) has proposed an extremely original
solution to the mind-matter problem which would merit extended discussion here if it could be
regarded as belonging to the New Age movement. However, as we saw, Bateson's influence in
the New Age is limited to secondary interpretations of his work a la Capra.
207
UW 150.
208
Pribram himself confirms this (HP:f 34).
THE NATURE OF REALITY 175
this might quite conceivably lead to a sceptical argument (the mystic thinks
(s)he experiences God, but in fact experiences only physical frequencies), New
Age authors characteristically see it as proof that mystical experience is not
illusory but "real".
The most widespread example of such ambivalent terminology, however, is
"energy". For examples of the way energy is described as both physical and
spiritual there is no better source than Shirley MacLaine. See for instance the
following conversation with her spiritual mentor David:
"But do you really believe the soul is a physical force?" "Yes, exactly. But it is
a significantly different kind of force from the physical atomic and molecular
forces that comprise the body. It is a subatomic force, the intelligent energy that
organizes life. It is part of every cell, it is part of DNA, it is in us, and of us, and
the whole of it—everywhere—is what we call 'God'"209
.
The implications for human "co-creatorship" are obvious:
We are literally made up of God energy, therefore we can create whatever we
want in life because we are each co-creating with the energy of God—the energy
that makes the universe itself. ... If the pattern of that energy has order, and
balance, and grace (which science claims it does), if it has meaning in terms of
all life, what is to distinguish it from what the New Age calls God?210
Nothing, finally, summarizes the basic idea better than David's remark: 'Maybe
the God-force is really scientific'211
. It would be superficial, in a New Age
context, to attempt to make a strict separation between the mind-matter problem
and the problem of religion vs. science. If the essence of mind or spirit
(terms which are used interchangeably) is divine energy, as is commonly asserted,
then naturally scientific or philosophical "proof" for the reality of mind/
spirit amounts to a legitimation of religion. Therefore it is commonly asserted
in New Age sources that between science and religion there need be no conflict,
and that a healing of the split between both is urgently needed. The argument
usually reflects some variety of parallelism212
. The hidden premise is, of
course, that the religion in question must be of the "right" kind, just as thescience
in question must be of the "right" kind. Sometimes this is made explicit:
'There appears ... to be no conflict between a mature science and a mature
religion'213
and 'theonly real battle is between genuine science and bogusscience,
and between genuine religion and bogus religion ... and the only worth-
209
OL326.
210
GW 100-101.
211
OL 240.Cf. OL 325: 'If and when science does get to establishing the Source, it will be
acknowledging spirituality as a physical reality'.
212
For instance OB 10, EW passim; DL 323-329; GW 95-108; S1-2,passim; SD 202-203;
MNP161.
213
GMC 102.
176 CHAPTER SIX
while battle is between genuine and bogus, not between science and religion'214
.
The problem is, of course, who decides what is "mature or immature", "genuine
or bogus".
The Wilber Controversy
Sometimes the wished-for convergence of science and religion is put in the
more general context of the conflict between the natural sciences and the
humanities. In Prigogine & Stengers' Order out of Chaos this is even the central
theme; the original French title La Nouvelle Alliance reflects the ambition
of the authors to reunite the "two cultures" on the basis of a common recognition
of historical time. However, we saw that it is exactly Prigogine's focus
on history which has not been followed by his New Age admirers, so this part
of his efforts must remain marginal to our present concerns. A far more crucial
concern with the demarcation between different kinds of "science" is
reflected in the vehement criticism of the holographic paradigm and of science-mysticism
parallelism which has been voiced by Ken Wilber in several
publications. Wilber's criticism is important because it is almost the only example
of an intellectual controversy within the New Age movement, and because
it illustrates a central problem area which has repeatedly been referred to above.
Very briefly, Wilber argues that natural science has no competence to speak
about spirituality. As an alternative to the monism of New Age science, which
he claims cannot but result in reductionism, he proposes a hierarchical vision
in which the higher levels encompass the lower but the lower cannot understand
the higher. Wilber's sophisticated criticism, only the barest outlines of
which can be presented here, seems to be similar to what E.F. Schumacher had
in mind in his rejection of Capra's views (see above).
Wilber argues that the holographic paradigm is 'shot through with profound
category errors'215
. It fails to distinguish between fundamental levels in reality,
the most important of which are the material, the mental and the transcendent
realms216
. Each of these corresponds to a specific mode of attaining
knowledge, the terminology for which Wilber borrows from Bonaventura: the
eye of flesh, the eye of reason and the eye of contemplation. Each level, furthermore,
refers to a specific object domain, which he refers to as sensibilia,
intelligibilia and transcendelia. The possible epistemological relationships
resulting from this are presented in the following diagram:
214
QQ:ss21.
215
EtE:pmhp 126.
216
In other publications, Wilber has made finer distinctions within each level.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 177
[Reprinted by arrangementwith Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, MA]
Mode #5 represents 'simple sensorimotor cognition ... the presymbolic grasp
of the presymbolic world'217
, and mode #1 represents what Wilber calls "gnosis":
'the transsymbolic grasp of the transsymbolic world, spirit's direct knowledge
of spirit, the immediate intuition of transcendelia'218
. The experience in
these two modes is completely valid as knowledge, but it does not produce theoretical
knowledge. This is done only in mode 2, 3 and 4:
Whereas the data in any realm is itself immediate and direct (by definition), the
pointing by mental data to other data (sensory, mental, or transcendental) is a
mediate or intermediate process—it is a mapping, modeling, or matching procedure.
And this mapping procedure—the use of mental data (symbols and concepts)
to explain or map other data (sensory, mental, ortranscendental)—simply
results in what is known as theoretical knowledge219
.
Most sciences proceed by producing theoretical knowledge, but in principle a
science based on direct (unmediated) knowledge is possible. Logically, this can
only be the knowledge of mode #1. The word "science" is appropriate in this
mode as in modes 2-4, to the extent that all are based not on dogmatic formulation
but on valid procedures of data accumulation and verification. Such
a procedure, as explained by Wilber, must consist of the three steps of "injunction,
apprehension and confirmation"220
. Wilber's complete argument thus
results in a distinction between the following categories:
Mode #4 results in "empirical-analytic or monological (monologue) sciences".
As examples, Wilber mentions physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy and
geology.
Mode #3 results in "mental-phenomenological, rational, hermeneutical, semiotic,
or dialogical (dialogue) sciences". Examples: 'linguistics, mathematics,
experimental phenomenology, introspective and interpersonal psychology, historic-hermeneutics,
logic, interpretive sociology, communicative philoso-
phy'221
.
Mode #2 results in "mandalic sciences": 'the attempt by the mind to arrange
or categorize, however inadequately, the data of transcendelia ... this would
include mental cartographies of the transmental realms, rational "plausibility
arguments" for spirit; verbal discussions of Godhead; and so on'222
.
217
EtE:pp 67.
218
EtE:pp 67.
219
EtErpp 67.
220
See EtE:ete.
221
EtE:pp 72.
222
EtE:pp 72.
178 CHAPTER SIX
Mode #1 results in."noumenological or gnostic sciences": 'the methodologies
and injunctions for the direct apprehension of transcendelia as transcendelia;
direct and intuitive apprehension of spirit, noumenon, dharmakaya'223
.
Duly taking notice of the complicating factor of mathematics and logic in mode
#3, we may conclude that the distinction between mode #4 and #3 largely corresponds
to the traditional distinction between the Natural Sciences and the
Humanities. Wilber's criticism of the holographic paradigm reflects an acute
awareness of this distinction. Mode #2 largely corresponds to the transpersonal
perspective which emerged in psychology, as was seen in chapter two, from
the desire for a non-reductionistic account of mystical and related kinds of
experience. Mode #1 is simply mystical practice, as distinguished from theory.
According to Wilber, mysticism, as traditionally taught, is subject to the
same epistemological structure as all valid science (i.e. "injunction, illumination,
and confirmation").
It will be clear that, from a perspective that distinguishes between fundamental
ontological and epistemological levels, the attempt to describe all reality
in terms of one fundamental reality modeled on physics must be hopelessly
reductionistic. Physicalist reductionism is therefore Wilber's basic objection
to the holographic paradigm and to the parallellist enterprise:
...the new physics has simply discovered the one-dimensional interpenetration of
its own level (nonsentient mass/energy). While this is an important discovery, it
cannot be equated with the extraordinary phenomenon of multidimensional interpenetration
described by the mystics. ... To put it crudely, the study of physics is
on the first floor, describing the interactions of its elements; the mystics are on
the sixth floor describing the interactions of all six floors.... Further, physics and
mysticism are not two different approaches to the same reality. They are different
approaches to two quite different levels of reality, the latter of which transcends
but includes the former. ... In the rush to marry physics and mysticism,
using the shotgun of generalization, we tend to forget that quantum reality has
almost no bearing whatsoever in the actual world of macroscopic processes. ...
But it is precisely in the ordinary realm of rocks and trees that the mystic sees
his mutual interpenetration of all matter. His basic oneness of the universe does
not "start at the atomic level". When the mystic looks at a bird on wing over a
cascading stream and says, "They are perfectly one", he does not mean that if we
got a super microscope out and examined the situation we would see bird and
stream exchanging mesons in a unitary fashion.... Ask almost any physicist if the
connections between, say, a macroscopic tree and river are as intense and unitary
as those between subatomic particles, and he will say no. The mystic will say yes.
That is a fundamental issue and shows, in fact, that the physicist and the mystic
aren't even talking about the same world224
.
David Bohm's implicate order, according to Wilber, is very interesting but
should not be seen as a transcendent reality. Rather, it "subscends" matter, and
223
EtE:pp 72-73.
224
EtE:pmhp 135-137.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 179
is simply 'the unitary deep structure (holoarchy) or level-1'225
. As for Pribram's
holographic brain: Wilber has no doubt that memory is holographically stored,
but denies that this has any spiritual implications:
...it is said that a shift to a "perception of the holographic blur" would produce
transcendent states.... By the account of the theory itself, I do not see that it would
or could result in anything but an experience of one's own memory storage bin,
properly blurred and without benefit of linear read-out. How one could jump from
a blur of one's own memory to a crystal clear consciousness that transcends mind,
body, self, and world is not made clear at all226
.
Popular ideas about the holographic "frequency domain" are similarly criti-
cized:
The transform of "things" into "frequencies" is not a transform of space/time into
"no space, no time", but a transform of space/time objects into space/time frequencies.
Frequency does not mean "no space, no time"; it means cycles/second
or space per time. To read the mathematics otherwise is more than a quantum
leap; it is a leap of faith227
.
The common belief that the new holistic theories reintroduce notions of freedom
and creativity, and refute the determinism of earlier classical science, is
equally groundless:
...even with its little bit of Heisenberg indeterminacy, the physical universe is
much more deterministic than even level-2, biological beings. Any good physicist
can tell you where Jupiter will be located a decade from now, barring disaster,
but no biologist can tell you where a dog will move two minutes from now.
It's a reflex thing to do—finally, after decades of saying the physical universe is
deterministic and therefore human choice is an illusion, you find a little indeterminacy
in the physical realm and you go nuts. ... You get so excited you forget
you have just pulled the reductionist feat of the century: God is that big electron
in the sky. The intentions are good, but the philosophy is so detrimental228
.
Wilber acknowledges that some of the founders of New Age holism have subsequently
moved to a more sophisticated view, but is afraid that these necessarily
more complicated views will never succeed in reversing the tide of 'pop
mysticism and the new physics or holographic craze'229
. Wilber's own alternative
for a new paradigm would not only have to include all levels, modes of
knowing and correlative methodologies, but also a 'social evolutionary stance,
a social policy geared to help human beings evolve through the stage-levels of
existence'230
. It should be noted that, in Wilber's view, the only ultimate real-
225
EtE:pmhp 139.
226
EtE:pmhp 148.
227
EtE: pmph 149.
228
EtE:nap 169-170.
229
EtEmap 163.
230
EtE:nap 196.
180 CHAPTER SIX
ity is universal spirit, and all lower levels are ultimately illusionary in relation
to this final mystery231
. Therefore his opposition to popular New Age holism
can still be fitted into the general duality between science-based monism on
the one hand, and idealistic "illusionism" on the other. What distinguishes
Wilber is his carefully argued and psychologically sophisticated account of
how the different levels of "illusion" emerge from the ultimate reality of "Mindonly",
and what dynamics govern their relations to each other.
Quantum Questions (ed. Ken Wilber) is a compilation of "mystical" writings
from a number of famous physicists (Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Einstein,
De Broglie, Jeans, Planck, Pauli and Eddington). Wilber's aim in making this
compilation is to demonstrate that these physicists all came to embrace mysticism
while nevertheless rejecting physics-mysticism parallelism. According
to Wilber, they almost unanimously declared that modern physics offers no
positive support for mysticism or any sort of transcendentalism. They did this,
moreover, not out of ignorance about mysticism; quite the contrary, their writings
are 'positively loaded with references'232
to mystics and idealistic philosophers.
Their rejection of parallelism derives from an acute awareness that in
their research they were looking 'at nothing but a set of highly abstract differential
equations—not at "reality" itself, but at mathematical symbols of real-
ity'233
. Why, then, did they become mystics? The answer is that the new discoveries
forced physicists to be aware of the limitations of physics. In Wilber's
words:
...both the old and the new physics were dealing with shadow-symbols, but the
new physics wasforced to be aware of thatfact—forced to be aware that it was
dealing with shadows and illusions, not reality. ... Schroedinger drives the point
home: "Please note that the very recent advance [of quantum and relativistic
physics] does not lie in the world of physics itself having acquired this shadowy
character; it had ever since Democritus of Abdera and even before, but we were
not aware of it; we thought we were dealing with the world itself". And Sir James
Jeans summarizes it perfectly ...: "... from the broad philosophical standpoint, the
outstanding achievement of twentieth-century physics is ... the general recognition
that we are not yet in contact with ultimate reality. We are still imprisoned
in our cave, with our backs to the light, and can only watch the shadows on the
wall". ... To put it in a nutshell: according to this view, physics deals with shadows;
to go beyond shadows is to go beyond physics; to go beyond physics is to
231
This position is developed theoretically in all Wilber's books, and sometimes expressed
aphoristically in statements like EtE:nap 167: 'All things are not ultimately made of subatomic
particles; all things, including subatomic particles, are ultimately made of God'. Cf. the preface
to AP (xi): 'There follows, then, the story of the Atman-project. It is a sharing of what I have
seen; it is a small offering of what I have remembered; it is also the zen dust which you should
shake from your sandals; and it is finally a lie in the face of that Mystery which only alone is'.
232
QQ:ss 6.
233
QQ:ss 8.
THE NATURE OF REALITY 181
head toward the meta-physical or mystical—and that is why so many of our pioneering
physicists were mystics234
.
Wilber's rejection of popular holism seems complete, and is unusually wellargued.
It is all the more significant because it comes not from an "outsider"
but from within the broad sphere of New Age thinking, and because it clearly
formulates the fundamental differences between the two main types of speculation
about "the nature of reality" which we have encountered again and
again: a monistic type inspired by modern natural science and a hierarchical
and idealistic type (the first starting from a primary interest in "matter" but
concerned with saving the spiritual dimension; the second starting from "spirit"
and forced to explain the apparent existence of "matter").
If we screen our New Age corpus, finally, for argued responses to Wilber's
criticism by defenders of the holographic paradigm and parallelism, the result
is rather disappointing. Only Capra and Bohm have taken the trouble to give
some kind of response, but both restrict themselves to rather impromptu observations
which fail to address the fundamental philosophical problems raised
by Wilber. Bohm feels that Wilber incorrectly emphasizes transcendence at the
expense of immanence, but does not appear to have read Wilber himself, or to
be particularly interested235
. Capra treats the matter more seriously and argues
that, contrary to what Wilber believes, mystics do not perceive interconnectedness
and interpenetration in the ordinary realm: their mode of perception is
non-ordinary and because the perceived can no longer be regarded as separate
from the perceiver, it follows that the reality perceived by mystics is also nonordinary.
Physicists, by employing sophisticated instruments, also perceive a
"non-ordinary" reality. The mystic and the physicist do not perceive the same
elements, however, but their perceptions do mirror each other because both are
based on interrelatedness. Capra then evades the real debate by saying that he
is simply studying the overlap between physics and mysticism, but that there
is much more to both sides236
. In his observations about hierarchical models,
later on in the interview, he suggests that Wilber treats the concept of levels
somewhat too seriously. For the rest, he disposes of Wilber by simply agreeing
with almost everything he says while refusing to draw his conclusions237
.
We can only conclude that neither Bohm nor Capra is interested in polemics,
the former probably because he is too engrossed in his own theory, the latter
because of an apparently deep-seated inclination towards harmony.
234
QQ:ss9-10.
235
HP:pm 188
236
HP:ToPR 233.
237
See esp. HP:ToPR 237-238.