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A Brief Stop at the Human Intersection
If you think about the Universe as a vast unknown then you can think about human knowledge and understanding about the universe as the “human intersection with the universe.” Our knowledge about, and understanding of, the universe is exactly where we as conscious beings intersect with the universe. Many of the fundamental polarities that have confounded humanity for all time revolve directly around how we perceive this human intersection. On the one hand you could see human knowledge about the universe as a tiny intersection, a tiny speck of known in a vast perhaps infinite sea of unknown. On the other hand you might imagine that human knowledge was almost at the point of fully encompassing reality. In this case you would sense that human understanding was perched on the precipice, right on the brink, of understanding everything.
Romantic thinkers (like myself) tend towards the former while more empirical thinkers generally tend, perhaps ever so slightly, in the other direction. Scientists can be either Romantic or Empirical. Catherine, our commentor who is also a respected physicist in France, will tell you that European scientists tend to be of the more Romantic variety, pursuing knowledge for its own sake, while American scientist tend to be driven more by utility and direct application. I suppose this can be argued, but there is probably some truth in the generalization.
If we imagine back to a time before the human capacity for reason was very developed there would have been no way to imagine that there might be more to reality than what you could see, hear and touch. And there would be so many things that you could not understand. If lightening struck the ground next to you, you might assume that someone must have thrown it at you from the clouds. And that someone must be much more powerful than you and so it must have been a god.
With The Enlightenment human reason began to find new ways to understand the workings of the universe. Imagine the shift that must have occurred in human consciousness with the advent of the first scientific instruments that allowed us to perceive more of the universe than ever before. The telescope showed us a universe much vaster than we had ever realized and the microscope introduced new universes of the very tiny, and sailing ships took us to a “new world” that existed right here on this world. The sense of wonder and awe must have been overwhelming. Suddenly it was clear that there was much more to the universe than we had ever been able to imagine. At the same time there was also an awe emerging from the fact that at precisely the moment when humanity was begining to see that there was a great deal more to the universe than it had imagined, it also saw that the universe appeared to be running according to universal laws. There was unity in the universe. There weren’t gods in clouds throwing things down on us. There was electricity that we could observe as the static electricity that pops when we touch metal after scrapping our shoes on a carpet, or as the lightening that falls from the sky. In both cases the laws that govern its activity were the same. In short, the universe might be bigger than we could ever image, but we could, given enough time, figure it all out.
And so human understanding has progressed and I propose that one of the fundamental polarities in the way different people see the world lies in whether their leaning is toward the awe that comes from how huge and unknown the universe is on one hand, or the possibility of understanding all of it on the other.
Romantic thinkers tend to be obsessed with the unknown. Imagine arriving on a completely alien planet and being sent out to explore the area around your spaceship. The twist is that you are wearing blindfolds that only allow you to see through drinking straw, you have cotton stuffed in your ears and you are wearing boxing gloves. You walk around for hours examining the world with your impaired senses and come back to make a full report. How closely would your report reflect the reality that you would perceive if you were to remove the blindfolds, the cotton and the gloves, and then repeat the exploration? We know that our eyes only see a tiny sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. What if our total ability to perceive was ten times more impaired than the spaceman wearing boxing gloves? 100 times? 1000 times? etc.
Because they are so enamored by the vastness of the unknown, Romantics are less interested in knowing more about what they can already perceive and more interested in expanding the doors of perception further. They don’t experiment on the world; they experiment on themselves – sometimes living dangerously close to the brink of self destruction. They use emotion, intuition, art and altered states of consciousness to take themselves beyond the barrier of the known into the uncharted territories afforded by new perceptions. They gave us the image of the lone scientist sleeplessly pursuing a new discovery and the tortured artist on the unending quest for novelty. They were creative souls extraordinaire.
I would disagree that Romanticism represents some earlier stage of development that we have gone beyond. I think that Romanticism is one end of the polarity between the known and the unknown. That polarity creates a tension that drives human creativity through all stages of development as we explore the universal crossroads of the human intersection.
Hi Jeff,
after reading this blog, I found myself in the situation where there best part of me as a scientist wants both of the two worlds; it is in awe in front of the vastness of what we don’t know, of the unknown, but at the same time it wants with the same fierce passion to explain it all. This creates the tension and the passion.
Science is ( for me) exactly about finding the universal laws of the universe. I have the strong belief that universal laws are in everything that exists, and that they are simple under the right perspective. Maybe this conviction, allied with the curiosity of how things function ( “Tell me the how of things”, was saying Maxwell, my favorite physicist of all times) might define the Scientific Spirit.
I also as you define beautifully, believe in the notion of direct experience which enlarges our capacities of perceptions. It is what was happening in the ground of Being part of the retreat this summer; Andrew takes us to a place where our capacity to perceive the Absolute are magnified. Later on one can never forget what one has seen there, and the perspective on life is changed forever. This is a typically scientific method.
Within the above definition, Andrew is precisely a Scientist… which never ceases to amaze me.
For me, the radical difference between scientists is between the ones who leave some space for the magical structure of the world ( reflected in the human creativity for example, but not only) and those who don’t. The former could be represent by the old alchemists, the shamans, and recently by, for example, this European ( and american) school of scientists( to which I feel I belong), from Pascal to Newton to Teilhard , to d’Espagnat, who saw no contradiction between science and faith. The latter is the great majority of our contemporary scientists, who hold a materialistic view of the world.
Jeff, it would be great if we could clarify this notion of “worldview ”. The way I understands it – a worldview is my perspective on the world and life, the context, the light in which my existence takes form. If we agree on this, I claim that our worldviews are disconnected with our capacities of understanding, but rather they define our Values set up. They will affect our actions, not our understanding of how things work.
Understanding is separate, disconnected form this. Our worldviews correspond to our moral, our soul positioning; they are the diffuse reflection of the magical structure of the world I was talking about; they will open the space in which Events and Actions can ( and thus will– this is the magical part) unfold.
Thank you for the space to think a bit further in a different direction.
Yesterday I had been viewing my existence in the world. Funny how as an acupuncturist I see many trapped in the human body and the suffering felt physically.
I wondered if it is the attachment to being so physical and the forgetting that we are spiritual in a human body. Then began thinking of how much am I in my head thinking out different planes of my existence that I feel involved with.
So wondered if many others are wonder similar thoughts of being?
I can only say I do my very best to aid those who come to me in pain and discomfort in their bodies. Luckily most all leave better than they came but I can only hope it is part of the acknowledgment of their being in their body that is the start to healing.
Peace
Catherine lets think more about what a “worldview” is…we probably need a common definition because to me any of our understanding of the world which is interpreted (which is almost all of it) would be interpreted through a “worldview.”
And Leslie, I have been amazed to find that the kind of introspection that you are describing is exactly at the heart of Romanticism…
My sense is that the greatest scientists revel in standing at the edge of the Unknown, ever-curious what lies beyond, and excited about penetrating the Mystery as the infinite layers of curtains part. Great science faces into the Uknown, while false science sits in the corner clutching the Known, holding on for dear life. I feel that the true scientists, like Andrew Cohen and B.F. Skinner, spend their lives using everything they can to uncover the Truth, working at different levels of observation according to their specialties. Some are closer to the metaphysical than others (e.g., Feynman the Physicist), while others are closer to the details (e.g., Wilson, the great researcher of social insects and the evolution of social behavior altogether). It’s all about diving into the mystery, using whatever the best tools we have at the moment to understand more. Not knowing, but wanting to know.
Hi Jeff
When I ‘m thinking about the topic “Romanticism” you brought, I find the link between “the creative impulse” what Shelly Souza is inquiring about on her blog, also inspiration from Irish poet and philosopher, John O’Donohue.
It seems to me that the Creative Impulse recognized within the individual called soul.
And we can say “The Creative Impulse pull us into the unknown” vice versa “ We place profound trust in the act of beginning”.
Bible say “Love never fails”,Shelly say “Nothing to fix because nothing is broken” which comfort my inner sanctuary.
Yet my reality of facing up the money issues one after another bring the fear of Survival.”Love conquer fear” is not easy task within and as David mentioned previous post “How to deliver a world view” also challenging task.
Still I think it’s worth the challenge to live up to so called “Awakening life”.The word ” Faith ” shine indeed.
Hi Carl,
your comment about the Unknown inspires me a lot.
What s the Unknown , it is what we don’t know , or it is the Edge of knowledge ? I would opt for the latter.
Meaning that to reach the Unknown we have to get at the frontier of the Known, and know where this knowledge ends.
To do as if we don’t Know is not the Unknown, it is just mere lazyness.
it is the Krishnamurti saying: “Intelligence starts when Knowledges ends” but for Knowledge to end, one has to really to to the frontier of it and stand there.
It is the Socratic view and it is what you advocate for great Science and I agree with it ( although I wouldn’t put Richard Feynman into the category of mystical physicist, he was for me a typical example of a genius, but materialistic scientist, but I might be missing something here. John Wheeler and Freeman Dyson are pure mystics, among the americans I know of).
Now the retreat ( with Andrew) this summer has somehow put all this beautiful vision I had of the Unknown into question. Somehow this vision ( or worldview) which I share with you, is still intellectual. It still relies on the Known.
So how does one goes and pass over our investment to the Intellect, how does one reaches beyond the Intellect and transcend it ?
Does do intellectuals like us stop completely to rely on what they know, and jump into emptiness illuminated by the sole Intuition ?
I for sure feel quite stuck at the level to which I am invested in my intellect.
Any idea ?
About Feynman, Wheeler etc.. , a physicist like Feynman would never go to such a daring statement as the following by Wheeler :
“Wheeler has speculated that the laws of physics may be evolving in a manner analogous to evolution by natural selection in biology. “How does something arise from nothing?”, he asks about the existence of space and time (Princeton Physics News, 2006). He also coined the term “Participatory Anthropic Principle” (PAP), a version of a Strong Anthropic Principle. From a transcript of a radio interview on “The anthropic universe”[5]:
Wheeler: We are participators in bringing into being not only the near and here but the far away and long ago. We are in this sense, participators in bringing about something of the universe in the distant past and if we have one explanation for what’s happening in the distant past why should we need more?
Martin Redfern: Many don’t agree with John Wheeler, but if he’s right then we and presumably other conscious observers throughout the universe, are the creators — or at least the minds that make the universe manifest.”
I wonder if there is a race to try to understand the world, universe, and life on earth, humans, and how it all fits together. I feel a panic of sorts coming from people about the future and if we will have one in a few years. As I recall, this was the same feeling people were projecting a few years before the year 2000.
1.The panic of the “unknown thing” that was going to occur due to the “year” 2000 that began around 1990. 2.Followed by a true traumatic event 9 11. The FBI, CIA, and those who were involved with the twin towers had their thoughts on that event since the first terrorist explosion occurred in 1993. 3.People have quieted down a little since 9 11, but are confused about the year 2012, giving this date attention since around 2001. Will this date be the end to all civilization?
From my experience, it is usually during a trauma that a true change happens within the person experiencing the trauma. Either you will make life-altering changes for a healthier way of living or not. It can go either way. It all depends on how you view life. Lovingly or hardheartedly.
If you want to know how the Universe thinks, you must first understand how and why you think. What you give your attention to will come into your life. You get to choose to think thoughts that are romantic or the complete opposite. If you are a scientist or a philosopher, how you think will always be the way you measure everything in your work and life.
P.S. What your home life is like is how your work life is. In other words, what you have your attention on the most, usually everyone has their attention on their home life, you will play that role out in your work life.
Jeff, trying to explore the cosmos outside the spaceship through the view of a drinking straw, wearing boxing gloves and with cotton wool stuffed in our ears does not sound like much fun at all. Much more fun to have completely unbound and limitless access to the indescribable beauty of just absolutely merging with the whole vast and brilliant cosmos. Pure ecstacy, awe and wonder.
Catherine,
Maybe this doesn’t go far enough, but some of the scientists I have known, or whose books I have read, stare (as you say) from the edge of what is known into the unknown with a kind of wonder and excitement about what might lie beyond. I also find that they sometimes seem to “look back” at what is known about aspects of creation and are in awe of it, in part because they know more about its complexity and elegance than most people. It’s kind of the “How amazing it is to think that this could even BE, let alone come to be through some lawful process!” It’s completely amazing to reflect on the laws of nature as we have come to understand them, and the manifestation of those laws.
To actually understand the mechanisms of complex behavior, or how viruses mutate, or what happens in a lightning storm, or how the balance of nature in a lagoon works — often seemingly simple experiences with complex laws and dynamic order “behind” them — it’s quite awe-inspiring.
I don’t have the quotation on hand, but Einstein’s comment to the effect that to look at the world as we know it we cannot escape a feeling of wonder and mystery — that to me is where science can take us. I like that a lot better than making stuff up or believing blindly.
It’s actually being inspired what IS and what more there is to understand.
It’s being in the current of the evolutionary impulse, participating in our ever-expanding awareness and sensitivity as a species and as individuals, awareness that will enable more informed choices, wiser plans, and a deeper appreciation of the Whole. To me, that is the beauty of scientific inquiry and discovery.
When you consumed with passion,fire,what to do ?
Yes Carl, as you beautifully said… I completely agree with you.
Today I had lunch with Tony Leggett ( Nobel Prize 2003 form many things, but Tony is a specialist in superfluidity); frankly he impressed me. The curiosity he was showing and the innate passion in this oldish guy were a tribute to where Science can bring great scientist.
And still… I had the intuition at the retreat, that Andrew was pushing us, the intellectuals to go even beyond this, somehow to surrender our intellect completely and transcend it. How to do this is a mystery for me.
For the awe of standing at the frontier of the Unknown, I am on the same wavelength as you are; it is exactly why I chose to be a research scientist. The frontier is a very interesting place to be !
Hi Catherine,
It’s not just the intellectuals who need to surrender the intellect and completely transcend it believe me. Although I can see perhaps how much more challenging this would be as the whole life of the intellectual is based on great respect and high esteem for the intellect and for good reason.
Did you participate in the meditation virtual workshop this last weekend with Enlightennext? When you asked the question about how to surrender the intellect in your comment above – the instructions Andrew gave on this last workshop (taken from Tuscany) were so very simple and seem to answer your question perfectly if practiced – when you are meditating have ‘no relationship to thought, memory, fear or desire’. If your mind wanders to thought, just bring it back to these simple instructions and keep practicing this, eventually the mind will drop to the unknown, even if only temporarily. With more practice maybe permantly being able to abide in the unknown beyond the mind! I have found these instructions very helpful!
yes Joanna, I think you are right. Actually since I don’t have that much time for meditation and I want to be very serious with those teachings [ it is this intuition that if one is not dead serious with them, those teaching will be just useless; there is not half way with them !]
then what I do is to practice those instructions all the time, as much as possible.
Since the retreat in Tuscany, I also put my best to practice “ no relationship to thought , memory , fear or desire” even when I do some intense physics research. Some situations have been quite challenging ( like feeling completely empty headed in the blackboard before giving an explanation) but strangely the instructions seem to apply, even for intense intellectual activity.
It feels like walking on a rope though…
But thanks you are right, I shall stick to this at every second and then see what happens !
Jeff, could we say that the romantic approach is a need to turn in the interior truth? It is obvious that the materialistic worldview is mostly about the exterior truths. Is it not our intention to bring it all together – inner and outer truth? I believe thats also the idea in the discovery cycle. So we have to be both romantics and materialists in a way 🙂
You are right Catherine, the instructions for ‘no relationship to thought, memory, fear or desire’ also do apply to life aside from meditation. Because I can start having an obsessive thought train about something and then remembering these instructions is also good then. I think being involved in these teachings, perhaps we become more intuitive, we stop worrying so much and the answer comes from a deeper place quite surprisingly sometimes without stressing and straining about it.
Shizuka, I love your comment!
‘When you consumed with passion,fire,what to do ?’
Jeff said, “Romantic thinkers tend to be obsessed with the unknown.” True, and also the unknowable. Given how much there is to learn within the knowable, it’s pragmatic to focus on that.
Brian, your comment is interesting because it reminds me just how impersonal our responses are.
When ever people used to talk about aliens or flying saucers I used to have the same response – there’s so much to do here in the known realm of manifest existence so why spend so much time thinking and wondering about something that is so unknown and unproven as ‘life on mars’ or ‘outer space creatures’.
Surprisingly though now, I am even open to this unknown possibility, it’s as though another much vaster more cosmic perspective has opened up. Now I think well there’s so much out there that is unknown, and there’s this incredibly exciting pull to want to explore it and know more. Very compelling. Of course that doesn’t mean there’s still not a lot to do in the knowable, and that really does need attention too.
I’m thinking that the focus should not be on the inherent limitations of our intellect as much as on the vastness of the unknown and on giving up certainty about what we think we know. It’s more about doubting that we know everything and less on doubting what we actually do know. It’s about removing obstacles to moving forward — both in our “personal” lives where we often let concepts and ideas preoccupy and worry us, unnecessarily limiting our movement forward; and in our broader intellectual lives where we often think we know more than we do, or arrogantly presume that certain answers or directions are wrong, despite not really having evidence to support that presumption. What I am trying to say is that the “problem” is that we limit ourselves and our understanding, not by what we actually know but what we THINK we know or assume or exclude from the realm of possibilities. I’m articulating this rather awkwardly, but as in meditation, it’s about letting go rather than holding on, observing rather than identifying with, facing into the unknown and being willing to see what might emerge. I think that might be the point of what we have been discussing here.
Actually, though, the other side of the coin — as Jeff suggests by contrasting the Romantic with the Scientist — is that when it comes to “understanding” the Whole of the Universe, the totality of what we can experience, the cognitive function and its products, concepts, are inherently incapable because concepts require discrimination between this and not-this, and the Whole by definition includes and therefore transcends all possible discriminations between this and that. The Whole is the ineffable or the great mystery to which such great scientists as Einstein have referred. Nonetheless, the mind can take us a very long way in understanding the mechanisms and the dynamic flow and evolution of the Whole and its parts all the way up to an understanding of the Whole as a single system.
I think we have to (and I mean have to) do everything at the same time.
-we have to bet everything we’ve got on what we think we know with every choice we make. If we doubted what we know we couldn’t get up out of bed in the morning.
-we also have to assume that we might be just about to discover the whole truth – that’s what keeps us moving.
-we also have to question everything that we know because it might all be wrong.
-and last we have to assume that the entirety of reality is infinitely bigger than we will ever know.
that is sort of the rule book for being human.
I agree with the rule book for being human except the last point: how can we know that the entirety of reality is bigger than we will ever know ? This is typically something that I am sure I don’t know … ! and it is precisely this last “not knowing” which defines for me the modern scientific mind.
Maybe it would be good at this point to differentiate between relative knowledge and Absolute Knowledge. Absolute Knowledge comes to all scientists who take their job seriously ( and in this sense to do Science is not incompatible with the enlightenment). Einstein was calling this one “Intuition”. Relative Knowledge is the part of the mind which compares, explains and calculates. Einstein was calling this the “faithful servant”. No scientific discovery, even the smallest one, was ever made without the Absolute Knowledge, the intuition. The explanations, and calculations come next, and are a degenerate version of Knowledge. When we go deep in the Ground of Being, under Andrew supervision ( at least it is what happened to me and what I am ready to bare witness for) we have a direct access to the Absolute Knowledge. This went to me as a surprise; going deep in the unknown was going deeper and deeper in what I had identified long ago as the world of pure Intuition , or pure meaning, the word of Absolute Knowledge.
So what is the “unknown” from this perspective of knowing absolutely ?
Well, I re-join Carl here. I believe , like him ( if I understood well) that the key is that there is no low of causality, or at least those laws, if they exist will appear completely differently viewed from the Absolute.
The mistake is that the relative knowledge, which identifies the causes and the effects, is not at the the Absolute Version of Knowing.
Viewed from the Absolute viewpoint, the causal injections in our discourse , have to be seriously reconsidered. This false knowledge puts barriers everywhere, as Carl said. And of course the mistake is always the same; it is to give an Absolute Character to what is relative; as Einstein was saying, we honor the Faithful Servant and neglect the sacred gift of Intuition.
Given the distinction that you use would it be true to sat that we will never know the totality of reality relatively? Perhaps we are closer in the way we see things than our language is communicating.
Catherine, I’ m not sure how to get what you mean with knowledge seen from “the absolute”. If you mean a place where everyone and everything is One, then I dont think we can talk about knowledge there, cause knowledge includes sepating things somehow. But with an inspiration from that absolute I believe we can grasp things better and come closer to a description of truths.
Dear Mette and Jeff,
yes I believe that we can, at best, only asymptotically approach the Truth with Relative Intelligence [ the intelligence which compares and calculates].
One loose but still accurate way of describing the Absolute Intelligence is Intuition. It is a knowledge which comes to you as a whole; just like this “ pang ! ” any scientific discovery, even the smallest one requires a grain of this Absolute Intelligence. This act of pure understanding, this contact with the grain of Absolute Intelligence, is already a contact with the Ground of Being. It is a Path towards Realization that initiated scientists followed in the past in secret societies. But you are right– this Absolute intelligence cannot be captured or possessed, it is not an object. It is pure meaning, pure certitude and thus pure understanding. It is also our true nature and it is calling us forward. When it degrades itself then it becomes the relative Intelligence.
My quest of the Absolute naturally pass through this contact; I believe all my materialists scientific colleagues know about this moment of understanding, this “Eureka” and even if they don’t use this word, maybe they would agree to call this a contact with God.
Recently my colleague Kostya, who claims to be completely hermetic to spirituality told me : “there is an infinite between the one who comes first on a discovery and the one who comes second”. This Infinite he talks about is already charged with the Absolute, in this infinite you have the grain of Absolute Intelligence, which supports all scientific discovery.
Hi Catherine, re: “do intellectuals like us stop completely to rely on what they know, and jump into emptiness illuminated by the sole Intuition ?”
It seems this is what happens re: what is true:
We go for long whiles accepting what is agreed upon collectively based on the authority of those who decide these things but then some smarty pants may come along to dare to question that acceptance of what comes to pique curiousity and doubt about that veracity. Investigations further that doubt and leads to diclosures and discoveries that reinforce the need to challenge the accepted view of a truth, sometimes to great inconvenience of a challenger (think Galileo, to name one) but eventually truth will out. Most of us aren’t geared to be that kind of challenger but when pushed to that point, most will stand up to insist on our rightness. Based on our homework and tenacity, we may come out on top or get shot down, back off discouraged. But truth does find a way of getting out even after centuries, sometimes.
Re: “If you think about the Universe as a vast unknown then you can think about human knowledge and understanding about the universe as (the human intersection with the universe).”
I won’t contradict your statement but posit that Earth and Humanity are our intersection with the Universe. Without humanity, would consciousness of the Universe even exist?