evolution ? was: Today's Jean Klein

[Guest guest]

, Dharma <deva@L...> wrote:

> >You know, I have always had the idea that it feels right because

it is the

> >most energetically sound (physics wise) state of both brain and

body =

> >motor and sensory cortices. In one way, it's the return to the

state of

> >being natural evolution and selection (not spiritual "evolution"

which is

> >a human concept) has arrived at as optimum.

>

> "Natural evolution" is also a human concept. It's one of our

myths. Which

> doesn't mean it's not so. It's one of our ways of understanding and

> structuring the world.

 

To try and more explain what I meant in my previous post:

 

The scientific theory of natural selection is a human concept and may

in some people's eyes be a myth, but it is certainly less of a myth

than the idea of "spiritual evolution".

 

After all, you can't construct testable experiments based on the myth

that organisms can evolve spiritually (from where to what and exactly

how and under what kind of system ? The spiritual system of the

person stating this ?) and from those experiments make observations

and predictions to be tested out.

 

The idea of spiritual evolution is something entirely else than the

idea of natural evolution and selection. Natural evolution does not

use the ideas of "advanced" and "primitive" in the terms that humans

usually use these words, where "advanced" means "intended desirable

state" and "primitive" means "undesired state of lack".

 

The concept of natural evolution concerns energy and the conservation

of energy (energy vs entropy) on an organismal and cellular level

which is as automatic as the loss of energy of photons during

fluorescence of a chemical compound. The concepts of quantum physics,

although not used for such large scale descriptions, can very well be

used to explain the concept of natural evolution, both on a genetic,

organismal and ecological level. They just aren't used as such

because there is much added complexity and synergy in living tissue

which makes it difficult and pointless to conduct experiments of

quantum physics in tissue and cells.

 

In natural evolution, no organism or tissue thereof is seen to be

lacking or wrong or primitive. In fact, due to the organisms

currently alive can trace their ancestral roots and material back to

the dawn of life on this planet (and further back) and still alive,

they are seen as the optimal solutions for life in the current state

of the physical realities on Earth. But since physical states

constantly change, the organisms within this physical reality will

constantly flux and change with their environment, based on the

cushion of survival allowing this change (almost like a "bank" of

flexibility), the genomes and the genotype.

 

These ideas of evolution and flux based on energy and the current

physical state is far away from the idea of spiritual evolution where

yet more concepts and myths are frequently used to undermine the idea

of "perfect current state" and to change it to a "must reach some

unknown and desired state". In addition, the changes observed in the

organism during the spiritual "evolution" happen in the phenotype,

not in the gene pool, and is thus not evolution in the scientific

sense. Natural evolution has no other goal than reaching the

energetic optimum of the current physical state, the best fit. This

goal constantly changes and does not remain something fixed as it

does in most systems of spiritual evolution, although they are in

many ways the same (when "spiritual evolution" has been stripped of

ideas of a fixed goal).

 

That does not mean that the concept of natural evolution and basic

physical concepts may not be a better way of explaining the events

often observed in spiritual "evolution".

 

 

Love,

 

Amanda.

[Guest guest]

Namaste A et al,

 

Spiritual evolution is the removal of impediments to manifestation,

which in its final stages takes on compassion and the purification of

the awareness sheath.........ONS Tony

[Guest guest]

Hi Amanda,

>The scientific theory of natural selection is a human concept and may

>in some people's eyes be a myth, but it is certainly less of a myth

>than the idea of "spiritual evolution".

 

Myth is symbol in movement... a way of perceiving the world and

structuring our perceptions. It is perhaps unique to modern times that we

are able to see the myths in which we live, our own ways of understanding

the world. To say that something is a myth does NOT mean that it isn't

true. In Jung's introduction to his autobiography, he said, "This is my

myth."

>After all, you can't construct testable experiments based on the myth

>that organisms can evolve spiritually (from where to what and exactly

>how and under what kind of system ?>snip<

>

>The idea of spiritual evolution is something entirely else than the

>idea of natural evolution and selection.

 

What you are saying here is that physical evolution and spiritual evolution

are entirely separate and unrelated. Perhaps your teachers of evolutionary

theory were scientists who saw religion and spirituality as beyond the pale

of science... not physical, not susceptible of scientific study, not

provable. And perhaps those spiritual teachers you have known were

unwilling or unable to encompass the scientific view of the world's

evolution. But this is one world, one universe, both material and

spiritual... one does not evolve in the absence of the other. It is a

thinking, conscious world that is in evolution.

 

Did you read the excerpts I just sent from Teilhard? His was one of the

great minds of the 20th century... someone said "the greatest synthetic

mind since Aquinas." He was a geologist and paleontologist; he was on the

team that discovered Peking Man. The excerpts I sent were from his more

mystical and spiritual writings, and they express with a fervor that had to

be restrained in purely scientific works his understanding of the evolution

of this planet and of thinking and spiritual man.

 

His great work was _The Phenomenon of Man_, a difficult book to get into

because he found it necessary to coin so many new words to express his view

and understanding of the world. The terms "noosphere" and "Omega point,"

for instance, come from him. But perhaps his words have become so much a

part of the language now that the book is no longer difficult to read.

 

In that book he writes of evolution as an authority in the field, but going

further into what one would call meta-evolutionary theory. Early in the

book he establishes that every atom is dual and has both its bit of matter

and its bit of life or "consciousness." As matter comes together into more

complex forms, there is more conscious awareness. And man, he says, is the

most complex form of all. And so he sees evolution as the forward movement

of the thinking world.

 

He writes of the great tree of evolution... and he sees that we are in the

midst of a leap in evolution at this time. And not just another leap in

evolution... he thinks that we are at the central point in history, the

turning point, at which the movement of evolution begins to converge back

toward unity. His was a teleological view... he saw the movement of

history and evolution as being drawn into the future by what is at its end,

which he called the Omega Point. I see people on the net now using the

term "Omega Point," but to grasp its full meaning one should understand

Teilhard's work, especially _The Phenomenon of Man_.

 

And perhaps you might read again the excerpts from his frankly mystical

_Hymn to the Universe_ with the understanding of his scientific background

and his work in the area of evolutionary theory? I think much more will be

clear.

>As the years go by, Lord, I come to see more and more clearly, in myself

>and in those around me, that the great secret preoccupation of modern man

>is much less to battle for possession of the world than to find a means of

>escaping from it. The anguish of feeling that one is not merely spatially

>but ontologically imprisoned in the cosmic bubble; the anxious search for

>an issue to, or more exactly a focal point for, the evolutionary process:

>these are the price we must pay for the growth of planetary consciousness;

>these are the dimly-recognized burdens which weigh down the souls of

>christian and gentile alike in the world of today.

> Now that humanity has become conscious of the movement which carries

>it onwards it has more and more need of finding, above and beyond itself,

>an infinite objective, an infinite issue, to which it can wholly dedicate

>itself.

>snip<

> Let us then establish ourselves in the divine milieu. There, we shall

>be within the inmost depths of souls and the greatest consistency of

>matter. There, at the confluence of all the forms of beauty, we shall

>discover the ultra-vital, ultra-perceptible, ultra-active point of the

>universe; and, at the same time, we shall experience in the depths of our

>own being the effortless deployment of the plenitude of all our powers of

>action and of adoration.

>snip<

> Humanity, the spirit of the earth, the synthesis of individuals and

>peoples, the paradoxical conciliation of the element with the whole, of the

>one with the many: all these are regarded as utopian fantasies, yet they

>are biologically necessary; and if we would see them made flesh in the

>world what more need we do than imagine our power to love growing and

>broadening till it can embrace the totality of men and of the earth?

 

- Pere Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, _Hymn to the Universe_

 

Amanda:

>These ideas of evolution and flux based on energy and the current

>physical state is far away from the idea of spiritual evolution

 

Henri Bergson wrote of the _elan vital_, the vital energy or vital spirit,

at the heart and core of evolution, moving through history and empowering

the evolution of the thinking world. If you do not care for Teilhard's

teleology, read Bergson.

>In addition, the changes observed in the

>organism during the spiritual "evolution" happen in the phenotype,

>not in the gene pool,

 

Are you sure of that?

> and is thus not evolution in the scientific

>sense. Natural evolution has no other goal than reaching the

>energetic optimum of the current physical state, the best fit. This

>goal constantly changes >snip<

 

The moment you posit that "natural evolution" HAS a goal, you admit that it

is also spiritual, involving consciousness/ spirit. Thus Teilhard says:

>... if the laws of

>biogenesis of their nature suppose and effectively bring about an economic

>improvement in human living-conditions, it is not any question of

>well-being, it is solely a thirst for greater being

>that by psychological necessity can save the thinking world from the

>taedium vitae.

> And here we can see with complete clarity the importance of the idea,

>suggested above, that it is at its point or superstructure of spiritual

>concentration and not at its base or infrastructure of material arrangement

>that humanity must biologically establish its equilibrium.

>snip<

>Henceforth we know enough - and it is already a great deal - to be able to

>say that these onward gropings of life will succeed only in one condition:

>that the whole endeavour shall have unity as its keynote. Of its very

>nature the advance of the biological process demands this. Outside this

>atmosphere of a union glimpsed and longed for, the most legitimate demands

>are bound to lead to catastrophe: we can see this only too clearly at the

>present moment. On the other hand, once this atmosphere is created almost

>any solution will seem as good as all the others, and every sort of effort

>will succeed, at least in the beginning. Thus, if in dealing with the

>problem of the various human races, their appearance, their awakening,

>their future, we start from its purely biological roots, it will lead us to

>recognize that the only climate in which man can continue to grow is that

>of devotion and self-denial in a spirit of brotherhood. In truth, at the

>rate the consciousness and the ambitions of the world are increasing, it

>will explode unless it learns to love. The future of the thinking earth is

>organically bound up with the turning of the forces of hate into forces of

>charity.

 

Love,

Dharma