Sophia’s Web: A Passionate Call to Heal Our Wounded Nature

Dualism and Holism

And the twain shall be one flesh:

so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.

~ Mark 10:8

And on the 8^th day (today!) God said, “Let there be hope!” Why do those words come forth? Because, we are on the brink of disaster, perhaps even extinction, due to a dualistic philosophy, a way of looking at life, that doesn’t work. We think only of ourselves–our wealth, our security, and our convenience– in this day and age.   While we fret over our own personal future, we forget how our children and posterity will live. We destroy the wellbeing of our Mother Earth.

We are experiencing various religious and political groups warring with one another to the point of bloodshed, heartbreak, hatred, and death. Each political or religious group calls the other an “evil doer” while being blinded to seeing themselves in the eyes of those evildoers. While these groups are diverse, they suffer one illness, self-centeredness. Both sides of each conflict (coin) are blind to the unity of humanity.

In search of ever more resources and production, we rape and pillage our Mother Earth.   We are destroying our environment because we have gotten ourselves into a competitive framework. We see winning as having more access to resources and goods than someone else. This competitive mindset results in a depletion of natural resources. Our ultimate goal is to win dominance over Nature, yet that war is exposed to be against ourselves. Our relationship to Nature, after all, is the same as that of a child to its mother. We are dependent on her for survival. What shall we breathe when we destroy the atmosphere? Is it wise for us to take a dagger to the womb that supports us?

If you don’t agree with the reality of Global Warming, listen to the reports of increased dead zones in the oceans. Why, there is even the reemergence of poisonous algae that went extinct millions of years ago in these areas! This “devolution” proves that nothing is truly gone. Perhaps what we think is extinct is but in sleep, a potential waiting to unfold. It is only our human arrogance that thinks we are top of the line. All that appears linear to us, including evolution, may well be cyclical, just as the Earth proved to be round, not flat.

There is, furthermore, a widening gap worldwide between the rich and the poor who are becoming more and more like slaves. Yet, if we attend to history, we discover that slaves tend to rebel. Their fear of being beaten, starved and killed serves as the catalyst for anger and revolution. The fear of this happening also enslaves the slaveholder, who is consumed by the effort to thwart such “terrorism.” Oppression breeds rebellion; rebellion breeds more oppression. Round and round we go in a vicious cycle.   When will it stop?

DUALISTIC AND OBJECTIFIED THINKING

These issues reflect an underlying philosophy called dualism that pits one thing against the other. Two men holding guns out at each other are said to be in a duel. Either you live and I die, or I live and you die. Such duels are a metaphor for our dualistic philosophy of life. Insanely we pit our views against one another. Hence, in today’s world, we have multiple wars, neurotic and psychotic illnesses, the battle of the sexes and rape.

All of this turmoil results from a dualistic philosophy. We are so egocentric that we cannot see the various ways of perceiving the world as being akin to multiple spokes on the same wheel. Spokes apparently going in diametrically opposite directions are necessary to the whole wheel turning in its own holistic cycles towards a goal neither spoke can fathom. Many of the world’s wars (or glorified duels) would disappear if we could accept an overriding truth: what is diverse is unified.

For example, animals have different ways of perceiving from humans and hence live in a different world. There are some birds that have the visual capacity to see upwards of 500 miles. Meanwhile we often struggle to see 90 miles ahead as we sit atop a mountain on a clear, sunny day. However, in our self-centered world, neither bird nor human give much credence to the other’s point of view.

Even within our own species, we are egocentric in our views of the world. We fail to see that spokes, which begin on opposite sides of a circle nonetheless, lead to one hub. We each tend to see our specific way of viewing the world as the way; we really don’t get that our way is simply a way. We are now reaching the “dead end” of our “one way” streets.

Yet, each way of perceiving from every individual in every species reflects God, just as the multitudes of colors we see are all refractions of one source of light, our sun. Imagine how “reality” would seem different if we could see ultraviolet and infrared, for instance. What if we could hear the rumblings of the inner Earth and the music of the dancing stars? Alternatively, consider that perhaps we can! Perhaps we just don’t know how to look and how to listen past what we believe to be real. Perhaps we have much to learn from animals like bats that taught us radar.

Human perceptions change according to the physiology, psychology and spirituality of an individual within a cultural framework. We “see” what we are taught to expect and to value. There is no objective reality “out there” that is being observed by detached and rational minds. For example, rather than history being an objective science filled with facts, the study of the past is a function of the perceptions of the historian. These perceptions are determined by personal, familial, social, cultural and biological variants. For instance, the focus on war, politics, economics, and material invention taught in American schools as “history” overlooks art, labor, women, home and philosophy. This is because of what our mainstream culture values. Ultimately, it is these values that determine how we see everything in the world, from gender and sexuality to world politics to the universe at large. These values are the children born of a union between our perceptions, brought to us by our limited senses–such as sight, smell and taste–and our distorted philosophies, shaped by their words, beliefs, and culture that surround us.

Over the course of history, our views of the world have changed because our philosophies and perceptions have changed. In past cultures and societies, people were very comfortable with the language of myths, fairy tales and dreams. By contrast, in today’s world, we are more apt to believe in what we deem to be the literal language of scientists and scholars. Similarly, the ancient cultures could see energy or spirit patterns in the land that mirrored the energy patterns in the body. Shamans could use the synergy between these energies for healing both the individual and the Earth. Today, we sometimes see this ability as nonsensical and superstitious. These shifts do not occur because our minds have progressed in how they see the world. Rather, the shifts simply reflect cultural changes in philosophy and perception that have implications for how we interact with the world.

Within the context of modern literal thought, our language focuses on a specific definition of a subject that ultimately isolates that subject from the whole and from the thinker. To the degree that we can isolate and objectify what we perceive, we can fool ourselves that we are merely objective observers, non-interactive with what we observe.   We become “nominal” thinkers, cut off from the changes actively unfolding around us.

This trend towards literalism or objectification is a mirror of the scientific philosophy of reductionism, which interprets the universe as divisible into its basic parts in order to understand how things work. From a reductionist and literal point of view, a tree would be nothing more than a tree, existing in isolation from the rest of the universe. Its metaphorical relationship to the greater whole and the ecological interdependence of the tree with the other aspects of its eco-region would be ignored.

HOLOGRAPHIC AND METAPHORICAL THINKING

Within the metaphorical world of dreams, myths and legends, this same tree would have symbolic significance that spoke to the spiritual, physical and psychological essence of an individual and to the universe at large. We find, for instance, the tree-of-life symbol existing in varied cultural myths. It appears in the well known ancient Jewish story in Genesis, Native American mythology and teachings, stories of the !Kung bushmen of Africa, and as a symbol from ancient Irish shamanist cultures existing prior to the Druids.   In the senses of the people living in ancient cultures, a tree’s existence had meaning in relationship to the individual observing it and to the greater whole, both visible and invisible.

Such significance cannot be dismissed as “mere” metaphor. Epistemologist Gregory Bateson (2000) defines metaphor as a language that connects the apparently disparate. He further asserts that metaphor is Nature’s language, our own mother tongue. Fantasies and dreams are written in the language of metaphor. Because of the rich, connective tissue of such language, fantasies and dreams, like myths and fairy tales, speak more fully about the wholeness of life than what is literal. By using metaphor, one image can be universal in its reflection of things or processes. Metaphor is the holistic language of the universal matrix by which one thing is revealed in the many and many are revealed in the one.

Rudolph Steiner expresses this holographic relationship that humanity has with the universe in terms of microcosm and macrocosm:

The three stages of activity of the human soul – the purely intellectual, the aesthetic, and the moral -are microcosmic images of the three realms which in the macrocosm…. lie one above the other.  The Astral world is reflected in the world of thought; the Devachanic world in the aesthetic sphere of pleasure and displeasure; and the Higher Devachanic world is reflected as morality (good or bad deeds). (Steiner, 1911, p.16)

Mythologist Joseph Campbell’s work, The Hero of a Thousand Faces (1990), realizes this holographic matrix in the metaphorical language of myth. As the title suggests, Campbell’s thesis is that there is one hero with different faces in different cultures. Each culture tells a different myth enfolding and unfolding the same Truth. When we read deeply into Campbell’s work, we eventually realize that each of us is an individual face of the one hero. Our heroic task is to discover that hero leading his life deep within us. Hence the ultimate cry of the hero reading and speaking the myth is, “I am (S)He!” Self-discovery is realizing we are a creative and unique expression of the one hero radiating a thousand faces.

This revelation of who we are in relation to the hero in myth is reflected brilliantly in Michael Ende’s (1984) classic, The Neverending Story.   It contains the story of a little boy named Bastian who comes across a book also called The Neverending Story. Bastian reads of a boy named Atreyu whose quest is to save a magical land called Fantasia. The land of Fantasia literally has everything you can imagine, since it is the land of creative fantasy. As Bastian reads the book, he discovers that he himself is the one to save Fantasia by ultimately naming a Child-Empress. In that quest, within the fourth dimension of imagination, to name his Empress, he finds his true identity and power in the “real,” three-dimensional world, where he must face down bullies.

The demand of the great philosopher, Socrates, was to “know thyself.” This demand saturates The Neverending Story. Bastian must find his true identity in the world, i.e., his Goddess, his true Nature. This quest, I would maintain, is a universal one transcending the accumulation of wealth and power.

Dualism and Holism

DUALISM AND HOLISM

And the twain shall be one flesh:

so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.

~ Mark 10:8

And on the 8^th day (today!) God said, “Let there be hope!” Why do those words come forth? Because, we are on the brink of disaster, perhaps even extinction, due to a dualistic philosophy, a way of looking at life, that doesn’t work. We think only of ourselves–our wealth, our security, and our convenience– in this day and age.   While we fret over our own personal future, we forget how our children and posterity will live. We destroy the wellbeing of our Mother Earth.

We are experiencing various religious and political groups warring with one another to the point of bloodshed, heartbreak, hatred, and death. Each political or religious group calls the other an “evil doer” while being blinded to seeing themselves in the eyes of those evildoers. While these groups are diverse, they suffer one illness, self-centeredness. Both sides of each conflict (coin) are blind to the unity of humanity.

In search of ever more resources and production, we rape and pillage our Mother Earth.   We are destroying our environment because we have gotten ourselves into a competitive framework. We see winning as having more access to resources and goods than someone else. This competitive mindset results in a depletion of natural resources. Our ultimate goal is to win dominance over Nature, yet that war is exposed to be against ourselves. Our relationship to Nature, after all, is the same as that of a child to its mother. We are dependent on her for survival. What shall we breathe when we destroy the atmosphere? Is it wise for us to take a dagger to the womb that supports us?

If you don’t agree with the reality of Global Warming, listen to the reports of increased dead zones in the oceans. Why, there is even the reemergence of poisonous algae that went extinct millions of years ago in these areas! This “devolution” proves that nothing is truly gone. Perhaps what we think is extinct is but in sleep, a potential waiting to unfold. It is only our human arrogance that thinks we are top of the line. All that appears linear to us, including evolution, may well be cyclical, just as the Earth proved to be round, not flat.

There is, furthermore, a widening gap worldwide between the rich and the poor who are becoming more and more like slaves. Yet, if we attend to history, we discover that slaves tend to rebel. Their fear of being beaten, starved and killed serves as the catalyst for anger and revolution. The fear of this happening also enslaves the slaveholder, who is consumed by the effort to thwart such “terrorism.” Oppression breeds rebellion; rebellion breeds more oppression. Round and round we go in a vicious cycle.   When will it stop?

DUALISTIC AND OBJECTIFIED THINKING

These issues reflect an underlying philosophy called dualism that pits one thing against the other. Two men holding guns out at each other are said to be in a duel. Either you live and I die, or I live and you die. Such duels are a metaphor for our dualistic philosophy of life. Insanely we pit our views against one another. Hence, in today’s world, we have multiple wars, neurotic and psychotic illnesses, the battle of the sexes and rape.

All of this turmoil results from a dualistic philosophy. We are so egocentric that we cannot see the various ways of perceiving the world as being akin to multiple spokes on the same wheel. Spokes apparently going in diametrically opposite directions are necessary to the whole wheel turning in its own holistic cycles towards a goal neither spoke can fathom. Many of the world’s wars (or glorified duels) would disappear if we could accept an overriding truth: what is diverse is unified.

For example, animals have different ways of perceiving from humans and hence live in a different world. There are some birds that have the visual capacity to see upwards of 500 miles. Meanwhile we often struggle to see 90 miles ahead as we sit atop a mountain on a clear, sunny day. However, in our self-centered world, neither bird nor human give much credence to the other’s point of view.

Even within our own species, we are egocentric in our views of the world. We fail to see that spokes, which begin on opposite sides of a circle nonetheless, lead to one hub. We each tend to see our specific way of viewing the world as the way; we really don’t get that our way is simply a way. We are now reaching the “dead end” of our “one way” streets.

Yet, each way of perceiving from every individual in every species reflects God, just as the multitudes of colors we see are all refractions of one source of light, our sun. Imagine how “reality” would seem different if we could see ultraviolet and infrared, for instance. What if we could hear the rumblings of the inner Earth and the music of the dancing stars? Alternatively, consider that perhaps we can! Perhaps we just don’t know how to look and how to listen past what we believe to be real. Perhaps we have much to learn from animals like bats that taught us radar.

Human perceptions change according to the physiology, psychology and spirituality of an individual within a cultural framework. We “see” what we are taught to expect and to value. There is no objective reality “out there” that is being observed by detached and rational minds. For example, rather than history being an objective science filled with facts, the study of the past is a function of the perceptions of the historian. These perceptions are determined by personal, familial, social, cultural and biological variants. For instance, the focus on war, politics, economics, and material invention taught in American schools as “history” overlooks art, labor, women, home and philosophy. This is because of what our mainstream culture values. Ultimately, it is these values that determine how we see everything in the world, from gender and sexuality to world politics to the universe at large. These values are the children born of a union between our perceptions, brought to us by our limited senses–such as sight, smell and taste–and our distorted philosophies, shaped by their words, beliefs, and culture that surround us.

Over the course of history, our views of the world have changed because our philosophies and perceptions have changed. In past cultures and societies, people were very comfortable with the language of myths, fairy tales and dreams. By contrast, in today’s world, we are more apt to believe in what we deem to be the literal language of scientists and scholars. Similarly, the ancient cultures could see energy or spirit patterns in the land that mirrored the energy patterns in the body. Shamans could use the synergy between these energies for healing both the individual and the Earth. Today, we sometimes see this ability as nonsensical and superstitious. These shifts do not occur because our minds have progressed in how they see the world. Rather, the shifts simply reflect cultural changes in philosophy and perception that have implications for how we interact with the world.

Within the context of modern literal thought, our language focuses on a specific definition of a subject that ultimately isolates that subject from the whole and from the thinker. To the degree that we can isolate and objectify what we perceive, we can fool ourselves that we are merely objective observers, non-interactive with what we observe.   We become “nominal” thinkers, cut off from the changes actively unfolding around us.

This trend towards literalism or objectification is a mirror of the scientific philosophy of reductionism, which interprets the universe as divisible into its basic parts in order to understand how things work. From a reductionist and literal point of view, a tree would be nothing more than a tree, existing in isolation from the rest of the universe. Its metaphorical relationship to the greater whole and the ecological interdependence of the tree with the other aspects of its eco-region would be ignored.

HOLOGRAPHIC AND METAPHORICAL THINKING

Within the metaphorical world of dreams, myths and legends, this same tree would have symbolic significance that spoke to the spiritual, physical and psychological essence of an individual and to the universe at large. We find, for instance, the tree-of-life symbol existing in varied cultural myths. It appears in the well known ancient Jewish story in Genesis, Native American mythology and teachings, stories of the !Kung bushmen of Africa, and as a symbol from ancient Irish shamanist cultures existing prior to the Druids.   In the senses of the people living in ancient cultures, a tree’s existence had meaning in relationship to the individual observing it and to the greater whole, both visible and invisible.

Such significance cannot be dismissed as “mere” metaphor. Epistemologist Gregory Bateson (2000) defines metaphor as a language that connects the apparently disparate. He further asserts that metaphor is Nature’s language, our own mother tongue. Fantasies and dreams are written in the language of metaphor. Because of the rich, connective tissue of such language, fantasies and dreams, like myths and fairy tales, speak more fully about the wholeness of life than what is literal. By using metaphor, one image can be universal in its reflection of things or processes. Metaphor is the holistic language of the universal matrix by which one thing is revealed in the many and many are revealed in the one.

Rudolph Steiner expresses this holographic relationship that humanity has with the universe in terms of microcosm and macrocosm:

The three stages of activity of the human soul – the purely intellectual, the aesthetic, and the moral -are microcosmic images of the three realms which in the macrocosm…. lie one above the other.  The Astral world is reflected in the world of thought; the Devachanic world in the aesthetic sphere of pleasure and displeasure; and the Higher Devachanic world is reflected as morality (good or bad deeds). (Steiner, 1911, p.16)

Mythologist Joseph Campbell’s work, The Hero of a Thousand Faces (1990), realizes this holographic matrix in the metaphorical language of myth. As the title suggests, Campbell’s thesis is that there is one hero with different faces in different cultures. Each culture tells a different myth enfolding and unfolding the same Truth. When we read deeply into Campbell’s work, we eventually realize that each of us is an individual face of the one hero. Our heroic task is to discover that hero leading his life deep within us. Hence the ultimate cry of the hero reading and speaking the myth is, “I am (S)He!” Self-discovery is realizing we are a creative and unique expression of the one hero radiating a thousand faces.

This revelation of who we are in relation to the hero in myth is reflected brilliantly in Michael Ende’s (1984) classic, The Neverending Story.   It contains the story of a little boy named Bastian who comes across a book also called The Neverending Story. Bastian reads of a boy named Atreyu whose quest is to save a magical land called Fantasia. The land of Fantasia literally has everything you can imagine, since it is the land of creative fantasy. As Bastian reads the book, he discovers that he himself is the one to save Fantasia by ultimately naming a Child-Empress. In that quest, within the fourth dimension of imagination, to name his Empress, he finds his true identity and power in the “real,” three-dimensional world, where he must face down bullies.

The demand of the great philosopher, Socrates, was to “know thyself.” This demand saturates The Neverending Story. Bastian must find his true identity in the world, i.e., his Goddess, his true Nature. This quest, I would maintain, is a universal one transcending the accumulation of wealth and power.